Rev. Maureen Frescott
Congregational Church of
Amherst, UCC
April 7, 2013
John 20:19-31
“Touching
Thomas”
When
I was about 5-years old, and too young to venture very far from the front yard
of our home, I would listen with wonder to the stories my older siblings would
tell about the amazing places they would visit in our suburban neighborhood,
just beyond the perimeter that I was allowed to explore.
One
of those places was called “The Island”
Nearly
every day during the summer my siblings and their friends would get on their
bikes and take off down the street. When I’d ask them where they were going
they’d say, “We’re riding down to The Island.”
My
mind would fill with images of swaying palm trees and sandy white beaches, and
being a fan of Gilligan’s Island I imagined that the Professor and the Skipper
would be there as well.
I
so wanted to go there with the older kids and see it for myself, but they’d
always tell me that I was too young to go that far.
Each
afternoon when they returned from The Island I’d ask them if they found any
coconuts or caught any fish, and I’d wonder how they managed to ride across the
water without getting their bikes soaking wet.
One
day my brother Brian finally relented to my pleading and agreed to take me with
him on their daily trip down to The Island.
Brian
had one of those big, wire baskets that held newspapers on the front of his
bike, and that’s where I sat as we sailed down the street and beyond the parental
boundaries that had hemmed me in.
But
to my surprise, after only a few minutes of riding, we arrived at The Island.
There
in the middle of the cul-de-sac at the end of our street was a large oblong
patch of grass, surrounded by a curb, and with clump of trees growing in the
center.
It was a traffic island, a turn around circle for cars.
It was a traffic island, a turn around circle for cars.
Of
course the other kids thought it was hysterical that I had expected to find an
actual island with palm trees and sandy beaches.
I
felt silly and embarrassed for believing the amazing story they had told me.
“Don’t
worry,” my brother reassured me, “when you’re older we’ll take you on a real
adventure. Down by the baseball field, on the edge of the woods there’s an old storage
shed. But,” he added, “even us older kids are afraid to go inside, especially
after dark.”
At
this point I was skeptical. I
asked him, “Why would anyone be afraid of a stupid storage shed by a baseball
field?”
“Because,”
he said with a wink, “it’s full of bats!”
To
which I replied, “Really?? Let’s go now!”
I’m
guessing many of you could tell similar stories of having been duped into
believing something that was not true or turned out to be much different than
what you expected.
As
children we may fall victim to tall tales and practical jokes, but as adults
the sting of falling for falsehoods is much more painful, as it takes hold in
our relationships, our business dealings, and our political, religious, and ideological
convictions.
It
feels especially hurtful when we discover that something we’ve invested a
significant amount of our time, money, energy, and passion in turns out not to
true, or based upon false information.
In
this technological age we might think we’ve become pretty savvy to those who
try to pull the wool over our eyes.
Having
access to the Internet is both a boon and a curse in this regard.
With
a few clicks we can check on the reliability of a car we’re thinking of buying,
examine the business practices of the contractor we’ve hired, and fact check
everything from election campaign speeches to suspicious emails sent by scam
artists phishing for our passwords.
The
internet helps us to be more savvy consumers, but as we know, the internet is
also a breeding ground for misinformation and false claims –
on
news blogs, social media sites, and in chat rooms - where stories spread like
wildfire, and the frequency of repetition leads some to believe that they must
be true.
Moreover,
just as in television and print media, the line between factual news and biased
opinion has blurred beyond recognition, and we’re left wondering how much of
what we hear and see is true and how much of it is tainted by the prejudices, ignorance,
and fears of another.
It’s
so hard to wade into the world today without holding to some level of
skepticism and doubt.
We
can only imagine what it must have been like in Jesus’ time, when the only way
you had to verify if something were true was to ask your neighbors, and to hope
that they would not lead you astray.
It’s
fitting that every year on the Sunday after Easter we hear the story of
doubting Thomas.
Just
one week after hearing the amazing story of a man named Jesus, who came back to
life after being crucified, we hear the story of a man named Thomas who doubts
that such a thing is even possible.
“Show
me the proof,” Thomas said.
For
us, hearing the story of the Resurrection followed immediately by the story of
doubting Thomas gives us the space to examine our own struggles with belief.
And
we need that space.
Every
Sunday we step in here from a world that bombards us with competing ideologies
and conflicting truths, to hear the story of a man who claimed that HE was the
Way, the Truth and the Life.
Every
Sunday we step in here from a world where many gods are lifted up for us to
idolize – money, power, fame, materialism – and we come together to worship the
one God who calls us to set all those other gods aside.
Every
Sunday we step in here from a world that is beset with fear, suffering, violence,
and oppression, and we’re encouraged to place our trust in the building of a
Kingdom yet to come, where love, peace, and equality for all will reign.
I
don’t know about you, but if we didn’t come in here every Sunday carrying some
doubt about the resurrection and its ability to change us and our world for the
better, I’d question our connection with reality.
Our
faith would become rigid and joyless if we didn’t have doubt inspiring us to
imagine new ways of encountering the divine.
Christian
author Philip Yancy writes, “Doubt is the skeleton in the closet of faith, and
I know no better way to treat a skeleton than to bring it into the open and
expose it for what it is: not something to hide or fear, but a hard structure
on which living tissue may grow."
