DATE: April 27, 2014
SCRIPTURE:
John 20:19-31
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
As we pick up the story this morning, it is important to note that for the disciples, Easter hasn’t happened yet. It’s a bit disorienting, I know. Just last week, we left church with “Christ is risen!” on our lips and a swing in our step– but for the followers of Jesus, gathered behind locked doors on the evening of the third day after Jesus’ crucifixion, Easter hasn’t happened, yet.
Mary is the only one to have encountered the risen Christ, and it seems that her witness (no matter how compelling we find it) was insufficient to persuade the despairing disciples that anything had changed. So they gathered up their grief and their guilt, their fear and confusion and followed Jesus right into the tomb, as it were, barricaded the entrance and turned their backs on whatever life lay beyond that locked door.
…Until Life founds its own way back into their midst. Life, in the figure of Jesus, who had somehow pierced their defenses (He keeps doing that, doesn’t he? Piercing our defenses; seeing right through us, wearing us down to get to the heart of the matter, finding us even when we we’re not sure we want to be found…)…Jesus came and stood among his friends and disciples and said, “Peace be with you.” And then he breathed on them.
When my son Tobey was brand new, he cried – like all infants – mostly to register his dismay that the world was big and cold and not at all the cozy place he had spent the last nine months. He’d sometimes get so worked up that he would suck in air and stop breathing momentarily, little body tense and face screwed into a ball. When he did that – got stuck mid-cry, I would gently blow into his face. His eyes would pop open in surprise, he’d gasp and let out a wail.
The disciples gathered in that upper room were, in effect, holding their breaths, wondering what might come next, now that the umbilical cord had been cut and they were on their own. Then Jesus blew into their faces –and they gasped. Life-renewing air flooded their lungs and joy flooded their hearts. That’s when the disciples realized that the vision had not perished; that God’s love does indeed overcome death; and that they were called to pick up where Jesus left off, forgiving sins and telling the wonder of God’s abiding love.
Thomas missed the whole thing. Thomas: who appears to have been the only one who did not cloister himself under lock and key that night; Thomas, who has gotten such a bad wrap over the centuries: “doubting Thomas.” The one who had to see in order to believe. Thomas. Where was he that evening? Maybe he had gone out for groceries to feed the group. Maybe he just couldn’t bear to sit still, and had gone for a walk in the cool night air to clear his head and sooth his grieving heart. Maybe he had gone out to investigate Mary’s claim –truth seeker that he was.
Whatever the case, Thomas missed that first upper-room appearance by the risen Christ. And his response to the others when they told him what had happened has singled him out for all time as “the one who lacked sufficient faith.” The Doubter. But let’s be fair here. Thomas may be the only one who asked to touch Jesus’ wounds, but his need for a first-hand encounter with the risen Christ was really no different than that of the other disciples. Remember that Mary had already told the disciples how she had met Jesus in the garden. But did they believe her? No, they didn’t. In fact, the disciples responded to Mary’s proclamation the same way that Thomas responded to the news that Jesus had appeared in that upper room: they refused to believe until he was standing right there in their midst, until he had showed them his hands and his side. Only then did “the disciples rejoice.”
Perhaps, if we’re honest, we might concede that all that smack talk about Doubting Thomas is really about Doubting Us. About our own doubts, and how we fear them. About our own struggles to come to terms with these pivotal events that none of us gets to witness for ourselves. Doubt has come to carry a kind of stigma, thanks to a Christian tradition that has too often labeled expressions of doubt as failures of faith. Acts of betrayal. Cause for shame. Discouraged from examining our doubts in the light of day, we lock them away. We hide our yearning to see, to touch, to truly understand. After all, who wants to be called a Doubting Thomas?
But Theologian Paul Tillich argues that doubt is really an expression of faith. It sounds contradictory, I know, but he says that doubt is evidence that faith matters, that there is something to doubt, something with which to wrestle, something worth wrestling with.1
It’s like the way Storyteller Garrison Keeler describes his imaginary Minnesota town, Lake Wobegon, as a completely Lutheran town. “Everyone here is Lutheran.” He says. “Even the atheists are Lutheran. It is a Lutheran God they don’t believe in…”
Then there’s author Madeleine L’Engle, who writes about the day she decided to abandon her career as a writer. It was her fortieth birthday when she received yet another rejection letter from a publisher. She concluded that it was time to throw in the towel. She resolutely turned off her typewriter, put on the dust cover, and pushed in her desk chair –only to catch herself composing a novel about failure in her head. The writer had not left her, it remained – in fact it reasserted itself in that very moment of profound self-doubt.
