15 April 2012

“Drenched … to doubt”
Second Sunday of Easter
John 20:19-31
15 April 2012


There are two or three times a year when you can count on, going into any Christian worshipping community, that regardless of where you are, who you are with, you will hear the same story from the same Biblical text.
Christmas is one. Easter, last Sunday, is another. The very calendar fact of those two holidays decides which portion of Scripture – really, which portion of the Gospels – is being read, and proclaimed, in Word, and Song, and Art, and other expression.
Ah, but outside those two festivals … there is a wide divergence.
For those worshipping communities which don’t follow the three year lectionary cycle of Scripture texts … today is, most likely, just another day, with the texts reflecting either the will of the preacher or the desire of the faith community or perhaps, a choice driven by the current events of the day, political, social, economic.
But for those faith communities which do follow that three-year lectionary cycle … today, as it has been for centuries previous, and as it will be until Christ comes again and we have no need of doing this in his bodily absence … today, as on every Second Sunday of Easter, we have the curious juxtaposition of a text, a story, right on the heels of the Resurrection of Jesus, which proclaims … not rock-solid assured faith … but, DOUBT, in the whole cosmic enterprise which we celebrated last Sunday.
Yes, once again, it’s the story from John chapter 20 of Jesus’ first appearance to all his disciples … all of them save for Thomas, who isn’t there and can’t believe the Word of Easter to be true.

“Familiarity breeds contempt,” it’s said, and perhaps that is how you feel toward this text … especially, after all, if you’ve been part of a liturgical church which follows the lectionary cycle, and you’ve heard this story 10, 15, 35, 60, 80 years in a row.
I get that. There are years when I’ve felt, not gift, but oppression from the lectionary … years when, coming off such a glorious Easter experience, such as we had last week, that it’s frustrated me to have this text of “doubting Thomas” thrust in my face. There have been years … granted, not many of them I’ve spent with you, but even a few here … when I’ve chosen to lay this text aside for a season, so we can hear, and I can preach on, something else … perhaps John’s Gospel account of the actual Easter event, pushing the joy of that Resurrection Day out one more week … just so we didn’t have to deal with Thomas.
And that’s probably OK, to do, every once in a while.
But not too often.
The joy, the gift, of the lectionary cycle is that it was created, set in place, by a prayerful, careful group of church leaders, over the centuries … we trust and believe that God’s Spirit guided them as they selected these texts, so that the message proclaimed from week to week would be far less about the one proclaiming it than about what is actually in the words of the text itself.
And there is most certainly Word to be heard, and meditated on, and prayed about, in these well-worn verses of chapter 20 of John’s gospel.
Two points in particular are most evident to me, this morning, and those are the ones I believe we should think and pray on today.
First, note that this gospel’s core message is about Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance to his disciples … his immediate faith community … the absolute core of what, who will be The Church on earth in the wake of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. These men and women are going to be the ones who will take forth the Word about the New Thing which God has done in Jesus Christ, take it forth into the world.
So what does Jesus do, to and for them, as he meets with them for the first time?
He wishes them peace.
He gives – the word actually suggests that he “tosses” them, the gift of the Holy Spirit … a gift which is caught, and not taught.
He grants them the authority of the same religion-shattering act which he brought, which set the religion of his place and time on end … he sends them forth to forgive sins.
So here is the core message, to Jesus-followers, of every time and place since then … we, you and I, are called and gathered together in that same Holy Spirit which Jesus first gave his disciples that Easter evening … a gift so important, so necessary, that Jesus wasted no time in giving it to them … this is the REAL Pentecost moment, the real transference of holy power from Christ to his Church … what Jesus says, and does here, is to establish the Church … the community gathered together in his name, in every time and place … Jesus establishes the Church as THE community, which, who, is to provide radical hospitality, and welcome, to all in his name … and how this will be done, is that the Church … WE … are to be a people, a community, a gathering and happening, who are all about bringing, showing forth, playfully giving … tossing out as a gift, if you will … the gift of God’s forgiveness, revealing life lived in living, breathing relationship with God … bringing it into the world, so that others can catch it, catch the Spirit, catch the faith, and pass it along themselves to others.
THAT’S our charter, our mission and vision statement, our core values, all rolled into one.
Everything else … buildings, committees, projects, task forces and teams, assemblies and social statements … everything else we, the Church, are about is given life and breath and informed and driven by this gift of Jesus, given immediately after he rose from the dead, given so that the Church, that WE, might bring that same message of Resurrection … life, where before there was death … forgiveness, where before there were broken relationships, fear, loneliness and despair.
That’s the first message for us, from these well-known words. Church, people who gather and work and live in my name … Jesus says … to you, I bring forgiveness … to you, I insist that you share the same, my forgiveness, my grace and peace, into the world.
And the second message flows forth from the first.
In the face of such radical welcome … hospitality … grace, peace, forgiveness and love … the natural human reaction … isn’t to receive this gift in joy … but to greet it with suspicion and doubt.
Thus Thomas … long derided, “doubting” Thomas … Thomas is here, as a representative, a figure, a person of … US.
Now, as for that “doubting” business … I’ll say again what I shared last year, and years before that, with you.
Nowhere in this text does Jesus use the word “doubt.”
A more true translation of Jesus words would be something like these:

