Jesus Appears to Thomas

You have to admit the events of Easter are pretty fascinating. Think of it. The women reach the empty tomb, they hear the angels tell them Jesus has risen. They run back to Jerusalem to the upper room and told the disciples what the angels had said which the disciples dismissed as babbling from some women. However some of the disciples run out to the empty tomb , are meet by angles and they still don’t believe Jesus has risen from the dead. A couple of people from Emmaus saw the risen Jesus and ran back to Jerusalem and told the disciples, and the disciples still didn’t believe it. On one hand it is pretty hard for us to believe they still did not get it but on the other hand can you really blame them? People raising from the dead isn’t something we understand either. We’ve heard this story year after year after year and we say we believe but if we get down to the inner parts of ourself, don’t we at times doubt that all this is real. We would really like to understand how this all happened. That Jesus really died; that Jesus really came back to life; that Jesus can really bring us peace in our life; that Jesus can give us power to do things we don’t think is possible….. It is hard to believe.
Even after all the resurrection stories they have heard and seen about Jesus, the disciples are still huddled together hidden behind locked doors, afraid. They are convinced that all is lost; there is no hope; maybe thinking that all these people who have reported they saw Jesus were just delusional - they were just victims of wishful thinking. So they stay locked in the upper room trying to decide what to do next…. when all of a sudden Jesus appears to them in the locked room. His first words to them are: “Peace be with you!” Then he shows them the wounds in his hands and his side. And they were filled with joy. It was true! Jesus really was alive!
But one disciple wasn’t there that night. Thomas was somewhere else and later in the week when the disciples see Thomas they tell him what has happened. Jesus alive? “No way”, Thomas says. Unless I see him with my own eyes, I am not going to believe. After all you guys didn’t believe anyone else when they told you they has seen the risen Jesus. Why should I believe you now?”
And now for all eternity, because of this one statement, Thomas is going to be known as ‘doubting’ Thomas. I prefer to think of him as Thomas the Honest. You have to feel a little bit sorry for Thomas - because after the trauma that he had experience over the last several days. The murder of his master… the fear and worry and disappointment that goes along with what he has been through. Again, can we really blame him for being a little skeptical and admitting it out loud.
Thomas wasn’t always ‘the doubter’. The first time we encounter Thomas is in the 11th chapter of John earlier in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus has just been informed that his friend Lazarus was so sick that he was about to die. Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, lived in Bethany near Jerusalem, but Jesus and the disciples were a day’s journey away across the Jordan river. Word then reached Jesus and the disciples that Lazarus had died. Jesus says, “Let’s go over to Bethany to see Lazarus”. “Wait a minute” the disciples say. “It is too risky. The authorities there have threatened to kill you. We can’t go there.” But Jesus insists that he is going. Here we meet Thomas for the first time. Because Thomas is not a doubter here, Thomas says, “Let us go with Jesus that we may die with him.” Earlier in this ministry of Jesus, it is Thomas who is not the doubter; not the fearful one but Thomas who is the faithful friend - willing to go to his death to be with Jesus.
The next time we find Thomas mentioned is in the 14th chapter of John. The apostles are gathered to celebrate the Passover - the night we call Maundy Thursday - the meal we call the Last Supper. Jesus is trying to explain over that meal the task for which had he had come to earth. Jesus is trying to explain to them that he will be leaving them. And at this point, none of the disciples believed or understood. Jesus keeps on talking and teaches about going to prepare a home for them. The disciples don’t have a clue what to say; they don’t understand at all and they don’t want to appear stupid by asking what Jesus is talking about. Fortunately for them Thomas is there at the table. Not doubting Thomas - but a thoughtful, questioning Thomas. Thomas who is willing to step up and ask the question everyone else was thinking. Jesus is talking about going to his Father’s house and preparing a place for them and then Jesus says, and you know the way to the place where I am going.” “Wait minute, Lord” says Thomas. “We do not know where you are going. We don’t understand what you are talking about. So how can we know the way?” A good question. Courageous Thomas. If you don’t know something, ask! Thomas reminds us that true faith means that we have to think about what we believe and we have to ask questions and then decided that we can believe…..
Now we meet Thomas for a third time in the Gospels. The other disciples have told him that Jesus is risen from the dead. But Thomas cannot believe it. It is not as if Thomas hasn’t seen someone risen from the dead before… He witnessed the raising of Lazarus; he had seen the daughter of Jairus raised from the dead and the same with the son of the widow of Nain - who came back to life. But the Romans were very good at killing people and the way Jesus had died - the cross and the nails and spear to his side they made sure he was really dead. This kind of death just couldn’t be reversible and Thomas just honestly tells them - “Unless I see the nails in his hands and the wound on his side with my own eyes, I just can’t believe.” Thomas who had been Jesus’ faithful friend; who had been thoughtful and courageous enough to tell Jesus he didn’t understand when no one else would; Thomas is just afraid to believe that it is true.
Thomas’ real problem was that he was just devastated by what had happened and in his grief he just couldn’t deal with it. He was so devastated by the loss of his friend and the hope of what he had promised that he couldn’t see the sheer joy in the faces of the other disciples who had seen the risen Jesus. Seeing that risen Jesus had changed them and given them power to be able to do what they didn’t think was possible - leave that upper room and go out and actually tell people what they had seen. But Thomas again was so torn up by his grief he couldn’t see that joy.
And often that is where we find ourselves. We are devastated by events in our own life; we are devastated by the events we see happening to others or around the world and we have our doubts that any of this is true.
The next week when Thomas has now joined the rest of the disciples in that upper room Jesus again appears to them all. Jesus goes right over to Thomas and shows Thomas the holes in his hands and the wound in his side and once again says those words “My peace I bring to you.”
Lets think about this moment. The risen Christ came to his disciples in the midst of their turmoil and fear. He came to Thomas in the midst of his doubt. Jesus could have very easily miraculously obliterated his wounds after he was raised from the tomb, but chose not to. He bore the marks of his wounds into the presence of his disciples.
Bearing the scars of those wounds he says them, Peace be with you.” It was as if Jesus was saying - “See these wounds- feel them and know that it is all right to hurt, to doubt, to question. Pain comes to us all - I was hurt by the very people I came to save.
I told you I would suffer. But these wounds prove to you that I have now overcome hat suffering and pain; even death no longer has any power of me. And because of that, through me, I can offer you that same power - I can offer you peace in your life because I bear these scars.”
The peace that Jesus offers is a confidence we can have from the resurrected appearance of Jesus. His return after his death signals the fact that his life and his promises will endure. His “peace be with you” is more than just a casual greeting like when we say, “Hey, how are you doing?” His “peace be with “ is a declaration of a fact of the peace that comes by being a follower of Christ. Because Jesus lives, because Jesus bears his scars, Jesus is showing us that even with the scars and wounds we carry through the events of our own life, even with the doubts and questions we have sometimes, we now know for sure that nothing can separate us from Jesus and from a life in him.
The confidence that the disciples received when Jesus came and said to them “peace be with you” is demonstrated in the response of the disciples to his appearance. Peace showed itself in Thomas’ confession of faith - Thomas’ falling to his knees after seeing the wounds and the scars on the resurrected Jesus and declaring “My Lord, and my God.”
The disciples, including Thomas, now believed. They had confidence in what Jesus had done. They understood the peace that comes from knowing without a shadow of a doubt that nothing could separate them from God’s love - however the world outside the doors was still the same, they still had to face the same situations they faced before Jesus appeared to them in that room. They still had to face the Jewish authorities who wanted to get rid of them; they still had to deal with the crowds of people who had mocked and crucified Jesus. They still had many trials and tribulations to face - as we will to.
“Peace be with you” Jesus says. Not because life will be easy for you. “Peace be with you” Jesus said not because you will always have life filled with joy and will never have to suffer.
But “peace be with you” because you have decided to follow the one who has a power greater than yours; to a power that promises to always be with you; the same power that raised Jesus from the dead; the same power that that will sustain you and lead you into life everlasting and in the end that is comforting as that is permanent while everything else including your pain and troubles are temporary. Jesus last words to his disciples is the same for us: Peace I leave to you, my peace I give to you.. Not as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Believe in God - believe also in me. Amen.

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

We have all experienced that zap of electricity that comes when we walk along a carpeted floor when the air is very dry and we touch a door knob - or even one another - and zap! we get that jolt of electricity. And it really stings!
A grocery store recently bit the bullet and spent big money on some major renovations. Among the improvements were all new flooring, a snazzy laminate that looked like real hardwood. The store also bought new shopping carts. These were sleeker and more “user friendly” than the previous model. An upgraded misting system in the produce section required new de-humidifying equipment for the rest of the store. But all these various upgrades resulted in a “perfect storm” for this grocery store. The contact between the new floor and the new shopping cart’s wheels coupled with the dry, de-humidified air resulted in perfect conditions to create tremendous static electricity. Suddenly every shopper with a grocery cart was getting electrified by the lemons, zapped by the chocolate chips, zinged by a loaf of bread. The pain for those local shoppers was no longer confined to the prices at the check-out counter. Now every item the shopper selected brought a painful static electric shock.
