Transformed Thomas

Text: John 20:19-31 Easter: April 15, 2007

Preacher: Vicar Anna Rudberg

It seems to me that Thomas has gotten pretty rough treatment through history. This passage in John has forever gotten him labeled as a man crazy about empirical proof, a man of shallow faith. His name has even come down through history as almost a caricature—Doubting Thomas—a name to describe the unimaginative one, the naysayer, the one who stubbornly sticks to only those things he can hold or touch, unable to make that “leap of faith.” But I’m not so sure that’s who Thomas really is. I think he’s actually a much richer character. And in fact, he has as much to teach us about believing as fearing, loving as mistrusting.

To begin with, Thomas is not the only one in the story who is having trouble completely buying what is happening. Pastor Tim described last week the other disciples’ reaction to the women’s discovery of the empty tomb. Are they overjoyed to hear the news? No, Luke says they dismiss the women’s story as an “idle tale.” Mark goes so far as to say even those at the tomb are so full of “terror and amazement” that “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” And you have to admit, it’s a pretty logical response—resurrection is not something we’re accustomed to dealing with. Only days before the disciples have seen Jesus die, even helped lay him in the tomb, and now they’re not only hearing he’s alive, they’re actually seeing it. Basically, I think the disciples are not quite sure what to do, and it’s frightening.

It’s ironic actually; in the midst of Easter, the season of our greatest hope, of renewal, of life bursting forward, we find the disciples in this passage scared and alone. They are huddled together in the Upper Room, fearful to so much as open a window, let alone believe that any Good News that is filtering through to them.

While I think Thomas joins the disciples in their understandable fear, I also wonder if there isn’t another reason for his hesitancy to believe. I think Thomas is not only unsure of what is happening, he is also nervous to trust, to give hope a chance. I suspect we’ve all experienced something like that in our lives. Something we’ve wanted so badly that when it happens, it is too frightening to believe. Or maybe, like the disciples, we’ve lost something we care deeply about and when it returns we aren’t quite able to admit it’s real. Worst of all, is that we might be tempted to shut ourselves off completely, too scared to let ourselves be vulnerable out of fear that we’ll be hurt again.

I remember when I was younger we once had a bedraggled little puppy wander onto our farm. Now if that little guy wasn’t the most unfriendly little thing—it wouldn’t let you hold it or even get too close, but preferred to just stare back with a wary eye from a safe distance. Each day my brother and I would lay out a pan of kitchen scraps and try to entice him closer, but the pup wouldn’t even look twice at it. In the morning, though, the plate would be licked clean. It took weeks for that puppy to learn to trust us, but ever so slowly he did, until eventually he grew to become our loyal dog, Nicky, sweet and affectionate.

Loving someone means being vulnerable and that’s frightening. It’s tempting to want to protect ourselves against that. I’m sure Shadow had had a tough puppy-hood and wasn’t about to let some fickle owners hurt him again. I think of how easy it can be to never take that step to love again, to never make yourself vulnerable. With that in mind, I try to imagine how Jesus’ disciples have just been feeling—their greatest hope, their hero and teacher, their MESSIAH, has been KILLED. This man in whom they had so many hopes, so much trust, is suddenly gone. They must feel abandoned, lost, and frightened. Reaching out to Jesus means opening up to be vulnerable again.

In that sense, Thomas models a powerful transformation. In the face of great pain, having just lost the leader he loves, he at first hesitates, chooses to doubt. But then, he reconsiders, he squares his shoulders and makes himself vulnerable by trusting again. With this act he embodies, OUR part, as follower’s, of the Easter story. Jesus has lived into his part the Easter promise, and now he waits for us to live into our response. Just as Jesus is resurrected from death into new life, Thomas is resurrected from disbelief into new hope. For what is the resurrection if it is not responded to, if it is not believed, accepted, rejoiced? But this takes trust, it means living into the vulnerability to love again. In this pivotal moment, Thomas reaches out to love his Lord in a new way, as a Christ who is both present and yet not of this world. What a powerful thing that is, to make that decision to believe. It is only appropriate then that Thomas’ cry is one of truest and rawest proclamations in all the Bible “My Lord and my God!”

