April 11th Easter 2

What we have in common

After the Crucifixion, the distraught and grief-stricken followers of Jesus dispersed and hid from the expected persecution that they saw coming.

Our readings today shine a light into the dark hiding places they ran to. In John 20 we read of Jesus becoming manifest in a locked room sans Thomas and then a week later plus Thomas.

In Acts 4 we have a snapshot of the early life and ministry of the nascent Church with the same followers, now also described as believers, speaking openly of the resurrection of Jesus with “great power”.

What is more, the Acts passage describes a shift in the fellowship and societal structure of these believers. They are described as all being of one heart and soul and as having had declaimed any private ownership of their possessions.

Something has changed and changed in a big way.

Well of course it has. That was always God’s plan, and the momentous events of the Crucifixion of the Son of God and his resurrection from the sealed Tomb changed the course of human and cosmic history for ever for good.

But it takes some believing though and that is where we are this week.

Just what did happen on the cross. Where was Jesus during the period from his death until his resurrection? Why 3 days, why not just a very brief moment of death and then victory?

These are questions we do not have the answer to and there are many more.

We all like detail and want to know how it all happened and what it all means, but somethings we have to take in faith and then using a different form of intelligence and logic, a more emotional and intuitive intelligence, become aware of the answers to these and other questions that have been always been apparent for those with the eyes to see and ears to hear.

Living with Jesus and listening to his teaching, the disciples had seen signs and wonders and heard wisdom such as never before been heard and seen before, but in such proximity to such divinity they could not see the signs from the substance or hear the wisdom from the Aramaic.

Sometimes it takes a different wisdom to get it, someone from a different perspective, or race or position in society, a Samaritan, a Centurion or even a child.

Bishop John Inge, our former of Huntingdon, and now , had a quote of the week published in the today from one such.

Adult to group of children: “What do you think Jesus was doing while he was in hell for three days?” Child, after a long pause: “I think he was looking everywhere for his friend Judas”

Jesus came back to find his friends and to reassure them. Jesus came to remind them of his teachings and prophecy that this would be the way and that all things would be well, and all manner of things would be well.

But some doubted. And the John passage deals in some detail with belief and the lack of it, which is not doubt, but another category of mind altogether.

In the gospel we read that Jesus came into the locked room and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you”. Next, he showed them his hands and side and then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Just looking at that sequence of events a number of reflections. The first thing Jesus said was “Peace be with you”. Now this may have been a customary initial greeting, but it did not immediately reveal who he was to them and it might have been necessary because they had been terrified that a stranger had appeared suddenly in a locked room and what is the point of locked room in this kind of thing can happen?

After he offered them peace and calmed them, and then showed them his hands and side and then, we are told, they rejoiced when they saw who he truly was. More peace follows as it was clearly needed.

We are learning from these verses that the disciples in that locked house did not recognise the resurrected Jesus at first sight, like many others. There was something materially different but essentially and intrinsically the same about this resurrected Jesus.

In breathing upon the disciples this word of God, this co-eternal one, who breathed all creation into life is able now to gift the Holy Spirit, the “Ruach” of God to his disciples and with that gift the power of his own to forgive sins. The power that he has just won through the sacrifice of his own life.

So, all the disciples, bar Thomas, have now seen and, eventually, believed. But Jesus did not leave Thomas out, like the late guest at the Wedding feast, debarred for arriving late, unprepared for something he could never have imagined.

A week later they are all in the same house, again with the doors shut, but this time, it would appear, not locked and in what must have been the “Groundhog Day” moment of the 1st Century, Jesus again appears and stands among them and says, “Peace be with you”.

More pointedly he says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And from that moment on the words “Thomas” and “doubt” have been written into the Canon and with negative connotation.

I want to suggest to you, though, that doubt is not disbelief. A week earlier the other disciples did not believe that this sudden stranger appearing in their midst was Jesus. They were not expecting him. They were still cowering behind locked doors and it was only when Jesus directed them to look at his hands and side that they recognised him and rejoiced.

We don’t know why Thomas was not locked away with the other disciples and missed Jesus’ first visit. Something tells me that perhaps he was a little braver and did not need to be locked away – perhaps he had gone to get them food, perhaps he was the lookout on the locked door, but he was not locked out from Jesus and his love. Doubting of the account that his friends gave him, he had not doubted the resurrected Jesus when he met him, and Jesus offered him the unique distinction of being invited to enter his wounds, those glorious marks of his passion, with his own fingers and hands and to no one else in the bible is that invitation recorded.

Did Thomas need to have that bodily contact with the tortured body of Jesus? The John account is not clear. We are told that Thomas simply replied, “My Lord and my God!”

He recognised his Lord and now he recognised his Divinity.

Taking the commission from Jesus to go and make disciples of all nations and the words of Jesus, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”, tradition has it that Thomas travelled to what is now Kerala state in India in AD 52 and gave his testimony to the people of that land.

What can we learn from Thomas? Well honest doubt is preferrable to insincere affirmations of belief. To shut down doubts when we are face challenges to our faith leads to only doubly delayed doubt. Unchallenged doubts develop in the darkness of closed minds and a sharing of our doubts can lead to a healthy reality check and in a loving and responsible fellowship we can all share our insights and doubts.

Our Lent Bible study group this year where we looked at the book the “History of the Bible” by Professor John Barton, was very rewarding because of the honesty and openness in which members of the group shared their faith own journeys.

Even today, our Lord is ever ready to come to us and meet us in our doubts and uncertainties. His words are always “Peace be with you” and “my peace I give to you, not such as the world gives.”

Christ’s peace is not a stifling peace or a sedative peace that numbs our mind and soul. I see that sedative peace given to the disturbed minds of the patients I visit in KHH whose lights are dimly still lit but they are not there anymore.

The peace and certainty of our faith rests in the assurance that there is no suffering, no pain or distress we can ever face that Christ has not gone into before us and that he will always be our companion and friend on our journey to the Father.

To quote the child Bishop John Inge referenced – “Jesus is always looking everywhere for his friends.

AMEN