Sermon for The Second Sunday of Easter, 2022 Gospel text: John 20:19-31
One of the things that drew me to the Episcopal Church as a young adult was its reputation as a church that doesn’t require you to check your brain at the door. Questions and even doubts about matters of faith are welcome and expected. So, it should come as no surprise that the apostle who figures prominently in today’s excerpt from the Gospel According to John is one of my favorite saints. That would be Thomas, also known as “Doubting Thomas.” What I love about Thomas is that he isn’t afraid to say what everyone else is probably thinking. He asks hard questions and names the elephant in the room when that is what needs to happen. After all, when Jesus assures the disciples in his final teaching on Maundy Thursday that they know the way to the place where He is going, Thomas is the one who says in essence, “No, actually, we don’t know the way.”
Thomas is the ultimate empiricist. With his penchant for asking awkward, probing questions and his insistence on proof, you might think that Thomas must be the patron saint of lawyers, but you would be wrong about that. Thomas is the patron saint of architects, builders—and according to some—theologians. Theologians? That does make sense when you stop to think about it. Theologians are all about asking questions and digging deeper. And on that note, let’s take a closer look at today’s Gospel reading.
It’s Easter evening. The disciples (minus Thomas) are gathered in the Upper Room behind locked doors—locked, we are told, “for fear of the Jews.” That phrase has been taken out of context and used to justify horrific violence against Jews for thousands of years. So, let’s be clear about what it means. In the Gospel According to John, the phrase “the Jews” refers to those in the religious leadership of Jesus’s day who opposed Jesus. It likely also refers to those who opposed the first Christians at the time this Gospel was written, around 90 C.E. “The Jews” does not refer to all Jews of Jesus’s day or to all Jews at the end of the first century, much less to all Jews today.
There were specific people—the temple leaders—whom the disciples feared, and for good reason. For all the disciples knew, they might have been next in line for arrest and execution. It is not surprising that they hid behind locked doors. Why wouldn’t they? Everything they thought and believed was turned upside down by the events of Holy Week. In modern terms, we can say that they experienced the loss of their assumptive world—the set of beliefs they held about themselves and about the world in which they lived, about the way things are, about what they could count on in their daily lives and work. That resonates deeply for me at this point in history. Maybe it does for you, too. So much pain and loss in the collective trauma of the last two years.
We can only imagine what the disciples felt. Fear, of course. Deep grief over the loss of their leader and friend, the loss of their dream of a righteous king. Guilt—maybe even shame—about abandoning Jesus on Good Friday. Despair. In short, the kind of deeply human emotions that arise after a sudden and traumatic loss. And then, Jesus “came and stood among them.” There are so many ways He might have greeted His friends. Here are two possibilities: “I’m back—just as I promised!” Or, more painfully: “I know what you did. Where were you when I needed you?” But of course, that’s not what Jesus said. He offered no criticism, no rebuke—He simply said, “Peace be with you.” Think about that for a moment. That’s the same thing we say to each other every Sunday—“Peace be with you.” We are saying the same thing to each other that Jesus said to the disciples. Wow. Just wow.
Now, Jesus doesn’t come back from the dead like some character in a 1980s soap opera saying, “Kidding—it was just a dream.”[1] He doesn’t come back “as good as new,” as if the crucifixion never happened. Although He is in some mysterious way healed, He bears the wounds of His brutal execution—He is the quintessential “walking wounded.” Jesus appears to the disciples wounded and scarred—just as we are. Aren’t we all carrying the wounds of the last two years? Some of those wounds are visible; some are not. We are “the walking wounded.” And Jesus appears in the midst of this pain to bring peace and healing.
But what about Jesus’s comment, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”? Is that just a criticism of Thomas? No. For one thing, the other disciples didn’t believe either until they personally saw Jesus. They thought the women at the tomb were telling “an idle tale.”[2] Thomas wasn’t asking for special treatment; he was simply asking for what they had received a week earlier—the same “proof,” as it were. Even Mary Magdalene didn’t believe until the Risen Lord (whom she thought was a gardener) called her by name. And it is Thomas, who in response to Jesus’s showing himself with all his wounds, immediately utters the first explicit affirmation of Jesus’s divinity when he says, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus is actually referring to us when He says, “those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” He is offering a blessing across the ages to us, to all who are drawn to Him, all who “walk by faith and not by sight.”[3]
Jesus saw the disciples in all of their human frailty—he saw their fear, their grief, their guilt, their shame, their uncertainty about how to go on—and he met them (literally as well as figuratively) exactly where they were, with kindness and compassion, offering them peace. That, I suggest, is the lesson for us today. In these times of trial, as we struggle to simultaneously navigate a global pandemic, reckon with injustice and conflict at home and abroad, and address the climate crisis, we are called to be kind and compassionate as Jesus was, even as we speak the truth in love.
So, my message to you is this: Love one another, as He loves us. Be kind. Bring peace. When you feel the impulse to lash out, to ridicule, to shame (even if it is just in your own head); when you are tempted—as we all are at times—to criticize another’s decision to mask or not, to vaccinate or not, to travel or not…whatever the lighting rod of the moment for interpersonal conflict may be, STOP! Just stop. Remember those words: “Peace be with you.” Imagine Jesus—the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—standing in the locked room of your heart, saying “Peace be with you.” We can be instruments of peace in a hurting world. We can be to each other as Jesus was to Thomas, and as Jesus is to us now. Go and do likewise!
AMEN
[1] The reference is to the ninth season finale of the CBS soap opera Dallas in 1986, when—in an epic plot twist—Pam Ewing exclaims, “It was just a dream,” thereby negating an entire season based on the death of her ex-husband, Bobby Ewing, in the eighth season finale.
[2] Luke 24:11
[3] 2 Corinthians 5:7; see also Hymn 209 in The Hymnal 1982.
