MOTHERS' DAY: "A Conversation around Peacemaking"

HOMILY: "A Holy and Defiant 'Yes'"

Easter 3, April 19, 2026
John 20:19-31

1.

Traditionally, as Orthodox Christians in Jerusalem approach Easter as they did last weekend, their particular celebrations begin the day before, on Holy Saturday. And on Holy Saturday they converge upon the old, old, old Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And you’ll see pictures of some of this on the back page of your bulletin this morning.

When I met Lareen, a young Palestinian activist, last Spring, she took her time in describing some of this to me and what it means to her community. She painted a kind of picture: how thousands cram into the ancient church in the Christian Quarter, every one of them carrying some kind of unlit torch; and how all eyes are upon the tomb at the heart of the cavernous rotunda, the tomb that has for hundreds of years represented Jesus’ own. And Lareen’s eyes swelled with tears as she described her community’s grief: how their own hearts in 2025 and 2026 bear the wounds of a hundred sorrows, and their hands the scars of displacement and ethnic cleansing. All of that—elders and children, broken yet hopeful in the old church on Holy Saturday; waiting and watching, waiting and watching; and how at last, then, an old Orthodox priest emerges from Jesus’ tomb, with a torch lit from within all that darkness, as hundreds and hundreds roar with delight. “Al Masih Cam!” Christ is risen! “Al Masih Cam!” Christ is risen!

And as this good news crackles through the crowd, so too the holy fire! Passed now from one brightly lit face to another. Spread within and then beyond the old church, torch to torch to torch, sister to sister to brother to brother. Throughout the old city and into the world of wonders and woes. “Al Masih Cam!” Christ is risen! “Al Masih Cam!” Christ is risen!

As it happens, Lareen still grieves for a beloved aunt, a beloved Palestinian journalist who was shot and killed by soldiers in the West Bank several years ago. And every year, she says, she goes to that Church on Holy Saturday, lights her torch from a thousand others, and then makes her own purposeful pilgrimage—through the old stone streets of the city up a hillside to her aunt’s grave. And she waves her torch across that grave. The Holy Fire, a blessing and a promise! “Al Masih Cam!” Christ is risen!

It’s her way, she tells me, not only of remembering her aunt and her sacrifice, but of claiming the resurrection for her people and the whole world, God’s holy and defiant “yes” in the face of cruelty and despair. “Yes” to the Christ who speaks truth to power and dismantles empires with love. “Yes” to the community that treasures its culture and history and seeks the common good. “Yes” to kindness and compassion and inclusion and justice.

Did you catch those last wonderful lines of Bruce Sanguin’s prayer: “As fire kindles brushwood / and causes water to boil, / so we await to be set on fire / with hope and gospel passion.” “Yes” to brushwood. “Yes” to fire. “Yes” to you and me set afire with hope and gospel passion.

For this is our Easter faith. That no act of violence, no heart-breaking loss, no surge of sadness is untouched by Christ’s resurrection. Again: That no act of violence, no heart-breaking loss, no surge of sadness is untouched by Christ’s resurrection; and the Light gathered in his tomb, then, gathered in his tomb and set free then in the world, can and will overcome our many fears and set us free as well. Free to love and be loved. Free to resist cruelty and choose justice. Free to sing hallelujah and praise God and “The Strife is O’er.”

2.

Even so, our faith is necessarily tested by uncertainty; and even Easter joy contends with doubt and disbelief. The genius of that Holy Fire ceremony in Jerusalem is its recognition of light in the midst of darkness, and its kindling of hope and community in a fragmented and traumatized world.

In our story this morning, then, Thomas is called the Twin; and many have wondered if this nickname is indeed to indicate the relentless pairing of doubt and belief in Christian practice. And I like to think this is exactly right. Thomas is something of an archetype. Familiar to us all. The point of the story isn’t to shame Thomas’ skepticism or overwhelm his doubt with incontrovertible evidence. Instead, this wild story reminds you and me of the coupling of doubt and belief in our own lives, in our own community, and the dynamic journey of faith which entertains it all in daily life, in weekly worship, and in our costly discipleship among the world’s broken hearts.

Like so many of us, Thomas is so traumatized by what he’s seen, so distressed by what’s happened within the community he loved; Thomas is so frightened by the unraveling of his people’s hopes and dreams—that he hears his friends’ good news as a cheap and happy fantasy. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my hand in his side,” he says, “I will not believe.”

