March
30, 2008
Doug Clay
Easter 2A
RCL
To read the lessons for the day click here:
http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearA/Easter/AEaster2.html
Acts 2: 14a, 22-32; Psalm: 16; 1 Peter
1:3-9; John 20: 19-31
Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal
mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have
been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body may show forth in their lives
what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and
reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
When it was evening on that day, the first day of
the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked
for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be
with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then
the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again,
"Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When
he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy
Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain
the sins of any, they are retained."
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the
twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him,
"We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the
mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and
my hand in his side, I will not believe."
A week later his disciples were again in the house
and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood
among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas,
"Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in
my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and
my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen
me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of
his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written 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.
Imagine - You came to the city full of hope, you had been traveling with your group of friends for some time now and in spite of some the usual differences you had expected changes in the world, instead you watched your best friend the heart and motivation of your group be arrested; worse than that he was killed – executed, in fact. And all those events happened in a most gruesome way. You feel you could have helped him escape – at least you should have tried but instead you ran away. You are angry and you are disappointed, not only in yourself, but in your friend. He said it would be OK – he said he would handle it. You believed he was big enough to avoid this. He said he was God; or at least that is what you heard and had just started to believe.
You are afraid.
People know who you are. You were inseparable for years. You witnessed all the events and miracles (turned into the crimes for which he was arrested and punished). You were an accomplice and you are thinking, “How am I doing to get out of this? How am I going to get out of town?” Your hopes have been dashed and a once bright future is now very dark indeed.
Can you picture the scene? The doors are locked. The room is dim. There is a low murmur of voices in the background as you sit in a corner and review, for the hundredth time, the contradictions, the injustices, and your own role in the horrible death of your best friend, your teacher and your leader. You had just begun to believe that life could be different and now you are faced with - what?
I am fairly certain that we have all been sitting in that spot, in that room at some point in our life. We have let ourselves down, we have failed our friends, and Lord knows we have betrayed our Master with our actions. We see our own shortcomings, we know our own hearts and we become very good at beating up on ourselves. My imagination has a lot of material to work with when I envision that room on the evening of the day the disciples discovered that not only was their leader dead, but his body was gone.
What do you see in that room? What do you see after betrayal, after disappointment, after separation? What do you see “after”?
The first thing that I see in this room is “fear”. It is obvious and it is real – the disciples are frightened of the Jews. They certainly had reason to think that the powerful religious officials, who went to such lengths to stop Jesus, would have no hesitation to come after his followers. So the doors were locked. After disappointment and betrayal, there is fear. Here were the disciples of Jesus sitting in failure, betrayal, confusion, disappointment, shame, and guilt. If you read through the context surrounding this passage you will find that the disciples had misunderstood Jesus’ teachings, had misinterpreted his miracles, and had even been misdirected by their own culture as the followed Jesus.
And fear is something that we all have to deal with. It was Dave Barry who said, “All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears – of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, or of speaking before a church assembly, and of course the words “Some Assembly Required.”
But real fear is not at all funny. It is deeply imbedded in each of us. Fear is one of the oldest and strongest emotions and can make us do things that we would not normally do. But, where does fear come from? It is actually self-generated based on our interpretations of what we see. A simple acrostic for fear is this: False, Evidence, Appearing, Real.
Fear was real for the disciples and it is real for us. Most of the time fear comes because we do not understand what we are seeing. We are human, the disciples were human. They did not understand. They were afraid of being locked up so they locked themselves in.
Also, in and around that room, we can see doubt. One member of the group, Thomas was not present when Jesus appeared to the others. We don’t know why he was not there. He could have been afraid of what would happen if the authorities caught them all together. Maybe he was just disillusioned, he had followed Jesus for 3 years, and in 3 tumultuous days it had all disintegrated and it was time to get back to reality. Over the centuries Thomas has been known as “the doubter” but if we read the whole story he was only one of a whole room of doubters.
