John 20:19-31 "Living the Resurrection"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         So – do you feel transformed?  Resurrected?  Or - how about simply renewed?  Even a little bit?  Is your life different?  Or is it pretty much the same as it was – with its own set of broken dreams and fears about tomorrow?

         I mean, Easter was supposed to change everything, right?  Easter was going to put us on a new road.  Every year, we are told that Easter will make our lives different.

         That is why we sang those joyful hymns last week, right?  “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.”  That is why we let loose the alleluias and decorated our sanctuary with fragrant lilies and tulips and those powerfully sweet smelling hyacinths, right?  That is why we rocked the rafters with the Hallelujah Chorus and marveled as it reverberated off the walls and ceilings, right? 

         Easter was supposed to have changed everything, right?  Right….It has only been a week, but, for most of us I would venture to say, the Easter Spirit is gone already.  Poof!

         Most of us have retreated back into the tombs of our own making, the ones that lock us up from the inside.  Some of us are once again living in the shadow of illness, others in the graveyard of failed relationships and family crises.  For still others, it might be job insecurity and loan debt.

         Well, do not despair if you are feeling untransformed or un-resurrected or even un-renewed today, if, in your estimation, your life has not really changed since last Sunday even though it was supposed to. 

         Do not beat yourself up about it, but rather take to heart that this sermon is for you.  It is for you because you have reacted to this whole resurrection business pretty much the same way as the disciples did – and it only took them a single day to descend into the shadows.

         As Anglican seminarian Byrony Taylor writes, when we find the disciples in our Bible passage today, we see that they “are hiding from fear of the Jews. Are they hiding from God like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden? Perhaps they are, in a way. What was the last thing they did before the arrest of Jesus? They fled and denied knowing Christ, even though each of them had said they would be willing to die for Jesus. They are still not willing to die for Jesus. They are hiding and they are terrified.

         They know Jesus is dead. They know that his body has gone from the tomb but they have no understanding as to what this might mean. I think they believe what Mary first tells them, that the body has been taken away and they don’t know where they have put him. Mary has since told them that she has seen the Lord but this just makes no sense to them.”

         If the disciples’ lives had changed at all, it was not a positive transformation.  In these verses, we find them more confused than ever.  However, most of all, we find them afraid, and so they are holed up in the back of a non-descript Jerusalem home, off an alleyway in a not-so-good part of the city.  The shades are drawn, the windows shut, the door locked.  Thomas has drawn the short straw, and so only he has ventured out to slink in the shadows to scrounge up some food and some water.

         Yes - the disciples are afraid.  They are afraid because the Jewish authorities might be on the lookout for them.  They are afraid because they might be arrested and tried and crucified like Jesus.  They are afraid because, should that happen, they too will surely be abandoned in their time of greatest need. 

         But they are also afraid that Mary Magdalene’s story might be true, that she really has seen Jesus.  And if that is so, then surely he will come looking for them as well – even now as the eleven nervously sit about, their tempers short, sweating in their hidey-hole where not a breath of air is stirring.  And if Jesus does show up, they can just imagine what he will say to them:  “Where were you?”  “You abandoned me?” Horrible thoughts, just horrible!

         And, of course, it is at this moment as they play that terrifying conversation  with their rabbi over and over again in their heads that Jesus does turn up.  But he does not turn on them, as they had anticipated he would.  Astonishingly, he stretches out his hands and whispers, “Peace be with you. I forgive you, you thought you were no longer my friends but you are still my friends, and I say peace be with you.”

         And then Jesus declares, “I send you.  Go and forgive others as I have forgiven you.”  And perhaps the unspoken words are these:  “You are not much.  You have got a lot of failures and faults.  But you are all I have – and you are enough.  Therefore, I send you.” 

        And then he breathes on them – gives them each a shot of the Holy Spirit.  Just like God breathed on Adam at the very beginning of time, Jesus offers them each a slug of life itself.  “Now, go and live the resurrection,” he might have said in parting.

         Thomas, of course, missed that profoundly spiritual, deeply life-changing moment of both forgiveness and commissioning.  No wonder he was disappointed, miffed, a wee bit angry, wanting his own special proof, which he articulated in as graphic a way as he could think of, given the circumstances. 

         “Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won’t believe it could happen to me.”  And that’s all I have to say about that!  Oh Thomas, you never doubted the experience the others had.  You just wanted it for yourself.

         And lo and behold, Jesus took Thomas at his word, returned a week later, offered Thomas that same peace and forgiveness that he had offered the others and, as a sort of bonus perhaps, told Thomas he could in fact put his hand not simply on the wounds but in the wounds. 

        "Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving. Believe.”  The Bible text does not actually say that Thomas did as he was invited to do – though certainly artists down through the ages seem to think that he did.  However, whether it was from touching the wounds or hearing the words of peace and forgiveness, Thomas made his confession:   “My Lord and my God.”

         This story of Jesus first appearing to his disciples and then a week later to Thomas is the passage that the lectionary assigns for us to read on the first Sunday after Easter every single year.  Maybe those folks who developed the lectionary – that three year cycle of Bible readings that frame our church year – maybe those folks figured they ought to give something to people like yourselves who came back to worship on this, one of the lowest attendance Sundays in every church in all of Christendom, people like yourselves who do not feel particularly different after the lilies and the Hallelujah Chorus, but who came back anyway to continue your seeking, determined to, in some small way, do as Jesus said and actually live the resurrection.