And this cry moves us to the third resurrection of the story. It is the rebirth of a new kind of church. Up until this point the “church,” or what will become the church, has essentially been a group of people who are in constant contact with their charismatic leader, Jesus. They hear him preach, they witness miracles, they are cured or know people who are cured. They are able to see Jesus, touch him, hear him—just as Thomas wishes to do. Jesus realizes, though, that this is all about to change. He will soon leave them and they will have to go on alone, building a church based on his teachings and on faith, but without his physical presence. From now on, they will have to speak of their experience of Jesus to a people who never met him. And in a matter of 50 years, even those who had met Jesus in person also will be gone. The church is about to become those Jesus speaks of, who “have not seen and yet have come to believe”.

Thomas models just how difficult that transition is going to be, and Jesus realizes it. It is not easy to believe without physical proof. How daunting for this fledging church to reach out to people who will have to believe without seeing. Even worse, Jesus knows he’s going to be depending on these disciples, the very ones who themselves have trouble believing without seeing. How can they expect others make this decision when they can hardly decide for themselves?

But Jesus doesn’t make them do it alone. He doesn’t berate Thomas for his disbelief, but he meets him where he’s at. Jesus doesn’t leave his disciples stranded but gives them the tools with which to do it. He breathes on them... He strengthens them with his spirit. He gives them the mandate and the confidence to speak his message for him—to forgive sins, to preach the good news. Although Jesus command for them is challenging, he does not abandon them.

And that is the church that we’ve inherited. A church that follows a God that challenges, but also gives the tools to overcome those challenges. A church based on a promise but not physical proof. Unlike Thomas, we don’t ever get to see the incarnate Christ. When we gather together as a Christian body, as we do today, we hold little hope that Jesus will walk in in physical form to speak and counsel and heal. But even if we don’t see him in “in the flesh,” we still see Jesus in the world, don’t we? And I think this is one of the most powerful parts of the Thomas story. I mean, did you ever stop to wonder why Thomas asks to touch Jesus wounds? Why not ask to shake his hand or maybe to embrace him? Perhaps it is because it is through these very wounds that Thomas feels the closest to Jesus. Just as Thomas is suffering, so is his Lord, and perhaps this is where Thomas feels the greatest empathy, the greatest sense of connection. And is it not the same for us today? That sometimes the most profound way that we’re able to reach out to God is through the wounds of the world? When we reach out in love to others, when we respond to those in need, stand with those who are lonely or forgotten, are we not also reaching out to God ourselves? When we dare to speak out against injustice or take up the voice of the unheard, is that not our own cry to God? When I consider my own life, it is at these times of reaching out that I most strongly feel in harmony with what Jesus calls us to do. It is at these times that I most clearly feel the presence of God.

Just as in this passage Thomas is resurrected through the wounds of Christ from disbelief to hope and love, so too are we. In the face of all the pain and hurt and abandonment—Christ’s wounds in this world—we are called not to retreat, not to huddle in our Upper Room. Instead we are called to know those wounds; to not be afraid to touch them, to feel them. We are called to feel the breath of Christ and be strengthened. To reach out towards our broken world and see in it what Thomas sees, “my Lord and my God.”

Gravy

Text: Luke 24:1-11 Easter, April 8, 2007

What do you supposed the other ten did that night? The ten out of eleven who dismissed the news of excited Mary Magdalene and Joanna and the Mary the mother of James, and some other women, too. The ten who were not Peter. Because Peter being Peter ran to the tomb to see for himself.

But the other ten thought that Mary and Joanna and Mary were telling an idle tale. An idle tale: It is hard to know exactly what that word means since it appears only here in all the new testament. It probably means they thought the story was made up, a yarn. A little hokum. Hogwash, if they were not so polite. Perhaps you know what it is like to feel the presence—a physical presence near you—of someone you love who has died. Perhaps the other ten thought that that was what happened to Mary and Joanna and the other Mary and their friends. A kind of extreme wish fulfillment that they, the other ten, were somehow immune to.

