“Easter Dreams”

John 20:19-31

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

April 19, 2026

Whenever I start to wonder, “What REALLY happened at Easter?” I think about how the early church was described in the Book of Acts: Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. (Acts 4)

Sounds like a hippie commune, right? Something really unusual, surprising, and incredible must have happened after Jesus’s death…because only something life-altering and earth-shattering would convince a bunch of rational, everyday people to pool all of their possessions and live in a commune together. 

You don’t give up everything you own and join a commune if you’re a reasonable person. You don’t join a religious sect that is counter-cultural and frowned-upon if you’re a reasonable person. 

This is a fascinating thing about Christianity. Because you might look around this room today and think, “Well, this looks like a pretty reasonable group of folks.” 

But if you’re here, there has to be at least one small part of you that isn’t reasonable at all. Because there’s nothing reasonable about the Resurrection; nothing reasonable about following a guy who tells us that we have to lose our own lives to find them; nothing reasonable about continuing to read a book that’s thousands of years old and claim that our lives have been utterly transformed by a person we’ve never heard or seen. There’s nothing reasonable about that at all. 

Thomas – dear old Thomas. John tells us he’s known as “the Twin” which is what the name Thomas means. But we know him better as what? Doubting Thomas, that’s right. 

Thomas has been held up as a cautionary tale (“Don’t be like this guy!”) or lauded as a hero (“Thank God there was at least ONE reasonable person there to ask the sensible questions!)…but, as usual, I think it’s more complicated, right?

First of all, let’s give Thomas the benefit of a little bit of context. This is the third time in John’s gospel that Thomas speaks. He first comes on the scene in chapter 11. Jesus has just learned that his dear friend Lazarus has died. He wants to leave immediately for Judea so he can help his friend. The other disciples urge him to use caution – they worry that if they go back to Judea he will get hurt or killed. When it becomes apparent that Jesus is going, whether or not his friends decide to tag along, Thomas speaks up and says to the others, “Let’s go, too, so that we can die with Jesus.”

Wow. “Let’s go, too, so that we can die with Jesus.” Kinda makes you feel bad for thinking Thomas didn’t have enough faith, right? 

And then in chapter 14 Jesus says, “In my father’s house there are many rooms and I am going there to prepare a place for you.” This is a beautiful text – I read it at almost every funeral. Jesus is trying to comfort his friends, telling them “do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.” Thomas speaks up, saying, “Jesus, we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

Thomas. Faithful, strong, passionate, struggling, beloved Thomas. He is always following Jesus. He’s willing to follow him to death in Judea. He’s willing to follow him to this big house with many rooms, wherever-the-heck-it-is. He loves his friend and he’s willing to follow him wherever he leads. 

So it’s actually somewhat surprising that Thomas reacts the way he does when the others come to tell him that they’ve seen the Risen Christ. He scoffs, “Yeah, right. You saw Jesus. I’ll believe that when I see it with my own eyes.”

I wonder if Thomas felt a little hurt and left out. Here he is, the one who has been willing to follow Jesus wherever he leads and he missed the big show. Why did Jesus come to the others when Thomas wasn’t there? It hardly seems fair. 

And then there is, of course, the elephant in the room: these are perfectly reasonable questions to ask, right? I mean, dead people don’t get up and walk around. It’s a perfectly reasonable response. 

Bible scholar David Lose says that Thomas wasn’t a doubter as much as he was a realist. When Thomas demands to see Christ’s wounds, he’s not so much making a request as he is mocking his friends. He doesn’t actually expect these things to ever HAPPEN, mind, he’s just trying to point out how ridiculous their story is. [1] 

So when Christ shows up and turns his own words back on him and actually invites him to do the impossible….well, it’s one of those moments where the whole world just kind of falls away. Here we see it: two dear friends reunited in this strange and unbelievable way. Jesus could have scolded Thomas, but he doesn’t do that. Instead, he simply invites Thomas to experience the incredible – to see the wounds, to step into a new world where the impossible is the new normal. 

And Thomas, upon seeing Christ with his own eyes, says, quite simply, “My Lord and my God.”

Of all of the statements of faith that various people say when confronted with Jesus, there’s none more faithful than these astonished words breathed from Thomas’s lips. Thomas, the one we’ve labeled as a doubter, confesses that Christ is his Lord and his God.

