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Sometimes symbols can speak more powerfully than mere
words. With this springtime
garden of flowers in our chancel, and with the candelabra, and with the
glorious music—the sights and smells and sounds of Easter are still
here. And with the children
singing—last Sunday we had 56 children here—just between the ages of 5
and 11! We might see the
connections. We might
understand in our hearts and minds that it is still “Easter.”
You see this is the season of Easter.
It is called “Eastertide,” because Easter isn’t over.
It isn’t something that just happened to Jesus; Easter happens to
us, too. It’s not just a
day, over and done with. “Eastertide”
carries us forward, with a surge of holy momentum, as people of the
resurrection.
But just in case the snowstorm distracted us, or just in case we got
caught up again in our busy lives and moved on too quickly, God presents
us with this gift from the Gospel of John.
This is a reading NOT for the Sunday after Easter—No
sir!--but a reading for “the second Sunday of Easter!”
Do you see the difference?!
The disciples are gathered together. The
excitement of Easter morning is over.
Most of them “missed it,” or “it missed them.”
They have heard some talk about Mary Magdalene seeing the Lord, but
they did not see Him. Easter
has not happened for them. They’re
behind closed doors—afraid to go out, and afraid of who might come in.
They are afraid of what Easter might mean for them—what the cost
of discipleship might turn out to be.
And perhaps they are afraid that Easter might not mean anything at
all. In the Gospel of Luke we
read that Mary’s words “seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not
believe” (Luke 24:11). It is
so ironic! The Lord is now free—the
stone has been rolled away and he is risen! But
his disciples are trapped in fear behind those closed doors.
A parable is told about a man who had not lived as he should have.
He eventually died and found himself forlorn in Hades.
When word got around that he was in hell, his friends came to the
gates of hell and stood
there, banging on the huge locked gates saying, “Let him out!
Let him out!”
Still, those huge gates remained firmly locked.
Finally, there appeared One at the gates of hell, dressed in royal robes,
saying, “Let me in! Let me in!”
And the gates of hell swung wide open and He entered.
This is our salvation!
The disciples, behind those closed doors, have been invited by the Holy
Spirit to come together. They
don’t know yet what God is doing, but they gather as disciples of Jesus
Christ. They show up.
And
Jesus enters! Easter happens to them! The
Risen Lord comes to them, and they’ll never be the same again!
Jesus comes in, so that the disciples can come out.
In the Apostle’s Creed we say something about our Lord that at
first glance seems entirely inappropriate: “He descended into hell.”
But the message of Holy Week, the celebration of the Easter season,
is precisely this. Jesus
entered our prison of sin, and death, and fear, and set us free!
He comes through the gates! He
comes through those closed doors! “Peace
be with you,” He says. The
Good News is that you are a child of God, forgiven and free.
You can come out from your prison to walk with our Lord in courage
and new life! The disciples
experience this as they gather together.
They know this to be true!
But there is a problem. Thomas
isn’t there. Do you see a
pattern here? Like the
disciples before him, Thomas hears people telling about experiences of
seeing the Lord. But they are
not Thomas’ stories—not yet at least.
Easter has not yet happened for him.
So Thomas declares, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the
nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in
his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).
God bless Thomas! And God
bless the other disciples!
Because Thomas represents all of us who have our questions, all of us who
have our doubts. The great 20th
century theologian Paul Tillich once said:
“Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of
faith.” The Gospel invites
us to bring our questions and bring our doubts to the Lord and the
Lord’s followers. We are
invited to come, to be welcomed and included by the community of faith
just as Thomas himself was. The disciples embrace Thomas—doubts and all.
Remember, the disciples have been through this, too.
They had heard Mary Magdalene’s testimony about Jesus being
alive. But they were unable to believe it until they had their own
experience of the Risen Lord. They
know about doubts along the path of faith.
They know about growing in trust.
The Good News is that Easter
continues! Even if we
somehow missed it before. The
Easter story is not over for us, just as it was not over for Thomas.
Like those first disciples, we come with our doubts.
We come with our scars—they are part of who we are.
They are reminders of what we have been through.
They are signs of both the healing we have experienced and the
healing that is yet to take place. You
see, we are invited to come as we are.
And Easter happens—not all at once, not at the same time or in
the same way for everyone. Our
Lord comes—even through closed doors—with his own scars reminding us
of how God works in and through suffering.
Sometimes in our culture it gets confusing.
We talk about the “weekend” as Saturday and Sunday.
We talk about Monday as the “beginning of the work week.”
But which is the first day of the week?!
It is Sunday! Sunday is
the day that God began all of creation, saying “Let there be light”
(Genesis 1:3). Sunday is the
day of resurrection, the day of Easter light.
And just as it happened to those first disciples, as they gathered on the
first day of the week, it happens still.
Easter continues! Our
Lord comes, as we, His disciples, gather in His name! And just as in the
beginning God created us by breathing into us the breath of life (Genesis
2:27), on the first day of the week Jesus breathes into us the Holy
Spirit, making us new people. Our
Lord offers us peace for the days ahead—whatever they may
bring—because He will go with us. With
the gift of His Spirit Jesus gives us the courage to open those doors to
the world--ready to welcome those whom our Lord brings through those
doors, and ready to follow where He leads us out into the world.
Somehow Easter happened for Joan Henderson, in spite of it all.
On Easter morning 10 years ago, she walked in the front door of a
church.
To be honest, she really wasn’t interested in following anything or
anyone. She didn’t want to
be changed, she wasn’t looking for community.
She just wanted to get her girls baptized so they could get
admitted to a Catholic school. “Quick
and clean,” she thought. In
and out. The way she put it,
she was looking for a “drive-through baptism.”
Joan had no idea that she had been invited.
She realizes now that she had been.
She was invited by the Holy Spirit.
The invitation was so subtle she didn’t know anything was at work
other than her trying to get her own way.
Ten years later Joan tells her story to author Diana Butler Bass.
“Around (Joan’s) neck hangs a necklace, a gift from a friend.
It simply reads SHOW UP. The
pilgrimage of faith, Joan realizes, began with that invitation—and God keeps
asking us to show up through grief and doubt, joy and fear.
‘In every situation,’ she says, ‘Christ is in the middle
offering an invitation…’
“I showed up,” remembers Joan. “I
did all I could. I
showed up. That was it.
And that was a lot. And
Christ and the community of his followers showed up for me.
I am so grateful--I’ve never been the same…”
Thomas was never the same either. Thomas
exclaims, “My Lord, and my God!” And
eventually he follows his Lord through those closed doors, bringing the
Good News of Jesus Christ to
India
, where the
Mar
Thoman
Church
continues to bear his name.
The truth, as someone has observed, is that “you can’t prove Easter is
true by going backward, only by going forward.
Because that is where the risen Christ is, on the move, ahead of
us,” leading us from this first day of creation to each new day to come.
For Christ is risen! He
is risen indeed!
Thanks be to God!
Amen!
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