Message March 30, 2008
Scripture: 1 Peter 1:1-9, John 20:19-3
When I chose the scriptures and message title for this service, I was thinking of the glory and triumph of the Resurrection, seen through the eyes of someone who has believed it my whole life.
But events this weekend have caused me to see the scripture and title in a completely new light. A friend and colleague of mine, with whom I have been leading worship on Sunday nights, has disappeared, with my car.
On Friday night and Saturday morning, I was worried about the car. But now I’m worried about the friend, because none of the people who care about her has seen her.
She is a recovering drug addict, and the last friend to see her said she was high. At first, I was angry, that this woman who can pray so eloquently and sincerely turned her back on all her friends, betrayed our trust and did the most self-destructive thing she could think of.
Now I’m worried that her self-saboutage may have gotten way beyond her and that she is in serious trouble, maybe even dead. [Note: She has since come back and has gone through several ups and downs since I wrote and preached this message.]
Now what? Feelings of anger and betrayal have changed to worry and fear and grief.
Now what?
I was thinking, originally, that this phrase would express the letdown after the euphoria of learning that Jesus is alive. A message ultimately to breathe in the Holy Spirit and be enlivened and encouraged to share the good news.
But I have been forced back to the emotions of Holy Week first: The feelings of betrayal and abandonment on the part of Jesus and of fear and grief and disillusionment on the part of his disciples.
Easter for us, because we know the story, begins at sunrise, as we go with the women to the tomb. “He is not dead, he is risen!” we are told. And we sing triumphant halleluias on this most joyous day of the Christian year.
But for the disciples of Jesus whom we read about on this Second Sunday of Easter, the story unfolded more slowly. The news had to break through layers and layers of pain, suffering and defeat.
These witnesses saw him get arrested. They heard the hand-picked crowd that called for his crucifixion. They saw him, maybe even heard him struggle through the streets carrying the cross. They saw the broken body on the cross. They heard that he was buried in a tomb.
They knew the danger they themselves were in, even admitting to know him might get them killed as well.
It’s the anger, deteriorating into despair that I have new feeling for. Imagine for a moment how the people in Jesus’s inner circle felt in those first few days after his death.
Just let it sink in for a few seconds. I know all of you have experiences you can draw on, when all your hopes were dashed. When you suffered the most awful losses.
At some point in that pain, you lifted your head to ask, “Now what?”
Imagine yourself as a disciple, a follower of Jesus trying to make sense out of a senseless death of this great, gentle, godlike man. Imagine surveying your options after following him for months, maybe years, and now he’s gone.
Now what? You ask. Where do I go? What do I do, now that he’s gone? Can I believe anything he said, since they killed him and God didn’t stop it?
Imagine yourself, feeling so sure of Jesus’s words and teachings, having seen or heard of his miracles, his healing. And then having it all collapse with his death.
Now what? You ask.
Imagine, as the news filtered out, well, gossip really, that the body was gone, that some of the women and then some of the men had seen Jesus alive. At first people said it was an idle tale. They didn’t believe it. How could they?
If you heard it from someone who had actually seen Jesus, you might have seen joy in their faces and that might have been enough to convince you of the truth of their story.
But if, like Thomas, you heard it whispered from someone who heard it told furtively from someone who heard it uttered in cautious wonder from someone who heard it from an eye witness… you might be afraid to believe such a fantastic tale.
Now what? You think. What am I to make of such gossip?
Dismiss it and get on with my grief? Go back home and pick up the pieces of the life I left to follow Jesus?
Or maybe check it out, seek to find out more. Now what? What is this story of resurrection?
That’s where Thomas comes into our story. I imagine him dealing with his grief by reading some of the psalms of lament. Maybe even Psalm 22, which Jesus began to say on the cross – “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” He’s rolling in grief and suffering, rocking back and forth with the pain. And he’s wondering if there is more bad news to come, of companions arrested and executed, of a general search for followers, perhaps.
Now what? He worries.
And then he begins to hear different stories about Jesus and his followers. Stories so giddy with hope, he can’t believe them.
Thomas was probably among those men who dismissed the witness of the women who first saw the resurrected Jesus. You know, an idle tale such as women tell.
Then more of Thomas’s fellow disciples are saying that THEY saw Jesus alive. Some of them describe a scene where Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into them. Thomas sees the transformation of the eye witnesses. But the layers of despair are thick. He wants his own eye witness experience. He wants his own moment of euphoria.
His pain is so great, he needs to hear and see and touch Jesus to believe the good news of the resurrection.
But he has an answer to the question of Now what? He will stay with the witnesses and hope to see Jesus for himself, the way they did.
Please notice that some of the witnesses, like Mary Magdalene and the other women who went to the tomb, were seeking Jesus when they saw him.
But others, like the people locked in the Upper Room on Easter Evening, they were the recipients of God’s free grace. They did nothing to merit being witness to Jesus’s appearance, except lament his death and fear the same.
Thomas, like the first people that the women told, didn’t believe these first eye witnesses. But Thomas sought to confirm the news for himself.
Jesus is gentle with these waves of witnesses, as the news radiates outward. He appears to several people, gradually increasing the circle of those who have seen with their own eyes, touched with their own hands, the resurrected body of Jesus.
These people have a new, fresh, exciting answer to the question of “Now what?” Jesus told them, As the father sent me, now I send you.
Forgive the sins of others, he said, and they are forgiven in heaven. And go tell what you have seen.
Imagine, then, the glow, the euphoria that would course through their bodies as Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into them. They would surely forgive Thomas’s doubt, as their doubt had been forgiven by the first witnesses.
But Jesus and the witnesses have a problem. Will Jesus have to appear to every single follower before they believe? This is the crux of the story of Thomas. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” Jesus says.
Oh, but that’s not the end of the story.
The writer of John ends with a promise: Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.
In fact, Jesus and his disciples have been answering that question of “Now what?” for 2,000 years. Receive the Holy Spirit, forgive others and tell them the good news that their sins are forgiven.
The grace of Jesus Christ is STILL appearing to us, perhaps at our greatest moments of despair, when we go seeking him as the women did at the tomb. Or perhaps when we are in a locked room with our companions, fearing the authorities. Or perhaps, like Thomas, when we are sitting in a pew among believers, trying to see for ourselves what all the gossip is about.
Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into us. Now we are witnesses.
Now what?
Tags: Easter, gospel of John
