1 John 20:19-31 Second Sunday in Easter The first Easter is ...

Jesus tells them, “Peace be with you. Just as God sent me, it is time for me to send you.”He gets close enough for them to feel his breath, to know that he is really alive, and notsome ghost, and he says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”And then, as quickly as he appeared, he is gone. But the disciples have seen enough to knowthat everything has changed. They have seen first hand the resurrection of their hope, thetransformation of death into life, and so they go into all the world and tell everyone andeverybody believes what they say and lives happily ever after.Well, not exactly. You see, they weren’t all there. Of the 12 disciples, 2 were not there. Thefirst, Judas, well, they knew what had happened to him. But the other one, Thomas, calledthe “Twin,” no one knew where he was.Maybe he is out wandering the streets. Maybe he is hiding in a different place, unable to bearound the people who remind him most of Jesus. Maybe he is searching the empty tombfor the body of his friend.We can only guess, but what we know is that when Jesus came to that locked room, whenJesus showed his wounds to his followers, when his disciples rejoiced and embraced andcelebrated the first Easter, Thomas was not there.Imagine as Thomas returns to the room where the other disciples are. Imagine that feelingof anger and resentment as your friends dance around as if nothing has happened, as if henever died, as if everything is okay.Imagine your bitter disappointment in them, as they tell you some nonsense about Jesusbeing alive again and showing up there right in front of their eyes.When Eric Ottens, one of UE’s beloved basketball players died a few years ago, I traveledwith the basketball team to his little hometown in Iowa for the funeral.As the congregation of mourners packed into that small chapel around the casket of theyoung man who had died tragically before his time, the church chose to blast praise musicthrough its speakers.One of the Eric’s teammates turned to me with an incredulous look: “What are they doing?”It felt as if they were trying to drown out the death in the room, and it didn’t work, just likeit never does. It felt as if they were denying any of us permission to grieve.Have you ever lost a loved one, and then tried to return to class or work or a relationshipwith people who don’t know what you’ve lost? Have you ever tried to go to thesupermarket the day after the funeral? With people who are going about their daily lives,when that seems like the hardest thing for you to do?2

If you can imagine that, then maybe you will be a little more gentle with Thomas thanhistory has been. When we all met Thomas, we were introduced to the king of all doubters,the faithless disciple who just couldn’t believe what he couldn’t see.But there is more to Thomas than this one story. It is told that Thomas is the one who tookChristianity to India for the first time, and many Indian Christians still have Thomassomewhere in their name, as a tribute to the disciple who first traveled there with the goodnews.When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” a verse that we Christians love totake out of context, Jesus is talking to Thomas, who just moments before had asked hisfriend, “How can we know the way?”No, what we remember Thomas for is what he says to his friends back in that locked room.We remember Thomas for what he says, because they are some of the most honest andpainful lines in the entire Bible.“Unless I see with my own eyes where the nails went in, unless I can put my finger into thehole in his side, I don’t want to hear any of this nonsense!”Can you imagine if someone in a church said something like that? Can you imagine if, in themiddle of the Apostle’s Creed, or during one of these resurrection hymns, or during thesermon, someone just stood up and said, “I’m fed up with all of this ridiculous celebration.He’s dead, I tell you, he’s dead. That I can believe. And until he shows me different, that’sall I’m willing to believe.”Thomas rejects the story he hears not because he is faithless, but because he saw it with hisown eyes. He saw them carry him away from the garden. He knows what happened toJesus, his teacher and friend, and you can’t just make that pain go away with a nice storyabout being raised from the dead.“Unless I see with my own eyes where the nails went in, unless I can put my finger into thehole in his side, I don’t want to hear it.”A few years ago, after Mother Teresa had died, they began to translate her personal diary.This woman who had spent half a century tending to the poorest of the poor, giving up allher possessions and calling the world to service and justice, evidently was not so rock solidin her faith.“[Those in] Hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss ofGod. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does notwant me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist. My smile is a greatcloak that hides a multitude of pains…“[People think] my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing and that my intimacywith God and union with his will fill my heart. If only they knew . . ."What is most amazing is that these writings coincide with the same period in her life whenshe left the school at which she taught and went to go live among the poor in Calcutta. Inthe midst of her greatest doubt, she made the most radical decision of faith possible.3

