Reasonable Doubt

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

We’re here to talk about Jesus by talking about Thomas, and I am very excited about that because Thomas is great. And there’s a disclaimer I need to make before we get into it, because centuries of either skipping over it or interpreting it incorrectly is part of how we got to where we are, and we are long overdue for a course correction.

In many places in the Gospel According to John, and in our reading for tonight, you’ll see phrases like “the doors were locked for fear of the Jews.” The word there is Ioudaion, which, in context, means Judeans, which means the governing authorities of the placed called Judea, who were Jewish. It doesn’t mean your classmates who practice Judaism, with whom some of us gathered on the quad this evening. The line from point A to point B on anti-semitism is sometimes that short, and that is so dangerous.

Last Saturday morning in Poway, and six months ago in Pittsburgh, and many many times throughout history, Jewish people have been murdered by white supremacists. Many of those white supremacists have had their understandings of Judaism twisted from the very beginning from seemingly innocuous scripture like this. Fear is very powerful.

It is important to me that you understand this, because you are emerging adults in a world full of fear, and you have more power to counterbalance that fear than you are led to believe.

We worry, as Christians, I think, about fear and about doubt and about whether all of this stuff that we’re practicing is really making the world better. If you leave this building on Wednesday nights with just a little more love for your fellow humans than you came in the door with, and a little more courage to do something you’re afraid of, and a little more emboldened to speak peace into a world of violence, then we’re on the right path.

It breaks my heart to think about any of you being in danger on campus, in your classrooms, in movie theaters, or at restaurants, or wherever you go—to fear for your safety in our sacred places almost too much for me.

But I spoke with a few of you this week—and so many other weeks, when death felt so near—about how we are the Easter people. I say that phrase a lot, and you’ll hear it in other contexts from other Christians and other Lutherans, especially, and I just want to remind you what that means. Being the Easter people doesn’t mean we’re always sunshine and candy and spring flowers. It means that we are always alive, even in death.

I know, I know, impossible. But that’s the thing. Jesus was dead, and Jesus is alive again. Death is real—perhaps the realest thing there is—but death is never the end of the story. God promises us that there is life, and there is death, and there is life again. That sounds too good to be true, and I think that that’s exactly why it makes perfect sense that our dear friend Thomas in tonight’s gospel is not quite ready to accept it as fact, either!

On the week after Easter every year, my fellow clergy and I all write sermons about Thomas. They say the usual things that we say about Thomas: he wasn’t with the other disciples, he doubts that Jesus has risen, he demands to touch Jesus’ wounds, he gets the opportunity to do so, he believes, he proclaims. A great story!

But there’s more to it than that. The disciples are all celebrating, delighted by this unfathomable turn of events, and saying “He is risen! We have seen the Lord! Hallelujah!” but Thomas thinks for a moment and says, “I don’t know, y’all. You saw him? I wish I could see him. I’d like to touch his wounds and hear his voice—as you have done—so that I may say, without a doubt, that he is risen.”

And that’s not really too much to ask, is it? The other disciples have seen and touched and heard, shouldn’t Thomas be afforded the same? And Thomas—like any of us who have grieved a death—may very well still be coming to terms with the idea that all of it even happened. Weren’t they just traveling the Palestinian countryside together, the whole community, a few weeks ago? Weren’t they just riding haphazardly on donkeys in to Jerusalem? Wasn’t Jesus just here?

With all this rattling around in his mind, what does it feel like to hear the other disciples proclaim that Jesus is risen from the dead? Thomas is sure that, last week, they told him Jesus had died. Was that real? Did that happen? Was it not Jesus whose face he’d cradled in a final goodbye? Was it not Jesus nailed to the cross, after all? Was this all some kind of trick? Or, what if the disciples are mistaken? What if it is an impostor claiming to be their Lord? Thomas needs to touch this man who claims to be the risen Christ and touch those wounds.

This is important. Thomas does not ask that Jesus perform a miracle. Thomas does not ask that Jesus break bread with them. Thomas does not ask for Jesus to recount the details of their life together, as some sort of password.

