Preached by Steven Tomlinson on April 19, 2020
If you’ve been outside this week, you might wonder where you are.
Bright sunshine and a cool breeze. How can this be Austin? When has the air ever smelled this good?
When have the wildflowers been so brilliant, the birds so loud, the smell of jasmine so sweet?
It’s really spring — and it feels like God is doing something new. Like resurrection. Like Easter.
And even as I give thanks for all this new life, I miss our old life.
I miss being with you. I miss rowdy Easter where we’re all hugging and laughing and crying on each other.
I miss us being St. James’ together. That’s the Jesus I know best, and I’m grieving that Jesus, and I know you are too…
the Jesus we meet every Sunday when we pass the peace, the Jesus we meet around the table.
Of course, we still have each other. We have Zoom. We have phones.
Jesus is still here, but it’s not Jesus we can touch. The one who’s always been there.
This is not the Easter we are used to, the one where we’re packed together in the pews, shouting alleluia, with shell-shocked visitors whom no one can adequately prepare for St. James’ on Easter. We warn them, but they can’t believe it until they see it for themselves.
For St. James’ this is an unfamiliar Easter in an extraordinary time. We’re grieving, but at the same time, there’s something else, something like hope because the Spirit is moving, showing us something new (like Peter says) “in a time of trial when the genuineness of our faith is proven.”
A time of trial, like the First Easter.
The disciples were hiding. The door was locked. They feared for their lives. And they were grieving Jesus, their friend and rabbi. The miracle worker who encouraged and protected them. If they’d been listening, they would have heard Jesus promise that God would raise him, or Mary who’d already seen the risen Lord. But they didn’t hear or couldn’t believe. So, they were hiding.
They couldn’t worship publicly, but they’d come together as best they could – and when they came together, Jesus came too.
Even with the locked door, the fear and the grief, suddenly Jesus appears, and he says: Peace be with you.
And he shows them his wounds as if to say. Yes, there’s this, and we are together. You are mine and I am yours and we are one.
This is not what the disciples expected. The door is locked, and Jesus shows up anyway.
And they do what we do when God breaks through our locked doors and interrupts our grief. They laughed. They wept. They rejoiced.
Again, Jesus says: Peace be with you.
As the Father sent me, I send you.
He breathes on them: Receive the Holy Spirit. Jesus gives them his Spirit, and they are changed forever.
So pity poor Thomas, Thomas who was not with them. When the disciples with the Holy Spirit, newly sent, converge on him like a cloud of witnesses: We have seen the Lord. It must have been terrifying, like when your friends come back from some sort of retreat or encounter and you can tell something has happened, but their story makes no sense.
And what Thomas does is remarkable: He takes a risk. He risks sharing the depth of his feeling, his true self with his friends. He becomes vulnerable.
Unless I see the mark of the nail in his hands and put my hand in his side, I will never believe. This is not arrogant skepticism, but a confession, a cry for help, his despair that he has lost Jesus and the fear of false hope. For although he can’t believe, this is what he wants most.
It’s like these days when we tell each other, I want to believe that Jesus is with us, but it doesn’t feel like it, not like the Jesus I know.
People scoff at Doubting Thomas, but the Thomas we see here courageously lays himself bare in hope of what he loves most — and God heard his doubt as a prayer, and God answered — a week later, the Second Sunday of the First Easter.
The disciples are back behind locked doors. This time Thomas was with them. Have you ever wondered why? Maybe he has already come to believe after all — maybe because he had seen Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit in his friends, because of how they had loved him in his doubt and grief.
And then Jesus shows up. “Peace be with you.”
And he offers Thomas his hands and his side.
“Do not doubt but believe.” – which is to say: Peace.
It doesn’t say Thomas put his fingers in the wounds. He didn’t need to.
It’s not because any physical evidence but because Jesus answered his prayer and loved him in his fear and grief. That was what Thomas really needed, and he says: “My Lord and my God!” Thomas now sees the truth clearly.
And then Jesus points to an even greater joy that includes you and me.
“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
You and I believe not because we walked with Jesus in Palestine, but because we know the Spirit that gives life to the Body of Christ, that is the church — a spirit that testifies to our spirits of love and unity and resurrection.
Still, when we’ve had one powerful experience of Jesus, we may have trouble believing when God is doing something new.
It was difficult for the disciples to part with the physical presence of their friend and rabbi, even to receive the Holy Spirit.
Just as it is difficult for us to give up our physical presence together as the Body of Christ, even for a season – even if God is, for a season offering us something new.
Because the disciples discovered that Jesus was much more than the physical body they’d known; and as we discover Christ’s presence with us in all the ways we can meet now, we can believe, not just in what we’ve already experienced, but in what the Holy Spirit teaches our spirits, that Jesus is in all, over all, and with us, whatever form his body takes in this changing world.
It’s almost like the Lord is telling Thomas that to see him is risky. When we see we can get attached to a particular limited edition of Jesus. Meanwhile, God is doing something new. Like Easter. Like the Spirit. Like where we are now.
The spirit of St. James is irrepressible. It doesn’t wither and die just because we must keep a social distance.
We still belong to each other. We are already finding fresh ways to offer radical hospitality: we are calling each other, meeting online — and in this weird new world, we’re sharing doubt and grief. We are trusting each other with our true selves. Our conversations have new depth and a growing conviction that we will be together whenever and however we can.
Perhaps as we are hiding from this pandemic, God is doing something new with us, just as he was in that locked room where the disciples were hiding. For whenever and however they were together, Jesus showed up – and his word to them was “Peace.”
In that same way, whenever and however we are together, Jesus is with us. Whatever doubt or hope, joy or grief we bring to share with one another becomes a prayer that God hears — and Jesus will reveal himself, to encourage us and revive us. To send us.
And to say: Peace be with you. Receive the Holy Spirit. Do not be afraid.
