Sermon 2nd Sunday of Easter Nancy Meehan Yao April 11, 2010 Hector Pres Church
Psalm 150 p 508
1Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!
2Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness!
3Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp!
4Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!
5Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
6Let everything that breathes praise the LORD! Praise the LORD
John 20:19-31 p 883
19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear, Jesus came and stood among them and said: “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24But Thomas (who was called the twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “unless I see the mark of nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” 26 A week later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said “Peace be with you.” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”28Thomas answered him: “ my Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “have you believed, because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.” 30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that, through believing , you may have life in his name.
Thomas has gotten a bad rap. Thomas, one of the Twelve, is known almost exclusively as “Doubting Thomas.” His name has become slang for anyone who exhibits lack of faith. Don’t think the team will make it to the Final Four? You’re a Doubting Thomas. Don’t think the car will make it to the gas station at the next exit? Doubting Thomas. Don’t think your brother-in-law will ever return the hedge clippers he borrowed three years ago? Well, then maybe you’re as realist- but still you would be called a doubting Thomas.
Thomas was one of the Twelve. Thomas was fully a disciple. In Matthew 10, he is listed by name as a disciple, one of the group who is given authority to heal, and cast out unclean spirits. But we know very little else about Thomas. When Jesus was talking about Lazarus being dead, Thomas, without knowing what he was really saying, said “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Later in John, when Jesus is talking about going away, Thomas blurts out what everybody else in the group is thinking: “But Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
Thomas is the one who says what everybody else is thinking, but is too afraid to say. Thomas is the kid in class who isn’t afraid to look dumb, Thomas isn’t afraid of being “uncool”- He asks the one thing we all don’t know in order to solve the problem.
And here, it is Easter evening. Except the disciples don’t know its Easter. They don’t understand what God has done. Oh, they’ve heard some idle tale from Mary, and Peter, about the stone being rolled away, and the body being missing. Mary told them about the man who called her name, who turned out to be Jesus, but they still don’t understand. They are locked in a room, together, but terribly afraid, afraid that what happened to Jesus will happen to them next. At this point, they are the doubting ones. Jesus appears to them, wounds still visible, and tells them “peace”- Shalom.
Thomas is not there. We don’t know where he is- the text doesn’t tell us. Maybe he wasn’t as afraid as the others. Maybe he was more courageous. Or maybe he was just the one who drew the short straw and had to go out and buy them something to eat, while they hid away. We don’t know. But when Thomas comes back, they tell him that Jesus has appeared to them. And Thomas says his famous line: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
Thomas says what a lot of us would say, in the same situation. “What? No way. You’re crazy. I don’t believe it- I can’t believe it”
Thomas has heard now 2 experiences of the resurrection- one from the women and Peter, early that morning, and one from the group gathered in that upper room. But are those disciples, those witnesses acting any differently? NO- they are still huddled together, locked away from the world. Thomas doesn’t ask for much more than what the other apostles had already experienced- look back at the text- “Jesus came and stood among them and said “Peace be with you. After this, he showed them his hands and his side.”
A week passes. We don’t know what they did in that first week. We do see that they are still in the same place- locked in that house—they have SEEN Jesus, but they haven’t moved much at all. They haven’t gone anywhere. Jesus said to them: “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” But they are still in that same room. But here’s the interesting part, I think—the important part. This time, Thomas is with them. And this time, Jesus comes again.
Jesus comes to them, and comes to Thomas, and says the same thing: “Peace be with you”. The disciples haven’t put Thomas out—they include him in their gathering. They don’t reject him for his doubts, or for his questions. And this time, when Jesus appears, Jesus doesn’t reprimand Thomas. There are no words of shame—Jesus comes to Thomas, and meets him exactly where he’s at—“Put your finger here, and see my hands. Reach out your hand, and put it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe.” Jesus knows what Thomas needs—and does it.
This time, Thomas gets it. “My Lord, and My God” he says. Thomas gets it, and gets it all- that Jesus is both his Lord, his Master, and God. Thomas is the first theologian- he makes the first claim about just who this Jesus really is. He calls Jesus “my Lord and my God”
My Lord- a Lord who descends and condescends, who meets him right where he is. A Lord who became human, suffered, and died—a Lord who rose, and came back to give peace and the Holy Spirit to the early church. A Lord who comes to us, who claims us in baptism, before we can really know what is going on.
And then Jesus has a word for us, too—“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”
The Gospel of John was written to the early church, after it had been put out of the synagogue. The earliest Christians were first, Jews, and when they tried to tell their fellow Jews- friends and family-about Jesus, they were thrown out of the synagogue, threatened, cast out of society. So this text is a comfort to them- even the ones who were not there, the ones who were not part of the original Twelve, are blessed.
“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”
And this is God’s word for us, today.
Blessed are you when you believe, even though you have not seen. Blessed are you who doubt, because I will come to you, Jesus says. Blessed are you, church, when you include people who struggle with their faith, when you do not put out the ones who say out loud the questions that we all are thinking. Blessed are you, whose faith is flagging and weary, you who have seen things that take away faith, you who have questions, you who want to know “why?” Blessed are you when you are locked in a room made of fear and doubt. Blessed are you who don’t know where Jesus is going, even if you know Jesus is the Way. Blessed are we, people of God, for Christ has come to us, and has given us the Holy Spirit.
And Thomas? He got a bad rap. When Portuguese missionaries traveled to India in the 1600’s, they found a group of Christians already there. They were called the Mar Thoma church. Legend has it that Thomas, Doubting Thomas, traveled through Persia, to India, preaching and witnessing as he went, and was martyred for his faith in India, near the close of the first century.
So maybe we need to rename Thomas. Maybe we need to call him- Faithful Thomas. Or Passionate Thomas. Or Truth telling Thomas. Or maybe we just need to claim him as our own, as one of us. Maybe we need to see ourselves as Thomas.
Amen.
