Second Sunday after Easter
“Doubt” — Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Acts 2:14a, 22-32/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (John 20:19-31/NRSVUE)
Anyone who’s been around church for a while could tell you that the Sunday after Easter, the Sunday after Christmas, Sundays of three-day weekends, and any Sunday that people know the pastor is going to be on vacation, aren’t generally the best-attended services of the year. This first Sunday after Easter is often referred to as “Low Sunday,” though that isn’t necessarily due to below average attendance — it’s because the vibe is a bit more laid back than it was on Easter morning.
But sometimes such Sundays present us with real blessings. Just consider a few of the things we have to be thankful for today (in no particular order).
First of all, Mindy and Holly are here sharing their gifts of music and of singing resistance with us.
Second, your pastor isn’t on vacation. While many of my colleagues opted to take today off, I’m right here with you.
Third, it’s not quite as crowded in here as it was last week so you can pretty much sit wherever you want, stretch out and get comfortable.
Lastly, we get the chance to look at one of the most interesting (and most familiar) passages in the entire Bible — the end of the twentieth chapter of John’s Gospel which, of course, tells the story of the disciple we’ve come to know as Doubting Thomas.
This text is the reading for the second Sunday of Easter every single year, which isn’t a big surprise. John contains four post-resurrection appearances by Jesus — the first one to Mary Magdalene on Easter morning, the last one to the disciples beside the sea, and two of them in our relatively short reading for today, which means there’s a lot going on in these eleven verses.
As the scene begins, it’s Easter evening. Mary Magdalene has just told the disciples about all that she witnessed in the garden beside Jesus’s empty tomb. The disciples are hiding out in the house where they’d been meeting along, trying to figure out what they’re supposed to do now. They’ve locked all the doors out of fear that they too will be taken away and executed. After seeing what Jesus experienced, they are understandably terrified about that possibility.
And then the newly-resurrected Jesus just shows up out of the blue — a turn of events that had to be pretty overwhelming for the disciples, and one that also gives us a few things to ponder. Jesus was supposed to be dead, but now he’s standing right there talking to them. Mary Magdalene told the other disciples that she saw Jesus earlier in the day, but we don’t hear anything at all about their reaction to this news. Did they actually believe her before he showed up to meet them that night at the house? And John makes a point of telling us that all of the doors were locked, so how did Jesus actually manage to get in? Unfortunately, we don’t get any answers to these questions because John leaves so much unsaid here.
We are left to imagine for ourselves what was running through the disciples’ minds and what they were talking about among themselves in the hours between that morning, when Mary Magdalene showed up to share her good news about the resurrection, and that evening, when Jesus showed up to share it too.
Now he’s talking to them; he’s showing them the wounds in his hands and his side. Understandably, they rejoice when they finally realize that it really is him. As the bewildered disciples celebrate Jesus’ arrival, he says to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” He then breathes upon them and says to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
By all indications, Jesus then just seems to disappear (though John doesn’t actually tell us that either). Thomas, who was one of the twelve but was not fortunate enough to be there with the others when Jesus arrived (though John also doesn’t tell us where he was or why he wasn’t present) comes back to the house. The disciples tell him about all that has just happened, and Thomas then utters his well-known skeptical response, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” A week later, Jesus appears once again, granting Thomas his wish. And the rest, as they say, is history.
But poor Thomas has been looked down upon for the past two thousand years for his apparent unwillingness to just accept what the other disciples had told him about Jesus, which seems a little unfair.
First of all, the other disciples are far from perfect but none of them ever gets tagged with a nickname that sticks to them like glue for eternity. I mean we never hear about “Denying Peter,” do we? No, Peter just gets to be Peter (or sometimes Simon Peter). But Thomas is rarely if ever spoken of as just “Thomas;” he’s always “Doubting Thomas.” And haven’t we call been taught that name-calling is just plain mean?
Second of all, Thomas only seems to want what all of the other disciples have already received — a personal encounter with the resurrected Jesus. Would any of them, presented with the same situation that Thomas found himself in, have wanted anything less? Be honest — would any of us want anything less?
For centuries, though, critics of Thomas have latched onto the idea that he doubts the appearance of the Risen Christ; and this doubt is inevitably seen as a lack of faith.
But what if Thomas’s doubt really stems from something altogether different? What if he doesn’t doubt in Christ but rather in his fellow disciples?
I mean, one could certainly argue that Thomas has pretty good reason to doubt them.
Just a few chapter’s earlier, when Jesus prays to God for his disciples, he says this: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth. I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”
What Jesus is praying for here is that his disciples, with God’s support, will go forth and do his work in this world after he is gone — spreading the good news to all God’s people.
What Jesus encounters when he arrives on the scene in our reading for today, however, is this same bunch of disciples hiding inside a locked room because they are too afraid to go out there and do what Jesus has called them to do.
Jesus seems inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here — they have, after all, been through an awful lot over the past few days. And so Jesus doesn’t yell at them or chastise them; he simply repeats for them a summary version of what he had prayed to God on their behalf a bit earlier: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Said slightly differently, “Come on folks, I know you’re scared but you need to get past that because it’s time to go out there and get back to work.”
And so when Thomas arrives at the house some point after Jesus has first come and gone, I kind of understand his skepticism, because these disciples who profess to have seen Jesus seem remarkably unaffected by the whole encounter.
I can only imagine what Thomas might have been thinking: “Wait, so you’re telling me that Jesus appeared to you, that he actually said, ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you,’” and you’re still sitting here? How do you expect me to believe when you don’t even seem to believe? I mean if you really did believe that it was Jesus who came here and said that to you, then you’d actually be out in the world doing what he told you to do instead of hiding out in the house.”
And what are these very same disciples doing seven days later when Jesus appears to them once again? That’s right — they’re still sitting around inside the house with all the doors shut.
Thomas gets the personal encounter with the Risen Christ that he missed; he sees and believes, referring to Jesus as, “My Lord and my God!” In response, Jesus now seems to become the skeptic, asking Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
This statement by Jesus and, indeed, this whole story by John, are bold declarations about what it means to actually bear witness to the Risen Christ. It is not about merely observing Jesus with your own two eyes; it’s about going forth and living the kind of lives that Jesus has called us to live.
It is not about sitting around in the safety of our houses (including our houses of worship) and talking about Jesus; it’s about getting out there in this compete mess of a world and working for lofty ideals like peace and love and equality and justice — even when it’s scary, even when it’s risky, even when it seems like it’s doomed to fail.
It’s not about what we see and say; it’s about what we take into our hearts and then actually do.
Because this is how those who have not seen Christ — and those who have seen Christ — truly come to be one with one another and with Christ.