Peace in the Unknown

A Sermon inspired by John 20:19-31

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio (1620)

 

Doubting Thomas.

Now, see, I already have trouble with the way tell Thomas’s story. He is forever remembered as Doubting Thomas. And, I feel like I need to defend Thomas, to take up for him and other people in the Bible who get a “bad rep” in the ways their stories are remembered and told.

To be honest, I’ve never really gotten the way that we interpret the story of Thomas in John 20 as the perpetual doubter. To me, the story is less about Thomas’ doubt and more about the beauty of the mystery of faith. It’s about the truth that in faith we will always have more questions than we do answers and, that even in the midst of the questions and doubts we have, the risen Jesus will show up and say, “Peace.”

Maybe we like to hate on Thomas because, honestly, it makes us feel better about ourselves. “See, Thomas,” we say. “You didn’t believe the others disciples about Jesus, that we was raised from the dead. You demanded to see him risen for yourself. But see, Thomas, I’ve only read the Bible, and I believe! And Jesus says that makes me blessed!”

And, then this next part Jesus doesn’t say, but I think we add it in our minds. “I’m blessed because I’ve not seen, yet I believe. And that makes me better than you, Thomas.”

Because, we do that all the time, don’t we? We divide the world up into categories to make ourselves feel better.

We divide ourselves into those of use who work hard and those who we think take advantage of charity or try to live off the government. Though, I haven’t heard of anyone of us calling Washington this past week to say we would like them to not send us a stimulus check because we are hard-working Americans.

We see a difference between those of us who have common sense and the people who we wonder how they get their shoes on the right feet each morning. Yet, I wonder how many of us have shared a post on social media or told someone about something we heard on a cable news channel without doing our own research to fully check out the facts for ourselves to make sure we weren’t spreading sensational stories that bend the truth?

We put the world into two categories—those of us who are most good people and those who are mostly bad people.

And, it’s this last category that really sneaks up on us. Sure, in church, we’ll say that we are all sinners saved by grace. But, we divide sins into categories all the time, deciding which ones are worse than others. And, usually, the sins that come our as not so bad in our minds, those are the ones we happen to be guilty of.

Really, when you are honest with yourself, haven’t you at some point looked at another person, someone who has made some bad choices that you don’t think you are capable of doing, and thought, “Wow! I am so glad that I am not like them!”

Jesus told a story about that in Luke 18:9-14.

Jesus tells this story about a Pharisee and a tax collector who come to pray at the temple. Now, when we hear the word Pharisee, we should read “religious person” or “righteous person.” The kind of person who is “right with God.” The kind of person who goes to church faithfully every Sunday. The kind of person who has been watching more than one sermon in this season of social distancing. This religious person comes into the temple and start praying OUT LOUD, “Dear God, thank you so much that I am not like this tax collector, like this sinner. I have studied your Word. I follow your rules. I give 10% of my income to the church. Thank you, so much God, that you did not make me like that person.”

The moral of the story, Jesus tells us, is that the Pharisee has missed the grace of God offered to him, the grace that the tax collector experiences. Because the Pharisee doesn’t understand that he is in need of mercy, too.

We all are in need of God’s grace, and when we begin to recognize that fact that is when we begin to in the kingdom of God. That is when we begin to understand that maybe we are more like Thomas than we care to admit. So, maybe the story that we read today is not a cautionary tale, a reminder to not be like Thomas, but, instead, is a story of grace and peace for the moment when we embrace who we are—people who have questions about faith and people who don’t always have the answers.

Jesus offers peace in the story he tells about the Pharisee and the tax collector, peace to those of us who are in desperate need of God’s love and grace. And in the story that we read today, Jesus offers peace to the disciples and to Thomas, too.

The peace Jesus gives is peace from the one who has faced death and is still alive, peace from the resurrected Christ. As Jesus speaks peace to his disciples, we are reminded of the words he shared with them at the Last Supper in John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.” Now, in the upper room and behind locked doors, the disciples are reminded of that peace again. It’s a peace that abides despite all the hurt and harm and hate the world can throw their way. The world did its worst to the Messiah and, yet, God’s compassion and care embodied in Jesus is alive and well as he stands in their midst again.

Now, because Jesus is risen, peace is for every time in our lives! Peace is for when we feel like Thomas, when we feel like giving up, when we feel like our faith isn’t big enough to stand up to all the bad in the world. Peace is for when our illusions about this “basically good person” we think we are come crashing down around our heads. Like when we admit that we manipulated a situation to our advantage and called it good business sense. Like when confess that sometimes we say things when we are angry just to hurt someone else but then act like we are only telling the truth and it’s that person’s fault if they can’t handle it. Like when we hurt the people we love most in this world. The peace of the Christ who died for our sins and was raised to life again by God’s love…his peace is for moments like that, too.

Because his peace looks like undeserved mercy and amazing grace.

After speaking peace to his disciples, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit over them. And in this breath, I’m reminded of how God breathes into us the breath of life in Genesis.[1] I imagine with the prophet Ezekiel how the breath of God can make the dry and weary bones in our body live again![2] Jesus breathes this same breath of God, of the Holy Spirit on the disciples as he commissions them to continue the loving, healing, peace-giving work that he started.

This won’t be the only time the disciples experience the gift of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, a Jewish celebration fifty days after the festival of Passover, as they are gathered together in Jerusalem and figuring out how to do this work that Jesus left them, the power of the Holy Spirit will rush upon them, breathing like tongues of fire, connecting and organizing these ordinary folks and followers into the apostolic church, a group of people who through the Spirit’s power will change the world forever.

The disciples who receive peace in that upper room today will live in expectant hope of the coming fullness of the Holy Spirit’s power for nearly fifty days.

What it we walked with that same expectant hope for the next 50 days?

Our celebration of Pentecost, the birthday of the church, is exactly 50 days from today. What if, for the next 50 days, we studied together what the Bible teaches about hope? What if we paid attention to how we feel right now, without judgement or without beating ourselves up, but as a way of asking “What am I learning about myself?” What if we trusted the Spirit to teach us about hope as we discover what the next 50 days hold for us?

Where might you discover hope? In our world? In your life? In your faith?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[1] “The Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life.” Genesis 2:7 (CEB).

[2] “He said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, human one! Say to the breath, The Lord God proclaims: Come from the four winds, breath! Breathe into these dead bodies and let them live.’” Ezekiel 37:9 (CEB).