Lose writes that what really happens in this moment is that Thomas’s very understanding of reality is shifted. His world expands and what he believes might be possible grows. Lose says, “This issue of having too small a vision of reality is what I find interesting. Because I also fall into a worldview governed by limitations and am tempted to call that ‘realism.’ Which is when I need to have the community remind me of a grander vision. A vision not defined by failure but possibility, not governed by scarcity but by abundance, not ruled by remembered offenses but set free by forgiveness and reconciliation.” [1] 

Like Thomas, we are often confronted by the reality that our vision is too small. Limited. Finite. 

Many of us look at the news and wonder, “How do things ever get any better? We seem to take one step forward and then forty five steps back.” Movement towards God’s vision of a Beloved Community certainly isn’t linear. And when we’re in the hard parts of the journey, it can feel downright impossible to imagine anything beyond what’s right in front of our faces. Like Thomas, we need to see it with our own eyes. Unlike Thomas, we aren’t typically visited by Jesus in the flesh walking among us. 

As many of you know, this church was founded by abolitionists who traveled west seeking liberation for enslaved Americans. Our church constitution was signed in 1856 - the ink barely dried before the Sacking of Lawrence and the Battle of Osawatomie. That same year, the popular anthem Ho for the Kansas Plains idealized the fight for freedom (and ignored the impact on the Native people who had already lived here for centuries):

Huzza for the prairies wide and free;

Ho! for the Kansas plains;

Where men shall live in liberty,

Free from a tyrant's chains. [2] 

This isn’t a song sung by reasonable people. Deeply faithful perhaps, but not reasonable. 

It can be easy to forget just how futile abolition seemed when our ancestors began dreaming of it. Case in point: when abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison began to publish The Liberator in 1831, he wasn’t even part of a movement. He was just a 25 year old with a printing press who insisted on being heard – hoping against hope that if he continued to shout his dream of a nation without slavery someone might listen to him.[3]  It was 32 long years before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. 32 years. That is a long time to stay the course. But people like Garrison, and Angelina and Sarah Grimke, and Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth dedicated their entire lives to this dream. They believed it was possible and they were undeterred by the voices of reason. They were governed by a vision “not defined by failure but possibility, not governed by scarcity but by abundance.” [1] 

And if they were able to dream those unreasonable dreams, then so are we. 

Because Easter is a time for dreaming. It is a time for putting away reason and flow-charts and models and statistical analysis and projections and data….not forever, but just for a time. 

Easter is a time to say to those reasonable voices inside our head, “Shhh. Quiet down for just a minute.” Easter is a time for dreaming. 

Easter is a time for opening ourselves to the possibility that things may go better than we had hoped, love may finally triumph over evil, rights may be made wrong, justice may finally roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. 

And Easter is a time for each of us to hear Christ’s invitation to be a part of the impossible. To reach out and touch his hands, his side. To know that the Spirit of the Living Christ is alive among us – even here – even now – and that we are still called to dream along with God. 

NOTES:

[1]  http://www.davidlose.net/2015/04/easter-2-b/

[2] http://www.calonsong.org/KansasSongs/HoForKansas.htm

[3] https://ffrf.org/publications/day/william-lloyd-garrison/ 

Practice Resurrection

 “Practice Resurrection”

Matthew 28:1-10

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

April 5, 2026

Two or three weeks before Easter each year, I start praying regularly and in earnest that God will deliver a sermon. I’m not picky about how it arrives: lightning bolt in the sky, a dream, uploaded directly into my brain. Doesn’t matter. Just, “Dear God, please show up with something you want the people to hear on Easter morning.”

This year, I prayed as usual. I prayed while driving, while loading the dishwasher, before falling asleep. And the same message was delivered again and again. Unfortunately, it is not a sermon. It’s a poem by Wendell Berry. Over and over again, for weeks now, this poem has been on my mind, day and night. Wouldn’t leave me alone. 

Wendell Berry is a poet/novelist/farmer/eco-activist/prophet from Kentucky. This particular poem is one of his “mad farmer” poems - written under the name of Berry’s alter ego. “Mad” because he’s angry about the state of the world. And “mad,” too, because some have dismissed him as a little unhinged. 

Berry wrote this particular poem in 1973. A year, not unlike our own in apocalyptic flavor. War was raging in the middle east and ending in Vietnam. There was an oil embargo. Chile’s President Allende was killed in a coup. The Supreme Court was debating women’s rights. The American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee and Marlon Brando boycotted the Academy Awards. Gay liberation was making strides as the first PFLAG meeting was held in Greenwich Village and psychologists removed homosexuality from the list of mental illness. Oh, and the Watergate hearings happened. 

