“To Believe or Not to Believe”
John 20:19-31 and I Peter 1:3-9
FPC SB March 30, 2008
Rev. Judith A. Muller

          This Sunday, the second of Easter, is often called “Low Sunday” Some think it anti-climactic. We think of Easter as a day and the liturgical calendar invites us to think of Easter more as a season. So this is not the first Sunday after Easter but the second of Easter. Christ is still on the move. He is determined to get in touch with his followers. He is not ready for us to return to reality, or business as usual. So for the Sundays of Easter, we will continue the celebration and reflect on texts that open up the implications of Easter. You heard read a text from I Peter that speaks eloquently of the new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We will be hearing more from I Peter in the next several weeks as we consider how we experience Easter. Today’s Gospel lesson is John’s more intimate narrative of an appearance of the risen Christ. Listen closely as you will also hear John’s Pentecost and his account of the commission of the church.
          In the first part of this chapter there is the story of Mary Magdalene coming to faith through hearing Jesus say her name. That story is interwoven with the account of Simon Peter and the beloved disciple who come to believe by the sight of the empty tomb and grave clothes. Now we read parallel stories that tell how faith comes without the experience of physical contact with Jesus. Our text takes up the story the evening of that first Easter Sunday when the disciples are together behind locked doors. Listen for the word of God from John 20:19-31.
          This Gospel episode has made Thomas a household name. We almost expect to hear him say, “Seeing is believing!” It wasn’t Thomas who coined that phrase and I think he has been unfairly maligned by the negative attention he gets from this passage. Ed McNulty writes that this passage is “one of the great acts of grace in the gospels”(LectionAid). The resurrected Christ is willing to meet Thomas and do whatever it will take to help Thomas believe. All the disciples needed to see the face of their Lord, and so do we. Thomas is determined, almost desperate in his desire to come to faith for himself and not to depend on the experience of others. If Thomas doesn’t speak for us, we can learn from him to be discontent until we experience faith first hand.
          Thomas is not a stranger to us. We’ve met him twice before. First when Jesus goes back into Judea at the death of Lazarus. When Jesus made the decision to return it is Thomas who urges the other disciple to go with him into what had now become hostile territory for Jesus. Thomas sys, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (Jn. 11:16). At the Last Supper Thomas is again eager to go where Jesus is going. Jesus says that he is going away to prepare a place for his friends and Thomas objects saying, “We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (Jn. 14:5). And Jesus said, I am the way…if you know me, you will know my Father also” (14:6,7).
          And when Jesus leaves the Upper Room that night he is going to his death. And do they follow him to his death as Thomas urged earlier? Not at all. Judas betrays him. Peter denies him, the rest flee back into Galilee away from the threats of the Jerusalem authorities. They all abandon him. They meet behind locked doors because they are afraid. Will they be crucified too? Should they try to continue the movement, who will lead them? What should they do next?
Jesus had warned them about a time when he would no longer be with them. He had not sugarcoated his words. He had told them the world would hate them and persecute them (16:17,18). Now it looked like it was about to happen. Was the “Jesus movement” about to die? Belief is not easy. The fear of the disciples is John’s acknowledgement of that fact.
          Who hasn’t, at one time or another, locked the door only to find that fear has been locked up inside as well?
          It was my first year at a new school. I never imagined it could be so difficult. My older sister, more gregarious than I, was going to a different school. I had no friends. No one sat with me in the cafeteria. It seemed everyone knew the rules and the ropes. It was my first experience with changing classes. I learned to change classes walking as if I knew where I was going and to put up a mask of self-confidence, doing everything I could to fit in. But at home, behind the door, my fear got the better of me and I wept several mornings until I finally found a friend.
          Locked doors? Who doesn’t have them? It’s possibly part of being human. Everyone has feelings and burdens locked inside in a place where the good news of Jesus’ love has yet percolated. But locked doors are no match for the Risen Christ.           We read of two appearances to the gathered disciples today, one without Thomas and one with him. They are similar in that Jesus stands among the frightened disciples. They are similar in that Jesus gives the disciples what they need and turns their fear into joy! He gives them the courage to speak the truth. He gives them what he had promised in the upper room: peace and the Holy Spirit. These gifts give them power to carry on the ministry that he had entrusted to them. And, remarkably, that ministry is a continuation of his own ministry.
          The disciples were not chosen for their own “self-enrichment.” They were chosen for a higher purpose. As God sent Jesus, so Jesus sends the disciples. Jesus commissions them with the ministry of forgiveness. This ministry, John says, belongs to the entire church—the new community created by Jesus’ resurrection.
