Easter 2B - April 12, 2015 - Saint Stephen’s
John 20:19-31
Every year on the first Sunday after Easter we hear John's account of the resurrected Jesus appearing to the disciples. In the chronology of John’s gospel it’s the evening of that first Easter Sunday, and the disciples clearly haven't believed Mary's wild story about meeting Jesus in the garden that morning. They’re huddled fearfully behind a locked door when Jesus slips through the door, appears before his despondent disciples and greets them with the gift of peace. And then he gives them a mission. They are to continue his ministry: As the Father sent him, so now he sends them. Go to the world—go even uninvited—and undo sin. With his breath upon them and his Spirit within them, they are to go.
Now Thomas is not with them when this occurs. He’s not huddled behind that locked door. He’s out someplace, and some time later when Thomas shows up they tell him all about it. I picture them excitedly telling him about this amazing thing that’s happened to them. ‘We’ve seen the Lord! He came straight into the room without knocking, without even unlocking the door’, they say! They tell him he spoke to them and said “Peace be with you.” “He breathed on us and gave each of us God’s Spirit”, they say breathlessly. They tell Thomas how Jesus told them they were to go out into the world and undo sin. They tell him all about this exciting event.
So there’s Thomas, listening to them all tell him about how Jesus really has been raised from the dead. But you know, he doesn’t seem too excited about it. “Okay”, Thomas says, “the Lord came to you, did he?” “Oh, yes, yes he did!” they say. “Uh-huh. And he breathed on you?” “Yes! Yes, oh it’s too bad you weren’t here for it!” “He gave you his Spirit?” “Yes, yes, yes”, they all say, heads nodding eagerly. “Told you to go out and heal the brokenness in the world”? More eager nodding. “And you were all here in this room when he said he sent you, each of you?” “Yes, absolutely”, they declare. “Uh-huh…”, Thomas says.
“You don’t believe us?!” they say. “Umm, well …sorry, no”, he replies. “If the Lord was here, and he breathed his Spirit into you and sent you on a mission to the poor, and the sick, and the hungry and the imprisoned… what are you doing still sitting here behind closed doors? If you’ve been sent, why haven’t you gone?”
We call poor Thomas “Doubting Thomas”. But really, who can blame him? Would you believe in the resurrection, in the idea of God radically breaking into our world and turning everything upside down - on the basis of a wild story told by people whose lives apparently haven’t been impacted at all by what had happened? After all, if they really had seen the Lord, if they really had been sent by him, if they really had received his Spirit and his power to undo sin, wouldn’t you expect they would have gone and started doing it? If anyone is to believe their wild story, they need to get out there and get going with the business of being the loving and embodied presence of the Holy Spirit. They need to leave their safe room and go feed the poor, tend the sick, care for the broken hearted, love the unlovable.
Now, of course, they did eventually go and start doing the ministry entrusted to them – which is the reason the Church exists today. It may have taken them a while to get started, but eventually the disciples did go and start to live into the mission that Jesus gave to them. That dispirited, fearful little band of ordinary men and women went out and began to change the world. And that included Thomas because John tells us the next Sunday, that would be today, Thomas got his chance to experience the Risen Lord for himself. And when he did, Thomas believed and with a last look at his Lord and his God, he set out to do the ministry entrusted to the disciples. Once he was sent, he didn’t hang around, he went. Tradition says Thomas was the first of the disciples to leave Jerusalem and that he travelled further than any of the other disciples - going all the way to south India. The Christians in India still celebrate Thomas as the one who originally brought them the gospel.
But it’s not just those original 11 disciples that are sent. Through our baptism we’re all sent. We’re all commissioned by Jesus to continue the ministry he started. Through our baptism we are ‘sent’ to the poor, the broken-hearted, the hungry, the lost, the lonely, the imprisoned, the sick, the tired, the isolated, the persecuted, and the rejected. We are sent to be people who are willing to walk into places where others refuse to go and bring God’s peace into the midst of another’s chaos.
So, today is a good day to ask ourselves, are we like the ten disciples who have seen the Lord and received his commission but never-the-less remain huddled together, afraid of venturing out into the world? Or are we like Thomas who headed out to do his ministry as soon as he was sent? Because if we stay huddled together with our friends, then the people outside our walls are going to ask themselves the same question about us, that Thomas asked of the those ten disciples: “If it’s really true that you’re followers of the risen Lord. If you’ve seen the Lord in the face of fellow believers, in the breaking of the bread, in the hearing of scripture–if it’s really true that, as Jesus was sent so he sends you–if it is really true that you’ve been given the gift of the Spirit to bring healing and wholeness into a broken world–if all that is really true– then why aren’t you acting like you believe it? Why do you stay behind your doors? How can you expect us to believe that God is doing something amazing through Christ if you don’t act like anything amazing is going on?”
It’s easy to stay locked inside of ourselves, afraid to embrace the baptismal call that God has given each of us. It’s easy to just stay doing what we enjoy doing together with our friends. Sometime I think we stay inside our church because we’re afraid to risk what lurks beyond our walls. Maybe people won’t welcome us. Maybe they aren’t interested in what we have to offer. Maybe we’ll be judged and found wanting. It seems so much safer to just stay inside with our friends. But Jesus is calling us out of our fear filled places.
My prayer for St. Stephen’s is that having experienced the presence of the risen Christ, we might respond by going out into the world with the confidence of knowing that we were sent by the great Healer, Lover, & Redeemer. Jesus calls us, the baptized, to seek and serve, to love and respect, to strive for peace and unity, to uphold everyone’s dignity. The question this week is not about whether or not we have doubts. It’s about our willingness to abandon our fear and go and be the people God calls us to be. The real question being asked of us is – will we go where God is sending us?