John 20:19-31
When it was evening on
that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the
disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among
them and said, “Peace be with you.” After
he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples
rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus
said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send
you.” When he had said this, he breathed
on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are
forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
But Thomas (who was
called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have
seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his
hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I
will not believe.”
A week later his
disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors
were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then
he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand
and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my
God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you
believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet
have come to believe.”
Now Jesus did many
other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this
book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the
Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his
name.
===================
I took a survey recently; I don’t recall
exactly what it was for, but one of the questions was “I would have liked to
live during…”Biblical Times, the Renaissance, the Wild West, or the Roaring
Twenties.”
I scratched off the Wild West right away – too
much shooting, too many horses and all that comes along with them. I thought about choosing the Renaissance, with
all the amazing new explorations and discoveries happening during that time, and
I was tempted for a minute to say “the Roaring Twenties,” mainly just to stay
as close to the present time as possible.
But I ended up choosing Biblical Times. Of
course Biblical Times spans a huge amount of time, and I am sure I didn’t want
to land around the time of Noah’s Ark, for example.
But the past four years of seminary, and the
opportunity I’ve had to study the Bible and learn about God’s work in the world
more deeply than I ever have before, made me wish that I could have seen and
heard Jesus during his ministry on earth, or else to be able to talk to his
disciples, to those who knew him first-hand, who had up-close-and-personal
experiences of him.
So, if I could wave my magic wand, I think
I’d go back to the time of Christ, just for a visit, to gather some tangible
evidence of what I believe.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to validate
our faith with an up-close-and-personal experience? To get that kind of
tangible evidence that would come from really having been there?
It seems like keeping the faith would be so
much easier if we had tangible evidence, if we could still today have an up-close-and
personal encounter with the living Christ.
Jesus’ followers clearly needed this kind of
encounter to recognize Christ.
On the road to Emmaus, the two disciples
walked with the resurrected Christ for much of the day, and listened to him
explain the fulfillment of the Scriptures in the things that had happened to
Jesus, and went in to have supper with him, and it was not until he took the
bread, and blessed it, and broke it, that their eyes were opened and they
recognized him.
Mary went to the tomb, encountered Jesus, and
thought he was the gardener.
It wasn’t until Jesus called her by name, that
for her that personal encounter happened, and she turned and saw that the man
she had been speaking with was her Rabbouni, her beloved teacher, the Christ.
When the women, including Mary, told the
disciples that they had encountered the risen Lord, the disciples didn’t
believe them. Instead, they locked themselves in a room in fear until Jesus
came to them personally, and then – only then - they rejoiced at his
resurrection.
In the same way as the others, Thomas wasn’t
convinced by the words of the disciples. He proclaimed his need for tangible
evidence, which was really no different than all the rest. And Jesus came,
again into a locked room, and met Thomas’ need for a personal encounter. And
Thomas proclaimed his belief with the first confession of faith after Christ’s
resurrection, when he said, “My LORD and my GOD!”
All of us who believe still need that same
personal encounter with the living Christ.
We are human, and the fact that we have come
to believe does not change the fact that we all continue to cycle through the
stages of fear, and doubt, as well as peace, and trust, and faith, throughout
our lives. But it is into that cycle
that Jesus comes, over and over, through the locked doors of our hearts, and
says to us,
“Peace be with you”;
“Do not be afraid”;
“Do not doubt, but believe.”
We cannot directly encounter Jesus, God, the
Holy Spirit through our five senses, those things that usually provide tangible
evidence for us. We cannot see, or hear, or smell, or taste, or touch the Triune
God. What’s interesting is, we can’t
see, hear, touch, taste or smell our doubts or our fears either.
They are really no more or less tangible to
us than God is. But so often they seem so much more real to us than the
presence of the living God.
But God is present to us.
When Jesus breathed on the disciples and
said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”, he gave the Holy Spirit to all the world, for
all time, to all those who would receive it. And the Triune God continues to be
revealed to us through the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit causes Scripture to become the
Living Word.
The Spirit gives us the words we speak and
hear when we pray.
The Spirit comes to us in our sorrow, our
anger, our joy and gratitude.
The Spirit of the living God is revealed to
us in the loving acts of one another – those that we offer in humble service
and those that we receive.
There’s a quote from Henri Nouwen that says, “When
a friend touches us with free, nonpossessive love, it is God's incarnate love
that touches us and God's power that heals us. “
We experience the Holy Spirit through the
light that shines in the darkness, sometimes even that one tiny glimmer of
light that is almost hidden in the darkness we feel.
We encounter the living God today through the
power of the Holy Spirit, working in us and others throughout the world.
Nonbelievers also need the tangible evidence of
a personal encounter with Christ, whether they realize it or not. And just like
anyone else, the way this encounter happens needs to be first-person, direct,
up-close-and-personal. This means it won’t happen merely through the words of
another believer to them.
Much like Thomas’ experience, it’s not the
same when all you have is someone telling you what their encounter was like. We
have to realize that this sort of loving dialogue is important, but we can only
be one chain in the link that brings a person to know the living Christ – and that
personal encounters with Christ are essential for anyone, in order to complete
the chain.
A professor of anthropology at Stanford
University, named T.M Luhrmann, recently completed a study of the way
evangelicals learn to experience themselves in conversation with God. She
describes herself as a skeptic. She discussed an aspect of her study in a
recent column in the New York Times, and she said this: “…[B]elievers and
nonbelievers are not so different from one another, news that is sometimes a
surprise to both. When I arrived at one church I had come to study,
I thought that I would stick out like a sore
thumb. I did not. Instead, I saw my own doubts, anxieties and yearnings reflected
in those around me. People were willing to utter sentences — like “I believe in
God” — that I was not, but many of those I met spoke openly and comfortably about
times of uncertainty, even doubt. Many of my skeptical friends think of
themselves as secular, sometimes profoundly so.
Yet these secular friends often hover on the
edge of faith. They meditate. They keep journals. They go on retreats. They
just don’t know what to do with their spiritual yearnings.”
Her words express the same cycle of fear,
doubt, peace, trust, and faith that we as believers still experience. And the
spiritual yearning she describes is that yearning that is filled, over and
over, by personal encounters with the triune God, the risen Christ, the living
Word, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Sharing our experiences with one another can
help us all see the common parts of our journeys. And this can open the door
for us all to greater understanding of the different ways people come to know
God.
But ultimately, everyone needs tangible
evidence, and that sort of evidence is there for everyone, through the living
Word of God we find in Scripture read and proclaimed, and through the loving
work of the body of Christ, each and every one of us, for the reconciliation of
the world.
And that, my friends, is very Good News!