Thomas wants to touch the wounds—Thomas wants to know that the resurrected Jesus continues to be the crucified Jesus. That all of it was real. That Thomas did witness his friend die, and that that friend who really did die is really now raised.

And as he has always done, Jesus appears at just the right time. Jesus knows what Thomas needs. “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says. “Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And so, in touching the familiar hands of his friend, Thomas recognizes the resurrected Jesus—the one whose torture and death he had witnessed just two weeks before. It was true, what his friends had said! He is risen! Thomas recognized him, exclaiming “My Lord and My God!”

Thomas’ understanding of Jesus, of the power of God, of the movement of the Spirit, was not based on his ability to see and interpret and rationalize. Thomas knew that the Christian life was about reaching out a hand, experiencing human brokenness, and believing in that connection.

It’s okay if you’re not convinced that Jesus was dead and is now alive. You didn’t see it happen, either. A good way, I think—and Thomas would probably agree—to investigate, is to reach out. Look around, as you are able, and see the human brokenness all around us.

Reach out. Take a risk. Make a connection with someone you’re unsure about. Open your scared, vulnerable self, so that someone might reach out to you. Connection in our shared fear and uncertainty—like gathering for tonight’s vigil—can help us to see the way forward, together.

I’ve said before and I’ll say again that “Doubting Thomas” is such an unfair nickname given to this man. Remember, just last week, when we heard that the women ran from the empty tomb to tell their friends that Jesus was alive, and they “dismissed it as an idle tale”? Why aren’t those men known as the Doubting Disciples in every theology textbook forever?

Or maybe, if we reframe the role of doubt in our lives of faith, being known as Doubting Thomas isn’t such an insult. We shouldn’t accept everything anyone ever tells us about God—especially when we’re told that we need to meet unreachable standards of perfection in order to be loved by God. We should doubt people who are so certain about their exact image of God being the capital-T-Truth, and hearing no other perspectives.

God is complicated, and we’re complicated. I guess this is confusing, because I hope that you never doubt that you are a beloved child of God, perfect as you are and as you are becoming. But, if you ever do doubt that, you know where to find me to tell you again. And maybe, some time, you’ll be certain, and you’ll reassure a friend in doubt.

Remember, we’re the Body of Christ, together. Broken and made whole. Alive, and dead, and alive again. Thanks be to God!

You, beloved, are alive!

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! [Christ is risen, indeed! Hallelujah!]

This evening we are gathered to celebrate the pinnacle of our church year, the holiest of days in the Christian life, the feast of the Resurrection of our Lord. This is the day, and the 50-day season, where we shout HALLELUJAH at all available opportunities, praising God for bringing life out of death. And all the songs have exclamation points!

If you attend a few year’s worth of Easter services, you’ll notice that there are four different versions of the story. We have the Gospel According to Matthew, to Mark, to Luke, and to John. Each story is a little bit different—the cast of characters shifts a bit, the dialogue and the events are not quite the same, but in every version, the tomb is empty. In all four versions of the story, the women who knew and loved Jesus—who had watched him murdered just days before—arrive at his graveside to mourn, to pray, and—in this year’s Gospel According to Luke—anoint his body with “the spices they had prepared.” Imagine, for a moment. It is merely hours since Jesus has died and been buried.

Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the Mother of James, and “the other women who were with them” spent their sabbath day afraid and unsure about what the future would hold. They relied on their tradition to point them toward action, to move through the rituals of grieving together.

These women probably fed their families, and gathered to pray in the candlelight. Then, before anyone else was awake, I imagine them meeting, quietly, at one of their homes, and gathering the spices they’d prepared. I imagine them looking one another in their scared faces, taking a few steadying breaths, nodding resolutely, and walking out into the dawn.

What did they talk about on the way, I wonder? Their community was in disarray, as Judas had disappeared and Peter had denied being one of them and, come to think of it, they weren’t sure where Thomas had gone to, either. Should they be going into hiding? Should they be demonstrating in the streets? Who would decide? I wonder if they simply discussed their work for the rest of the day, and their children, like a normal morning.

