These things are given you so that you might see God’s Christ, and trust that God’s life is healing this world, giving you and all creation abundant life.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 20:19-31
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
It’s easy to understand Thomas.
How could he trust in God? The last he’d seen of the Son of God he was dead, hands and feet and side and back and head covered in blood. Even if his friends said they’d seen Jesus alive, the evidence of his own experience, eyes, heart, was too much to ignore.
We know that feeling. Wherever you get your news, you could spend hours daily witnessing the pain and suffering of this world, of your neighbors. Every problem – and there are so many! – is a challenge to solve, and you doubt we’ve got the power or energy or wisdom or imagination or courage to handle even one of them. Trust God is bringing life to this world? Some evidence would help.
The problems of your daily life also pile on your heart. The illness or struggle of loved ones, your own struggles and fears, all can often seem unchangeable. Trust God is healing your mind, your body, your heart, or that of those you love? Some evidence would help.
It’s easy to understand Thomas.
It’s hard, though, not to resent what Thomas received.
His struggles with trust happened in the week between the Sundays, when he rejoined the others. But the risen Jesus was still walking around, and the next Sunday Thomas saw Jesus alive for himself.
He got to reach out and touch those scars of love. Thomas found his evidence, saw God’s life in Christ was real, and found the ability to trust.
But we missed both Sunday nights in the Upper Room, even the second, when Thomas got his chance. We’re still in the place of doubt and fear, with no way to have the physical and personal experience of seeing Jesus alive as Thomas did.
That’s why John is so compelling today.
He says, “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written,” John goes on, “so that you may come to trust that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Son of God, and that through trusting you may have life in his name.”
John says you have a chance to reach out and touch Christ’s scars of love like Thomas, and trust for yourself. Trust that Jesus is risen, and can give you and the world life.
That’s worth looking into.
We think we can’t touch Jesus’ wounded and risen body in person, see for ourselves that death cannot stop God’s love.
But look at what Jesus does here. He gives the disciples God’s peace that he knows and lives within the Trinity. He sends them just as the Father sent him. He breathes the Holy Spirit into them that breathes in him.
Jesus’ disciples and friends met God in Jesus, saw God’s face. He was filled with the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, the divine Son embodied as a human being.
But what Christ does that first Sunday night is confirm that God continues to be an embodied God, just not only in Jesus. He sends out his followers as new Anointed Ones, children of God, bearing God in their bodies, breathing God in their spirits, loving and touching others as God’s love and touch.
That means you can have what Thomas had.
Christ’s anointed ones have been offering their lives for the sake of the world ever since this moment in the Upper Room. Allowing themselves to be wounded as they love in God’s name. Risking their own comfort, even their own lives, to work in the world as God’s love, God’s Body, God’s hands, feet, voice, arms, heart.
If you want, you can only look at all the evil in the world, the bad news, the things you fear, the systemic injustice, the broken society. You can dwell on what seems like the rule of death in this world.
Or you can look for Christ working in the world. See the healing life and love happening in the world because Jesus is risen and has anointed followers, and filled them with the Spirit. You can reach out and touch scars of love in people who bear God in their lives for you, and to change the world. Maybe only what looks like a tiny piece of it to cynical outsiders, but that tiny change, that minute hope, is the seed for the healing of the whole creation.
And once you see and touch, you can learn to trust that God is alive and working in the world, and find abundant life here, even in the midst of all that can seem overwhelming.
Jesus gives you another gift, too.
There are times when it’s really hard to see the Christs working and loving and being wounded for God’s love in the world. Days, weeks, months, even years can go by where you’re overwhelmed by your pain or the world’s pain and you’re back with Thomas between the Sundays, doubting, wishing for evidence.
But Jesus says that if you can learn to trust without seeing in those times, that will bless you. One way to learn such trust is to remember the times when you did see. Call them to your mind, let them renew your hope and trust.
But the community of Christs around you are also tremendously important. Let us see for you when you feel blind. All around you is God’s wounded Body, scarred with love, and they can help you find trust until your eyes are restored.
Remember this, though: you are also sent.
You are also God’s Anointed, God’s wounded Body, filled with the Holy Spirit and with God’s peace. Your scars of love, your willingness to be wounded for the sake of your neighbors and the world, to offer yourself as God’s love where you are, these are signs to the other Thomases. Let them reach out and touch you, so they can see, and trust God’s life, too.
Because this is the path to abundant life for you, for all who suffer, and for the whole creation.
In the name of Jesus. Amen