Easter
2 2015 (Year B)
Father Adam Trambley
April 12, 2015 St.John’s Sharon
The end of the today’s Gospel passage lays out why the
evangelist wrote the Gospel, and why we read it. “Now Jesus did many other sings 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.” The
point of everything – everything written in John’s gospel, everything written
in all the gospels, everything written in the Bible, and everything we do in
church, and pretty much everything of any importance at all – the point of
everything is Jesus, and our coming to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the
Son of God, and that through Jesus we may have abundant, eternal life. Jesus’ own passionate desire, as well as
God’s eternal plan, is that we come to accept him as our Lord and God, and
become full citizens of his everlasting, glorious kingdom. Jesus went to great lengths to open this life
for us. Jesus emptied himself and became
a human being with all the difficulties human life entails; he taught people
who didn’t listen so well; he healed people who were dirty and smelly and not
always grateful; he cast out demons, which just wasn’t pretty; he fasted forty
days in the wilderness; he went to parties with tax collectors and prostitutes,
which, come to think of it, might not have been so bad; he was constantly
hounded by Pharisees, scribes or other religious authorities who questioned
everything he did; he was betrayed by one of his friends; he was tried and
abused by Jerusalem and Roman officials; he died on a cross; he went down to
hell to break everyone out of death’s jail; he rose from the dead; and then
kept showing up to his disciples so that they believed and had enough to share
with those who came after them. Jesus
did all this so that we might believe he is the Son of God and have life in his
name, and thanks be to God that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote it
down.
The problem, of course, is that belief is not so easy for
some of us, and probably all of us have had some crisis of faith or significant
questioning at one time or other. Maybe
something terrible happened to us or someone we love that shook our faith. Maybe some sort of hyper-rationalism made us
doubt things like miracles or God or any kind of eternal life. Maybe we’ve seen Christians who are such
moral failures that we throw baby Jesus out with the bathwater. Maybe the Christian fundamentalism of the past
few decades has created false choices in our minds between religion and science
or between love and truth or between something our heart or mind tells us and
what the Bible reportedly says. Maybe
faith and morality and God and Jesus have gotten wrapped up too tightly with a
relationship with a particular parent or grandparent or priest or pastor or
church in such a way that ups and downs of that relationships have made it hard
for us to believe and experience the unconditional love of God in Jesus Christ. Maybe we made significant mistakes in our
life and are deathly afraid that believing in eternal life can only mean
eternal punishment. Maybe we feel a
powerful pull from God deep in our soul and know that opening our hearts to a
full belief in God is going to turn our lives upside down, and we’d really
rather be left alone for now, thank you very much. Maybe we have spent decades saying the right
prayers and attending the right church services, and the right church meetings,
and the right church outreach projects, and the right Sunday school classes,
and the right church dinners, and just aren’t feeling whatever it is that faith
should feel like anymore. Or maybe we
are new to all this and no one has given us a reason to believe yet.
The good news today is that regardless of what the barriers
to belief in our life are, Jesus can overcome them. The story of Thomas is only one of a number
of post-resurrection accounts where doubt is present in Jesus’ followers. If Jesus’ closest disciples had doubts even
when they heard reports from their friends or, in some cases, were even seeing
the risen Jesus himself, then doubts in those of us two thousand years down the
road from that week in Jerusalem can certainly be expected. But the disciples’ doubts were not their
final disposition, nor should we expect our own uncertainties to be permanent
barriers to a complete relationship with God.
The disciples we hear about in the gospel today are locked
in a room because they are afraid. Jesus
shows up, and he says, “Peace be with you.”
Jesus overcomes the first set of barriers the disciples put up – their
fear and the locked doors—by showing up.
Then Thomas, one of the twelve who was away on Easter evening, puts up
another barrier. When he hears what
happened, he says he doesn’t believe it.
Not only that, he says he won’t believe it unless he sticks his finger
in the nail holes of Jesus’ hands and puts his hand in the spear hole in Jesus’
side. This attitude is not only
stubborn, but a bit gruesome, as well.
But this attitude is not too much for Jesus, who comes back the next
Sunday and again comes through the locked doors, and says “Peace be with you,”
and then offers his hands and side to Thomas, who has the good sense not to go
up and poke around in them. Instead,
Thomas just says, “My Lord and my God.”
Jesus has overcome the barriers to belief that Thomas put up.
Jesus is also able to dismantle whatever walls we have built
up between ourselves and him, to open any doors we have locked (or to just
glide gracefully through them), to allay any fears, to assuage any guilt, to
dismantle any pride, or even to meet whatever bizarre and utterly unreasonable
demands we may have made as prerequisites for our faith. But know that God does have a sense of humor
– if you decide you won’t believe unless you win the lottery, you might win the
door prize lottery and find yourself the recipient of a glow-in-the-dark Jesus
nightlight. Most of us, in fact, don’t
need great wonders. We just need the
small signs in our life that let us know that Jesus is paying attention. If we look for them, Jesus generally gives
them to us. These signs are all around
us. For me, recently, God provided a
zip-lock bag on somebody’s front lawn when I was out walking the dog and needed
a bag. I knew it was God. God will offer you the signs you need in the language
that speaks to you.
Once God does speak to us, whether by Jesus showing up some
Sunday night or in the more pervasive signs around us, our barriers to faith
get taken down and we find ourselves believing.
That belief brings two immediate practical consequences.
Just like he did on Easter with his disciples, when Jesus
comes to us, he says, “Peace be with you,” and gives us the authority to
forgive each other’s sins. Our divine,
saving faith in Jesus has two immediate consequences. The first is that we have his peace. This peace flows out of the conviction that God
is in charge of everything and we are OK.
Christ’s peace does not guarantee that there will be no trouble or
difficulties. But we can rest assured
that God’s will is done in the end, and that God’s will for us is very good and
we don’t have to allow the small stuff in between to destroy our faith or take
away our joy. The second consequence of our
belief in Jesus is the renewing of the community of God’s people around
us. With Jesus’ authority to forgive
sins, we can repair the broken relationship we have with each other. We have joy in Christ’s peace and can share
Christ’s love with others as immediate consequences of our faith.
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