19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ 24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ 26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ 27Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ 28Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ 29Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’
30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
When people are hurt, they often fear. And when they fear, they often hide. And their hiding displays their struggle with faith.
The disciples of Jesus were hurt. They had experienced the loss of their leader. He had been cut down by forces in the world that were to them overpowering. This leads them to fear. They are afraid of these forces, and in their fear they retreat into a pocket of isolation.
Often Thomas gets blamed for being a doubter, but truth is, this church gathered on this first week after Easter was filled with all kinds of doubts. They were a community, to be sure, but they were a community huddled together not around a faithful vision, but a feeling of fear.
The writer to the Proverbs says, “without a vision, the people perish.” The question is can they have a vision beyond the death of Jesus? Or is their vision only one in the past? A vision of past glories?
Yet there is Easter over all the fears. And it comes to them as it would also come to Thomas. Jesus appears to them and says, “Peace be with you!” Keep that in mind as you greet one another this morning with those same words. Whatever hurts and fears and doubts have found a place in life, there are the consoling words of peace. God’s peace rests upon you! Whatever darkness there is in any tunnel of life, there is God’s Easter light that shines upon you!
And the assurance is furthered by Jesus showing to the disciples his hands and his side. These were the places where he was wounded. It helps to show to the disciples that first and foremost, God shares our wounds in Jesus the Christ. God shares our hurts. But Jesus also shows that these wounds and hurts and even the death that was their result no longer hold sway over him or over us. We can rise from the hurts, rise from the fears, rise to new life.
And finally, Jesus breathes on them the Holy Spirit and gives them the gift of extending community through the forgiveness of sins. It is a message to be shared.
When the disciples get this message, they do in fact become sharers. They go out, and they go out energized and renewed. “Where’s Thomas?” they ask. And when they find him, they share the good news, “Christ is risen!”
But Thomas doubts. It says he is named the “twin,” but some commentators suggest that this means that he was a man of two minds. Part of him wanted to believe. But the other part of him was too caught up in doubts and unbelief.
And finally, he dares to lay down a gauntlet in his doubt. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” And he so he wallows in his doubts.
And somehow these doubts of Thomas must become contagious. For on the next week, when Jesus is again gathered with his disciples, they are again locked in. The community was walled off from the rest of the world. Fear was in their midst, fear that they did not even know could overcome Thomas’ doubts.
What they had forgotten was the way that the risen Lord Jesus brings the promise to bear.
Jesus appears again to them and says, “Peace be with you!” And offering Thomas his hands and his side, Jesus encourages him to feel them, to touch them, to see that these are the marks of his Lord’s death.
I suspect a pause as Jesus then says the next words: “Do not doubt, but believe.”
This was the seed of problem for all the church. It’s doubt. It’s distrust of the resurrection and its victory over all the forces of this world. To be sure, the forces of this world can be scary, can lead us to want to cower in fear, and in the process not share community. But the church is a community that is empowered by the risen Lord to go out and share.
And part of what we share is the very thing our Lord shared with us. We hear stories of hurt and pain in the world as others are afflicted by powers much greater than them. Yet like the deaf, our symbol of Jesus is pointing to the death marks in the hands. Jesus is risen beyond these. There is peace. There is peace we share here, and there is peace we share with others.
In a little more than a month, we will be celebrating our 50th anniversary. It can be scary to celebrate 50 years, I know. Back in the days when Holy Trinity was a large and incredibly vibrant congregation, there was talk about how we were the church on the hill. But with the intervening of a period of sharp decline in the 1990’s, there are for those who were around longer a sense that 50 years means we are the church over the hill—and that is but a short cry from being the church under the hill.
If doubts hold sway, we do not move as a community forward. But the promise is greater than all our doubts. Thomas came to faith in seeing the hurts that have been triumphed! Christ is risen! And his faith gives way to a bold confession: “My Lord and My God!” For Thomas, there is the confession that Christ is risen! And he would carry that message as the first missionary to India. Where’s Thomas now? He’s in India, spreading the Word! Christ is risen!
Did we get that, brothers and sisters? Did we get how the risen Lord works with us? He doesn’t show us punish or shame or ignore us. He doesn’t patronize us or marginalize us. He shares our scars, and shares them with us, so that we may see that all our fears and worries are taken into his mortal body and seen in the light of immortality.
Easter means that there is no tunnel so dark that the light of Christ will not shine. But we are freed to look at our hurts and our scars, not as those which have power over us, but how we have Christ’s Easter power of healing over all of them.
I’m not embarrassed by your fears and doubts, or my own for that matter. We have the assurance of Christ’s forgiveness, and that assurance gives us the courage to go forward into new days with a boldness that not only treasures community but builds community.
The church’s impetus on this Easter Sunday when Thomas is present comes from the freedom to look at scars and hurts even publicly, and to publicly confess that Jesus is Lord over all of them. That is why we gather. Our vision stems from this confidence. Our faith find root in our Lord’s sharing our scars, even our death. What are you afraid of? Give it to Jesus.
It is then that community happens as there is willingness to risk with others, to open the doors and to go where all the hurts and scars are. They are in abundance in this fearful culture of ours. But we are not afraid. We go with the risen Lord who has given us his Holy Spirit, and who leads us to share in the hurts of others, but also to share forgiveness and peace. Jesus is my Lord and my God!