2 EASTER, YEAR A

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE

THE REV. ANNE STANLEY

30 MARCH 2008

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Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20: 19-31

It had been a long week. A long week since that first day when Jesus had appeared at the open tomb to Mary Magdalene.  “I have seen the Lord,” she said afterwards.  It had been a long week since the evening of that first day when the disciples saw Jesus, too, as they were hiding in the room for fear of the Jewish authorities.  Jesus had appeared to them, too, and they, too, then could say, “We have seen the Lord.”

It had been a long week. It had been long for Thomas, the disciple who wasn’t around on that evening a week ago when his comrades saw the risen Lord. When he heard about it he couldn’t believe it, and try as they might, his friends couldn’t get him on board. “We have seen the Lord,” they kept saying all during the week. But Thomas wasn’t buying it.

            This is the day when, every year, we hear from Thomas. The one-week anniversary of the Day of the Resurrection.  Thomas, who didn’t believe. Not “doubting,” as in undecided and skeptical and hemming and hawing. But just plain not believing, which is what the word in this text actually says. Thomas did not believe what his friends were saying to him.  He had to have visible, tangible proof. He had to see those wounds for himself.  And TOUCH them!  Even if Jesus comes, “I won’t believe you until I see the mark of the nails in Jesus’ hands and put my finger into the mark of the nails and my hand in his side.” When Thomas joined his friends in their hide-out and Jesus suddenly did show up, Thomas saw for himself.  Maybe he even touched the wounds, we’ll never know. But he saw, anyway, and he believed. “My Lord, and my God!!”

Thomas’ story is so compelling, and rings so true for so many of us, that it’s easy to overlook those other disciples. Today’s story is about them, too, even though the story doesn’t tell us their names. Remember them, too, holed up in that room where they’d run to hide at the end of the Day of the Resurrection.  Remember: Jesus had appeared to them out of the blue, too, that evening. Jesus had appeared and his wounds were in plain sight. Jesus came and he showed the disciples his hands and his side. And the disciples believed; they rejoiced, it says, when they saw the Lord.

Jesus’ wounds weren’t miraculously papered, or “skinned,” over.  Not for the other disciples or for Thomas. His wounds were still part of him.  He was alive in spite of them. He was transformed through them.  Resurrected with them. The power of suffering, the power of death had not triumphed after all. Life had won the battle.

And so it is for us all, isn’t it? We accumulate scars and wounds all our life long. Wounds in our bodies, in our hearts and souls. Wounds we try to dump, and even when we can, the memory of them is painful if not intolerable.

The truth is that we know God only through what God has created, through the material. God came, after all, as a human being, as a Son, dwelling in flesh and blood. When that flesh was torn apart and the Son killed, resurrection and transformation and life continued right on through the damage.

The question is not “How come that happened? or Why did this woe happen to me, or him or her or us?”  The question is, “Here we present ourselves to you, O God, our souls and bodies, covered with scars and the wounds of our lifetime…..How do we manage with them? What do we do about it all?”

Mary Magdalene, Thomas, the other disciples, Peter…..that small band of followers of Jesus, look what happened to them after that first day and week! Some of them were quaking cowards. Others were seekers. At least one, Thomas, was a total non-believer. Just like us! They were all at various points in their own spiritual  journeys. Just like us. This little band came together and was given new life and a strength that they never had experienced before.  The power of the resurrection is what we call it. Power that transformed them. Power,furthermore, that didn’t stop with them, because it moved out and out, to us and for us and through our own woundedness to transform us.

And not merely to transform us but to reach out through us to touch and transform the lives of others, too. Listen to these words, spoken to me just yesterday, by a person describing what happens in our church: “… a small band of individuals,” she said, “gathering to learn about hope for ourselves, starting to grow strong enough to search for ways to share that hope with others.”  

This is our mission, as Easter people, in the name if Jesus. Thanks be to God!