In the midst of these seismic shifts, the Mad Farmer speaks, unleashing a manifesto. 

Only, it’s a strange manifesto. Doesn’t quite fit the form.[1]  There are no carefully-crafted statements of belief or step-by-step solutions. It’s not linear or cohesive. It sounds more like the Book of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes. It’s puzzling. Like a parable, you can pick it up again and again and turn it over in your mind, finding something new each time. 

Okay, enough talking ABOUT it. Let me share it with you. And if you’re the type of person who does better reading along, you can find it as an insert in your bulletin.  Click to read:

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front 

by Wendell Berry, 1973

I think the reason the poem wouldn’t let me go this year is because it speaks to the choices that are ours to make in the midst of chaos. Berry wrote in a time of unbridled capitalist consumption, seemingly-endless war, government corruption, and ongoing struggles for liberation. The first stanza lends itself to despair. We read it and can feel a bit like pawns on the global stage. Cogs in a machine. 

But then the Mad Farmer speaks about the choices that are ours to make: 

…friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world.

And a little further on:

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

Today’s story from the Gospel of Matthew begins with a pair of women making choices like these. Doing something that doesn’t compute. Expecting the end of the world and being joyful anyway. Practicing resurrection. 

Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (most likely Jesus’s mother) went to the tomb early that morning. Just a few days earlier, they had been present at Jesus’s crucifixion, “looking on from a distance.” That, too, was a choice, of course. A choice to do something that doesn’t compute: willingly witness pain and suffering. 

The Greek word used for the women’s activity in both passages is the same one: theoreo. They “looked on” from afar at the crucifixion. And when they came to the tomb early in the morning, the text says they “went to see.” Theoreo means seeing. But not just any kind of seeing. It’s perhaps better translated into English as beholding, contemplating, considering. It’s watching with intention because you expect something important will happen. [2] 

I think that Mary and Mary were there that morning because they were expecting resurrection. Practicing it. Looking for it. Theoreo. Prepared to consider and behold it. 

I can’t help but notice that they didn’t bring spices to the tomb as the women did in the gospels of Mark and Luke. They weren’t showing up to anoint his body. They don’t seem to anticipate finding his body. In John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene is astonished when the messengers ask her, “why do you look for the living among the dead?” But in Matthew’s version of the story, Mary and Mary seem to be doing just that. They have come to look, see, behold, consider the reality of resurrection. 

They are choosing to 

Listen to carrion – [to put their ears]

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Unlike some of the laughably clueless disciples, Mary and Mary get it. They’ve been told to expect resurrection. To look for new life. To believe in second chances. To hold onto hope, even when it makes no sense. And so they do. They are practicing resurrection. And they find it. 

Notably, this does not solve all their problems. The good news comes hand-in-hand with an earthquake. The women receive the gospel from the angel and leave quickly with fear and joy to tell the others. The fear doesn’t go away. The chaos doesn’t stop swirling. But they are joyful despite considering all the facts. The women are listening to the carrion and practicing resurrection. Resurrection is not just something they observe - they join in.

I can’t help but think that the same must be true for us today. The same chaos that swirled in the first century is still here, now. The facts that we are left to consider in 2026 feel very much in line with the facts the Mad Farmer beheld in 1973. 

And so the invitation is the same: practice resurrection. 

Get up every day and expect it. Expect glimmers of new life even in the midst of disaster. Be unsurprised when you bend your ear low to the carrion and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Place yourself in spaces where you’re likely to find it - watch the ranchers practice resurrection as they burn the fields in Spring. Go down to Be Able to see what faith in second chances looks like when it takes on flesh and dwells among us. Talk to a parent who has come out of an IEP meeting or a hospital room feeling like hope might finally be on the horizon. Sit with an elder who tells you with confidence they’re not afraid to die because they know death is not the end of the story. 

In a 1973 interview, Wendell Berry said, “[If] you come from farming stock you know…when you plant a row in the garden each spring that thousands upon thousands of your own people have done it every spring, and that you’re participating in an act that has had to take place every year since agriculture began.”

And so it is for us. The Easter story is our inheritance - passed down by faithful ancestors, year after year in an unbroken chain. And the invitation is still there:

every day, do something that won’t compute;  

expect the end of the world, laugh; 

listen to the carrion; 

go forth in fear and joy; 

love the Lord, love the world; 

practice resurrection. 