They all must have been disappointed to say the least when Jesus was executed on the cross. Where was God in all this? Some people in the crowd wanted to know why Jesus had not saved himself. And in another Gospel, the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus himself calls on God: why have you forsaken me? Had God abandoned Jesus?

So no one expected what they found. What they found was nothing, which was not what you’d expect to find in a grave. The men there (not described as angels, but maybe they were) berate Mary and Joanna and Mary, asking them why they seek the living among the dead. But the men are not being fair, for the women did not come to seek the living. They had come to care for the body of the dead. They had seen the dead body of Jesus in the tomb, just two verses before. They had come to complete the story of the life of Jesus.

But evidently—that is, the evidence showed—the story was not over. They found that perplexing, it says. I’m sure they did. More believable is, as it then says, they found it terrifying. When something impossible and world-changing happens, it is right to be terrified.

Maybe the other ten did not believe in impossible and world-changing things. At least at that moment—later on they must have changed their minds, since they later risked their lives to preach the story of the risen Christ. But at the moment they were in denial. What they denied was the power of God to alter the forces of the universe, to be grand about it. As we should be today, on Easter Sunday.

Mary and Joanna and Mary, it says, told “this to the apostles.” What exactly did they say? Did they talk about the men in dazzling white, the empty tomb? Or did they talk about their own fear and confusion. Did they mention that they were advised to recall Jesus’ own earlier words about how he would rise? Did they mention that they remembered those words? And did they say whether that memory help them understand what had just happened?

The other ten did not believe a word of it. But we don’t know what anyone at this moment believed. Belief is not the issue of this passage. The women might or might not have believed what the dazzling men told them. Peter, who only sees an empty tomb is simply amazed. So he goes home, presumably to think about it a bit.

What is it that God can do? Can the world be changed by God? Is that what the other ten are thinking?

Isaiah features so strongly during Holy Week and Easter because the prophet writes so strongly about the change from despair to joy. Which is at the heart of Easter. About the stingy past and the abundant future. About hopelessness and hope renewed. There is no question in the prophet’s mind that God can change the world, that God in fact is the source of change for the good. “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” God says in Isaiah. What could be more radical than that? New everything.

In the past there has been sorrow and struggle. And mostly, at least in this passage we just heard, mostly futility. The seeds we have planted—our projects, our ideas, our imagined future—have not yielded the fruit we hoped for. Others have received the benefit of our labor, of our ideas, of our energy. Others have reaped what we have sown. The houses we have built—our security, our safety, our comfort, our provisions, our establishments—have been inhabited by others, denied to us. What we have done has not worked out. Children, our hopes, die from illnesses or hunger or abuse or inattention. And the old do not live out their allotted lives.

Isaiah writes of the time of the Babylonian exile. Yet, now, the exiles return home. The former things shall not be remembered, God says. Not to forget them, but to let them go, to look forward. “Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating,” God says. A new world is coming, where “one who dies at a hundred will be considered a youth,” when men and women will not labor in vain. When instead of futility, there will be satisfaction. When instead of scarcity, there will be abundance.

A friend was badly burned at his high-school graduation party (he was trying to re-start a fire by throwing gasoline on it). No one thought he would live. His mom later said he looked like a piece of charcoal. Imagine a mother seeing that. Yet he recovered, and lived, and just now is thinking about retirement, having raised a family and started a business or two. My friend says about this experience that the whole of his life after that stupid party is gravy. Gravy, meaning extra, undeserved. We might say: gravy, meaning grace.

So much of what we do is based on fear of one thing or another. And what those things or the other things boil down to in the end is fear of death. All our deepest anxieties, and a lot of our trivial ones, are anchored in the fear of death. If the knot that ties us to death is cut, then we are free to wander where we will.

This tiny and crucial episode in the Gospel of Luke ends in uncertainty. In the moment of the discovery that Jesus is no longer dead in the tomb, there is no conclusion. The story sits on the cusp. Things could go either way. Mary and Joanna and the other Mary and Peter could all go home and ponder things forever and dither about, and the other ten could sit around and mourn and talk about the good old days. But that’s not what happens.

