Now What?
Mr. J. Cody Nielsen
Kay Spiritual Life Center
April 11, 2010
John 20:19-31; Psalm 150
If you look on the bulletin you will realize that this is Easter II. It’s not normal time, regular time, or says anything about Easter being over. In fact, we have just begun a 50 day stretch toward Pentecost (which will be much after many of you have graduated or at least finished for the year)….
And so we say “Christ is Risen. (Christ is Risen indeed)
Chris is Risen and we are better because of it. But, Christ’s resurrection always provides a question ever year I have yet to resolve: Now what?
We go through this entire time of Easter and we are passionate…. and excited…and we baptize people…. and then…. NOW WHAT!
Imagine you are the disciples. Imagine this Jesus character you’ve been following around gets crucified, dies, is buried, and then three days later gets up….. Not just has his body taken away and you are left with a mystery but instead the guy gets up, goes for a walk, and shows up at your door….. Ah…… NOW WHAT?
For the Disciples, just like us, the resurrection leaves us to figure out what to do next…. And that is the question we begin with today….
Thomas though has a little bit (well, let’s say a pretty big issue getting started with the now what)
He wants more proof before he makes his next move…. He utters the words made famous in the our reading today….
“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.”——
Thomas kind of has the short end of the stick in this situation. For most of the last two chapters of the Gospel of John, we see Mary Magdalene & the disciples being seen by Jesus. He appears to all of our main characters…. except of course Thomas….And of course, since he didn’t actually see him…. he has doubt and questions the declaration….and we question his dedication and faith…. but is this a valid response?
Yes, Thomas struggles with his faith….. yes Thomas is the doubter….. But the story of Doubting Thomas has something deeper to be understand than simply a question and a challenge to the exclamation of a risen Christ….. A simple doubt, while still a doubt in the midst of one of the most important moments in history, is heartbreaking in more ways than one…. Thomas’ simple doubt when looks at in the context of the whole Gospel of John becomes more about Thomas’ trust and love in the community of disciples than in the faith of the resurrection itself.
And as a Church, trust and love is what we are about as well… Trust is what brings us together to be the body….. So Thomas comes into question of the declarations of the community and thus doubt and shows his lack of trust in the other people who have seen something a little different. The disciples are trying to get to now what!, and Thomas begins with the ….. …… I don’t believe any of you…. I can’t trust your statements…. I can’t trust that way of being…. I only trust my faith… and my faith requires that I see and touch the resurrected Christ…MY faith is what matters…. my kind of faith is the right way to understand this situation… and that’s what I don’t believe your faith is enough for me to trust in you….
And that’s sometimes what we have going on in our community. We are called together as Christians to live out and understand a now what…. Perhaps a now what that is bigger than anything in human history. . Our big old “Now What” that we have to answer as the body of Christ doesn’t even get started because we immediately move toward doubt….We look at the body of Christians throughout the world and we begin to point our fingers at those who see Christ’ resurrection in a different way… with a different kind of theology…. with a different belief in what Christ’ resurrection means for us…. and we begin to tear apart, becoming a community for us and only for us….
We are convicted by our faith to believe one thing or the other… To stand for the right to choice or to stand on the right of life……. to stand for a conservative expression of faith or a liberal expression, or somewhere else in between….We stand for an inclusive expression of community, and we shun against those who can’t express the came inclusion…. We fellowship with those who see “eye to eye” with us… And we begin to doubt and to question when someone’s belief structure and their rational are seen different….. And so immediately our inclusion becomes exclusion…. because we doubt them as living out the right message…. We look at some of the different groups, even groups on our campus and even in this center… and we say…. hmmmm maybe that’s not exactly the way it is… We become an inclusive ministry dedicated to justice and inclusion…. and we look at those who are more conservative and maybe have just a little bit of doubt…. I don’t know if they got the message right… I don’t think that mission trip is doing the right thing….. we doubt that they see the risen Christ…. we want them to see only our own way of seeing it…
And this is Thomas’ true dilemma… He takes a community of believers who he has worshipped with, fellowshipped with, even fled and hid even until now with, all in hopes of telling this very story we have heard so many times….. and Thomas hears the story, the story he probably did not expect but the one he has been waiting for in some way, and he says that it’s just not good enough….. Their eyes and their fingers are not enough for him; he must see and touch for himself…. They aren’t right…. The resurrection doesn’t take place for Thomas unless Thomas sees it and experiences it on his own terms…..
Thomas actions are rebuked often because he is seen to have a lack of faith… But do they have to be rebuked not so much because of Thomas’ lack of faith as much as his lack of trust and love from within the community…. He is breaking apart the body, the gathering of disciples, by one simple doubt, and putting into jeopardy the kinds of situations we see in our reading from Acts…. where the same disciples will valiantly stand up against the powers that be, trusting and believing that while each of them may have experienced Christ in a little different way, that the message of the gospel remains and even unto death they as disciples will stand for the message of the living Christ and the redeeming God. Because if we as a church are going to stand up against a world that doesn’t see some of our actions as valid, or having any point, we have to stand together…
As Nancy Clare Pittman puts it, At some point, if our churches/ communities are to faithful to the risen Christ, we must stop distrusting our friend in Christ. At the very least, we must stop questioning motives, doubting dedication, and thinking the worst of our companions when they state a different opinion or offer a contradictory version. We must learn to believe not simple in the goodness of the Lord, but in the goodness of one another, even when they deliver the strangest news—- “We have seen the Lord.”
Easter often leaves us with the question we have yet to fully solve: now what…. But perhaps the answer to that pseudo questions begins in the response to those who are around us by saying…. I trust you…. I believe you…. even when they don’t see eye to eye…. Our now what of this community, our justice, our healing, our models of relationships, they begin to really come alive not just when we embrace those who see it our way, but when we learn to trust fully those who see things a little differently, and begin to live out the now what now what we say at the communion together… We are one with Christ…. one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world, that we may be for the world the Body of Christ… And so, today, let us begin to let go of our distrusts, our expectations of what our fellow Christians must look like and instead start to actualize how God permeates through all people, even those who are a little different from us, but all have the same love of God and same desires to Proclaim….. CHRIST IS RISEN….. AMEN