Thomas
may express a reluctance to believe his friend’s accounts of the resurrection, but
Jesus does not chastise him for his doubt.
Jesus
appears a second time to give Thomas what the other disciples had already
experienced - the sight of the risen Christ in the flesh.
And
he offers a blessing for those who would come after – the church –
those
of us who have no option but to believe without having seen.
The
reality is that none of the disciples had believed on faith alone.
They
sat huddled in a locked room, convinced that Jesus was dead and buried, despite
having been told by the women that the tomb was found empty.
If
they had truly believed without seeing, they would have been out shouting it in
the streets rather than hiding behind a locked door in fear for their lives.
But
Jesus walks through the locked door and meets them in their fear.
And
he greets them by saying, “Peace be with you.”
He
does not scold them for ignoring the significance of the empty tomb,
he
doesn’t admonish them for hiding themselves away rather than spreading the good
news of the resurrection….and he never asks them, “Why?”
“Why
did you run when I needed you most?”
“Why
did you abandon me and lose faith in the one moment that you had to prove
yourself as true disciples?”
Jesus
doesn’t return to his disciples to render judgment.
He
doesn’t come to place blame.
He
doesn’t come seeking revenge.
He
doesn’t appear in the Temple or the Roman court before those who had him killed
in a defiant show of “I told you so.”
Instead
he comes to his friends, those who loved him most, with the greeting, “Peace,
be with you.”
Jesus
gave them what they needed.
Love…reassurance….and
the Spirit of God that he breathed out upon them, to strengthen and inspire
them for the task that lay before them –
the
building of the church.
He
met his disciples right where they were, in the locked room, fears and doubts
and all.
And
because Thomas wasn’t there the first time, he came back a week later and did
it all over again.
Perhaps
Thomas didn’t need to touch Jesus as much as he needed to be touched by Jesus.
He
needed to know that he was not forgotten.
He
needed Jesus to reach out to him and include him amongst those he had called to
carry on his name.
And
that’s what Jesus did.
He
reached out to Thomas in Spirit, just as he reaches out to us.
The
only difference is, we can’t see Jesus.
At
least not in the way that his disciples saw him.
But
we can see Jesus in so many other ways.
In
the faces and actions of those who give so much of themselves in the name of
love.
In
the difficult choices that we make to include everyone at the table, even if it
means facing our fear that there will be less to go around.
We
see Jesus in as many ways as there are people seeking to see him.
Even
though sometimes the way in which others see Jesus is difficult for us to
believe.
There
was a story in yesterday’s news about a woman who claimed to see the image of a
cross and a crown imbedded in the side of a Pepperidge Farm Goldfish cracker.
To
her it was the image of Jesus, and a message from God, as this was something
she’d never seen on a Goldfish cracker before despite her habit of consuming
between two and three pounds of them every week.
One
commenter on the story remarked,
“Maybe
God's message to her was to cut back on the Goldfish.”
Another
said more seriously: “When a defect on a Cracker is a significant affirmation
of your faith, perhaps something is wrong with your faith.”
Perhaps.
Perhaps
it would be a better use of our time to see Jesus at work in the world then
imprinted on the side of a cracker, or in a grilled cheese sandwich, or in the
dirt stain on the side of a house.
But
if the people who see these images need to see them, because their life has
knocked them on their back and their faith is circling the drain, then who are
we to judge what is a true experience of the risen Christ and what is not?
I
believe Jesus appears to us when and where we need to see him.
In
the face of a stranger seeking help, in the embrace of a loved one in need of
comfort, and in the hard-to-believe, head-shaking, stories of chance
encounters, miraculous healings, answered prayers, and bizarre sightings of the
stereotypically long-haired bearded Jesus in the most irreverent of places.
If
that’s what it takes to help us to get out of bed in the morning and put one
foot in front of the other when we’d rather stay under the covers and cry….
If
that’s what it takes to get us to set aside a distraction, an addiction, or an
obsession, and go out and help others to do the same…
If
that’s what it takes to get us to shift our eyes off the false gods in our life
– money, power, and materialism – and set our eyes on what our faith requires
of us – to love mercy, to act justly, and to walk humbly with our God…
Then
I say bring on the fish tales.
Bring
on the crazy stories of resurrected messiahs and hope born anew.
Bring
on the far-fetched yarns that cause us to roll our eyes in disbelief and insist
that we must see it with our own eyes to believe it….
and
then we believe it anyway.
Because
we know there’s more to Truth than believability.
Jesus
was a gifted storyteller, and he wasn’t beyond stretching the truth and our
imaginations with tales of magical mustard seeds, prodigal sons, and good
Samaritans - to get our attention and to get us to cock our heads in bemusement.
I
suspect Jesus knew that these were the stories we’d remember and want to take
apart to find their truth, and once we did we couldn’t help but retell the
story to our friends and all who are willing to listen.
Thomas
will always have a home in our Christian story because his story is our story.
Blessed
are those who seek to be touched by Christ.
Blessed
are those who open their hearts to the promise of new life.
Blessed
are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,
not in spite of their doubts, but
because of them.
Peace
be with you…
…and
Amen.