But when they arrived, “they found the stone rolled away from the tomb” and “they did not find the body.” This was not what they expected. I imagine their minds beginning to race. Had their friends come and moved his body, without telling them? Had they misremembered where he had been laid? Had the Romans not been satisfied with stealing Jesus’ life, they had to come back and steal his death, too?

Before they probably even formulated a complete sentence to say to one another, “suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.” Terrified, they fell to the ground and covered their faces. Nothing prepared them for this. One of the dazzling strangers speaks: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

“He is not here; but has been raised.”

“Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again."

Remember. Last week, on Maundy Thursday, we talked about that word “remember.” Re-member. To put back together. These dazzling strangers are complicating the story by the second, and yet have calmly asked these women to put the pieces together. While Jesus was alive, he told them he would be killed but that he would rise again.

These women—and the male disciples, too—were astounded by this every time, and never believed that Jesus could have been telling the truth. It was impossible. And yet, in the creeping light of the resurrection dawn, it is all coming into focus. Maybe, just maybe, the worst thing has not been the last thing.

The Luke story doesn’t tell us the play-by-play, but I imagine that these women scrambled to their feet and ran all the way back to their homes, panting for breath, shaking their loved ones awake, exclaiming “Jesus is alive!” To what I’m certain was their unspeakable disappointment, the women are dismissed by the eleven male disciples, who call their proclamation “an idle tale.”

In general, I abide by the maxim “believe women.” Have you ever—whether or not you are a woman—told an important story only to have someone wave it off as unlikely, since he hadn’t experienced it for himself? You can identify, then, with these women. It is important that we listen to people’s lived experience, especially when it vastly differs from our own. There are many ways of knowing things, many ways of being true.

And, simultaneously, we live in a world where seeing isn’t even always believing. A healthy dose of skepticism and doing your own research can, sometimes, save you from being dangerously misled. So, if you show up to the resurrection dawn with confusion and skepticism, you’re in good company. Most of the disciples are unsure.

But Peter—dear, dear Peter—got up and ran to the tomb. He corroborated the story of the women, that the tomb was, in fact, empty, and was amazed.

The thing that changed on the first Easter morning was not that a group of people suddenly became certain—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that Jesus had been raised from the dead; it was that they were willing to live the rest of their lives open to the possibility. They stopped looking for the living among the dead. They understood that sometimes God steps in in ways that don’t make sense.

One of my favorite writers, Hanif Abdurraqib, wrote this week that his “relationship to faith changes daily, but [he’d] like to think that one part of believing is our shared stumbling toward the witness of something that was once thought to be unbelievable.”

The resurrection morning isn’t about certainty, isn’t about correct belief, isn’t about being able to explain how someone who was dead is alive. It is about the vulnerability of allowing yourself to live into the wildly unlikely reality that God put an end to death.

Through the life, death, and glorious resurrection of Jesus the Christ, God shows us what it means to be fully human. God shows us that it means expecting the unexpected and delighting in mystery. When we find ourselves in the depths of despair, in the throes of grief, frozen in fear, and trapped in our anger, God has been there. God has lived and died as a human being, and understands our life—and our death—from the inside.

As Jesus is raised to new life, so, too, are we! In the light of Easter, we see with new eyes that the possibilities are endless! God’s love for you is boundless! You, beloved, are alive!

Every Morning is Easter Morning

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!)

We have said and sung it in just about every grammatically possible way. Jesus Christ is Risen Today! Christ is risen, Alleluia! Alleluia, Jesus is Risen! And maybe you feel like we’re a little late to the party because Jesus Christ was risen on Sunday, and this is Wednesday, but, let me tell you—every morning is Easter morning, from now on.

You may have a heard a story about a cheesy song with those lyrics, but, all jokes aside, it’s the truth. We don’t say “Christ was risen” or “Christ has risen” but “Christ is risen” because the resurrection of Jesus the Christ is not limited to a historical moment, but rather is for all time. Jesus Christ is Risen Today, and tomorrow, and the next day. We can sing these songs throughout the entire Easter season, and really every day except for a handful leading up to the celebration of the resurrection, again.

