April 11, 2010
The Second Sunday of Easter (Year C)
Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 118:14-29; Revelation 1:4-8;
John 20:19-31
Each year on the Sunday after Easter we hear the gospel lesson I have just read, the story of Thomas, who missed the first appearance of Jesus to the disciples, and then was with them for the second. In so many ways all of us are Thomas at different points in our lives. All of us doubt when others believe. All of us have a sudden recognition of the presence of Jesus, right there before us, in a way we could not imagine.
But this year, as I hear these lessons, several questions come to mind, questions we each need to think about and answer for ourselves, questions about resurrection that are answered in these stories, these two resurrection encounters between Thomas and Jesus (and the rest of us by extension), questions that are answered but not in a way that allows us to say we know the answer for everyone, or even for ourselves, but in a way that challenges us to go further and further into our own exploration of what new life means for our own lives and for the lives of those we love. This year these questions might even be valid to be asking as the community of Good Shepherd. I say this because I have had the opportunity to speak of these questions with our bishop Tom and my colleagues in the Concord River Deanery on Friday, and because one of the commentaries that I read this week asked these questions and they caused a real stir in my heart. I hope they do in yours also.
When we think of resurrection and our duty as Christians not only to proclaim it but also to live it – our duty to tell others and invite them into resurrection with us, I wonder, how do we do that when we cannot scientifically prove resurrection to a world that wants measurable proof? How can we talk about it when it is such an absurd notion when compared to "reality"?
How do you put into words the completely different state of being that resurrection is, a wholly new mode of existence? How do we do that in a way that we can relate it to others and even to ourselves?
Further, how do you conceptualize a state of being that is unparalleled, yet remains identifiable with the old person? How can Jesus at once NOT be a ghost, yet also not be temporal? How could he be visible and then invisible? How could he be within space and time, yet beyond it? How could he eat fish and walk through doors?
These questions are the questions of theology, and very practically the questions that stagger our faith and force us to really believe or to become wishy-washy about faith, taking only the “feel good” and surface layers of it, not daring to dive into the depths of it all.
But we as a community are living in the precipice of a time when truly testing the answers to these questions in our own lives and faith journeys is not optional. We must dive, we must take the step off the precipice and we must by faith follow the example of Thomas. Thomas wasn’t there when the others saw Jesus. He didn’t see resurrected Jesus eat fish or walk through doors as the others had. He didn’t see it.
Are we not all like Thomas? Has anyone seen Jesus walk through the door or eat fish? Has anyone walked with him along the road? Been taught by him at a campfire? Been struck blind so that you might see? No? We are like Thomas in that. We could be like the scientists who need empirical data to prove a hypothesis. Yet, we are all here, never having seen, never having known.
And so was Thomas. He was with the disciples again, even though it was dangerous for them to gather. They were known to be Jesus’ friends and disciples. The religious leaders had turned Jesus in and there was every reason to believe his disciples could be sought out for the same kind of fate that Jesus had met. Yet they still gathered, and Thomas who had not seen, gathered with them. He thought they were a little demented perhaps, but he was with them. They were his community.
And they were in disbelief even as they were in belief, a new belief, a belief that caused them to know what they could not verbalize: what that wholly new mode of existence was that Jesus was now living, a mode comparable to, an extension of, but NOT temporal, and also NOT ghostly. Jesus was alive in a whole new way that was beyond all their “knowledge” – and frankly beyond all of ours.
Thomas came to that place of understanding and faith, not so much because he sought it or even because he got it when they explained it to him. He came to that place of understanding and faith by abiding with the community and finally being touched in his own way, in his own life, by the truth of all that they had been saying.
Good people the only way any of us can ever put the good news of the resurrection into our vocabulary, the only way we can conceptualize life that is not temporal and yet continuous with and dependent upon what was mortal, the only way we can begin to have faith enough in a risen Jesus is to live it, to live into it, and to let our own experience be the words we use to proclaim it to others. We might have nice churchly language about the resurrection of Jesus – and it is important to know such language, to trust it and to know the theology and the hymns and the community lore about resurrection. We must indeed know it, this knowledge of resurrection that is in the category of "know" not believe. We must "know" it intellectually so that we will recognize it when we are able to believe the true story. The true story, the converting story, the proclamation story, will be found and told in our own experiences of resurrection, which is when our faith will come alive not only for ourselves but as a witness to others, just as it did for Thomas.
When we have experienced resurrection, a life we could not imagine or believe but that is filled with the things of true life, love, humor, health, laughter, kindness, trust, future, a thing of delightful possibility instead of dreaded, fearful, remorseful sadness, that kind of resurrection is what we can use to transform the world, and certainly our own lives and absolutely every community of which we are part. That kind of resurrection will give us the faith that the disciples had if we but dare to trust it, and find it.
Of course it is ironic that I am preaching such resurrection to you from this pulpit at this time when the bishop has asked me to resign, that you may go forward to find that kind of new life as a community. Frankly, that is very ironic, especially when many of you know that I am fearful about what the future holds for me. But I want you to know that there is a part of my soul, deep and real that also trusts that resurrection is possible, not only for the community of Good Shepherd – which, honestly, I have no doubt believing. I know you. I love you and I know you are capable of being an incredible community filled with all the proclaiming new life that God intends for his community. But sometimes, sometimes, I even have that hope for me.
So, yes, I ponder these questions and invite them into your consciousness and heart to ponder also, not because there are concrete answers or "ought tos" to them, nor do I expect concrete answers from you. But I know that your lives and my life will give evidence of resurrection to ourselves and to others, because our faith, your faith and my faith, is a glue that holds us together even when we will be separated.
It is that faith, born of previous resurrections in our own lives, and that even newer, deeper faith that will be born out of the resurrection that awaits us all, that faith is what we will depend upon to answer these sticky questions and that faith which I hope and pray will allow all of you, all of you – I will say it again – all of you, to stay together, to witness to each other, to be Thomas for and with each other, to be there for those who cannot see it, cannot comprehend how new life is possible. I believe it. Believe with me.
Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd