Kahu's Manao
Keawala‘i Congregational Church
United Church of Christ (USA)
Second Sunday of Easter
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Rev. Kealahou C. Alika
“Faithful Doubt”
John 20:19-31
Many of the conversations leading up to last Easter Sunday included a familiar refrain: “Easter is early this year.” Some asked, “How can that be?” Others asked, “What happened?”
The questions were enough to prompt others to look for an answer. Before long various explanations began appearing on the internet.
Whatever explanations others may have provided, the fact is Easter was early this year. There was so much going on between Christmas and Easter. Everything was compressed into a short period of time. I must admit that I found myself feeling a great sense of relief when I woke up last Monday morning. I felt like I could finally take a breath.
For many Easter is an occasion that happens one day a year. Once the sunrise service comes to an end everything is put away and stored for another year.
But Easter is an occasion that happens more than one day a year. It is a season that spans fifty days. One of the benefits of our lectionary readings is the reminder that today and every Sunday until Pentecost are Sundays of Easter and not after Easter. Over the course of the next seven Sundays the readings from the Bible will call our attention to the implications of the resurrection of Jesus Christ not only for the early church but for the church in each succeeding generation. (Preaching the New Common Lectionary: Year A, Craddock, Hayes, Holladay, & Tucker, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1986, page 180)
Today’s reading from The Gospel According to John involves Jesus’ encounter with the disciples after the resurrection. How does the story of his encounter with the disciples, especially Thomas, help those who were a part of John’s community to believe in Jesus and to experience God’s peace? (The Word & You, Volume 1, Nan Duerling, United Church Press, Cleveland, Ohio, 1997, page 153)
The question is important because the writer of John’s Gospel and his community lived sixty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Unlike Thomas and the other disciples of his day, the writer of John and his community did not know Jesus as a living human being. They heard and read stories about him but they did not know him as a person.
What becomes quickly apparent in the story is the significance the writer places on words of peace that Jesus conveyed to the disciples the evening of that first Easter centuries ago. Three times Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19, 21, 26)
The Greek word (eirene) that is used for peace is comparable to the Hebrew word shalom. As we enter a sixth year of war in Iraq we may be tempted to think that peace is the absence of war. But we know that the absence of war means nothing without the presence of wholeness and health, harmony and security, justice and truth. That is what makes the war in Iraq so difficult for us right now.
We measure what we presume to be a success of war by pointing to the decline in violence rather than by looking at whether or not the country is more secure; whether or not schools and hospitals are open and whether or not the infrastructure of water and electricity is functioning. We are far from seeing a lasting peace.
But the peace that Jesus offers is to be understood as more than the absence of war. Jesus comforted and encouraged his disciples with words of peace before his death (John 14:27, 16:33). But they needed to hear it even more. As Jesus faced his death they all scattered and left him alone (John 16:32). They were all afraid – “fearful that what happened to him might happen to them, broken in their relationship with him. They had deserted him; he did not desert them.” (Op. cit., page 153)
Jesus came to the disciples to reestablish his relationship with them, to let them rejoice that he was alive, and to make their broken lives whole again. He also came to entrust to them his mission of love. (John 20:21)
What I have come to appreciate about Jesus’ encounter with the disciples is the way in which he conveyed them to the power of the God’s Spirit. (John 20:22) Many draw parallels to the power of God’s Spirit to the account of creation which appears in The Book of Genesis. It is written, “The Lord God formed humankind from the dust of the ground and breathed into that person’s nostrils the breath of life; and that person became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)
That image of Jesus breathing upon the disciples, of God breathing into a human being the breath of life is one that we know well through the teachings of our Hawaiian ancestors. To share one’s hä or breath with another is to share life.
That is what Jesus did when he met the disciples behind locked doors. He did the unimaginable. He entrusted his mission of love for the world to a fearful and broken group of disciples.
Just as his work was to restore the broken relationship of the world with God (John 1:29), now the work of the disciples would be about the task of forgiving or letting go the sins of others and holding on to them (John 20:23). All this Jesus did but Thomas was not there.
When the other disciples told Thomas what had happened he refused to believe them. It would not be until a week later that he would see and touch Jesus and find himself confessing, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28)
Jesus’ final words to Thomas became a great source of comfort and reassurance to the writer of John and to those in his community sixty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29)
We may want to berate Thomas for doubting what the others said of their encounter with Jesus but that would be too easy. The word that is translated as doubt from the Greek word apistos literally means “without faith” or “unbelief.”
When Jesus meets Thomas it becomes evident to Jesus that Thomas needs to move from unbelief to belief. It has been said that faith does not remove all doubts; that faith does not remove all questions. Instead faith invites us to trust the witness of Thomas and the early disciples that Christ is risen indeed.
We are in the same position today as was Thomas and those who were a part John’s community in the years following Jesus’ resurrection. We are called to believe without seeing and to enter into a relationship with the risen Christ.
Later others would come to recognize the significance of believing without seeing. In the first century the writer of The First Letter of Peter looks upon the risen Christ as a living hope when he writes: “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy . . . ” (1 Peter 1:8)
Such is the joy of our faith. May we all be strengthened by the power of the Spirit that we too may join our voices with Thomas and say of Jesus – “My Lord and my God.” (John 20:28)
Amen.