          So, this is our commission and our high calling. We are to be about proclaiming the love and mercy of God and the forgiveness of God that opens up new beginnings. Remember Matthew’s description of what disciples are to do? Go out into the world to preach, teach and baptize in Jesus name. John is not quite as specific. But the passage does encourage belief as a heart-felt trust to overcome doubt and inspire courage. Belief is the antidote to fear.
          When we go out into the world we may run into people who are indifferent or, worse, hostile to our faith. We will need a large measure of stick-to-it-viv-ness if we really take our ministry seriously because we will meet with resistance and competition for our time and interest. We will need strong faith to believe in spite of our problems and pains and all that tells us things are so wrong that believing in God doesn’t make sense.
And our problems are just starters. There are people starving, and oppressed people and people traumatized by war, missing limbs and living in horrible conditions. In some parts of our world ministry in Jesus’ name is risky business and people we know are out there doing it despite the risks.
Thomas teaches us about faith—about believing when everything is all wrong. He gives us permission for understandable doubt. It allows those of us who have questions to ask them. And that’s why we remember him. He seems like an ordinary person and we can identify with him. We want to be courageous enough to say that everything is not all right with us. We too, are people who want a sign, any old sign, that we have a reason to hope.
I Peter offers us hope. When we hear this word it usually has a kind of last-chance quality to it. It is as though we are a losing sports team, hoping for the next season. Whether our problem is health, money, or family troubles, we often just HOPE they will be better. But this distant promise and passive existence it not what Peter offers. He reminds us that because of Easter and the resurrection, we  have “an inheritance” waiting for us that is so glorious and indescribable that nothing in this life will affect it.
The resurrection gives us hope. What we want, of course, it hope that our situation will become better now. But sometimes, despite our best hopes, things seem to just drag on the way they always have. When things don’t change, our inheritance can keep us going. Hold onto to hope. Fred Craddock, the great teller of stories has written, “Hope is the very stuff of life; it keeps the farmer on the tractor, the prisoner alive, the student at the book and the patient waiting for the morning (1 and 2 Peter and Jude, John Knox Press, 1995, p.24).
Thomas got what he needed—an opportunity to take a look, see and touch. And here is certain evidence of how much God cares for the individual, for each one of us. Although the others had overcome their own doubts, (notice though they were still behind those locked doors a week later) Thomas’ hurt was still locked away.
          We are struck with his demand to touch Jesus before he would believe. At a clergy retreat in January, we were shown the Italian painter Caravaggio’s painting of this poignant moment. New Testament scholars debate whether Thomas actually did touch Christ’s body, because John never says that he did. Caravaggio’s painting depicts Jesus pulling back his garment with one hand to show the wound made by the spear and Thomas’ finger piercing the wound itself. Thomas’ face shows wonder and amazement as he comes to faith. Now Thomas can join the others. He has asked for what he needed—visible, tangible proof—and that’s what he got.
          But why wasn’t he satisfied with seeing Jesus or the witness of the others? Sometimes people will not be able or willing to accept this gracious gift because they are sure that everything in the world is wrong, that life is miserable and horrible and want to hold onto their doubts. It’s the same with us. We have to wrestle with our doubts to put muscle into our faith. Jesus let’s us touch him in communion. He let’s us experience healing and find wholeness in the community created by his resurrection, the church, this family where Christ has changed the character of human life. And here we will find that God’s grace will not let us go. God keeps gracing us with the strength of peace of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to keep going.
Jesus pronounces a blessing on all who have not seen and yet who believe through the word of Christ through the apostles and the church. Can there be anything more encouraging than the assurance that faith is available to us and to others regardless of the distance of time or place from Jesus. And that is what Thomas illustrates this for us. Even when we ask with Erma Bombesk “if life is a bowl of cherries, why am I in the pits?” the “secret of grace is that life is all right at the center even when it seems all wrong on the edges”(Lewis Smedes p.119). And we can show that grace to others even as God has shown it to us in Jesus Christ.
To believe or not to believe? Thomas received an act of grace. God gives us the same gift now through hearing the good news and sends us out into the world. Easter keeps happening in our lives and in the world through Jesus’ graciousness. And this is our true hope.
We are invited to act on this for that is the only way that God’s gift of faith can be let loose in the world. It is the way Easter continues. It is the way God keeps Easter happening, making something out of nothing, and raising up life where once there had been only dearth. And we are invited to be witness. We are called to proclaim that Easter keeps happening. Let’s unlock the door and go out because that’s where the risen Christ is.