NOTES

[1] With gratitude to Matt Wheeler who notes that the “manifesto” isn’t very manifesto-like in this lovely post: https://rabbitroompoetry.substack.com/p/manifesto-the-mad-farmer-liberation 

[2] Commentary about theoreo found in Preaching the Gospel of Matthew: Proclaiming God’s Presence, by Stanley P. Saunders, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010). 294.

[3] Berry interview: https://www.motherearthnews.com/sustainable-living/nature-and-environment/wendell-berry/ 

“Miracles and Silly Little Potlucks”

Mark 6:32-44

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

March 15, 2026

A lovely, crisp fall day in 2021. You may remember that back in 2021 many of us had all our best meetings outdoors, whether that was on a walk or at a picnic table. Because….? COVID, that’s right. 

So I’m on this walk-and-talk meeting and the person I was with mentioned to me that they hadn’t sat down for a meal with other humans since March of 2020, about a year and a half before. As a person who was living and working in the same space as my spouse and kids (who were also going to school in our living room), this blew my mind. I hadn’t had a meal ALONE in a year and a half, but this other person (who lived alone) hadn’t had a meal WITH anyone else. Our experiences of the pandemic were so different. 

Different as they were, I will guess that most of us missed out on some important meals during this time. Birthday parties cancelled or moved to Zoom. Weddings where no cake was served. Funerals without the funeral meal. And of course, Christmases and Thanksgivings alone or with immediate family only. I remember how we set my mom up on a tripod so she could “join us” for Thanksgiving on Facetime. Such a strange meal. But we all did what we thought best to gather in the ways we could. 

Those of you who were here during that time might remember having Drive Through Communion? I’ll never forget the joy I felt, seeing your masked faces as I passed the elements through your car windows. For many of you, it was the first time I had seen you outside of a Zoom box in months. And when we got a little more organized and understood more about the virus, we gathered for Communion on the Lawn. Do you remember that? I can still remember us all, sitting in lawn chairs carefully spaced at intervals, grinning like mad because we were TOGETHER. Not necessarily gathered around the table in the sanctuary, but gathered together at Christ’s table nonetheless. It was such a joy to share that holy meal in the same physical space again after months away. 

The pandemic taught us many lessons. More lessons than most of us wanted to learn, I’d say. Do you remember how tiring it was learning all those new things? My word. 

But one lesson that has stuck with many of us, I think, was how important it is for humans to gather together for a meal. So many times since then, I’ve gathered at tables with friends, loved ones, strangers, looked around and thought, “I don’t think I’ll ever take this simple thing for granted again. At least, I hope I don’t.” 

 

Jesus knew the power of gathering together for a meal. I suppose this is why one of our sacraments involves eating together. We remember that Christ gathered at that table with his followers, just like they had so many times before. He took the daily bread there on the table - and the cup containing nothing more than every day wine - blessed it and shared it with his friends. As he did so, he commanded them to remember. Remember this meal. Remember this moment. Remember what it’s like for us to be together here. 

This comes as no surprise because the Way of Jesus is an embodied faith. In the beginning, God created human bodies. The prophets proclaimed justice and liberation and healing for human bodies. At the core of our faith is a story about God loving the world so much that God took on human flesh and entered the world through the body of a young woman laboring and sweating to bring a tiny human body into the world. 

Jesus’s public ministry began with his human body being held in the arms of his cousin as John baptized him in the Jordan River. After, he went away to a wilderness place where his human body was pushed and challenged. His first miracle happened on the dance floor at a wedding - human bodies dancing and swirling and looking for something to drink. 

And, of course, when Jesus gathered at that final meal with his followers he washed the feet attached to their human bodies. And then passed the bread and wine to fill their human bellies. 

It’s easy to imagine that, in that moment, the disciples remembered the story we heard from Mark this morning. The Last Supper is a direct echo of the Feeding of the 5000:

[Jesus] directed the disciples to seat all the people in groups as though they were having a banquet on the green grass. (I can’t help but think of our Communion on the Lawn here.) They sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. [Jesus] took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them, broke the loaves into pieces, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. Everyone ate until [their human bodies] were full.

Over the years, people have listened to this story and wondered, “How did this miracle work, exactly?” Like all the best miracles, we’re not given a behind-the-scenes tour. One of my favorite explanations is that Jesus gathered up the five loaves and two fish that the disciples had, blessed it, and shared it. This, of course, was not nearly enough food to feed all those people. But luckily, the people in the crowd had more to share. They took out Goldfish crackers and granola bars and beef jerky sticks and apples and passed them around, along with the loaves and fish. A little bag of Chex mix here, a warmish-but-still-okay cheese stick there, and, eventually everyone had enough. 

