Tangible Evidence

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!