1 May 2011

“Love among the ruins”
John 20:19-31 / 1 Peter 1:3-9
2 Easter A
1 May 2011


Though the calendar says it’s the Second Sunday of Easter … our Gospel texts for this and next week remain on the Day of Jesus’ Resurrection itself.
It’s such a monumental event … THE reason for the Church, that We Are the Church, after all … Jesus is risen! …
… it’s such a monumental event, that it takes a few weeks for the weight of what has happened to sink in. We need to hear the story, again and again, told and retold to us … so that, in and through the telling, as John says at the end of today’s text, “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.”
Part of that “again and again” means that today we have our annual reading of the story of Thomas, the story labeled forever as “doubting Thomas,” and sermons and messages repeated ad nauseum on one of two themes …
… berating Thomas for his “doubting,” or
… inviting hearers of this story to live in, and be comfortable with, their “doubts” about the faith.
There’s just one problem with both those interpretations.
Nowhere in this text does Jesus use the word “doubt.”
The words are pistis and apistis … pisteo being the Greek verb for “to believe” … so the similar dichotomy in our English would be, to use another word, like that between “moral” and “amoral.” Literally, “having faith” and “without faith.”
So Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not become unbelieving, but believing.”
But I think we like to use that word “doubt” because it reflects our natural position of having a theology of scarcity … there’s just not enough to go around …
… enough of what, you may ask?
Enough of … anything.
Money. Land. Gasoline. Health care. Parking spaces. Easter candy.
And faith.

If I could just have more faith, and less doubt, things would be all better.
Better for Thomas.
And better for us.
Yeah, that’s it. More faith.

But what this old chestnut of a story is really saying to and for us, is that this whole concept of “more faith” is a total crock.
Thomas either has faith, or he doesn’t.
We either have faith, or we don’t.
A vacuum is only a vacuum while it is totally devoid of everything. Once one little molecule of air is introduced into the vacuum, it’s not a vacuum any more.
And so it is with faith.
This is why in Luke’s gospel, when the disciples say “Increase our faith,” Jesus replies, “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
We have enough. Enough money, enough food, … and enough faith.
The theology of scarcity is nothing more than the voice of death, once more, come calling.
And since death met its death on the cross … all there is left for us is faith … hope … love … and life.

And so … to address those who decry “doubting Thomas and his doubts” … since questioning faith necessarily means that there is faith there any way … not a vacuum … then, questioning faith (not doubt, please … just send that death-and-scarcity word right out of our faith-vocabulary forever) … questioning faith isn’t going to harm faith one bit.
Indeed … questioning … testing … tempering faith … can only serve to strengthen it.

And so, with faith, as it is in so many other things we humans abuse, the problem isn’t in the acquiring … it’s in the application.

And that takes us to the often-forgotten first part of this Gospel text … what happens on the evening of Resurrection … when Jesus appears to every other disciple except Thomas … as they’re locked away in fear … shut away for safety … there, among the ruins of all that their lives with Jesus had been … the really dead Jesus, now really raised from the dead Jesus appears personally to them and says “Peace be with you.”

This is, of course, directly connected with the words which come after … and their popular interpretation. If the whole business about Thomas is a story about doubt … don’t doubt, have more faith, more faith to believe more …then, this part of the story, these words, will show us the result of having that more.
Jesus sends those who really, truly believe … he sends them, us … peace.
“Peace be with you.”

There’s just one thing with this peace.
It’s not very peaceful.
Indeed, it’s unsettling.
First, it comes with a directive, to be messengers of the Gospel of forgiveness. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Second, it comes with a charge … “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

If you sifted through everything that hacked Jesus’ opponents off about him … everything Jesus did that got him into trouble … what would be the One Thing that was at the root of it all?

Associating with people on the outside? Performing miracles? Raising the dead?
Well, those were all part of it.
But there was one overarching theme … through everything that he did … that most rubbed people the wrong way, about him.

Jesus claimed to be God.

And how did he do this?
He forgave people their sins.
Why, only God can forgive sins … that’s what the religious folks of Jesus’ day said. How can this man do what only God can do?
Exactly. Except, of course, they didn’t realize that this man was, is, also God.

And so here, when Jesus gives the disciples “peace,” and then sends them out to forgive sins in his name … well, this is no “serenity now” … no “every day in every way, it’s getting better and better.”
And certainly it’s no “just have more faith, more faith, more and more and more faith, and you can do more, believe more, work more for Jesus than if you had less faith … and more and more stuff’s going to go right for you, go your way, then, too. God’s material blessings will shower down upon you … just don’t doubt, but have more faith, have more faith.”

Again, that’s a total crock.
Jesus sends peace all right … but it’s peace that will be most unsettling.
It is peace through the sign of the cross … the sign of truth, the sign of God’s justice, the sign of It All Stops Here, folks … the phoniness, the lies … the theology of scarcity … the endless cries for “more.”

It. All. Stops. Here.

Our reading from 1st Peter … one of the last of the Scriptures to be added to the canon of the Bible … coming somewhere around a hundred years after the words of John’s gospel were written … they point out the reality of what following Jesus meant then … his peace, most unsettling …

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.

Those to whom this letter initially came, living a hundred years after Jesus’ death and resurrection … none of them had seen Jesus in person … they were well past the events of his life and suffering, death and being raised. But they, also sent in his Spirit, sent in his peace, sent in faith … not more or less, just Sent In Faith … they believed, too, despite the trials and sufferings they were beginning to feel as Christianity became an underground, criminal, persecuted religion in the Roman Empire … they believed, and were sent, to bring the word of forgiveness and peace to people of their place and time …
… leading to generation upon generation, so that this word of peace and forgiveness would come even to us, even to us …
And it is still a disquieting peace. Not a nice peace. But a peace which acknowledges that humans sin, and everything that we humans do … build … assemble … put together … governments, schools, corporations, and yes, the church … all are full of sin … the cry for “more” … and all of us, each and every one of us, we are still and most certainly in need of the word of forgiveness and new life.

Our book group is reading the new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We just finished the section which included his sermon to a group of theological students and pastors at Fano, Denmark in 1934. Though his situation was different than ours … facing the Nazi threat where state would take the place of God … his words in that sermon about peace, the peace Jesus brings, still ring true for us today ... especially on this Sunday, with this text before us:

There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture, and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying down the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.

That is the peace Jesus gave to the disciples gathered there that day.
And this is also at the heart of the question Jesus asked of Thomas, that first Sunday after the Resurrection.

“Do you want more … or do you want me?”

With peace, there is no “safety.” With faith, there is no more.
It’s all about Jesus. His cross, his life, his death, his resurrection.
All for the sake of the world. All for us.

No More and No Less.
His call, to all of us, his claim, on each of us, is for All of Us.
… that we may have life, in his name.

Enough faith. Enough life.
And enough … to share.
…so that they may have life, in his name, too.

Amen.