Of course, that’s only one interpretation. You may have other theories that you prefer. Or you may not be interested in the details at all. After all, stories don’t have to have factually happened in order to be deeply true and resonant. 

We may not have all the details, but what we do know is that, if the disciples had done it their way, this story wouldn’t have happened at all. Their initial plan was to send the people away and let them fend for themselves. Anyone who’s planned an event knows it’s much easier to end just before the dinner hour and let people go off on their own to find a meal. So much easier than taking RSVPs and gathering up a list of dietary restrictions and finding a caterer and paying for those meals and cleaning up after the meal and on and on. So I can’t say I blame them for their impulse. It’s dinnertime. People are hungry. Let them go so they can find something to eat. 

But Jesus has other plans. And he’s not pulling any punches here. He makes it plain: “You give them something to eat.” 

Jesus was fully confident that this giant crowd could figure it out, if given the opportunity. Perhaps the miracle wasn’t some magic Jesus did behind the curtain. Perhaps the miracle was Jesus believing in the people’s capacity to care for each other. Perhaps the miracle was the power of community that Jesus could see and name. Perhaps the miracle was a teacher who knew his students were ready to rise to the challenge. 

************

Last week in Adult Sunday School we read a line from our Lenten Devotional that I haven’t stopped thinking about. Rev. Jill Duffield said, “Memorize Jesus’ life and emulate it.” [1]

If Jesus believes in us, maybe we should, too. 

If Jesus believes we have the power to take care of each other, maybe we can believe it, too. 

************

About a month ago, when things were really awful in Minnesota, I read an article online called “Seven reasons why hosting a silly little potluck (or game night, or porch hang, or book club, or group hike) is essential to defeating fascism.” In this article, Milwaukee-based organizer Garrett Bucks writes about his answer to the question “what do we DO?” 

He says:

My answer is predictable and, I fear, often disappointing. It doesn’t offer a hero’s path. At first blush it doesn’t match the urgency of the moment. That question (“what do I do?”), leaves so much unsaid (I’m frightened! I feel powerless!)....We long for an invite to the secret meeting where every perfect activist step is laid out before us like a treasure map. We crave, whether we admit it or not, “one simple trick,” that will reverse all the ways fascism makes us feel impossibly tiny. [2] 

There is no simple trick. There is only slowly and steadily building and sustaining community. Stopping to talk to a neighbor while out walking the dog. Hosting a potluck or puzzle night or coffee in the driveway. Visiting with other parents while our kids play on the playground. There are bowling leagues and D&D campaigns and mahjong gatherings. There is no simple trick. There is only community built when we all sit down on the lawn, take a few snacks from our bags, bless them and pass them around. 

Lest you think: BUT THIS IS NOT ENOUGH! THE WORLD IS ON FIRE! 

You are correct. This is not enough. The world is on fire.

And: none of the things that will quiet the flames are possible without community that is built one potluck, one movie night, one sing along at a time. 

Bucks explains, 

If you ask activists in Minneapolis how they’ve actually spent the past few weeks, you’ll hear about sets of actions that are either incredibly intuitive or that can be taught in relatively short workshops. There’s nothing particularly tricky about learning the SALUTE format for reporting ICE activity. You don’t need a doctorate in social movement theory to organize a food delivery spreadsheet. We all know, intuitively, how to blow a whistle. 

What is time consuming, however, is vetting strangers who want to join a Signal group, knowing which nonprofits can offer fiscal sponsorship for a mutual aid campaign, which churches or businesses have room for an emergency meeting, and who on your block is more flexible during the day or the night. The people who have been most effective in Minneapolis…aren’t the big talkers with the loudest megaphones. They are those who already knew their neighbors, who could be key connectors when, on a dime, an entire city raised their hands looking for something useful to do. [2] 

Jesus knew this, too. When the day grew long, when the people got hungry, the disciples’ first instinct was to make things simple: send them home, let them find their own food. Those of us who are introverts FEEL THIS IN OUR BONES, am I right? 

But Jesus saw another way forward. “You find them something to eat,” he said. 

Host a silly little potluck. Get together with strangers and sing songs of love and liberation. Take a granola bar out of your purse and share it with the person next to you in line. 

The miracle of the loaves and fishes is still calling us and convicting us. 

We get there together or never get there at all. 

NOTES:

[1] Duffiled, Jill. Lent in Plain Sight. P. 58

[2] https://thewhitepages.net/p/seven-reasons-why-hosting-a-silly