I would love a perfect faith, I think. It would suit me well, particularly as a pastor. If I spenttoo much time psychoanalyzing myself, I might even say I went to work in the churchbecause I want so much to touch those wounds, to be in the physical presence of JesusChrist and know who I am meant to be and what I am meant to do.I want to pray and know who I am praying to, I want to sing a hymn and know who islistening. I want the voice of God to ring clear like a bell in my head and my heart.When John Wesley, the founder of Methodism and frankly one of the most faithful peoplein all of history, was young and full of certainty, he headed from England to the Americancolonies to convert the “heathen Indians.”When he got to Georgia, he found that most of the Native Americans had already had theirfill of Christianity from the Christian soldiers slaughtering their families. He tried to start thesame sorts of Bible Studies that had worked so well in college back at Oxford, but no one inrural Georgia seemed quite as excited as they should.It got so bad that the local people brought him up on charges for being too religious, and heleft in the middle of the night, walking through the swamp in disgrace to hop a boat back toEngland.He arrived in England a failure, a miserable and complete failure, questioning everything hehad ever known about God and himself. He avoided his old friends, he considered givingup his ministry, he thought of his dreams to convert the Native Americans and wonderedinstead, “Who will convert me?”As he was talking with his friend Peter Bohler, asking him how he could possibly preachwhen he had no faith, Bohler’s response was simple and powerful, “Preach faith until youhave it.”We gather in worship not because our hearts are always full, but precisely because it takesone another to stay alive in the faith. We go out into the world to serve and to act for justicebecause in touching those wounds we touch the wounds of Christ.We lift up the bread and the cup because while we may never see Jesus in the flesh, he left usthose gifts. And we pray and we sing of faith even when our faith is broken for the samereasons John Wesley took preaching back up—because faith that is certain and verifiable andpoured in concrete is not faith, it is knowledge.Knowledge is nice, but it’s got nothing on faith. Those of us willing to take the risk of faith,willing to breathe thin air and barely subsist on bits of holy manna will one day be able to seeGod. Just as Peter says in the epistle for the day, “Although you have not seen him, youlove him, although you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with anindescribable and glorious joy...”And I should tell you, Jesus does come back for Thomas. About a week later, in the samelocked up room, Jesus shows up with a message for his old friend.4

And while Jesus gives Thomas the chance to touch his wounds, Thomas thinks better of it.Not because he is afraid, not because he’s embarrassed, but suddenly, in that moment, hedoesn’t need to anymore.And it is Thomas—poor, doubting, faithless Thomas—that is the first one to declare thatthis is not only their risen Lord, but that his eyes are looking at God. There is no otherdisciple that could make that claim, because it could only be made after a long journey ofdoubt and struggle.And in a last touch of irony, as if to speak directly to all of us on the other side of thesepages, Jesus does what he often does, declaring happy and blessed those who can count theirblessings on their pinky finger.Jesus offers one more Beatitude here, saying a little prayer for all of us who will be asked tobelieve without ever seeing a thing.It is almost time for this year to come to a close, and we will be sending some of you outthese doors into the unwritten possibilities of a new road.Here’s my advice: don’t let our polished little worship service here fool you. There is roomfor doubt, room for struggle, room for questions here in the presence of God. In fact, I’mnot so sure that the struggle and wrestling match and confusion, well—I’m not so sure thatis not the very presence of God itself. And I hope you’ll see the lifetime of bumps andbruises ahead not as an obstacle course but as a roadmap of grace.To believe in Christ is to believe in his wounds, and also in ours. To be huddled in the roomof our own loneliness and uncertainty, only to find that there is no place we can go that Godcan’t find us.And that no matter how thick the doors of our resistance are, no matter how far away Godmight seem, there will come a day when we will hear the words of Jesus to Thomas and toall of us who count him as our twin:“Peace be with you. Even when it seems that there is nothing left, peace be with you.”5