Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

 4-19-09
The Sunday After Resurrection

Text: John 20:19-29; Luke 24:47-49

 ● "Overwhelmed" is a good way to describe the disciples after Jesus died: huddled together in their fear and confusion, not knowing where to turn or what to do next. They were left only with an overwhelming sense of failure, loss, and shame.

It would be hard to know whether they were more disappointed and disillusioned with themselves for having abandoned him or with Jesus for having believed in the first place? [“I’ll never deny you, Lord! What’s up with that, Peter?”]

● “Overwhelmed” is also a good way to describe our condition as we are left trying to make sense of the resurrection and the promise of God’s new world right in the middle of some pretty disturbing evidence to the contrary.

 ● Our recent trip through San Francisco brought the following to light for me:

 ~ There is the surface appeal of a life that will eventually destroy us.

It was an environment that appealed to all sorts of “appetites”. Food, sex, the arts. Most often, you don’t even have to ‘sell’ it--- you just have to ‘offer’ it.

Each manned with someone ready to offer you reasons why you should choose them. “No thanks, I just ate. “Well, come on in anyway. Surely you’re not satisfied?!”

            In a word, we’re too easily “entertained”---  (lit. ‘to hold’) something to distract us, at least momentarily, from reality. It catches our eye--- it arouses our imaginations--- it captures our heart. The only thing left is ‘opportunity’ [to act].

 ~ There is the realization that underneath all that we say “appalls us”, there is a strange attraction; a fascination with that which we publicly declare “repulses us”. 

A vulnerability. A curiosity which reveals our constant need of healing and wholeness. Places “in us” only safe with a loving God.

 ~ There is the numbness, the strange lack of sensation—the fear of feeling nothing.

They were all the places that I was anxious to “walk through” in order to get to where I wanted to be. Knowing that I need not stay; I need not engage any of the hurt, any of the brokenness, any of the mess.

If we’re not careful, it’s a world to which we can become indifferent.

 Hebrews 11:3

“By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come form anything that can be seen”.

 ● What “we see” is the world that “we have created”.

It is what is “seen”. But, it’s “not real”. What’s beneath what is seen is pain and abandonment and brokenness and abuse and loneliness.

 ● But, by faith, we see that “the world was created by what we can’t see”--- God. But, by faith, we understand that the lost-ness and the brokenness are not final; that the resurrection has made possible God’s new life, God’s new world.

            We all live struggling to see it; straining to look beyond what is “seen” to what is “unseen”. Somewhere in our hearts we long for it; seek it.

 ►When it comes to the Bible, we have a hard time really hearing the story unless we hear it as a story about us.

We have to imagine ourselves in the stories. We have to imagine ourselves as the prodigal son, walking along the road rehearsing our speech, wondering if we will find welcome or the door slammed in our face. We have to imagine ourselves as the leper being touched or the religious leader walking around the hurt of the world. We place ourselves in the position of the thief on the cross saying, “Hey Jesus, remember me…”

 ● This story is easy to imagine because it involves trying to believe in Jesus in the midst of unfulfilled expectations and dashed hopes.

● The setting: the disciples gathered in a locked room for fear that the ones who came for Jesus will come for them next. Every sound, every branch that broke in the breeze, every pounce of the neighbors cat, becomes for them the sounds of fear.

 ● We usually associate Thomas with “doubt” (really hard to shake those nicknames; usually associated with our failure).

But, the word used of Thomas is not the word we would use for ‘doubt’; the word used here is ‘unbelief’. He’s just doesn’t believe. He thought following Jesus was over. He had been one of those who bought into the whole idea of following Jesus, but he saw what they did to him.

            When Jesus first appears to the disciples, Thomas isn’t there. Why not? For all he knew, Jesus was dead and so let’s just get on with life.

It was not necessarily because he was scared or he was off formulating an interpretation that might help him adjust to this new twist… he just doesn’t believe. In order to believe again, he would need some concrete evidence.

 ● I think we can all easily envision ourselves in this story.

Thomas responds as all of would expect; as all of us have: with “conditions”. Thomas says, in effect, unless my conditions are met, I will not believe.

            “If Jesus will change…”, “If God will heal…”, “If God…”

 ►Each time we ground our faith in such conditions, we actually diminish our capacity for belief.

