Sermon for April 16, 2023 – The Second Sunday of Easter

The apostle Thomas is often branded as the stooge of the apostles — “Doubting Thomas” – but that is both unfair and inaccurate. In actuality, the opposite is true. There are two scenes in the Gospel prior to what we’ve just heard that shed light on the apostle Thomas. One scene is when Jesus was trying to say “good-bye” to his disciples, just before he was seized in the garden at Gethsemane. Jesus had said, “Let not your hearts be troubled....  I go to prepare a place for you... and you know where I am going....” No. No idea, at least for Thomas. It seems only Thomas has the courage to admit that he is clueless. “My Lord,” Thomas says, “We don’t have the slightest idea where you are going! How can we know the way?” Thomas’ question is also a good and honest question for us, too. How can we know the way, especially when the path is dark and the risks are many, and the fear is great? “How can we know the way?”

There is another glimpse of Thomas in an earlier scene when Jesus first said to the apostles that he would return to Judea because his friend Lazarus had died. The disciples knew full well about the death threats against Jesus (and probably against them, too). Many of the other apostles protested Jesus’ plan to return to Judea. Not all of them. The brothers James and John, in their grandiosity, were very eager to return to Jerusalem, because they were convinced Jesus was going to be crowned king. James and John’s delusion was their expressed hope to sit at Jesus’ side as prelates in his forthcoming reign. James and John wanted to accompany Jesus to Jerusalem, for all the wrong reasons. But it was Thomas who really understood Jesus. Thomas pleaded with his fellow disciples not to desert Jesus but to stay with him. Thomas said, “Let us go [to Jerusalem] that we may die with Him!”  Perhaps more than any other disciple, Thomas was prepared to die with Jesus all along. Thomas had been following a Messiah whom Thomas knew would suffer and die. Not true, it seems, for the other disciples.

When the resurrected Jesus had first appeared to the other disciples who were hiding in the Upper Room, Thomas was not hiding with them: neither hiding his willingness nor his readiness to serve his crucified Lord, even to follow Jesus to death. What exactly Thomas was doing that evening, when all the other disciples were huddled together, we don’t know. But given the evidence, we could well imagine that Thomas was not hiding out; rather he was out doing what he had always done with and for Jesus: helping, healing, feeding, loving, speaking in the name and love and power of Jesus.

And that is a much fuller picture of Thomas. That is his story, what we know of it. When Thomas later meets up with the disciples, and they tell him their news that Jesus has appeared to them, alive, Thomas is incredulous. Thomas knows these other disciples. He knows their arguments, their betrayals, their blindness, their duplicity, their deafness, their hardness of heart.  Could he possibly trust their report? No. Clearly not. He doubted their experience, because their experience was not his experience. Their report did not ring true to Thomas. With such wonderful, refreshing honesty, Thomas says, “Unless I see in Jesus’ hands the print of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe. I simply cannot believe… you (the other apostles.)”

And so it was. Not until Thomas had personally, physically, undeniably seen and been touched by Jesus was he, Thomas, willing and bold to respond, “My Lord and my God.” I find Thomas a great hero because of his courage and clarity to know his needs and to express them. He is not asking to know about Jesus; he is not banking his life on other people’s experience of Jesus; he needs to experience Jesus’ resurrection power personally. And so do you.

You may be wondering this Eastertide, “Where is the risen Lord among the war-torn areas of the world, or where people live under tyranny or terror?  Where is the risen Lord in Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Sudan, or Haiti? Where is the risen Lord amid all of the suffering that surrounds us and fills our own lives and wounds our hearts? And you may find yourself doubting that God is anywhere in sight. What to do?  For us, like for Thomas, the report of others is not enough.  Second-hand information about God is not enough.  We need to be able to touch and know and undeniably experience Jesus at work in our own world and in our own lives to be able to believe in Jesus’ resurrection. The apostle Thomas gives us a very helpful example.

For one, name your doubts; pray your doubts. Your doubts are the seedlings of your faith. Pray your doubts, and pray your desires. Ask God for what you need to experience to know for sure that Jesus is alive, and present, and powerful in this world and in your own life, now. 

Secondly, draw from your own miracle memory how you have experienced life coming out of death in your own past. You have probably already died, and maybe more than once. There is something in your own life’s experience that has just killed you. Maybe your heart didn’t stop pumping blood, but your life, as you had known it, came to an end.  Finished. And you could not imagine how-in-the-world you could take the next step, much less face the rest of your life. You have probably already died more than once… and yet, look at you! You’ve come back to life. Like Jesus, you have your own wounds, too. You may not have wounded hands or a wounded side, like Jesus, but you well understand wounds. Wounds to your body; wounds to your soul. Maybe you, too, have been betrayed or abandoned, just like Jesus, and the experience has just killed you. You, like Jesus, are walking wounded. What killed you, what was your breaking, is probably also your making. You somehow have come back to life – miracle of miracle – and you are probably more real, more alive, more strong, more able, than you’ve ever been before. That’s an experience of the resurrection power that Jesus promises us all. 

And I’ll name one other way to get in touch with Jesus’ resurrection power today. Do what Thomas did when he extended his hands to touch Jesus. We are actually doing this very thing as we extend our hands to receive Jesus’ body and his blood in Holy Communion. It is an experience of union with Christ; it is a co-union, a communion with Christ – your body, your broken body, being filled with Jesus’ broken body. There is tremendous power in this union, in this communion, between the two of you. What is it you need from Jesus?  What of his resurrection power do you need today so that you can go on?  Ask Jesus for this as you extend your hands and open your heart. Jesus is really present to you.

Someone has said that “faith is a series of doubts vanquished by love.” Jesus is dying to love you. And he has come back to life to assure you of the same. Nothing will be able to separate you from the love of God is what we experience in Jesus.  Not even death. Not even when you die before you die. You just wait. You’ll be absolutely amazed how life, the abundant life that Jesus promises, will come out of your life experiences even of death. With every death, there is a rising. Absolutely! Absolutely!