2 Easter, Year B                                                                      Acts 3:12a, 13-15, 17-26
April 23, 2006                                                                         Psalm 118:19-24
St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church                              1 John 5:1-6
The Rev. Linda McCloud                                                         John 20:19-31  

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time 

            Several weeks ago in a sermon, I mentioned the Seven Deadly Sins.  By way of review, they are: pride, covetousness, lust, gluttony, envy, anger, and sloth.  Sloth, from a spiritual standpoint, could be defined as not tending to your relationship with God as compared with having joy in God.  Nowadays sloth is given the more broad definition of being an attitude of “couldn’t care less” over against the old-fashioned “Protestant work ethic.”  I like the spiritual definition better, because our spiritual life carries over into every other area of our lives.   

The focus of our scriptures today is not the sin of sloth, or the absence of it.  I say all this simply to point out that doubt is not on the list of the Seven Deadly Sins.  Perhaps doubt is not on the list because doubt is not considered to be a sin.  In fact, good healthy doubt that explores faith can lead to healthier faith.  Take, for example, Thomas the Apostle, whose story of doubt and faith the Gospel writer uses to encourage us to believe.  Our Gospel reading for today from St. John focuses heavily on Thomas’ doubt.  Our sequence hymn takes up the refrain:   

“When Thomas first the tidings heard,
how they had seen the risen Lord,
he doubted the disciples’ word.  Alleluia!”[1]   

For a man who doubted, Thomas was extremely attentive.  He seems to have been around all the time.  He followed Jesus and went through the stages of faith -- maybe more than once.  This is one of the reasons I ask newcomers and seekers to come to church faithfully for a year to let the liturgy wash over them.  These things take time. 

The Gospels do not say exactly when Thomas met Jesus.  He is something of a mystery character until we get to the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel.  In that story, we find Thomas filled with zeal and devotion to Jesus.  Jesus is on his way to raise Lazarus from the dead.  By this time in his ministry, there is a bounty of sorts on Jesus’ head.  Jesus was steering clear of Jerusalem for the time being.  Bethany, where Lazarus had lived, was within walking distance – about two miles away.  Did Jesus dare go back there?  Yes, and Thomas (also called “the twin”) would encourage and challenge his fellow disciples:  “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” 

In the first three Gospels, Thomas’ name appears in the lists of disciples whom Jesus called to himself.  By simply hanging around, by being there, Thomas was able to absorb a critical amount of information and thus be subject to formation as an Apostle.  This made him available for transformation when he met the Risen Christ.  Thomas seems to have had a critical eye and ear and heart.  You probably couldn’t fool Thomas.  He was a practical sort of guy.  He was so practical that he even asked Jesus for more precise directions on following him when Jesus was speaking in metaphorical language about “going away” or dying.  

But there was one critical time when Thomas did not show up with the other disciples.  Scripture does not give us a reason why Thomas was absent from the group that first Easter Sunday, but we can be fairly certain that he never missed again.  Maybe that first Easter Thomas was having a slothful moment – a moment of apathy instead of having joy in God.  Perhaps he was on a mission of mercy to a less fortunate person.  Whatever it was, the Risen Christ was very patient and loving and still very much the Teacher.  Jesus’ death was messy, but it cleaned up so nicely when he was raised from the dead.  Thomas and the other disciples had an opportunity to see Jesus again for the first time.  

When Thomas first learned that the other disciples had seen the Lord, Thomas did not say he absolutely would not believe.  He just said he needed proof.  That is very different from being an atheist.  If we were to use modern theological terms to describe Thomas before he met the Risen Christ, we would probably say he was an agnostic at that time.  An agnostic, broadly defined, is someone who doesn’t know whether God exists.  We could say that he was a skeptic.  The good news is that Thomas did not hold on to his skepticism once he had encountered the Risen Christ.  His new experience of Jesus was like nothing he had ever known.  The presence of Jesus in the midst of the disciples dispelled all doubt.   

With all this in mind, I say, “hooray for Doubting Thomas!”  We do not have to take someone else’s word for it that Jesus is alive.  We can experience the Risen Christ ourselves, every time we gather in His Name.  We can know, as Thomas knew, that God does not have grandchildren.  God has children.  We can’t go to heaven on someone else’s coattails.  We must experience the Risen Christ for ourselves.  This is why the church exacts of us Baptismal Vows, which we renewed at the Bishop’s visit on Thursday.  The questions that demand responses are very direct – “Do you believe . . .” – not “do you believe that someone else believes?”  If you come to faith on your own, no one can pull the rug out from under you.  Like Thomas, you will be able to say of Jesus: “My Lord and my God!”   

In this Second Week of Easter, the church is still in a euphoric mood.  We have once again renewed our awareness of our Lord’s resurrection from the dead.  As we enter this week and read our scripture passages, we realize that it is time to get down to the business of following Jesus on a daily basis. During the Great Fifty Days of Easter our first readings will be from the Acts of the Apostles.  This chronicles some of the Acts of the Holy Spirit in the early church, and the reaction of the first Christians.  Our reading in Acts today picks up just after Peter and John have healed a lame man at the Temple.  What were they doing in the temple?  It was the “hour of prayer” – where else could we expect to find them?  Christianity is daily.  They were getting down to the business of living out their faith in their everyday lives.   

Thomas, with his faith renewed in meeting Jesus again for the first time, was strengthened to take his place as an Apostle and forgive the sins of those who repented.  Thomas’ doubts were not the opposite of faith.  His doubts melted when he encountered the Risen Christ for himself.  For him, seeing was believing.  For us – well . . . we will just have to work through our doubts to stronger faith, wishing we could have had Thomas’ experience of seeing Jesus with our own eyes.  I refer us once again to our sequence hymn, which echoes the words of our Lord:

How blest are they who have not seen,
            and yet whose faith has constant been.
            for they eternal life shall win.  Alleluia!