I think that’s the way it is with faith, too. We work it out in our moments of greatest need or deepest distress – like a stone in our pocket that we rub and worry over until it shines. It is that grappling that gives our faith its shape, its substance. We have tended to write off Thomas as the one who lacked faith. But really, he was just worrying over the things that mattered to him most, seeking out the one to whom he was utterly devoted: “Is it you, Lord? Is it really you?” …Thomas asked to touch the wounds in Jesus’ hands not because he lacked faith, but because he yearned for it.
And here, for me, is the key (Faithful doubters, take note): that Jesus neither reprimanded nor dismissed Thomas for his request. Instead, Jesus gave Thomas exactly what Thomas needed in order to believe. He offered up his wounded side, his hands, so that Thomas might put his fingers in those most tender spots and discover for himself that Jesus lived. In a move that spoke more of hope than of failure, more of friendship than betrayal, more of love than of shame, Jesus said, in effect, “Come…Touch me. It’s OK: You will neither hurt nor offend me.”2
“You will neither hurt nor offend me.” One of my professors at Chicago Theological Seminary once wrote, “To question is not to destroy.” In other words: It’s ok to ask.
Sometimes, it is in the very act of scrutinizing, of touching our most tender spots, that our faith is both challenged and strengthened. Sometimes it is walking into the dark room of our uncertainty and fear, hands outstretched, that we encounter the Risen Christ. It is the good news of the incarnation, that God honors our human experience. God knows that we need to see and hear, touch and taste and feel.
Because so did Jesus. Before he breathed on the disciples in that upper room, Jesus himself lived, laughed, loved, argued, wept, gasped and breathed his last. How intimately he must have understood our own need to feel breeze on our cheeks and wind in our hair, to see and touch – even to grope – our way into faith?
“Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side…” It was that invitation, those words of assurance, that prompted the most profound confession of faith in all of the four gospels: “My Lord and My God!”2 Reveling words spoken by none other than Thomas, doubting Thomas, faithful Thomas.
What if we, what if the Church, could be more like that: unafraid to question and be questioned, to touch and be touched. What if we embraced Thomas as our ancestor in the faith, and set out to find evidence of the living Christ in our midst with equal determination? What if we did not hesitate to ask the questions that keep us up at night – out loud? What if we received one another’s questions with equal tenderness and compassion? What if we embraced our struggles – not as signs of failure – but as evidence of our desire to grow in faith?
What if we tuned our ear to hear the risen Christ as he speaks to us from within our every locked room:
So, you’re not sure what the resurrection really means or how or whether it happened … “Come,” says Jesus. “Touch my wounds.”
So, you look around at the death and destruction that dominates the headlines and you ask, “How could a loving God allow such suffering?” …“Come,” says Jesus. “Touch my wounds.”
You thought you understood the Bible, but now it seems the rules are changing; things that used to be called sinful are now accepted…and you can’t make heads or tails of it? … “Come,” says Jesus. “Touch my wounds.”
You would like to believe, but the stories you read in the Bible seem so out-dated, or contradictory, or even hurtful … “Come,” says Jesus. “Touch my wounds.”
You DO believe and love the stories, but you haven’t always found the Christian Community to be as welcoming and loving as you think God desires. “Come,” says Jesus. “Touch my wounds.”
“Touch my wounds, not to get some kind of forensic proof, but to remember that I, too, have ached, grappled, argued, cried out in dismay, have felt abandoned, have wondered, have loved…have loved…have loved.”
Sisters and Brothers in Christ: It may be that Easter hasn’t happened for you, yet. Easter doesn’t happen for all of us at the same time. We live with our doubts, our dilemmas – some of us every day. We retreat to the tomb. But we don’t need to stay there. Jesus Christ – who meets us right where we are, groping, incomplete, faith still forming, faltering, re-forming – Jesus Christ calls us out into the light of the new day. Greets us. Blesses us. And then says: “Go! I send you.” And here’s the heart of the matter: He doesn’t tell us to wait ‘til we’ve got it all figured out. The world is full of folks locked up in rooms of pain, oppression, addiction or anguish, right now. Like us, they long to hear a word of hope, of love, of life restored. Proclaiming that word, that’s our sacred calling. So whatever you’ve got, whatever love for God, whatever story of faith-still-unfolding, go ahead and share it. Doubts and all. Along the way, you may just find yourself inspired by the living Christ… just like Thomas.
Scripture Texts
John 20:19-31 – NRSV Translation
19 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.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 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.”
26 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.” 27 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.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 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.” 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 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.