Unbelievable
The story of Thomas invites us to believe, not in death, but in life through Jesus and to hold space for the unbelievable bigness of God’s love .
Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Second Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 20:19-31
God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The church has been a bit hard on Thomas.
The gospel writer says he already had a nickname – he was called “the Twin” – but we never call him that, do we? We call him “Doubting Thomas.” And, every year, when we hear this story on the second Sunday of Easter, I always feel a lot of sympathy for him. For one thing, it’s really not fair that he is the only one who gets the nickname “Doubting.”
Because every one of those disciples in that locked room were doubters.
They had all already heard from an eyewitness that Jesus had risen. Mary Magdalene had told them all, earlier that day, that she had seen the risen Christ. And there they still were, huddled in fear, with the doors locked, doubting. And it wasn’t until all of them saw the wounded hands and side of Jesus that they believed. Thomas wasn’t the only doubter. He was just the last doubter, at least among the inner circle, and only by chance.
And maybe doubt isn’t such a bad thing anyway.
The story that God would become human, that God would die, and that God would rise again from the dead–that story was and still is, a little bit unbelievable. I received some feedback from an earlier sermon that encouraged me to be careful about describing the love of God as unbelievable or incredible, inviting me to ponder if I really want to say that God’s love is not able to be believed – that we can’t believe it.
But I think I do. Maybe I don’t want to go all the way to say it can’t be believed, but it is difficult to believe–and we shouldn’t forget that. Because if we believe it too easily, I think we tame the wildness of God, we shrink the hugeness of God’s love. If we stop demanding to witness, to see and touch God’s goodness, if we stop being on the look out for Jesus’ scars, if we take all of it as a given, as obvious–then we are liable to forget how earth-shattering this story really is.
How ridiculous it is. How mind-boggling. How unbelievable.
That niggle of doubt keeps it in perspective. Keeps the extraordinary bigness of God’s love from becoming small and mundane.
So I think it is alright that Thomas doubted – that all of them doubted. And it’s good that we have this yearly reminder to believe the unbelievable.
But, of course, it’s also good to remember that believing has a shadow side.
In the tradition I grew up in, we rarely talked about Christians and non-Christians, we talked about believers and non-believers. But as I’ve grown older, it sometimes seems like a strange distinction to me. Because everyone believes in something. We’re all believers. Some believe in Christ, and others believe in different faiths, or they believe in humanity, or in a higher power or a greater purpose or the idea that life has meaning – or they believe equally that life has no meaning. But everyone believes in something.
And so that’s the other reason I don’t think it’s fair to call him “Doubting Thomas.” Because Thomas was a believer.
Before he met the risen Christ, he believed in death.
He believed, with good evidence, that death was final. He believed in death so much, that the idea of the resurrection, of life, was for him, unbelievable.
And it can be so easy to believe in death.
So easy to believe in the things that suck the life right out of us. To believe in lies and conspiracies and our own superiority, to embrace paranoia and pessimism and despair. To believe that nothing will ever change, or if it does, it will change for the worse. And to be mired in those beliefs so deeply that we can’t even see that they are killing us.
So I’m not sure that Thomas’ problem was doubting. I think he and the other disciples believed – but they didn’t believe in life.
And that’s what Jesus comes to change.
He shows them his hands and his sides, shows them his living, breathing body, and tells them to believe – believe in life! Believe that life is possible, even after death. Believe that wounds can turn into scars. He tells them to believe!
Jesus doesn’t want us to believe so that we get the right answers on some cosmic test. We don’t need to fret about believing the right things or believing them hard enough. Nor do we need to despair about the impossibility of believing the unbelievable. No, the gospel writer tells us: “These things are written that you may continue to believe…and that through believing you may have life in Jesus’ name!”
Believe in life – so that you can have life!
Life that is full and abundant, completely trusting the giver and sustainer of all life. That’s why believing is important. Not because having the right list of beliefs in your head is your ticket to heaven.
It’s important because believing how we get to trusting.
If I don’t believe that the chair will support me, I will not trust it with my weight. Belief and trust are bound up with one another, so bound together that in Greek they are the same word. And whereas we are tempted to separate them, because for us belief is individual and cognitive, while trust is relational and emotional, in this passage we are invited to both.
Because what Jesus really wants from Thomas – from all them – from us – is relationship. Jesus wants us to believe so that we can get to trust. So that we will lean in with all our weight and trust that we will be supported. But since it is so difficult to trust if you don’t believe, Jesus helps with that too – showing us the evidence we needed to see to believe — to believe in life. To believe that life and hope and healing are possible. And to believe that love and joy and peace and all the other fruits of the Spirit cannot be permanently trampled by fear and despair and hatred. That life is not destroyed by death.
And when we believe in life through Jesus, when we trust Jesus with our lives, we experience life – we become fully and abundantly alive.
And that has a name – it’s called faith.
So, perhaps we should start calling him Faithful Thomas. Faith isn’t the opposite of doubt. The opposite of doubt is certainty. Certainty runs from doubt, tries to kill it, and never looks back. Faith reaches down to lift doubt up too.
There is room for doubt in faith. There is room for unbelievable in believing. There is room for needing to put your fingers in Jesus’ wounded hands so that our unshakeable belief in death may be overcome by belief in life, may be overcome by the enormity of God’s love, until we cry out with Thomas in awe and in trust: “My Lord and My God! We believe.”