We know that there is a lot of power in electricity. I learned how potent electricity could be one time when I was working on my broken dishwasher. I was literally blown across the room, hitting the wall and slumping down. I looked up and said with a grin to my wife who was horrified and sure she had a dead husband….- “At least now I know what is wrong with it.”
Electricity is a powerful thing - and as we think about the Holy Spirit, that is how we should think of it - as powerful as electricity. We need to believe that the Spirit that God gives us - the spirit of Jesus Christ himself, that dwells in us - is every bit as powerful as the electricity that runs our homes. Can we do that? Can we really believe that?
My favorite holy spirit story is the account of Ezekiel overlooking a valley. God has taken him there in a vision. What Ezekiel sees is a valley full of dry bones. The description of the bones makes sure that we realize that these bones are old and dry and dead. God says emphatically - there is no life in them. Now God tells Ezekiel to tell these bones to live. Ezekiel is skeptical but he does it and what he sees is incredible - all of a sudden the bones begin to jump up and put themselves together. Remember that old song - the foot bone is connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone is connected to the shin bone, the shine bone is connected to the knee bone - Here the word of the Lord! That song comes from this story. That is what Ezekiel is watching happen before his eyes - the bones are assembling themselves and once the skeleton is together, they begin to grow sinew and muscle, and blood vessels, and organs and skin overtop it all and then all of a sudden the valley is no longer dead bones but full of perfectly formed people. But God says - they aren’t done yet. Ezekiel looks at God rather quizzically and God says, “Watch this!” And God begins to blow his breath across the valley and this wind of God blows over all these people and they are filled with God’s spirit - the Holy Spirit. God is like this big defibrillator that zaps these people with an electric shock - only instead of it being electricity it is his spirit carried by his breath. God holds those defibrillator paddles like a doctor restarting a heart and “Now” God says, “Now they are done! They are now truly my people ready to do my work; like a mighty army!” What made the difference between just people and the people of God, was that electric zap of the Holy Spirit!
This was true as well if we remember the story of the creation of mankind. In the first chapter of Genesis we read that God not only created Adam, but breathed his spirit into him. Adam was, from the beginning, zapped and filled with the Holy Spirit.
In the gospel of John the gift of the Holy Spirit is tightly woven into the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, his mission and witness. In John’s gospel the continuation of Jesus’s mission, is found within the commission of his followers. We remember the account of Jesus death on the cross where Jesus’ spirit is “given up” as he dies.
In today’s story we hear how those still frightened disciples were hunkered down in the “upper room,” where they had celebrated Passover with their Master. Suddenly — in a room with locked doors — Jesus stood in their midst. John makes it clear in his gospel that Jesus had fulfilled all of what God had empowered him to do. Jesus had proclaimed the good news of the gospel. Jesus had extended God’s offering of forgiveness, and love, and had sacrificed himself to make that offering a living reality. But there still remained those doubtful disciples. John’s gospel could not end without dealing with these disciples. So as the shut-in remnant of Jesus’ follower’s cowered in their rented Jerusalem rooms, the resurrected Jesus
enters into their midst. He shows them his wounds, proving his identity and shocking them into recognition. Then the risen Christ, the one who had completed his mission, who had done all that God had directed, offers the final piece to this mission. Jesus “breathes on them,” just as God had breathed on the bones in the valley or on Adam, and declares “Receive the Holy Spirit” This Holy Spirit is the confirmation of Christ’s power on earth. Jesus had told the disciples before the crucifixion that he was going to send his spirit - and here it is! Jesus, like an electric shock, breathes his spirit into them to revitalize them and to wake them up and ready them to go out and be the army of God - just like those dry bones. Scared disciples like dry bones are useless, but filled with the Holy Spirit, that final jolt of electric energy, the bones and the disciples become the ones to go into the world and tell the gospel of Christ.
Jesus calls the Holy Spirit a gift. Here is the gift of life, which will be like a breath of fresh air to a stale world. For in receiving this gift, you receive my spirit," Jesus seems to be saying. In that giftedness, the disciples discover that their fear is replaced with joy, their shyness is replaced with boldness, their hesitation is replaced with courage, and their sense of lostness is replaced with a sense of purpose. Now, with that joy, boldness, courage and purpose, the disciples move out from behind their locked doors. From all the accounts of the gift-Spirit, it is quite apparent that this gift means action. This is not a gift to place on the mantel, or in a trophy case, or to hang on a wall. This is not a gift to preserve and protect, grateful for having been thus blessed to receive, but it's mine and no one else's! Rather, this gift sends us out as Christ's representatives to the world. It is a gift to be used.