         And so the lectionary creators gave us this story of Thomas, hoping, I think, that we would discover something so fundamental in this incident as well as something deeply profound about this particular disciple.

         What is striking to me first in this story is that Jesus comes offering peace, not a sword.  Jesus breaks into that locked, airless room in Jerusalem that is ripe with fear.  Jesus breaks into the tombs that the disciples have created for themselves, but he does not bury them with anger or malice or resentment.  He does not bury them with all those things that the world heaped upon him at the time of his death. 

         Instead Jesus comes offering forgiveness and the peace that passes all our understanding, the peace that is part and parcel of true reconciliation.  Jesus comes and shows them a way out of the tomb, setting them on the path of a new beginning.

         As United Church of Christ pastor, Kate Huey, reminds us:  “Whenever we're afraid and hiding out, all locked up, God comes to us in the midst of our fear and says, "Peace be with you." Whatever doubts churn in our minds, whatever sins trouble our consciences, whatever pain and worry bind us up, whatever walls we have put up or doors we have locked securely, God comes to us and says, "Peace be with you." Whatever hunger and need we feel deep in our souls, God calls us to the table, feeds us well, and sends us out into the world to be justice and peace, salt and light, hope for the world.” Forgiveness is a powerful tool. 

         Now if the vast potential of forgiveness is one thing we can take from this story, then the role of belief and doubt in our lives and on our spiritual journey is surely another.

         In my research for this sermon today, I learned that the Greek word used in this Gospel narrative for “believe” has less the meaning of “believe” as we generally define it and more the meaning of  “trust.”  And so we might well read:  “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be untrusting. Trust.” 

         It is not a question of doubt versus belief, but rather it is a question of trust.  Doubt is all right, if it is linked to trust. Doubt in the midst of faith is a good thing.  As theologian Frederick Buechner wrote, “Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.  It keeps it alive and moving.”        

         And so Lutheran pastor, David Lose, challenges us:  Can we understand “that doubt is not the opposite of faith but an essential ingredient? That hardboiled realism is an asset to vibrant faith? That (we) can bring (our) questions and skepticism, as well as (our) insights and trust, to (our) Christian lives? 

         Doubt, then, as well as forgiveness is a powerful tool, and perhaps that is why in our story, in the very last verse, Jesus blesses Thomas – slips in a final beatitude – meant not solely for this much- maligned disciple, but for us as well.  Oh Thomas, you never doubted the experience of the other disciples.  You always trusted Jesus.  You just wanted that extraordinary experience for yourself.  Don’t we all!  “Blessed are you who trust – trust that I am risen, that I am here - even if you do not see me.”

         The picture on the front of our bulletin is a painting done by Caravaggio, an early 17^th century Italian artist known for his dramatic lighting and his close physical observation of his subjects. 

         In this painting entitled “The Incredulity of Thomas,” the artist shows our disciple not just putting his hand on the wound in Jesus’ side - with perhaps the backs of his fingers touching whatever was inside.  Caravaggio paints Thomas actually wedging his finger deep into the gash – right up to the second knuckle and still going inward.   

         Surely the artist could have gotten his point across in a less graphic way!  I actually always found this particular depiction of Thomas and Jesus kind of gross, the disciple’s fingers probing deep inside an open wound – until this past week when I read an analysis of this painting by another artist, Jan Richardson, who is also an author and Methodist pastor. 

         She writes, “As Caravaggio sees it, Christ stands to the left, chest bared, drawing Thomas’ hand into his wound as two other disciples look on. It is an intimate scene: Christ bows his head over Thomas’ hand, gazing at Thomas as he pulls him toward his wound; Thomas leans in, brow furrowed, the other disciples standing so close behind him they threaten to topple him straight into Jesus.

         Yet Thomas seems about to tumble into the wound of his own accord. He is doing more than merely looking where Christ leads him; his whole being is absorbed in wonder. The first time I saw this image, I immediately had the sense that Thomas was thinking, ‘There’s another world in there.’” 

         Richardson goes on to say, “Perhaps that’s what strikes me so about Caravaggio’s painting: it stuns the viewer with the awareness of how deeply Christ was, and is, joined with us.

The wounds of the risen Christ are not a prison: they are a passage. Thomas’ hand in Christ’s side is not some bizarre, morbid probe: it is a union, and a reminder that in taking flesh, Christ wed himself to us.”

         There is another world in there – and we are a part of it.  It is as real as the nail holes in Jesus’ hands and feet, and as real as the wound in his side.  It is as real as the final blessing he gives us – in spite of our doubts – or perhaps because of them.  It is as real as the forgiveness he offers. 

         There is another world in there – a world that Jesus embodied, a world of justice, peace, and compassion.  There is another world in there, and just as Jesus invited Thomas to probe and peer and so become part of the new life pulsing inside those injured hands and scarred side, so he invites us to be a part of the world that is his Good News, the world of transformation, renewal, change.  He invites us to be part of that world even as he sends us out, like the disciples long ago, sends us out to live the resurrection.  

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.