Easter
Sermon by the Rev. Sue Singer
April 27, 2003
John 20: 19-31
"A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them."
A day late and a dollar short. Poor Thomas - actually he's a whole week late and he has traditionally been seen as being more than a dollar short. "Doubting Thomas," we call him, completely lacking in the essential commodity for any self-respecting disciple, he's missed out on the authentic resurrection experience for sure. We can easily see his amazing encounter with the risen Christ "a week later" as just the result of a kind of patronizing willingness on the part of Jesus to get him caught up with the others. And so we either dismiss Thomas out of hand, or we see him in a very facile way - his story somehow "makes it all right" for us to doubt and we stop there.
I think the evangelist John is doing much more important things by telling this strange and somewhat confusing story as part of his account of the resurrection. Why should he want to include a doubting latecomer in the cast of characters at all? If his Gospel is written, "so that you may come to believe," wouldn't it make more sense to tell the story in such a way that there would be no room at all for doubters, latecomers or questioners? The answer to that question has a great deal to do with us - we who find ourselves, a week after Easter, again in the church - and I know that Thomas is with us, and within us.
It's very hard for us to have experiences of faith right on cue. The church year marches on regardless - Christmas follows Advent, Easter follows Epiphany and Lent, and before we know it Pentecost is upon us. And all those feasts and seasons have emotions and attitudes and particular spiritual gifts associated with them. In a sense we know how we are supposed to be feeling as we re-live them each year, and even what is supposed to be happening in us, what fruits they are supposed to bear in our lives. Anticipation in Advent and joy at Christmas, mission and proclamation in Epiphany, penitence and renewal in Lent, vision and empowerment at Pentecost, and the complete rebirth of everything we are into new life at Easter, when all our hymns have us rising triumphantly from the grave right along with Christ.
But what happens if we're like Thomas, a day late (or early) and a dollar short (or over)? What happens if we lose our job in Advent, or if we hit bottom at Christmas, or if we are in the depths of depression at Easter, or if we fall in love in Lent, or if a something in our life is dying a hard death at Pentecost, or if the world is poised to go to war throughout Epiphany? What are we to do with the disconnects between our lives and the Church's life? In particular, what are we to do when our inner or outer circumstances mean that, like Thomas, Easter means nothing to us because we simply can't conjure up faith in our Risen Lord on demand?
The first thing that this Gospel tells us is that this is not uncommon - in fact, it's probably the normal experience of most people. Those other disciples, confidently telling Thomas during the week after Easter, "We have seen the Lord," and expecting him to sign on right then, they actually had nothing to boast about at all. It took them a while to reach the point of faith too, but that tends to get overlooked, probably because they wrote the story.
At the beginning of today's Gospel it's Easter evening and they have already heard that Jesus is risen. Peter and the other disciple, who have seen the empty tomb, have told them, and Mary Magdalene, who has met Jesus in the garden, has told them. So here they are, having heard about the resurrection from three known and reliable witnesses, one of whom has actually seen Jesus and heard him speak, all of whom are probably right there with them in person, and what are they doing? They are in the house with the doors locked for fear. It doesn't sound too much like a group of people who have believed, does it?
And Jesus comes in to them and pays no attention at all to their inability to have faith right on cue. He doesn't say, "Shame on you," for running away at the Passion, for failing to be transformed by the early morning witness of Mary and Peter and the other disciple, for remaining in a faithless huddle that evening behind locked doors. He gives his usual greeting, "Peace be with you," just so they can be absolutely sure it is he, and then sets about giving them exactly what they need in the present moment in order to have faith. He shows them his scars, and breathes his Spirit on them.
It doesn't seem to matter to Jesus that they haven't managed to believe in a logical time frame or on a rational schedule. He is much more concerned that they "get it" about the resurrection when and how they can, so that they can take its power to forgive sins out into a world that needs it. And just to drive the point home that Christ does not depend on our being in the right place at the right time in order to be brought into his risen life, Thomas gets a complete repeat performance all for himself the following week.
Jesus offers himself - "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach your hand and put it in my side" - at the right time for Thomas, on Thomas' schedule, not on the other disciples' schedule or anyone else's schedule, in order that Thomas can reach the place of faith. "My Lord and my God!" the most exemplary declaration of faith of all time - made by the disciple who was a day late and a dollar short.
It's certainly a wonderful thing when our faith bursts into bloom right on cue, when we stand in the candlelight of the Easter Vigil and, as Christ rises from the tomb, know ourselves to be risen from all the tombs in which we have been buried. That's a gift, but it's not a necessity. More often than not, and probably over and over again, we will find ourselves like Thomas, "out of synch," out of joint with ourselves and with the particular season of redemption in which we find ourselves.
The Archbishop of Canterbury was in that place a few weeks ago, as he sat down in the face of a press deadline to write his Easter message in the middle of Lent - Lent in the Church and Lent in the world, this year.
"It's a sobering business," he said, "trying to guess where we'll be in a few weeks' time and seeking a word of gospel to speak into this unknown situation. Yet it's just this kind of situation that Easter is most relevant to. The resurrection is not the solution to a problem - 'how do we go on believing in God when God's Son dies?' It is the beginning of a new creation, a new world: 'The first day of the week' in which God will remake the whole of the broken universe. I don't know yet what I need from God. ... But what God has to give me is not something to fill in the gaps in my desires and my plans, but a comprehensive new relationship with him which changes everything. So here I sit in mid-Lent, not knowing what to pray for, not knowing what words will be necessary if and when the reality of war overtakes us, what words will be necessary in the aftermath of war with all its tragedies and losses here and elsewhere in the world."
When the Archbishop talks about Easter as "the first day of the week in which God will remake the whole of the broken universe," he is drawing on a very ancient tradition in the Church which completely transforms the way we understand time. The first day of the week is the day of creation, but you can also count it as the eighth day of the week, the day of resurrection. The early Christians did just that, they believed that the arrival of the eighth day, when Christ rose from the dead, took all of us outside time altogether, out of the endlessly-repeating seven-day week into a new place altogether. The eighth day is the day in which God inaugurates a new creation, a remade world, a resurrection that overcomes death for all time, and which is therefore available to us at all times, as we wait for its fulfillment at the end of all time.
The early Church understood and experienced Sunday as the eighth day of every week and so can we. A week later, a week after Easter, and every week after this, we are again in the Church, on the eighth day, and Thomas is with us and in us, waiting for resurrection to be revealed one more time, at the time when we most need it. Because with God, resurrection is always in the present tense, always upon us, always available to us wherever we happen to be in our lives in time and space. We can never be late for new life - it is there waiting to break in on us at any time - at Easter, yes, but also the Sunday after Easter, in Lent, at Pentecost, in Advent, whenever we need Christ to reach down and grab us and pull us out of the tombs of death or despair or fear or doubt in which we find ourselves.
The Archbishop concludes his message:
"At Easter we recognize what God has done; and if God has done it, it stays done! There is a new world. At every moment it stands at the edges of our failure and violence, and nothing can take it away, nothing can build a wall so high that it cannot impact on the everyday world."
Happy Easter, happy Eighth Day, and many, many more. Amen.