            Our faith becomes “circumstantial”; it becomes limited to the situation. Our lives can simply go no further.

To put it this way: What we see happening often prevents us from seeing what’s happening!

            It fails to allow room for all the ways that God is at work using even our doubt and unbelief to shape and strengthen our faith in him.

 ● Jesus comes back again and, this time, Thomas is among the group. He speaks with Thomas as if there is no one else in the room. Can you imagine the moment they shared? The look on their faces? Jesus, in an extreme act of grace and kindness, not rebuke or disgust, says, “Put your finger here… look at this… touch my side…”

            The story doesn’t indicate whether Thomas actually touched him. Maybe just the fact that Jesus was so ready to meet Thomas at the point of his doubt caused him to believe. With his eyes, it was still just Jesus, Mary and Joseph’s boy; but with his heart, it was this one he would continue to see even after he was gone.

 “My Lord and my God”… when he ‘sees’ Jesus, suddenly, nothing else matters. The proof he thought he needed was in the experience of Jesus. He didn’t need to touch him, he didn’t need to feel the wounds. He had experienced Jesus in a way that was not limited to what he could touch or feel or see. Suddenly, Jesus not just alive, but alive to him!

 ● This following of Jesus would now be summarized in his declaration: “My Lord and my God”--- “obedience” and “worship”.

 ● Obedience means that we don’t always get the luxury of knowing what happens next; that attempting to control our lives/circumstances under those conditions is futile.

 ● It means that sometimes we’re actually limited by what we know when that knowledge prevents us from believing that there might be something more.

We have to admit that this life is about glimpses--- foggy images, lack of clarity, unmet expectations, unfulfilled promises. It means that we live with partial knowledge and relative certainty.

 ►Obedience is the confident response of those who worship.
            So, we “worship”… we revel in the story and the promised and mysterious presence of God for life.

 ● Obedience without worship is just our way of attempting to make life more predictable; it’s manipulation. By the same token, worship without obedience is the highest expression of hypocrisy. “If you love me, you’ll obey what I command”. “Whoever has my command and obeys them is the one who loves me” (John 14:15,21).

 ►To lose faith is to stop longing; to stop seeing. To lose faith is to decide that what you see is all there is.

            It’s not to doubt or need clarification.

 “Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” Jesus says that there are advantages to believing without having seen. Following, believing, trusting, requires a different way of relating--- “faith”. Not that we don’t need evidences, we just no longer demand proof because we’ll never get it.

 ● Just as the couple on the way home to Emmaus, as soon as they recognize him, he was gone. Following him would now require a new approach: faith---trusting the story, entering the story.

 Maybe our eyes are actually not the best faculty we have for seeing? Maybe what we see isn’t always what’s real? Maybe the smiling couple doesn’t really have the ideal marriage? Maybe the apparently self-confident leader struggles with insecurity? Maybe the young attractive individual is racked with doubts that they’ll ever really be loved for who they are?

            Maybe there’s truth to be seen which can’t be perceived with the naked eye? Maybe often what we see is actually masquerading the truth?

 ► “Spinning heads and burning hearts” can quickly be reduced to explanations and apathy if not continuously nurtured and pursued. It’s what happens when we stop looking, stop searching, stop believing.

 In Luke, the message was: “repentance and forgiveness of sins”.

The Bible envisioned that when God finally acted to bring about the blessing of all nations promised to Abe,  that healing restoration would go out to the whole world.

            “Repentance”--- a new way of thinking; a new way of ordering our lives.

It’s not just an imperative (command), it’s an invitation. In order to participate in this ‘resurrection life’--- this new way of life, one must change the way they view God, view life; allow this story to be their story.

            “Forgiveness of sins”--- a new way of responding to all of the conflict and chaos of our world.

 ● But, they could not do that on their own. They were to wait to be empowered by God’s personal presence.

The Easter story always provides the possibility of a future for those who have lost hope. When the path of your life turns out to be a cul-de-sac. Where would the disciples go when their hopes were shattered at Golgotha? When that marriage is dead, when that cancer takes its toll, when calamity strikes?

When seen this way, the resurrection of Jesus is not simply a creed that we recite or a doctrine that we set out to prove. Rightly understood, it’s God’s invitation to life beyond the boundaries of sight and the limitations of disappointment and fatigue.