“Do not become unbelieving, but believing … unfaithful, but faithful … uncertain, but certain … distrusting, but trusting.”

Nowhere here does Jesus deride, denigrate, lessen Thomas’ faith-word, faith-speech, faith-apparent-lack-of-faith. Rather, Jesus meets Thomas where he is, gives him a bodily and a spoken word of encouragement, care, love … as Thomas struggles with, wrestles with, his a-faith / faith dilemma … and, indeed, it is Thomas who gives the only confession of faith in this whole passage.
Yep, Thomas.

“My Lord and my God.”

Curiously enough, this was the same phrase that Caesar was demanding his subjects say of him … so Thomas not only makes THE confession, THE statement of faith in Jesus in these verses … he also makes THE counter-cultural, counter-worldly power and authority statement of his, of all time. Jesus – the risen Lord Jesus – not Caesar – not power, not wealth, not king or queen or president – JESUS IS LORD.
Take this message to heart, people of God gathered here this Sunday, gathered here behind our own shut doors, gathered to worship our risen Lord Jesus.
It is the “doubter,” the faith-wrestler, the faith-seeker, who here makes this strongest confession of faith, as to who Jesus is, to and for him, to and for the world.
The community which Jesus creates with the sharing of his Spirit is to be a community which includes a-faithers, wrestlers, seekers, “doubters” like Thomas. The community of faith which the risen Lord Jesus creates, calls and gathers, makes strong and wise and holy, is to be one where, in which people like Thomas … and here, don’t lie to yourself, because we have all been, we all are like Thomas, in one moment or another … this faith community in Jesus’ name is to be a place, a people where faith is caught, playfully, lovingly shared, in Jesus’ spirit of grace and hope and love.
And so I believe it’s a good thing, a very good thing, that this story of Thomas comes around every year after Easter. It serves as a check, a guard, a Word and a witness to us … should we start taking faith, Church, ourselves SOOOO seriously, that we lose the life-giving, free-flowing, joyful sense of faith tossed and caught, shared freely within and without these walls … this text comes around to remind us, that it’s Jesus’ gift, his Spirit’s gift, who, which brings us together … who, which empowers us, not to “holy huddle” but to be sent forth in love, to freely forgive and reveal life, life to be lived and shared in relationship with God, into the world God loves.
And this text is also a reminder, that our community is to show itself … we are to show ourselves, forth as a broken community, a broken and made whole community … a community made up of … drenched disciples … drenched in our baptism to be, not perfect … but … forgiven, forgiven faith wrestlers, seekers, “doubters,” people who are fully human even as our Lord is fully human, people who do not deny but embrace the full range of human emotion … we welcome ALL, wherever you, they, we are on our faith journey … because it’s in that struggle, in that honesty, when, like Thomas, the truth of Jesus’ coming as one of us, living as one of us, suffering and dying as one of us, and rising
again …
… it is in all of that, that messy, wonderful business of LIFE as it really and truly is for us, that Jesus comes to us … gives us his Spirit, calls forth our confession, and sends us forth as authentic people into the world God loves …
… authentic people who serve an authentic Lord, who is big enough, and loving enough, to meet each of us as and where we are, as we live into this faith-walk where he meets and calls us …
… authentic people, who show forth Jesus as best we are able, real flesh and blood people, forgiven, forgiving, living, loving, playfully sharing his Spirit into a world of people who are just like us.
Loved by our Lord.
Amen.