Judges 6:11-24; John 20:19-31

April 11, 2021

  • Dealing with Resurrection change

 

A few years ago, my family was travelling back from a trip to Florida.  As much fun as it is to visit Florida, it is always better to leave.  Strange things happen in Florida.  Anyway, we were headed back from that visit and were travelling through the eastern part of South Carolina to get to Virginia.  That is the part of South Carolina in which I grew up – my elementary school years up through my seventh grade.  As it turned out, we were going to be passing very close to the house my family built in Fountain Inn, S.C., the house that I even helped build myself and where I learned as a little person about insulation, drywall, and other basic carpentry.

 

Even though my children did not express much interest in seeing where their dad spent his childhood (I think they were tired and worn out), I could not resist the opportunity of seeing the place, myself.  So we drove there to see what it was like then.  After driving back and forth in front of the house in creepy fashion, we pulled into the driveway unannounced.  We were pushing dinner time, but the people living there then came out and greeted us and gave us a tour around the house.  It WAS the same house, certainly, but it looked dramatically different than it did 36 years before.  Someone had built on to the house, and I think it had been painted a different color, and it was certainly showing the wear and tear of decades of use.  And it looked much smaller than it did almost four decades ago.  The house and the yard looked much smaller than they did to those childhood eyes.  It was the same house, but it was also very different.

 

Now imagine that you are in Thomas’ shoes.  You have been living with your rabbi Jesus for three years of intensive, small-group community.  You have seen things you could not have imagined, and learned all kinds of things that you did not understand, but you stuck with Jesus because you knew he was special.  He might just be the one, the Messiah.  You were close, and he was one of your dearest people.  You loved the man and you believed in him – until he was crucified.  Everything was going well until he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.  Within a few days, he was dying on a cross and everything was over.  The journey came to a cruel, terrifying, abrupt, vicious end.  Your own life was potentially at risk.  Maybe it felt that the last three years had been a waste.  All you knew was that everything was now different.  You just did not understand how different things had become.  When you returned to the home where the other disciples were hiding, they had a bizarre report that the Jesus you knew for a fact was dead was now alive.  He was walking and talking and very much alive.  It was not possible, but they all seemed so convinced.

 

Thomas is often vilified for his reluctance to buy wholeheartedly the claims of his friends.  We cannot even say his name without connecting the “doubting” part.  We don’t call Peter, “Denying Peter,” or even Judas, “Traitor Judas,” but Thomas gets his “Doubting” name for all time because he refused to believe the impossible: that Jesus was as much alive as they were, perhaps in some ways more.  He was no longer bound to death at all which each of them would still one day still have to endure.

 

That confusion is what happens when things change up on us, especially when things feel normal in some ways but very different in other ways.  It’s hard to know which way to look, forward or backward – toward what’s different and what’s still the same.  The pandemic is the perfect illustration.  In some ways, things are identical to before a year ago, and in other ways, things are completely different.  You may recall that I was not even with you a year ago.  Things have indeed changed.  But the world has become a new place, and somehow God must be at work right in the middle of it.  Faith dictates that God is tremendously at work right now around us.  We will spend the months ahead figuring out where God is leading us.  Thomas did not have that perspective, however, and that is the key to the whole passage and his reaction.

 

In fact, Gideon was in the same boat – God was doing something new, something different, something that had not happened before in that day.  Gideon’s people were living under foreign occupation.  They needed to be free.  It was time for someone to deliver them, and Gideon was supposed to be that person.  Of course, Gideon had no idea what was going on, and he wanted the evidence to show him that God was serious, that this change was something that God was doing, that what he was hearing was the truth.

 

Thomas wanted the evidence, also.  He wanted to see with his own two eyes what the other disciples were saying was true.  He was wrestling with the fact that something new might be going on, but it was so hard to reconcile with what he knew to be true.

 

And this is the great Christian dilemma.  Ever since that first Resurrection Sunday nearly 2000 years ago, we have been trying to figure out what it means that Jesus lives and how it shapes our lives as we seek to follow Christ Jesus.  Somehow we need to live out the power of the resurrection in our own lives every day, but the fact that Jesus rose from the dead means that things are different.  Things are entirely different as I was expressing last week.  On the other hand, so much of the world still looks the same.  People can still be difficult, hard, and cruel; the world can be difficult, hard, and cruel.  But what we have since the first day Jesus rose from the dead is the beautiful, powerful, life-changing Kingdom of God. I need you to hear me: the Kingdom of God was unleashed on the world with the death and resurrection of Jesus.  That is the fundamental change that revolutionized everything, but we need to open our eyes to see it.

 

Gideon needed tests and proofs to belief God might be using him for something new.  Thomas needed to touch the wounds of Jesus to believe that he had risen from the dead.  Notice, however, that once Thomas simply saw Jesus, his tests went out the window.  He never had to touch the wounds to believe, but he still had to see.  He opened his eyes to the Lord and King Jesus.  He embraced the world as it had become and what God did.

 

Will the people of God open their eyes, also?  Jesus makes this interesting statement about those who believe without seeing being blessed.  We cannot and will not see Jesus standing before us in bodily form, so the blessing we will receive is when we believe that the Kingdom of God is right here and we have a part in it.  It is not a matter of sight; it is a matter of faith.

 

Here is where the rubber meets the road:

Can we believe that what Jesus has done in this world through the love of God is greater than every pandemic, every economic downturn, every war, every catastrophe?

 

Because the Kingdom of God is here… we can resist pandemics out of love for life

We can work through economic crises out of generosity and compassion.  We can work for peace out of kindness and greater peace. We can overcome any obstacle to God’s love in this world with God’s love.  The powers of darkness are still trying to strip us of our joy, our love, our mercy, our forgiveness, our reconciliation, and our compassion.

 

Either we are still waiting for some proof before we believe that Jesus is risen and Lord of all or we put our trust and confidence in the one who has conquered death itself and invites us to follow in his steps and facing the world he changed.  You and I have all had holy experience, times when we found the Spirit of God in our midst and times when we needed a little more help like Thomas, but faith has been given to us so that we can continue the mission of Jesus to rework this world in his glorious Kingdom.  It is here, if we will but see it.  It is here, if we will but do it.  It is here for us all.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.