Sermon for Sunday April 19th, 2020
Christ Speaks to us, saying, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Today is the second Sunday of Easter. At some points of time in history, this Sunday has been called Low Sunday. The fanfare of Easter is gone, the Easter lilies have found new homes. The church that was full of family and friends, now feels empty as the more normal number of worshipers are in attendance. It used to be pretty common that after the busyness of Holy Week, the normal pastor will have taken the following Sunday off, so a supply preacher is leading worship. So, after the joy of Easter Morning, this Sunday feels back to normal, leaving us with the question of if anything really changed.
Interestingly enough, when people would be baptized or join Churches only on Easter Vigil or Easter Morning, the remainder of the worship services during the 50 days of Easter were used by the pastor to teach the new members (and remind the other members) the “Mysteries of the faith,” So there would be sermons about communion, baptism, the Creeds, prayer, and any other thing the pastor thought needed to be taught to new members in the faith. The fancy phrase for this was the Mystagogical catechesis, no real reason that you need to know this, I just like saying mystagogical catechesis.
So, it makes sense that on this Sunday, we talk about Thomas. This whole text this week sometimes gets discussed as being about Doubting Thomas. I am going to be honest, until this past week, that was also the image that I had of this odd disciple who isn’t mentioned much except for in the gospel of John. I thought of him as this disciple who lacks faith and zeal, and need to be rather graphic in the gore to believe that Christ has risen.
That doesn’t really do Thomas much justice. The more that I read this text and the other times in John that Thomas is mentioned, and also when I turned to the traditions concerning Thomas, I found a disciple not really all that different from us and in many ways a good model of the faith. In Thomas the Apostle, I could find a disciple enraptured by Christ, driven by the spirit, who just sometimes needs reassurance. Amazingly, when he demands reassurance, there is God, and Christ ready to give him what he needs.
In today’s text we hear that when Jesus appeared to the disciples for the first time, Thomas was not with them. Jesus shows his wounds to his disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit (by breathing on them) and tells them that just as the father has sent Jesus, so too, Jesus is sending the disciples. When Tomas joins his fellow disciples they tell him that Jesus appeared to them. They had to have told him what happened. Can you imagine a world in which a dead man appears in the middle of them in a room that is locked and them not telling Thomas, and he showed us the wounds from the crucifixion?
Thomas doesn’t really show doubt when he says that he needs to touch the wounds to know that it is truly Jesus that was crucified and now has risen, he is just asking for the same sign that the other disciples received.
So, a week later, the disciples are still in hiding and Jesus again appears. He tells Thomas, Peace be with you (the same thing as the others heard) then shows Thomas his wounds. Immediately Thomas gives one of the clearest testimonies about who Jesus is, “My Lord and my God!”
That doesn’t really sound like much doubt to me. Yes, he needed to see Christ risen from the dead to believe, but he also had seen Christ on the cross, dying. He had been mourning the death of his teacher and friend, and people are telling him, that no, he isn’t dead. Thomas needed the reassurance of seeing Jesus again.
Thomas appears in the gospel of John two other times by name.
After Jesus had heard that Lazarus had died and told his disciples that he was going to go back to Judea, right after the Jews in Galilee had tried to stone Jesus, Thomas said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” This Thomas that we read about today and who we often call doubting Thomas, just two weeks before, had been ready to go to Jerusalem to die alongside Jesus. That doesn’t seem like much doubt, on the contrary it sounds like someone who truly believes, who trusts Jesus. Seems like a pretty strong faith to me.
Then on the night that Jesus was betrayed, after Jesus had washed his disciples’ feet, Jesus told them, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas responds, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
Thomas is a complicated man it seems. He has an amazingly strong faith that allows him to say, let’s follow Jesus and die with him, and at other times he doesn’t understand what Jesus is telling him. He sometimes even needs reassurance in moments of doubt, fear, and chaos.
Thomas is a disciple that I can understand. He has a faith that I have experienced. Sometimes I can shout My Lord and My God! And be ready to march off following Jesus no matter where it might lead me. Other times, I am just confused and need to have things explained to me. There are sometimes that I just feel lost, hurt, and in a dark place and cry out for some reassurance or hope from God.
What the stories of the Apostle Thomas shows us, is that all of these things are acceptable they are all part of the process of faith. It also shows us that even in moments of confusion or doubt, Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit gives us what we need if we just ask. Like we hear in Matthew 7 verse 7, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”
In closing let us pray a prayer written by Martin Luther:
Behold, Lord, an empty vessel that needs to be filled. My Lord, fill it. I am weak in the faith; strengthen me. I am cold in love; warm me and make me fervent, that my love may go out to my neighbor. I do not have a strong and firm faith; at times I doubt and am unable to trust you altogether. O Lord, help me. Strengthen my faith and trust in you. In you I have sealed the treasure of all I have. I am poor; you are rich and came to be merciful to the poor. I am a sinner; you are upright. With me, there is an abundance of sin; in you is the fullness of righteousness. Therefore I will remain with you, of whom I can receive, but to whom I may not give.
Amen.