The gospel story of Mark tells of two earlier encounters: “When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. When they heart that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either.”
Thomas was not the only doubter, he was just the last one to “see and feel”.
So what is doubt really? It is basically indecision, to be wavering or to be uncertain about the certainties of life. Honest doubt is looking for answers; it’s seeking for personal understanding. Honest doubt is not cynicism which is certain in its unbelief. Honest doubt is not comfortable with the current situation and is struggling for answers.
I think we all have felt pressure at times to ignore doubt or pretend they are not there, or at least keep them hidden in some secret place so nobody else finds out about them. We may feel that if we acknowledge doubts we will be disqualified from God’s family or at the very least it shows that we are a little less spiritual that other Christians. Doubt though, doesn’t mean that you have lost your faith, it simply means that you are trying to figure out how your faith works in this chaotic world. So instead of being afraid of doubt we should let God use our doubt as a means of making us stronger and drawing us closer to God.
There is a story about a man who was watching a butterfly as it struggled to work its way out of the cocoon. After a while he began to feel sorry for the butterfly, so he got a tiny little knife and carefully cut the cocoon just enough to help the butterfly work its way out. And sure enough, the beautiful butterfly got out and stretched out its wings and began to flutter for just a second. Then without any reason it fell to the ground and was soon dead. That person discovered too late that the struggle to get out of the cocoon is what makes the butterfly’s wings strong enough to fly. So without the struggle the butterfly has no life. I think that our doubts are like that cocoon. God allows us to struggle with the realities of our life and faith, not so we will fail but so we can be strengthened to spread our wings and fly.
Thomas missed the earlier appearances of Jesus and it resulted in doubt. But what happened? Once he acknowledged his doubts, he was ready to deal with them. Everyone else had seen and believed but Thomas was still willing to put himself in a position where his doubts could be dispelled. He remained within the group and the other disciples didn’t condemn him for his doubts. Instead of fear and judgment, the community of faith became a place where doubts could be confronted. What did he need at that time? He needed comfort, some reassurances, he was still struggling.
But, there was more that fear and doubt in that closed up room, and this is the most important part. After fear and doubt there was forgiveness.
Forgiveness is demonstrated by the first words out of Jesus’ mouth when he entered the room. “Peace be with you!” Not “Where were you guys?” not “How could you have let me down?” But, “Peace be with you.” It was forgiveness from the start. How often do we fail to keep forgiveness by bringing up the past with someone? How many times do we make sure the other party knows how little we think of them, to make sure they know how much we have been hurt?
There is a story of a mother who ran into the bedroom when she heard her seven-year-old son scream. She found his two-year-old sister pulling his hair. She gently released the little girl’s grip and calmed her. She then turned to comfort her son. “There, there. She didn’t mean it. She doesn’t know that hurts.” He calmed down and nodded his acknowledgment, and she left the room. As she started down the hall the little girl began screaming. Rushing back in she asked, “What happened?” The little boy replied, “She knows now.”
Jesus though demonstrated forgiveness immediately by the assignment he gave them. “I am sending you as the Father sent me.” He immediately indicated this continued trust in them by giving them an assignment – to carry on his work. Jesus not only sent them but he empowered them and gave them his own authority. The light had finally begun to come back into their lives.
With Thomas also, Jesus did not condemn or scold but instead invited him to examine the truth. Jesus invited faith with gentleness, kindness, recognized the need for evidence and blessed him with greater faith and at the same time sent that blessing forward in time even to us today.
As we look into that room we can see faith restored. Jesus, whom the disciples were certain never to see again, walked into their tightly closed room and caused hope to spring fresh in their darkened, heavy hearts. Fear and doubt are replaced by forgiveness. Forgiveness cultivates and causes faith to grow. Faith strengthens us to live and love in our world.
Amen
Doug Clay
Adapted from a sermon titled After by Allen Patterson published on sermoncentral.com