I attended a poetry reading on Friday where an Iraqi woman bared her soul out loud in a series of poems lamenting the terrible cost of war in her homeland, and grieving the seemingly endless cycle of greed and violence that pierces the hearts of so many: Iraq and Afghanistan then, Gaza and Iran now. And in her poetry I heard the same bewildering mix we find in our story this morning: defiant faith perhaps, but overwhelming despair; an aching for mercy, but a fearful heart as if maybe mercy isn’t enough. And I really can’t blame her, right? Or Thomas. If I’m honest, I lie awake so many nights, restless with the same brew in my belly: faith and doubt, belief and disbelief. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands,” Thomas says. “I will not believe.” Sounds right to me.

What’s unsaid in the story is that his friends—those other disciples—will not shame Thomas for his disbelief. And this seems to me very important and urgently so in the church. They will not mock Thomas or even tease him for the doubting in his heart. For his own despair and restlessness. Instead, they seem to simply give Thomas (and Jesus and the whole resurrection story) the time and space it deserves. So that when another week goes by, and when Jesus returns to stand among them in the house where they’re staying, Thomas is brave enough and honest enough and open enough to touch Jesus’ wounded side and take Jesus’ battered hands into his own. “My Lord,” he says. “My Lord and my God!”

3.

I am beyond blessed in the privileges I’m afforded in doing ministry among you all, and in our own United Church of Christ. Which breaks down so many walls that divide us from one another and builds instead a beloved community of mutual care and celebration. You know what I mean.

And last Sunday turned out to be one of the most extraordinary moments, and really one of the most humbling, in my 37 years doing this kind of thing. Downstairs at the Table, with many of you, I had the great honor of facilitating a ritual of blessing for a first-year UNH student who asked us, our church, to hear his new name and welcome his new name and honor his precious transition in worship. A transition, by the way, that has God’s fingerprints all over it. That’s my hot take.

And I don’t have to tell you all about the culture wars being waged in Concord or DC around the rights of transgender teens and the worthiness of their stories and dreams. And I don’t have to tell you about the many ways religious traditions are used to perpetuate fear and bigotry and homophobia. But there we were last Sunday, Van and I, at the Table—as one after another after another after another of you stepped toward him with tears in your eyes, olive oil at your fingertips, and words of love and blessing and determination upon your lips. It was sacramental. It was incarnational. It was profound. “Van, you are loved.” “Van, you are a Child of God.” “Van, we are your church now.” “Van, you rock!” And so many hugs. Huge, holy, heartfelt hugs.

NEVER AGAIN: "Yom Ha Shoah"

JUST WONDERIN': "Who Would Jesus Bomb?"

SPEAK OUT NOW: "Triplets and a Floundering Civilization"

WHITHER THE PROPHETS NOW? "At Palantir Getting Arrested"

HOMILY: "المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)"

Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026

John 20:1-18

1.

Mary Magdalene (Kelly Latimore)

Last Spring, as many of you know, I took a deep breath and sat down with a tattooist, in a little shop in Jerusalem. That would be a tattooist, as in an artist whose specialty is tattoos.  On human skin.  Just to be clear.  Sixty-three years down the road for me, and I’d never considered it or even been tempted.  Needles make me kind of queasy.  But something about last year, something about last year’s sabbatical, something about the moment and the place: I decided it was my time.

And there, in the Old City, I was directed to a little shop on a little lane, run by Palestinian brothers whose family have passed it along, from generation to generation for hundreds of years.  (Some of their designs, in fact, are four, five hundred years old.  Simple designs.  Like Christ on the cross.  Or the Holy Family.  And it’s stunning, really, to watch a young person in 2025 or 2026 sitting for a tattoo that’s been etched into human bodies for hundreds of years as a sign of devotion and hope.)

But instead, I chose just a couple of words that day, in Arabic, المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)—words that say, right to left, “Christ is risen.” المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!).  And as the tattooist worked his magic on my forearm, and I turned away so as not to faint, I was struck by the idea that one day I would take this tattoo, and these very words, to my grave.  No turning back now.  المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)  “Christ is risen.”  And then I quickly thought of the amazing Palestinian Christians whose faith so inspires my own: friends like Zoughbi Zoughbi and his son Tareq at Wi’am in Bethlehem, and Omar Haramy and Laureen Abu Akleh at Sabeel in Jerusalem, and Father Issa Thalijeh who serves as parish priest at the Church of the Nativity on Manger Square.  I remembered each of them, their faces, their testimonies and stories.  And there in the shop, I invited them once again into my heart, and now into my own skin.  I remembered their kindness in the midst of so much suffering.  And most of all, their fierce and loving faith.  المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)…

2.