I read a great article on Sojourners, and shared it on Facebook yesterday, called “Christ is Risen. Now What?” It was written by Kaitlin Curtice, a Native American Christian and author. As the title suggests, in it, she asks, “now what?” Now that Easter Sunday has come and gone, what has changed? What did we spend six weeks of Lent in preparation for? I think it helps us to decide how to look forward if we take a second to look back. Back to the very first Easter morning.

As I read this gospel story, and imagine the experience these women had early that morning, I just sort of shake my head in wonder. They had come to the tomb of their friend to do what they would have done if he had died any other way—they had come to mourn and, as it is written in some of the other gospel accounts, bring spices for funeral rituals. But he hadn’t just died, naturally, he had been crucified publicly but the Roman government. Their whole world had turned upside down, and so they sought comfort in the only shred of normal life they could muster, their duty to their friend, even in death. The other disciples were off, secluded somewhere, afraid and unsure. And here’s the thing—it’s hard to blame them! Jesus has been executed by the state, and so it’s not like the political unrest has come to an end after three days. They were probably still in danger. Leaving the relative safety of the place where they are staying in Jerusalem to go out in the dark and visit the tomb—which is guarded by soldiers, remember—absolutely outs them as friends and supporters of this convicted, executed criminal. Who’s to say they won’t meet the same fate? Peter’s denial of being associated with Jesus, while not exactly brave, is pretty easy to understand.

But something brought Mary Magdalene and the other Mary out into the world that morning. I think that thing was hope.

I read a book called Hope in the Dark last month that I am obsessed with. I underlined like half the sentences, and mailed copies to a bunch of friends and pastoral colleagues I hoped could be similarly affected by it. I will get you a copy, if you want. In it, Rebecca Solnit writes not about a shallow or casual hope, but a deep and serious hope. It’s this true hope that led these women out to the tomb that morning. They weren’t hoping that Jesus would be alive, but they were hopeful that life could go on without him. They were hopeful that they could get up and go do the work that he had called them to do, keep the movement going, one day, one step, at a time. “Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.” [1]

The story of Jesus’ resurrection does not have to be a critical dissection of just how it worked, biologically. We can sit here and wonder about how a dead man came to life again, and never get anywhere closer to solving the mystery. I know this question is one that some of you are asking, and it’s a question I ask, too. We talked about this just the other week, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Since we cannot know the historicity of this event, what about it can we know? What does this story tell us about God? Time and time again in our scripture and in our own lives, something that was once dead is alive again. Something that was seemingly hopeless returns, full of possibility. What does this say about the nature of our God, about the persistence of God’s love and liberation? Jesus the Christ was crucified and died, and then, somehow he lived again. The empire put Jesus to death, but his movement and his followers could not be silenced. The message of the gospel is not quieted by fear, is not silenced by death. The message of the gospel is not to be whispered, but shouted.

The story of the women leaving the tomb to tell their friends about Jesus puts this so clearly. “So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy,” it says. There’s a reason that we sing all of our happiest songs for Easter, all the ones with exclamation points in the titles and hallelujahs all over the place. Part of the radical nature of Easter is that, in the midst of political violence and social turmoil, God calls us to bring good news of great joy. “And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.” [1]

So, if we circle back to Kristin Curtice’s question--it’s Easter, now what?--have we come to an answer? What do we do, if every morning is Easter morning? Do we go about our lives, quietly? You can, if you want. Or, you can go about your life, as the Easter people, bringing good news of great joy. You can shout HALLELUJAH at all available opportunities. You can rejoice in the knowledge and love of God, you has freed you from the power of sin and death. You can celebrate today, and every day.

In a few moments, we’re going to have the opportunity to renew our baptismal covenants. When you were baptized, if you were baptized, you were baptized into Christ’s death as well as his life. We need not be reminded that there is death in this world, that is thrust before us pretty routinely. But what we do need to be reminded of is that there is life in this world. There is new life in us today because we have heard the story of Jesus’ resurrection and made it part of our own story. We who were dead are alive again. That’s pretty good news.

Be not afraid, sing out for joy! Christ is risen! Hallelujah!