Second Sunday of Easter, April 15, 2012

Christ Episcopal Church, La Crosse, Wisconsin

The Very Rev. Canon Patrick P. Augustine, D.Min., Rector

I John 1: 1-2:2, John 20: 19-31

A Hopeful Faith

If someone had said to any first century Jew, “so-and-so has been resurrected

from the dead!” the response would be, “Are you crazy? How could that be?

Has disease and death ended? Is true justice established in the world? Has

the wolf lain down with the lamb? Ridiculous!” The very idea of an

individual resurrection would have been as impossible to imagine to a Jew as

to a Greek.1 What changed the worldview of these Jewish men and women

who had actually felt betrayed by Jesus not declaring himself as their

Messiah during Palm Sunday in Jerusalem? There was no hope that these

followers of Jesus would ever speak with such confidence and excitement

about him. They were not only grieving for the death of their Master but

they were meeting behind closed doors terrified for their personal safety.

The change came only after Easter when they heard he is risen, saw with

their own eyes, touched with their own hands. They came to understand

that this could only be the action of Israel’s God who could raise Jesus from

death. Dr. Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his Easter sermon put

it in these words:

Easter makes a claim not just about a potentially illuminating set of

human activities but about an event in history and its relation to the

action of God. We are not told that Jesus ‘survived death’; we are not

told that the story of the empty tomb is a beautiful imaginative

creation that offers inspiration to all sorts of people; we are not told

that the message of Jesus lives on. We are told that God did

something.

1 Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, P. 207

That something is what the Gospels call Resurrection. The story of the risen

Christ from John’s Gospel took place exactly one week after Easter Day. John

tells us that Thomas is not present at that first Sunday night meeting, and

when told about the risen Christ, he doesn’t believe it. He makes a demand

that he has become famous for: hands on proof—his finger in the nail holes

in Jesus’ hands and feet. Now Jesus makes his appearance and greets the

disciples with Shalom-Peace, a greeting typical in biblical tradition (e.g.

Exodus 4:18, 1 Samuel 25:6). The peace Jesus offers is not something that

comes from positive thinking. This peace is not something that can come

from a pill we can buy at Walgreens pharmacy. This Shalom-Peace comes

from the heart of God:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world

gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid (John 14:27).

But then Jesus addresses Thomas by name, submitting his hands and his side

to the hands-on proof that he demanded. Thomas does not touch the marks

of Jesus’ wounds; but at once he leaps to the first confession of Christian

faith:

“My Lord and my God!” (John 20: 29)

Thomas is uttering a faith statement about the deity of Jesus. “Lord” and

“God” were often coupled as “YHWH” and “Elohim.” In the presence of the

risen Christ Thomas reached, in exaltation of his sudden deliverance from

obstinate gloom, to radiant faith. (William Temple) The Easter miracle of

John 20: 19-31 is that Jesus comes not just once, but again and again to these

scared and confused disciples. The point is Jesus’ offering of himself, over

and over again, to people who long to see him. With no question asked,

Jesus offers himself and gives the repeated gift of his presence and his peace.

The disciples who learned for the first time on Easter Sunday about Jesus

resurrection still were meeting behind closed doors. It is also a chronic

temptation after two thousand years for the church, too, to stay behind

closed doors. Yes, there is a perennial temptation for the church to stay

behind the closed door of the private and personal domain. Behind this door

are found the personal, spiritual, and familial dilemmas that occupy humans

in their private existence. The message of the gospel is taken seriously and

with some urgency behind this door. It means keeping the joy of Easter

carefully and prayerfully tucked within the four walls of Church or as one’s

own private precious religious experience. If on Easter Sunday

congregations are able to hold at bay all of their worries, concerns, and

doubts and hand them over to the power of the resurrection, it does not take

long for the vocabulary of death to creep back in and push Easter out. Easter

is real, not simply in the trumpet celebrations of the week before, but as it

unfolds in the lives and stories of disciples who are regularly tempted by fear

and despair.2

New life flows through the veins of those disciples who now are a

community of the risen Christ. They dare to risk their comfortable world for

the wild frontiers of mission in the local community and the world. Jesus

sends such missional communities out into the world with the power of his

own breath - Holy Spirit. It is the same as what God did at the time of

creation; a new community with the breath of God is created. They are sent

out for action. God calls us to serve, and to love in the most substantial

ways: with our time, resources, and gifts to live this hopeful faith as the

Epistle reminds us:

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard,

What we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked and touched with

our hands, concerning the word of life—this life was revealed, and we

have seen it and testify to it… (1 John: 1)

Alleluia! Christ is risen.

2 David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors, Feasting on the Word. Pp. 400-405.