In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Worship, April 7, 2024
The Second Sunday of Easter, year B
Download worship folder for Sunday, April 7, 2024.
Presiding: Pastor Joseph Crippen
Preaching: Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Readings and prayers: Donn McLellan, lector; Jan Harbaugh, assisting minister
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
Download next Sunday’s readings for this Tuesday’s noon Bible study.
The Olive Branch, 4/3/24
What’s Next?
Your life in Christ is lived in what Mark left open, where you, like believers for centuries, let go of your fear and witness to God’s life in the world.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Resurrection of Our Lord, year B
Texts: Mark 16:1-8
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 wasn’t Jesus’ death that frightened the women. It was his resurrection.
These women were as brave as anyone could be in the days of Jesus’ suffering and death. While most of the men who followed Jesus hid away in fear after his arrest, this core group of women who’d been with Jesus from the beginning kept vigil at the cross as Jesus died, watched Joseph and Nicodemus take his body down, saw where he was buried. Sunday morning, while others locked the doors, these women gathered together what they needed to anoint Jesus properly, and headed for the place they saw him buried.
That’s courage. At every point.
And yet, after the women meet a young man who tells them Jesus is now risen, and shows them the empty tomb, Mark ends his Gospel with this: “They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Now they were afraid. Terrified. When they’d just heard the best news of their lives.
Because it was also the most terrifying news of their lives.
All they endured in those three days was the way of the world under Roman rule, except that it was their Jesus who suffered. But there were always trials, floggings, crucifixions.
And death is death, and they knew what to do when loved ones are dying. You weep and grieve. And you take care of them. You keep watch as they die, and lovingly take care of the body after. Of course it was hard. And they could’ve been imprisoned, or worse. But they knew the duty and courage love demanded from them, and they loved Jesus to the end.
But they didn’t know what to do if death itself ended. If Jesus was still dead, they’d know how to go on. The way they always did. But if Jesus is alive, everything is changed, and they didn’t know what that meant. And that terrified them to their core.
Now, of course that didn’t last.
Mark writes his Gospel in a time when everyone knew that these women got it together that very morning, shared the news of Jesus’ resurrection. They were the first witnesses. And yet Mark still ends this way. It was so unsatisfying to later believers, some ancient scribes added their own endings, verses of which might be included one of your Bibles. The other evangelists, writing after Mark, made sure to include multiple stories of what happened after that early moment at the empty tomb.
So if everyone knows the women lost their fear and spoke up, why does Mark end where he does?
Maybe he wonders if you and I are frightened by Jesus’ resurrection, too. Maybe Mark wants you to write the next verses of this Good News, this Gospel, by how you live your life filled with the risen Christ. Like these women did. But he needs you to know that will mean letting go of your fear.
So, what if you could live your life free of your fear of death?
These women might have known how to deal with death and suffering as part of their regular existence, but what Jesus’ resurrection eventually taught them is that death no longer frightened them. They could live boldly, but ready to go when their time came.
So how would this Gospel continue if you wrote your ending, your life, without fear of dying? Without fearing that your loved ones will die, because of course they will, but God has them well in hand. Without pretending you alone somehow will make it through this life without dying? What if you embraced your failing body or mind, even your death, as part of the gift of living?
Imagine your witness to others if you lived every day with joy and hope as if it were your last, your only day, unafraid of what was next, and ready to go whenever it’s your time.
And what if you could live your life without fear of living?
In Jesus’ resurrection, these women learned that their future was utterly changed, that they had a life to live in Christ that they thought was over. But to live it, to know Jesus’ abundant life, it meant releasing their fear of living fully. It meant trusting God was with them in all things. For their friends, it meant unlocking the door.
So how would this Gospel continue if you wrote your ending by releasing all the things you cling to in fear? All your grasping for possessions or security, all your fear that you can’t prevent problems from happening to you, all can be let go in Jesus’ resurrection life, and you can find true, abundant life here and now as Jesus promised.
Imagine your witness to others if you unlocked the door and lived free of all the things that cause fear, and your life witnessed with joy – even in serious difficulty and suffering – to God’s life living within you.
And what if you could live unafraid to love?
That’s the tenacious fear. These women, and the other disciples, learned in Jesus’ resurrection what it meant to live into his command to love, and they did. At first, everyone shared everything, no one went without, all lived in love together. But even early in the book of Acts it starts to fall apart. This fear clings. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable to others in sharing love, or forgiveness, risking being wounded by others, it’s frightening. But how would this Gospel continue if you wrote your ending unbound from this fear?
All the justice and equity, the ending of oppression and violence, all that God dreams for in our world and that we dream too, all can start to happen when we love without fear. Because we will see the power of Christ’s love working in people, one at a time, for healing and hope.
Imagine the witness and healing your self-giving, sacrificial love could be to others as you joyfully let go for the sake of your family, your neighbors, your world.
Mark left open the end of his Gospel for you to add the rest of your story with the risen Christ.
We know the women and so many others over the centuries let go of their fear of dying, of living, of loving, and transformed their homes and neighborhoods and worlds with the risen love of Christ. That was the gift of the Spirit of God, moving in them, easing their fear, giving them courage to live in love no matter what happened.
And that Spirit is now given to you, and speaks in your heart saying, “don’t be afraid to die. Don’t be afraid to live. Don’t be afraid to love, I am with you. Now go and live in a way that shows the rest of the world how this Gospel, this Good News, continues. Until all are whole and well in God’s love and life.”
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
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