Worship > Sermon Archive

The Reverend Beth Fain

Sunday, March 30, 2008
Easter 2a RCL: John 20. 19-31

Have you ever wondered why Thomas wasn't with the disciples the Sunday evening of the resurrection?
When the eleven gathered with others to share one another's fear and grief, why didn't Thomas come, too?
Was he working?
Did he have a family commitment he needed to tend?
Was he too tired? Too afraid? Too depressed?
Did he have every intention of showing up but got way laid at the last minute?
Did he think he wouldn't be missed?
Did he think it didn't matter if he made the effort to come or not?
Surely he didn't expect to see Jesus with his gathered brother and sister disciples or certainly he would have shown up. Surely.
What did Thomas miss by not gathering with his brothers, and most likely sisters, in their gathering place the night of the resurrection? He missed hearing the first words to the gathered community by Jesus: Peace be with you."
Peace be with you.
Do you think that Thomas, after the extreme three day's trauma and anxiety of going from a joyful meal with promises made and feet washed and words of love shared ending with a traveling song
followed by watching his beloved teacher be arrested, persecuted, and killed, might have found value in hearing that same Jesus say one more unexpected time, Peace be with you?
Jesus' second action that night, after showing his crucifixion wounds, was to say to the disciples yet again:
"Peace I give you. Now just as God has sent me, now I send you."
And with those words, whether they knew it or not, a gathered community becomes a church.
Jesus' third action was to breathe on the disciples and to give them his Spirit.
Fourth, Jesus lets them know that they have the power to forgive and to be forgiven.
Do you think that Thomas, wrung with the pain of the past few days, most likely filled with sorrow and guilt, could have used a gift of the power of Jesus' spirit?
Would he have felt better knowing that he was forgiven and that he could forgive, too?
But Thomas wasn't there, and so he didn't. Not for eight more days.

In all the accounts of encounters with the resurrected Jesus, almost always there is more than one person around when Jesus shows up.
Only does Mary of Magdala encounter Jesus completely on her own.
Every other account of the pre-ascension Jesus occurs when two or three, at least, are gathered in Jesus' name-or at least very nearby.
In our Gospel by John, we have a description of disciples drawn together and the first example of the post-resurrection church.
People fearful and grieving, but not staying alone.
People gathering together to support one another in fear and grief.
And Jesus shows up.
Jesus gives them more than they ever expected to receive.
Peace. Forgiveness. Power. The order to take what they have received out of the isolated room into the larger world.
Part of what we have received from the power of the resurrection is the gift of church.
This is our mission: Peace, power, and forgiveness-from here into the world.
Jesus knows that many of us are the kind of people who like to experience things before we believe. Like our brother Thomas.
Thomas can never make up for what he missed by not being with his brothers and sisters that first night of the resurrection.
He has to wait another eight days in his doubt and confusion and fear and sorrow.
But Jesus, being God, always is so much more ready to give than we are to receive, and Thomas is given another opportunity to gather with brothers and sisters and wait for Christ.
Like many of us, Thomas thinks that what he needs to build that relationship with Jesus is some flesh and blood, five senses experience with Jesus.
Which is why many of you are worshipping at a church like St. Mary's today.
In what we call a liturgical church rather than a Bible church.
Because we, the disciples gathered, need that five senses encounter with God.
We do listen to a lot of Bible in our worship at St. Mary's on Sundays-four different passages of Scripture.
But with our shorter sermons, so we can get everything else in, if we want in-depth Bible study, we have to show up another time.
Like Sunday morning at 9 or Wednesday morning at 9.30 or Friday morning at 6 am-or all those other times you gather to study the Bible.
We think that Bible study is so important that we lift it from worship and spend longer quality time with it some other time in the day or the week.
What we do spend a lot of time in worship doing is receiving the kind of God experience that Thomas encountered a whole week later.
We spend a lot of time experiencing God and our relationship with God through our senses.
Our knees bend and touch cushion or ground when we enter our pews at the beginning of worship, and when we pray with our brothers and sisters, and when we confess our sins, and after we receive communion.
We move our hands and arms to cover ourselves in the sign of the cross.
We touch our head and mouth and heart at the beginning of the reading of the Gospel as a sign that those words are to be in our thoughts and mind and in our speech and the inner most part of our being.
We touch our head and heart and shoulder to shoulder and heart again as a sign that we are surrounded by the love and power of God our Creator and Jesus the Christ and the Holy Spirit who dwells in our midst. Especially after being forgiven by that same power.

Especially as we are blessed by that same power.
We bend our bodies in reverence to the cross when we enter and leave as a sign that we honor God more than we honor ourselves.
We feel God's love through clasping hands and hugs at the Peace.
We hear God's voice through the voices of one another-joined in prayer or music
We hear God through prayers offered with a cadence of God of mercy and then a chorus of hear our prayer
We hear water pouring and remember our baptism
We see candles lit and are reminded of the light of Christ
We stand or kneel before God's holy table with our hands and mouths open as a sign of our confidence that God will come into our hearts and feed us and fill us.
We smell God's love in grape-infused wine and feel its wetness on our lips.
We feel God's love in soft yeasty bread placed in our hands, smell its sweet aroma that then fills our mouths with the taste and texture of that abundant love.

We can receive a little of this sensory experience of God when we are alone.
But we can only get the total experience when we are gathered with our brothers and sisters. Here. In the post-resurrection church. We are here today for many reasons, but most likely because we want to experience God.
We are the church of the gathered men and women in the upper room the night of the resurrection, and joined by lagging Thomas one week later.
Today, like those disciples gathered in that room in Jerusalem, we are a post-resurrection gathering of brothers and sisters. Some of us are afraid. Some of us are tired. Some of us are sad.
All of us are blessed. None of us is alone. All of us can be filled.
We are Christ's body. The church.
AMEN

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