Easter 2: Where's the Proof?

A whole week has passed for us since we celebrated Jesus’s resurrection last Sunday morning. But for the disciples in our reading this morning, it’s still the evening of Jesus’s resurrection. They still haven’t encountered the risen Jesus yet; only the Mary’s have. And of course Peter and John have only seen the linen cloth lying in the grave. So aside from the Mary’s, the rest of the disciples have locked themselves away. No doubt they feel some mixture of fear, sadness, frustration, and confusion. They’d dropped everything they’d been doing and followed Jesus through some challenging situations. They’d seen his miracles at work changing people’s hearts, bodies, and minds. Could it all have simply been wishful thinking? An illusion? A deception? Will they now suffer the wrath of their leaders - for do not forget our disciples are themselves Jews - those Sadducees and Pharisees who were so keen to execute Jesus for breaking the Law. 

But the locked door is no barrier to Jesus. His entry into the room with his disciples fulfills what is foreshadowed earlier in John’s Gospel: Jesus is the sheepgate/the doorway/the way, for the sheep, the disciples, for us, to enter into relationship with God. No lock - whether a physical lock or the lock that we use to guard our hearts from the things and people we fear, can separate us from God’s love for us; his coming for us; his coming to give us his peace. Not the world’s peace, but God’s peace.  

Knowing their fear and confusion, knowing their true need, Jesus immediately showed them the wounds of his hands and side, to demonstrate that he had the power to conquer death, and so to deliver on his promise to bring them with him to new life in God: he was the door, the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel given long ago: I will send you a servant who will suffer for your sake and gather you to me; and not just you, but all nations, Jew and non-Jew alike, as we hear God promise to Abraham in Genesis. 

The disciples are overwhelmed, likely with relief and a sense of resolve that their convictions and their actions were not in vain. Their lack of power and control, rightfully causing them to lock themselves behind closed doors, subject to the powers of this world, was thrown over with Jesus’s resurrection appearance. And a good thing too because Jesus’s next breath is one of commissioning them, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to go out into that very same world they wanted to lock out, to continue precisely the mission that got Jesus executed. They now have the power to forgive those who have acted in ways that demonstrate their lack of belief in God; and to call out those actions that still demonstrate a lack of belief in God. 

This power is not one of some church office; rather it is the power of knowing, believing, following, most of all, responsibly demonstrating God’s love so that others can see it, and are inspired to seek and maybe follow God too. The power to forgive is acting so that God’s forgiveness of you - and so God’s love - is seen through your humble engagement with other people. Any other claim of having the power to forgive is pure hubris (otherwise known as the deadly sin of excessive pride). This is the commission God gives to his disciples, and through them, to each of us. 

Now for whatever reason, Thomas wasn’t with the other disciples in the room behind those locked doors the day Jesus is resurrected. So he doesn’t get the chance to see Jesus or his wounds as the other disciples do. Before any of the other disciples could express doubt, Jesus had shown them his wounds. But Thomas wasn’t with them and so he’s hearing about Jesus second hand.

And when told he makes the claim most of us would likely make: “unless I see the marks in his hands and can put my fingers into the spear wound in his side, I cannot believe what you’ve said.” So a whole week goes by and apparently the disciples are in the house again with the doors at least shut, if not locked and Thomas is there with them this time. To continue the parable, Jesus comes to gather the one wandering sheep Thomas and says to him: “Thomas, come to me and see, put your eyes on my wounds, put your fingers in my side, remember all the words of God that I have said to you my wandering sheep, and I will gather you to my sheepfold, to my kingdom, to my Father and your Father.

Thomas is smart. He’s not going to believe just simply to make himself feel better after tragedy. God is a mere humanly constructed placebo if he only shows up when bad stuff happens. No. Thomas needs Jesus to show himself to be more than an answer to suffering. And this is precisely how Jesus shows up to Thomas.

Here I am Thomas. Yes, I am the ground of your very being; the creator and the consummator, alpha and omega. Yes, you can count on me being present through times when you will suffer. But I am commissioning you for a much harder task: to proclaim forgiveness to those who are completely unaware or unwilling to believe that they need God’s forgiveness. It’s easy for people to turn to God when they suffer; but what about when life is just fine. It is easier for those who have everything to go through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven, Thomas.

Blessed are those who do not see, who do not suffer what you have with me, and yet believe. No one after you, Thomas, will encounter me as you have. So I need you to go to them, not once, not twice, but 70x7 times. Why? Because the kind of doubt you demonstrate Thomas cannot be overcome by scientific proof; for God is beyond the limits of scientific measurement; but this is all people can see if they only look for what they can measure.

So you must speak about what you have seen, heard and experienced of the God you have lived with, revealed in the Scriptures. Doubt is addressed as you yourself lived Thomas: by attending to God’s word, paying attention to how that plays out in the relationships you have and that you struggle with.

You can show up to church every Sunday and go through the routine, go through the motions of setting up and doing the business of Church, and still completely tune God out conflating him with your own little projects bent to your own needs and desires, and emotional immaturities. Pharisees and Sadducees are good examples of this. We must show up to receive, but it's in having been given the Spirit and the commission to go out and share what we know of God that causes both our own increase toward faith, and fruitful witness to others.

You learn and grow and develop in your faith not solely by study but by telling and teaching and talking to others about who God is. Those who truly believe are often those who struggle with doubt: it is precisely because of doubt that they’re not satisfied with a God who only shows up when things suck. God must be there to claim us in suffering and in sufficiency, or he cannot be the God of all. So it is that those who doubt most are always checking - in good and bad times - always working to test what they believe. It is in this testing, checking, sifting scripture, prayer, struggle, listening to others disagree and not dismissing them - living with God just as Thomas and his friends did - that God works to shake you of your own arrogance, presumptions, false beliefs and ways. It's in the testing that God shows up. AMEN