The Rev. Ann R. Lougee

April 23, 2006

"Do not doubt, but believe"

John 20:19-31

A wonderful old curmudgeon I once knew said he only came to church when there were poinsettias or lilies decorating the sanctuary. Last week, a person we don’t see here very often made a joke about being a "Chreaster" member -- one here just for Christmas and Easter. Well, at least they’re honest about being part of what some ministers call the C&E crowd. Some ministers also call today Low Sunday, when the "spectator Christians" are gone.

While it’s true that many pews and quite a few pulpits are vacated after the "high holy days," yet the lectionary gives us powerful words that don’t allow for an after-Easter letdown. This story from John’s gospel tells of the birth of the church, in an alternate version from Luke’s story in the Book of Acts, which we hear every year at Pentecost.

Though the details are different, in both versions, we hear that the disciples were hiding together in a house to which they had fled after the crucifixion, terrified of being arrested like Jesus. In both versions, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit, that same Spirit that was in Jesus.

In both versions, the disciples are gathered behind locked doors. Then, suddenly, in John’s version, the risen Christ is among them, depicted literally as Jesus, who speaks to them and gives them his peace. He then breathes on them, to place his spirit in them, and sends them out of their locked room into the world.

To us moderns, it all sounds pretty unlikely. It would be so much better if only we could see it for ourselves, wouldn’t it? So here we are on Low Sunday listening in as Thomas voices our own doubts. He, like us, wasn't there when Jesus made his first appearance to the miserable group behind the bolted door, and he says he won't believe it until he's seen for himself.

Now, wanting some kind of sign doesn't necessarily mean that you've lost your faith. Even though we know that certain people in our lives love us, we need to hear it from time to time. So you may be the kind of person who is confident that you are loved by God; but, still, there is a deep desire to be reassured.

The gospels indicate that Jesus too needed to hear that message. That’s the central event in stories of his baptism. Whatever else went on, Jesus heard God say to him, "I love you – you are my beloved son."

Or maybe you're just the kind of person who is dubious by nature. Maybe for you faith has always felt like a matter that needs continual challenging, struggling and sorting through. Your faith is real, but your doubts are too.

Well, I’m quite convinced that, in the right circumstances, doubt may be a sign of a lively intellect moving toward growth. The Bible study class has often heard me quote Frederick Buechner who has said, "Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving."

Once Norm and I went with a church group on a mostly silent spiritual retreat in which we had times to meditate and pray and times when we all gathered for a talk by the leader. At one point that weekend, we each had an assigned time for private conversation with our leader. In my meeting, he said an insightful thing for someone who had only known me for a day. He said, "Keep struggling. It's your way of being close to God."

Doubt and struggle are not, after all, a denial of faith. They’re one way of faith among many. In the end, you see, doubting Thomas is the only disciple in the Gospel of John to proclaim that he sees God in Jesus.

Intellectual understanding sometimes just isn’t enough for faith. To become real, understanding may have to be translated into flesh and blood, to become part of our own experience. And that’s what today’s story of Thomas’ doubt is about.

In the Gospel of John, Easter is the beginning of the church and its mission, the moment when it was empowered by the Spirit. It was the moment when the disciples knew themselves commissioned to continue the work that Jesus had begun.

As the Gospel of John tells the story, Jesus had promised the disciples that, after his death, their lives would be guided by the work of the Holy Spirit -- in Greek, the Paraclete. This Holy Spirit that Jesus promised is what would allow their lives to be grounded in the gift of his peace and shaped by joy. So in today’s reading we hear this promise fulfilled.

We have come too late in time to know Jesus in the flesh. Yet we, like the community for whom John’s gospel was written, may also hear that promise and believe that that same Spirit can be with us so that we can see this promise fulfilled in our own lives and in the life of our church.

For scholars tell us that this gospel was written some two to three generations after Jesus’ death. Yet the community to whom it was addressed heard these words as their own commissioning to carry on the work Jesus had begun of revealing God and God’s love to the world.

Today’s gospel story tells us that we are called to rise above our doubts and fears -- to allow resurrection to make a positive difference in our lives. The risen Christ commissions the disciples and us: "As God has sent me, even so I send you" (John 20:21).

What we are sent to do, however, is not to live a life just like Jesus’ life, but to live our own lives as authentically as Jesus lived his, embodying the same Spirit. Easter celebrates the Christ Spirit alive in us.

By loving as Jesus loved, the church, both in the time of John’s gospel and in our time, also reveals God to the world. By revealing God to the world, the church makes it possible for the world to choose to enter into relationship with the God of limitless love that Jesus revealed.

The Easter season just begun is "The Great Fifty Days" a time to rejoice in the victory of love we see in the disciples’ experiences of a living Christ. So we rejoice in the dramatic transformation of those followers.

Visions of the risen Christ came to the disciples and helped them see the holy in new ways. These new realizations inspired them to continue Jesus’ ministry as channels of healing and witnesses to holy love and presence.

Just so, Easter offers us a vision of joy to inspire us to get on with the work of becoming whole and holy human beings. During Lent we were invited to recognize the fears and wounds which have blocked us from growing in love.

Now, in the continuing light of the Christ spirit, we are invited to continue to release such self-deceptions. The goal of the seven-week season of Easter is for us to be transformed by the Spirit of Christ for sacred friendship with one another and the world.

The risen Christ shows that the wounds that brought Jesus to death, and our wounds too, can be transformed into strengths by the power of resurrection. Our fears may turn to trust and our struggles into learning.

As this happens, we are called to come out from behind our own closed doors. We are called to move from our own hiding places of fear out into the world, to find the part of God’s mission that is entrusted to us.

We hear much talk in churches today (as well as in business and other settings) about "mission" and "mission statements." Parker Palmer, in a book titled In the Company of Strangers, has written that "the mission of the church is not to enlarge its membership, not to bring outsiders to accept its terms, not to judge people, but simply to love the world in every possible way – to love the world as God did and does."

The church’s mission, in Palmer’s view, is not to be the arbiter of right and wrong, but to bear unceasing witness to the love of God, as we see it in Jesus. That is something that I can accept without doubt. For me, that’s a good enough definition of what it means to "believe" in Jesus.

May it be so! Amen.