Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-31

A man and his dog are walking along the beach when they come upon another visitor to the beach. The owner of the dog is proud of his dog’s newly mastered fetching technique, so he says to the visitor, “Hey, watch this!” He then hurls a piece of driftwood far out into the sea. His dog runs across the top of the waves, fetches the stick, and returns, bone dry. The visitor just shakes his head in disbelief, so the owner has his dog repeat the performance twice more. Still, the visitor just shakes his head in disbelief. Finally, the dog’s owner asks the visitor if he’d noticed anything unusual, to which the vigilant observer replied, “Your dog can’t swim, can he.”[1]

If we consider carefully John’s purpose in relating the tale of Thomas, it is a tale told for our benefit – those who did not walk with Jesus, and were not eye witnesses of his resurrection. The blessing pronounced, after all, is upon those who have not seen, but have believed and responded to those who have spoken about what they’ve seen, heard, touched, and felt. John understands that most of those who are going to hear this message will be a bit like Thomas – and skillfully provides a Thomas for us so we can see ourselves in that room, confronted with our honest to God doubts about the resurrection story, and seeing them answered fully and completely.

You see, there is something subtly reassuring about knowing that someone close to Jesus – and someone Jesus was close to – might entertain doubts about what others were telling them had happened. More important, perhaps, is the way in which Jesus offers himself to the one who doubts. There is no rebuke. There is no scolding. There seems to be understanding. Finally, there is an offering of precisely what Thomas has asked to see – the scars from the crucifixion. He saw him crucified. He saw him dead, and he saw him buried. These are incontrovertible facts of Thomas’s experience. Now, the facts of his incontrovertible personal experience are being brought into question. It should be expected that he would balk at this new claim being made by his companions. Did he trust them? Yes, most likely. Did he believe them? Yes, most probably. Was it enough for him? No, and I ask why would it be. If he was a witness to the darkness of Christ’s death, nothing but the light of Christ’s life could overcome that painful experience.

What is true for Thomas is true also for us – John knows it, and tries to help. Sometimes, however, we look at the lessons of the gospel in much the same way the observer on the beach looked at the dog that could walk on water. He was not astonished that the dog could walk on water; he couldn’t believe the dog didn’t know how to swim. All the necessary evidence was at hand, but his personal expectations wouldn’t allow him to make sense of it.

This is akin to the way in which the resurrection of Christ struck the women at the tomb in last week’s lesson. There is a statement of truth given by an angel of light – Jesus is not here. Yet, this is coupled with a resistance to the idea that the world we have known could be so radically altered into a world we have yet to know. In the business of examining the world and our relationship to it, we call this a paradigm shift. It’s like going from the idea of a flat earth, which makes wonderful common sense, to a round earth, with which we have yet to wrestle with. Such a radical shift requires our entire world view to change. Where our maps and charts once read, “dragons be here,” or “the end of the world,” we must now pencil in: “What possibilities are here, what challenges, and what opportunities?

Now, let us reinsert ourselves into John’s story and view the character of Thomas. If the world is as we know it to be, then Jesus is dead. He was betrayed by a friend, tried and condemned by the authorities, and executed as a criminal – nothing more than a common thief, though what he was presumed to have stolen was a title – the Son of God, God’s Anointed One. His death, in the world we know, disproves his claims and brings an end to his ministry. It also brings the sky crashing down on the disciples’ heads, as they are known associates of this man, this criminal, this blasphemer, Jesus. Here they are, hiding out behind closed doors. What will happen to them?

The record of Scripture is precisely a record of paradigm shifts like this one. Abraham, called from Ur of the Chaldeans and the household gods of his ancestors, encounters the Living God who call him away from all he has and all he has known. Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, preserves the lives of his entire household as well as the people of Egypt. Moses, dressed in the clothes of a common shepherd, contends for the freedom of God’s people with Pharaoh and wins. Standing at the shore of the Red Sea, he calls upon God for assistance. God replies, “Why are you calling on me? You take care of it.” Moses raises his staff and the Red Sea parts – the people walk through on dry ground and Pharaoh’s army perishes.

In every case, there are a host of places in which any of these servants of the Lord might have refused to act. Each of them are viewed as strangers by the world through which they sojourn, yet, they are the friends of God. I have always liked the Flannery O’Conner quote: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” You see, being freed from the restrictive paradigm of the world in which we find ourselves, its rules and ordinances, its expectations and requirements, makes a person odd. People are often afraid to act, afraid to faith, afraid to trust, because everything they know about the world in which they live tells them it’s a ridiculous proposition. Yet, one thing we know about the world we’re in, is Christ is on the loose.

I read something this past week, though I can’t remember the source, about a king of Persia. Every time a prisoner was condemned to death, the king would be present. When the prisoner was released from their cell, the king would point to two doors at the end of the hallway. One, of normal appearance, led into the courtyard and a firing squad. The other, completely black, led elsewhere, the king assured each condemned man. The choice was theirs: the firing squad, or the black door. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the condemned prisoners would choose the door into the courtyard and be executed by the firing squad. At the end of the king’s reign, he was asked what lay behind the black door. “Freedom” was his reply – “and I’ve met very few men who were willing to risk it.”

In a very pointed way, this is the message of the gospels. Jesus offers a freedom that is foreign to the culture in which he was reared, the religious institution of his childhood and adulthood, and the people he encountered on his journeys from Galilee to Jerusalem and all points in between. He offered freedom to his disciples from the constraints of their fixed world views. He offered freedom to women from the constraints the world fixed upon them. He offered freedom from the paradigm or lens with which they viewed an unfair, death-dealing world. Yes, the political authorities have power over the body, but God has the power to free, to restore, and to make alive.

Unfortunately, the problem with this freedom being offered is that we must let go of what we firmly believe in order to accept it. We must let go of what we are convinced of is true in order to embrace the truth. In saying, “My Lord and my God,” Thomas is no less loosed from the rags of death and the clutches of chaos and emptiness than was Lazarus. Both are freed from the tombs in which this world places our lives – the tombs that tell us we can go this far and no farther; the tombs that tell us we shouldn’t expect more than we’ve been led to expect by experience; the tombs that constrain our minds and imaginations in the darkness of death dealing routines.

Christ has called us into a freedom that we have, in reality, yet to fully comprehend precisely because we have been unable to fully let go of the reality that has entombed us. Astonishingly enough this means that we have yet to make the confession of Thomas, “My Lord and my God,” or of the Deuteronomist, “My All, my Everything.” Yet, Jesus does not rebuke or scold us for clinging so tightly to the reality we know we know – instead, the Spirit constantly invites us to let go, and to embrace the reality we have yet to know – the freedom of forgiveness for ourselves and others; the honest to God love of God and neighbor; the joy creating selfless service to others, and the absolute peace of laying down our lives as we know them in order to be raised with Christ to continue the ministry of Christ as the body of Christ.