And that is what we need to understand. This is not just a story about something that happened over 2000 years ago to some people we don’t know. This is our story. We are those disciples and we need to not be like them and lock ourselves inside these four walls and make excuses about not being good at this or that; or being afraid to tell others of our faith; We as the church of Jesus Christ have been empowered by this same Holy Spirit that was breathed into Adam,; the same Holy Spirit breathed into those dead bones and the same Holy Spirit that electrified the disciples. We have that power - but we have to believe it; we have to acknowledge it; and we have to be willing to go and do where that spirit leads us with the knowledge that whatever it is we are going and doing, the spirit will give us everything we need to get it done.
As the recipients of this gift, those disciples walked out of that room, and into the world as a church: formed and reformed out of chaos and uncertainty by the breath of Christ; endowed with power and mission from the word of God. That breath-gift invigorated them for the task that awaited. Jesus had prefaced his gift-giving with the assignment: "I send you." And he follows it with the responsibility of authority. They, and now we, are to bring that fresh life-giving Spirit to a world which continues to shut its doors in fear. We are empowered to breathe new life into a stale world that yearns to share that breath of life.
The Holy Spirit is what transforms upper-room cowards into bold evangelists. John’s gospel completes Jesus’ mission by affirming that the presence of Jesus has never left this world. The Holy Spirit is what brings Christ to life in each one of us. That is the function of the Spirit: to breathe the resurrection presence of power into each of our lives. Since the resurrection, the presence of Jesus has never left this world. Since the resurrection, the presence of the risen Christ has been witnessed and worshiped through his Spirit-empowered disciples. From the first century to the twenty-first century, Jesus’ Spirit-empowered disciples have continued to gift creation with the living presence of the resurrected Jesus, the One sent by God to save the world and bring us back into a
relationship with God.
We are the ones who show the world the power that comes from putting our lives in the hands of a risen Christ, a Christ who gives us the power of the Holy Spirit. Just like a jolt of electricity, we can shock the world - with love and grace and forgiveness and caring and acceptance and all those things people don’t expect. The resurrection Christ lives through us and the spirit within us. Amen!

Jesus Appears to Mary

Each Sunday during worship - and I hope you , at some point, do this every day - we say the Apostle’s Creed together. It is a brief way for us to continually remind ourselves of who we are - we are God’s people - and to remind ourselves what is important for us to understand about who we are. We always need to remember, however, that this is a summary and not a comprehensive account of what we need to know about our faith. This time of year is a case in point, for we are in the portion of the church year we know as the season of Easter. This season of the church year goes from Easter - the celebration of the Resurrection until the Day of the Ascension - which is a period of 40 days.
in the Apostles Creed as we say the paragraph about Jesus, we remind ourselves of the crucial events that we just observed - Jesus was crucified and died, he descended into hell (which is just a way of emphasizing that Jesus was truly dead), he rose again on the third day - the resurrection and the next phrase says ‘and he ascended into heaven to sit on the right hand of the Father’. So if we take this at face value, our understanding is that upon his resurrection, Jesus pretty well then goes straight to heaven. But that is not the case. According to the Biblical account of Jesus after the resurrection, he spent 40 days on earth before his ascension to heaven. For 40 days after his resurrection, Jesus remained on the earth appearing to various disciples and followers to sort of give them that last little bit of instruction, of teaching, and proof that he truly had come back from the dead.
These 40 days when Jesus remains on earth, are what we recognize as the Season of Easter. And to reinforce this 40 day time between resurrection and ascension, we spend this season recalling some of the appearances Jesus made to his followers - and understanding what Jesus is trying to teach us in these appearances.
We also do things in the sanctuary, which help us remember that during these 40 days Jesus is still present. White is our color - white is always a symbol of the presence of the Christ. We have our special Christ Candle which burns - which again is that symbol of the presence of Jesus with us - and we will leave our cross flowered during this season - just another reminder of the presence of the one who brings beauty to our lives.
Today we look at the first appearance Jesus makes after his resurrection. Remember, no one actually witnessed the resurrection - even though we know it happened, how is still a mystery. When the women first went to the tomb, soon followed by Jesus’ disciples - the only indication they had of the resurrection was the fact that the tomb was empty. The women had some corroboration by a couple angels that told them that Jesus was raised from the dead - but the disciples assumed that someone had stolen Jesus’ body and told the women they had seen an hallucination. And the women thought maybe the men were right…..
