Sermon preached at St Thomas Church in New York City, Fifth Avenue, NY

St Thomas Church in New York City

Fifth Avenue, NY

Festal Eucharist

The Second Sunday Of Easter

27 April 2025 @11h00

Readings: Acts 5:27-32; Revelations: 1: 4-8; John: 20: 19-31

May I speak in the name of our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of our lives, Amen.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!!

Brothers and sisters in Christ, dear people of God, it is an honour and a privilege to have been asked to share with you the Word of God at Eastertide, just days after celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. As well as being a time of celebration for Christians around the world, today is also a notable day in South African history. For us it is the anniversary of the day in 1994 when all South Africans were able to vote for the first time, and so what we call Freedom Day marks the dawn of our democracy, the day we achieved our political liberation from racist rule and the injustices of the eras of colonialism and apartheid.

Many thanks to your Rector, Canon Turner, for giving me this opportunity, and to the Vicar, Father Matthew, for your welcome here today. Thank you also, the St Thomas family for inviting me and ensuring a smooth visit to the parish and to New York. Thank you too to those who have worked hard on the preparations for this service and our time together before the service.

Today's reading from St John’s Gospel presents to us the story of Jesus appearing to the assembled disciples, who were still gripped by fear after the gruelling events of the Passion. Appearing before them, it is significant that he greets them with the words: ‘Peace be with you’'. Although this was the salutation ordinarily offered at the time, to the disciples it meant far more than an ordinary greeting, for it conveyed the gift of peace from one now indisputably confirmed as the Son of God, Saviour of humankind. There was no denying His identity, for He showed the marks of crucifixion, His risen body carrying the proof of his suffering. The importance of the encounter is underlined by the repetition of the assurance of God's peace, and the breathing upon the disciples of the Holy Spirit, this metaphor reflecting the dual meaning of the word in both Hebrew and Greek which denotes both “breath” and “spirit”.¹

Sisters and brothers, this episode would appear to be in anticipation of Pentecost, the agency of the Holy Spirit confirming upon the disciples the role of Christ's ambassadors—a role now extended to us by the gift of the Spirit. And although it is not in our power to forgive sins, Jesus extends to us, through the agency of the Holy Spirit within us, the possibility of pronouncing forgiveness based on what God has done in Christ.

The story of Thomas’s disbelief and his subsequent encounter with Jesus are no doubt included in John’s account to illuminate his main purpose – to point to Jesus as the Son of God. Despite his initial doubts, Thomas, with his acclamation ‘My Lord and my God’', goes on to display the highest level of faith recorded in this Gospel. The confirmation of the divine nature of Jesus is unmistakable and provides a fitting conclusion to John’s record of the path by which the disciples' faith was confirmed. Jesus's affirmation that ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’'speaks of a faith that is of a nobler order than Thomas’s, the kind of faith which has sustained the Christian church to the present time.

We live in a time during which we can often feel challenged in our belief that this is God's world, and that God is in charge. How can we take on board Jesus’'s assurance implicit in the greeting ‘Peace be with you’ at a time when 40 conflicts of varying intensities ravage our world; when peace talks to end the war in Ukraine seem deadlocked; when the deadly power struggle between two warring military forces in Sudan carries that nation into a third year of civil war, creating the world's worst humanitarian disaster, when South Sudan stands on the brink of a new civil war, and when the killing and apparent ethnic cleansing of Gaza continues without respite?

These situations seem hopeless, but in our experience in South Africa, no situation is hopeless, no situation is beyond God's love and the achievement of God's peace. Let me give you one example.

At the height of apartheid, when the Dutch Reformed Church, which was the dominant church in the white Afrikaner community of South Africa, they wanted very little to do with us, the anti-apartheid churches comprising mostly black South Africans represented in the SACC, the South African Council of Churches. In fact, the Dutch Reformed Church provided a theological justification for the policy of apartheid.

But when Desmond Tutu, exponent of black theology and of liberation theology, was appointed to lead the SACC, he was not content to stand aloof from them. He reached out to them, he invited their leaders to SACC conferences, and he engaged them in dialogue. In time, enough of their leaders came to see the evil of apartheid to the degree that they were able to exert an influence on their political leaders, and today the Dutch Reformed Church is a member of the SACC.

When we hear in South Africa of the political role which some American church leaders are playing, when we read that some American Christians are struggling with Jesus's injunction to “turn the other cheek” (Mt 5:39), we wonder: are The Episcopal Church and the other mainline churches reaching out to your sisters and brothers in the more conservative churches of your country? Are you trying to engage them in dialogue?

I raise the issue because I recently received an appeal from a white South African friend whose family has played an important role in our church. He suggests that many American Christians are probably not unlike the majority of white South Africans who supported, or at least accepted, apartheid. He believes that, drawing on our own experiences, we should send some white South African Christians, possibly Dutch Reformed Church theologicans, to reach out and visit with American Christians, in order to share their experiences and, in his words, to help the Holy Spirit do its work.

The Easter story, as well as assuring us of new life, also offers us new hope. Hope, as I say often, is not a nebulous, pie-in-the-sky concept. It is rather the driving force which motivates our determination to name our problems, to identify solutions to them and to mobilise people to overcome them. But it is not just about good deeds or good works—it is about promoting justice. As that great African saint, Augustine of Hippo, said, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.”

And now, “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.” Amen. (Rev 1: 5b-6)

* * * * *

1 “ruach” (רוּח), and “pneuma” (πνεῦμα)