Second Sunday of Easter (C)

April 22, 2001

by Joe Parrish

The Gospel: John 20:19-31

When it was evening of Easter, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "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." 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." Then 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." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But 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.

Lord, we believe. Help us in our unbelief. Amen.

Poor Thomas--he gets labeled as the doubter. But in gospel of Matthew, Chapter 28, Verse 17, it reads, "…but some doubted." An inspection of the original Greek text of Matthew indicates those words could also literally be translated, "…but these doubted," referring to all the disciples that had gone to see the resurrected Lord in Galilee. So it seems that the "doubting" label Thomas has been given really could fall upon all the disciples in that house where they huddled in fear. If they all had believed in Jesus' resurrection, then why was there a need for the risen Lord to appear to them? Why did Jesus come to his timid band of followers in that house, perhaps in the same upper room where Jesus had celebrated the Last Supper? The answer is only that Jesus did appear to them. And indeed for us who follow those disciples as our guides, it surely was good that Jesus did appear to them. For one thing, Jesus breathed out the Holy Spirit on those disciples, empowering them to at least loosen the locks they had locked on the house door a week later. The next Sunday the doors were only "closed" but not "locked." So some progress had been made, except for the one who had been absent on the evening of the first Easter, Thomas. For Thomas seeing was necessary for believing. Thomas could not take the witness of the others. Thomas had to see for himself. And as if by telepathy, Jesus hears Thomas' request and appears to him with the others on the first Sunday after Easter, the Sunday represented by today in our liturgical calendar-we call it the Second Sunday of Easter, the second Sunday in the season of Easter.

How would we have reacted to Jesus' resurrection? Would we be as believing as the Beloved Disciple who ran to see the empty tomb on Easter morning, and seeing the empty tomb, believed? Peter, the other disciple who ran to the tomb on Easter morning, went inside the empty tomb and remained puzzled. And Peter was cowering like the rest in that house on the evening of Easter. Peter still had not believed, nor had the rest of the disciples. Their years of discipling with Jesus had not brought to mind what Jesus had told them about his dying to be followed three days later by his living again. The disciples were still caught up in dismay and disbelief that their wonderful Master had been murdered. And they probably felt the same fate was just around the corner for them as well. They feared death, they feared the death that their risen Lord would show them was not to be feared. How far does our own faith take us along the journey towards no longer fearing death? Are we also in denial that we too must one day die? Is death the driving force in our life? Do we live so cautiously that our life even seems like death at times?

The challenge that we modern day Christians face is much like that of those disciples in that locked house on Easter evening. We see the possibility of discipleship, but we feel too weak to carry out what we know is our calling to be the twenty-first century disciples of Jesus. We hesitate to share our faith with others. Maybe we never share our faith. Our friends would think us 'odd' if we did that, we rationalize. But if we do not tell others about our faith, are we no better off than those vineyard keepers we heard about the other Sunday who refused to give the owner of the vineyard what produce he deserved. In other words, whom are we serving, ourselves or the King of the Universe and Beyond?

We have taught and preached for over a year at the Elizabeth Refugee Detention Center, and last Thursday evening an amazing thing occurred-detainees in a dormitory room beside where we hold our religious activities were singing Christian praise songs. That was amazing to me! The last time I noticed that dormitory, the detainees were wearing Moslem prayer shawls and saying Moslem prayers. I can only hope that some of our congregation had taken our words to heart to spread the Good News to other detainees. But it was heartening to see the possibility that the Gospel was growing in what one might think was a most unlikely place, behind locked doors. Somehow the Holy Spirit had invaded and was taking control of the situation we face there with representation of a multitude of world religions-less than a third of the detainees are Christians I would estimate, not too far from the worldwide statistics I have heard, that only about a third of the world believes in Christ; two-thirds of the world are non-believers. We Christians are a minority faith group in the world as a whole, and perhaps also even in this country. How much of the weakness of Christianity can be related to our timidity in telling others of our faith? Are we also waiting to actually see the wounds in Jesus' hands and side before we catch fire and have a zeal for our faith that wants to tell others the Good News?

In our Alpha class we study the question, "who is Jesus?" We do not argue the premise that there is a God, but go to the direct representative of the living God in our Savior Jesus Christ. One conclusion is that either Jesus is who he said he is or he is a lunatic or he is the devil incarnate. No one would make the preposterous claims Jesus made about being the Messiah of God unless he actually were that Messiah, or he was mentally deranged or he was Satan. And that means we have to decide for ourselves whether we think Jesus is indeed the Messiah for us. If he is, then we have the best news in the entire world. But if Jesus is not the Messiah, then, as the apostle Paul said, we are the most to be pitied of all people. The miracles we believe Jesus did would be only illusions. The healings Jesus did would only be mass hallucinations. And all of Jesus' claims that God was his Father would be lies.

Yet when we view Jesus' life with the eyes of faith, we see how it all fits together. The Son of God should be able to have the power of divinity. The Son of God should be able to have power over death and the grave. The Son of God should be able to care for us for eternity if we believe in his Name. If Christ defeated death and the grave, then there is hope for the rest of us who put our trust in him. That is the basic Easter message. Jesus died for our sins. He was buried. And on the third day Jesus rose from the grave. Alleluia!

The problem that we all have in our journey of faith is how do we become less discriminatory about whom we will share our faith. We want only to spread the gospel to others like us. If we have an English heritage, we are comfortable with sharing with others with an English heritage. If we have a Germanic heritage, then we tend to favor only that group of people, and so on. If we are middle class, then we are comfortable with sharing our faith only with others who are middle class. But faith knows no boundaries in race, color, language, creed or anything else. Jesus is Lord of all, not of only those who look and act like us. Jesus is everyone's Lord whether they recognize it or not. Our task is to let others in on that fact, that Jesus is their Lord as well. And if we do not have the correct one as our Lord, then we have chosen a life's path that leads to eternal destruction and loss. It is impossible to say that whatever one believes is OK because it is not. To think of ourselves as being OK simply because we have not committed mass murder or pedophilia is a delusion. The devil delights in such thoughts because they prevent us from coming to grips with what is actually of ultimate importance. Do we have joy, joy, joy, joy down in our hearts because we believe in Jesus as the Messiah, or do we have nothing of significance down in our hearts? If Christ has not risen from his three-day prison, then we have no hope to rise from death ourselves-it is as simple as that. Without the possibility of resurrection we are no better off than the lower animals of creation, and for them it is indeed 'dog eat dog.'

The miracle of faith is the miracle of believing what cannot be proved. If faith could be proved, perhaps more would come to have faith. But faith by its very nature cannot be proved. Faith is intangible, but faith is real. Faith determines what we do with our life. Faith sets our goals in directions that others without faith simply cannot understand. Why would we care about the needs of others seeking their way in a dark and misleading world? Why would we give up our time and money to do the work of Christ in our church, community, and home? Why would we become a part of a movement that is absolutely unprovable unless our lives were bettered by it? And if Christ is real to us, then we are beholden to help others find faith in Jesus as well.

That locked room experience of the disciples happened in order to help us who are doubters to come to a living and lively faith. If we can hear the disciples' testimony and believe in Jesus as our Lord, then Jesus' dying on the cross would not have been in vain. If we can accept Jesus Christ's substitutionary sacrifice for us, then we no longer have to worry about our final destination. For in Christ's wounds we have been healed. By his blood shed for us on the cross, we have been saved. By his rising to life, we too shall rise to life eternal with him.

Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord has risen indeed. Alleluia!

Amen.