In our story—which is something like a tattoo, really, a kind of tattoo in words and images, that’s been passed along from generation to generation, for thousands of years—in our story Mary Magdalene is standing just outside the Jesus’ tomb, crying.  Crying.  Weeping.  Grieving.  She has watched her friend suffer.  She has watched masked agents of empire mock his faith and crucify him in public and even split and distribute his clothing for sport.  And now, early on the first day of the week, arriving early to avoid making even more trouble, she finds that even this—even this simple act of remembrance—is forbidden.  

She had run fast—you’ll remember—she had run fast to find friends, to share this madness with them, to bear this indignity somehow, together.  But they’ve now run for cover.  And Mary Magdalene stands alone.  Outside the tomb.  Weeping.  For one whose love had freed in her a long-forgotten sense of wonder and joy.  Weeping.  For one whose teaching had offered her a pathway to service and leadership in the movement.  Weeping.  For a friend whose hands had washed her feet, whose arms had lifted her from despair, whose fingers had blessed bread and broken bread and turned simple meals into holy feasts.  

Friends, there is no Easter apart from this ‘kairos’ moment.  Mary’s weeping in the garden.  There is no awakening to joy, no reconciliation in love, no holy hallelujah, apart from this moment.  “Grief,” Walter Brueggemann writes, “is an element of aliveness, and the answer to the denial the world/market demands of us.  Grief,” he writes, “is an index of our humanity.  It is proof of the presence of our relatedness to each other.”

Mary Magdalene’s broken heart is the first sign, then, the first salty sign of Jesus’ resurrection, and hers and ours as well.  It’s an index of our humanity.  Proof of the presence of our relatedness, our connection, our solidarity with one we continue to love gratefully, and powerfully, and yes, fiercely.  Grief is, after all, an element of aliveness.  I felt that aliveness—and Mary’s broken heart—on campus last month with students crying out for gun control and sanity in their dormitories and lecture halls.  I felt it in a hospital just last week where a doctor simply and bravely broke down, just broke down, after losing a patient.  And I felt it again and again in Palestine last Spring—where old women shook their fingers in the faces of armed Israeli soldiers.  And young poets in dark cafes breathed fire and hope, invoking a future beyond genocide and apartheid and occupation.

  

Sometimes—as you know—our grief is about loss; it’s about relationships we’ve treasured and turned over to mystery and eternity.  And it comes in waves, surging without notice.  Words then are hard to come by, but the pain is real; it’s physical, even overwhelming.  

Sometimes our grief is about transition, and the turning from one life to another, from old dreams to new dreams, even from one worldview to another.  Transitions can be remarkably beautiful and brutally hard; they can be sacred and important and terribly painful.  And there’s grief in all of that.  Of course, there is.  

And sometimes, sometimes our grief is about disappointment, or even anger and rage, for empires that dehumanize our neighbors, and tyrants who demoralize our democracy, and zealots who turn to war without ever counting the cost, and mask their thoughtlessness in the language of faith.

So Mary Magdalene, indeed, she’s one of us.  Standing outside the ransacked tomb, crying.  Traumatized by violence in the streets.  Her world, her life, her community divided and diminished all over again.  She too struggles to find words for prayer.  She too wonders if faith will ever make sense again.  She too suspects that all his talk of love, all his musing on mercy, was just fantasy, illusion, even hope betrayed.  She’s one of us.

And then, through her tears, through the salty rivers in her swollen eyes, Mary sees a gardener.  At least, she thinks so.  A gardener.  And this is her ‘kairos’ moment.  This is where Easter splits open the hard rock of despair and reveals light and hope and new worlds of possibility.  Because the gardener knows her name.  It turns out that the gardener knows her name.  And now he speaks her name.  The gardener is Jesus, who was crucified by empire, who was mocked by soldiers, who was betrayed by friends: Jesus who says now: “Mary.”  Which is to say, “I know you.”  Which is to say, “Love lives again.”  المسيح قام! (Al-Masīḥ qām!)…Christ is risen.

EASTER SUNDAY: "Christ Rising"

IN THE MEMPHIS SKY: "Pride"

WITNESS: "Moral/Immoral Economy"