Mary Magdelene then goes back to the empty tomb in grief. She sits outside the tomb and weeps. And even though angels had told her that Jesus was resurrected, she didn’t see how that would be possible and so she assumed that someone had stolen the body and that Jesus was still dead and she was devastated at the loss of her friend.
A little information about Mary. Mary grew up on the shore of the Sea of Galilee – in the town of Magdala. We don’t know what her life was like before she met Jesus except for one thing – her life was miserable. The Gospel of Luke tells us that she was filled with seven demons and that Jesus delivered her from them all. She then became one of Jesus’ closest followers and supporters. She and a number of other women traveled with Jesus and his disciples and helped to provide for him during his ministry.
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb with the weight of the world and her personal sorrows bearing down on her. She is in that place many of us have found ourselves - we have lost someone who means everything to us; someone who was an important part of our lives; someone that we loved so much that they were a part of who we are. And when we lose them, we are overcome with pain - emotional

pain and even physical pain. We are just like Mary sitting outside that tomb feeling like her whole life was over. Weeping over her loss….
Death is never an easy thing to talk about. Death is not a topic we like to think about - much less talk about. But we cannot truly understand resurrection unless we talk about death. Death is the one thing we all have in common. We have all experienced death of someone close to us - we will all die. We can’t get around that. It is a fact of life. We can’t cheat death and we can’t ignore it. We write songs about it like George Harrison of Beatles fame in the early 70's wrote a song called The Art of Dying.
It is as devastating for us to lose someone just as it was for Mary that day as she sat outside the tomb. Don’t ever let someone tell you that you need to ‘keep a stiff upper lip’ - that you have to be ‘strong’ - that weeping over the death of someone close to us is a ‘sin’. If you love someone It hurts to lose them; there is going to be a void in our lives as long as we live on this earth. We all have that time when all we feel like doing is to just sit and weep - often that sobbing with our whole body when for a moment - we feel like our life is over.
That is how Jesus found Mary. She was unable to believe anything except Jesus was gone forever and now she was alone and it hurt, badly.
While sitting there crying Mary senses a person standing beside her. This person speaks softly to her and inquires why she is weeping. She, not even looking up, states simply that someone has stolen Jesus’ body and all she wants is to be able to find the body so she can pay her last respects to her friend by doing the proper burial ritual since because of Passover they did not have time before laying him in the tomb- this is her last chance to honor the person who had been so important to her in her life.
She then hears the voice of the person beside her say, “Mary” - obviously in a way she had heard before because she turns to this person and realizes that standing beside of her is Jesus!
You know Mary had to be filled with an abundant of different emotions - shock, disbelief which turns to understanding. Jesus had tried to tell his followers over and over this was going to happen and they didn’t believe him - and here what he had said had come to pass….. Jesus had rose from the dead! He was alive!
And that is our promise as well. It is a promise - a guarantee - a done deal. Because Jesus was resurrected, the same thing will happen to us - the same thing will happen to those we love; those we care about; those who we have lost who have been such an important part of who we are. Because we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection - we can celebrate the resurrection of our loved ones.
In our faith tradition we don’t call funerals - funerals. We call them Celebrations of the Resurrection! A big part of our faith is our understanding of death - it is not the end - in many ways it is a beginning. A beginning of a new life with Jesus forever - where we are guaranteed eternal life filled with joy.
What we learn from this appearance of Jesus after his resurrection is that weeping and pain and grief are a part of death - we grieve, and that is a normal part of experiencing that death, but if we truly have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we are assured, guaranteed, that resurrection is the next step after that death.
Belief in the resurrection is one of the things that makes us different than the world around us. We still experience death in our life; we still don’t understand death - the whys or the hows or the whens - we will still experience the pain of missing someone - but we can get past that because we have faith in the promises of a resurrected savior who comforts us in our grief and gives us the promise that what pulls us out of that sorrow into the knowledge that because Jesus was resurrected we know - without a shadow of a doubt - that our grief can turn into the joy of knowing that death simply leads to the wonder of living in the presence of God forever.
That is what Jesus taught Mary that day. We can’t become so overcome by our grief that we forget the promise - we can’t become so overcome in our lack of understanding of the whys that we forget Jesus rose and showed himself so that we could believe - that we could trust in resurrection. Her weeping turned into joy of the knowledge of resurrection - and she ran off to tell others of this wonderful news! Amen!