What does happen is that they all change their lives, and tell people about Jesus and his life and crucifixion and resurrection, and they heal people, and they start communities, and they write books of the Bible, and they spread the story.

What does happen is that all realize that in the Resurrection of Jesus they have seen a glimpse of where God stands and how God works. The passage does not end with belief but with a way of seeing God and God’s power. Something impossible and world-changing can happen.

They see that God is willing to disrupt the laws of the universe to change things. God is willing to interfere in human affairs. And God, against the power of death, stands on the side of Isaiah and on the side of gravy.

Our Guy Jesus

Text: Luke 19:28-40 Other texts: Luke 22:14—23:56

It says in the instructions for today for pastors that “a long sermon might not be desirable.” I do, though, want to say a few words about why this Sunday has two names. But I’ll keep it short. Actually, I’ve made the same promise over the past few years, and each sermon comes out about the normal length. But this time, I really mean it.

In the book of Luke, the Gospel we read this year, there are four major stories that unfold in the next seven days. We just heard two of them. The first is Jesus’ grand march into Jerusalem. A time of joy and high expectations. The second is Jesus’ trial and execution. A time of shock, injustice, violence, and death. It does seem crazy—it is a little crazy—that the church should try to force both of these huge events into one Sunday. It is disorienting.

The third of the four stories is what happens in Luke between the palms and the grave. We’ll talk about that in a second. And the fourth of the four stories is Jesus’ surprising rise from the dead and the discovery of his empty tomb. That one we hear on Easter, when we come into this place and say to one another: “He is risen! He is risen indeed.”

In the space of one week we cover material that takes up between a quarter to a half of the Gospels, and in that time we tell each other stories that are the central stories of Christianity.

If you come to church this Thursday and Friday, on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, you find the transition between Palm and Passion a little smoother than if you just hear it all today. But even so, it is hard to reconcile the triumph of the one story with the disappointment—to say the least—of the second story. When we hear these two stories back to back like this, it seems that they are unrelated except in chronology. How can the crucifixion of Jesus have anything at all to do with the earlier march into Jerusalem and the Hosannas? Jesus is great, our hero. Jesus is dead, hung as a criminal.

But the events are related. One does lead to the other. Between one and the other in the Gospel of Luke, in the interlude, so to speak, Jesus solidifies his reputation as an enemy of those in power. His march on Palm Sunday—we should really call it “cloak Sunday” since in Luke the people throw their cloaks, not branches—his march is a sign to the people of Jerusalem—the combination in its day of New York City and Washington, DC—a sign that is scary to those who govern and enforce standards of behavior. And after that, he drives the merchants out of the Temple, and he denounces the scribes (he says essentially: Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in tailor-made suits, and whose words move the financial markets, and get to have the best box seats at the Red Sox games, and eat at the fancy restaurants), and he predicts the destruction of the Temple, the seat of power.

Jesus made people angry. Some people. Jesus was not brought to trial because he was a lovable sort of person. He was brought to trial—and condemned—because he was a law-breaking rabble-rouser, and because he was good at rousing the rabble and therefore scary and threatening.

We are Christians. That means we follow Jesus Christ. Jesus is our guy. We consider what Jesus says and does when we think about the world, and our place in it, and what we should do from day to day and in the long run, and what kind of person we want to be, and what we hope will happen, and how the world could be better than it is. It is not easy having Jesus as our guy, because Jesus was a very brave person, not influenced by fear, and he almost always focused first on what would be good for people—people first—and hardly ever on systems and doctrines. Which got him into lots of trouble. And his disciples, too.

Because we are Christians, we think hard and often about how we stand with Jesus. That is, not what Jesus thinks about us (he thinks we are great; that’s not a problem), but about what Jesus means to us. How does he seem to us. At the moment, do we praise him, thank him, ignore him, deny him, what? (Disciples of Jesus have done all those things.) This question is especially prominent during today, this combined Palm and Passion Sunday, and during these seven days ahead. Where are we in the story? Are we the movers and shakers, or the law-makers, or the law-abiding citizens, or the indifferent crowd? Or are we the rabble, looking to Jesus? It’s the ancient, constant, present question of Holy Week: who is Jesus for us?