Today is the second Sunday of Easter. Notice I didn’t say “after” Easter but “of” Easter, because for Christians Easter isn’t a day but is instead a season. We get 50 whole days of Easter! Isn’t that fabulous?!?! Well, sort of. It is hard to sustain the joy and mystery of Easter. One Easter Season in my previous parish we decided to ring bells every time we said or sang “alleluia” throughout the whole season, seven Sundays. It was great fun on Easter day. Everyone brought their bells and really got into it. On the second Sunday of Easter there were, of course, as is the Episcopal custom, a lot of people missing who had been there on Easter, so the bell ringing was a little quieter, but still joyful. But with each successive Sunday there were fewer bells brought to church and people were a little less enthusiastic. Finally, by the seventh Sunday of Easter the bell ringing was minimal and came with a lot of grumbling. The overwhelming consensus of the parish was that next year we could ring bells on Easter Sunday but that was it.
Now this might seem like a silly story, but I think it is emblematic of how hard it is to live into the reality of the resurrection, of what it means to be a community shaped by the dying and rising of Christ, by the expectation-shattering reality of life victorious over death and the world-changing reality of the triumph of love over evil. If it was easy to live into this reality, if we really grasped it, we would want to ring bells and shout alleluia all the time. But it isn’t easy. After all, everything in our pre-Easter experience makes it difficult for us to embrace fully this good news. Really? Love has triumphed over evil. Then why are wars still happening? God was victorious in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Then why can’t we gain the collective will to stop climate change or racism or sexism? Why do the rich keep getting richer while the number of those who are poor keep increasing? Maybe we should just hide ourselves away and get through our lives as best we can. I’ll come to church most Sundays to get enough strength to get through the coming week, but that is it. Don’t make me keep ringing bells. I don’t want to be reminded of how far the world is from what I glimpsed in the resurrection.
It is hard to sustain the enthusiasm of Easter once Easter is over, once the memory gets further and further away. John knew this better than anyone. He wrote at the end of the first century addressing people who had never seen or heard Jesus in the flesh. Most of them had been born after Jesus died. A child who was six years old on that first Easter morning would have been close to 70 by the time John wrote his Gospel. John’s problem, which is a problem for us too, was how to encourage people in faith when Jesus was no longer around to see or touch. His problem was how to help the generations of those who sought (and seek) to follow Jesus after that first generation understand what it means to be a community shaped by the dying and rising of Christ. That’s what our Gospel story for today is all about.
Just prior to where our story for today begins, Mary Madalene tells the disciples that she has seen the risen Lord. Do they respond with joy, rushing out to tell the world and then gathering to worship to give thanks and praise? No. They huddle together behind closed and locked doors because they are afraid of the religious authorities. They are worried that they will face the same fate that Jesus faced. They are understandably afraid. But their fear is no match for Jesus’ love. Through closed and locked doors Jesus comes and reveals himself. He is not a ghost, and he is clearly the same person who was crucified just a few days earlier. And he is also forever changed, and neither time nor space nor doors nor walls can contain him.
And he doesn’t just appear in their midst, he also gives them his peace. He isn’t just greeting them in a friendly way. He isn’t giving them the absence of conflict. It is definitely not the peace of the Pax Romana, a peace maintained by brutal oppression. Jesus is giving them an unexpected peace. A peace that brings life, courage, wholeness, completion. This peace will break down social hierarchies and challenge the status quo. This peace is the power of God’s love let loose on the world. In the words of the bishop and theologian N.T. Wright, this peace brings order to the world’s confusion and confusion to the world’s order. This is a peace that will push these disciples out of from behind their locked and closed doors into the world that is full of discord and conflict. This is a peace that will enable these followers of Jesus to meet the world’s discord and conflict with love. This is a peace that always seeks forgiveness and reconciliation. And they will be able to embody this peace because Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into them.
And yet, they still don’t seem completely able to embrace a resurrection life. Thomas, the twin, who was not with them when Jesus appeared joins them in the closed room, they still seem to be just a little bit afraid. They tell Thomas about Jesus’ appearance. But Thomas does not trust their report, just as they did not trust Mary Madelene’s report. Apparently, he wasn’t as afraid as the other disciples because he did not lock himself away in a room as they had, but he is still skeptical. We often think of those generations that lived before us as less knowledgeable and more susceptible to superstition and magical thinking than we are today. I doubt that this is true, but I am absolutely sure that they knew that dead people do not come back to life. So of course, straight-shooting and courageous Thomas doesn’t believe what his friends are telling him, and he demands the same proof that they had already received, to see Jesus and to touch Jesus’ hands and side (presumably so that he can affirm that it is actually Jesus).
A week later the group of disciples and Thomas are gathered together again behind closed doors and Jesus appears again and gives Thomas what he asks for. And brave, outspoken Thomas proclaims, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus doesn’t rebuke Thomas. Jesus doesn’t lecture Thomas. Jesus blesses all those who come after Thomas and these disciples who will not see Jesus but will believe because of the witness of these first followers of Christ. This is what John wants this passage to do for us. He knows that if faith and transformation of life was difficult for those first followers of Jesus who actually walked with him and saw him resurrected, then faith and transformation of life will be really difficult for the generations that follow. He wants us to meet the Jesus he met. He wants our lives to be shaped by the resurrected Jesus and transformed as his life was shaped and transformed. And he wants this because he knows this is the Good News. This is life. This is the kingdom of God made real right here and right now.
The theologian and Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann once said [paraphrased by me] that the primary challenge facing the Christian Church in North America in the 21st Century is that for most people, including church-going ones, God is not the primary actor in the story of our lives. We may believe in God. It’s just that apart from church we don’t think about God very much. The Biblical story, the narrative that teaches us to recognize God’s activity in the world is increasingly unfamiliar to us and is not a source of the kinds of stories we regularly tell and share as we seek to make sense of our lives. We have trouble seeing how these stories connect to our lives in a real way. We fail to see that the Biblical story is a never-ending story that started with creation and continues up to our own day and to the end of time. We are meant to walk around in the stories of Scripture and experience the stories for ourselves. Scripture is the message our ancestors rolled up and put in a bottle for us, because they wanted us to experience the person of Jesus as they had. Jesus is still alive in these stories.
As you try to make sense of your life, what stories do you turn to? Do you regularly turn to scripture? Do you daily read the Bible and reflect on it? Do you read books written by people who have reflected on Scripture for years, whose lives are steeped in the Biblical story? Do you join with others in this community who are seeking to enter the stories of Scripture to make sense of their lives?
It is hard to keep our focus on Easter that we might be transformed be the resurrected Jesus. It takes intentional commitment and discipline. The cares and concerns of the world will always seek to call us away from this focus and discipline. It can be exciting and fun to focus for a while, but it can get tedious after a few weeks or months or years. Uncertainty, doubt, and fear can overtake us. And the risen Christ is always seeking to break through our doors, our barriers to breathe into us the Holy Spirit that we might be transformed and in turn carry this transformation, this peace, this life into a world desperately in need of God’s peace.
“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But 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.” John 20:31
