John 20:19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “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.”

 

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

God you are the first light cutting through the void.

You are the final light which we shall enjoy forever.

Help us to welcome the light and walk in it always.

We praise you God,

that the light of Christ shines in our darkness and is never overcome;

show us the way we must go to eternal day;

through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

from the New Zealand Pra yer Book.

Today we hear of the second and third post resurrection sighting of Jesus that are included in John’s Gospel.  The first was to Mary Magdalene in the garden which is included in the Easter reading from John.  The Second is to all of the disciples expect Thomas.  The disciples are still in Jerusalem.  They are locked away in fear.  In their place of fear Jesus appears to them in the flesh.  He comes to comfort their fears and to empower them.  John’s manages in his telling of the visit to include images that we normally associate with Pentecost.  Jesus does more then comforting them in their fear.  He sends them out of the room and he commissions them for ministry “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.””  In a not so subtle way he is telling the disciples to get out of the room and get with the program.   They are to go out into the world as Jesus did and proclaim salvation and the love of God.  They are to forgive sins as he forgave sins.   This is partially what got Jesus in trouble with the religious authorities.  It was claiming the power to forgive.  A power that the religious leaders of the day held only belonged to God.  If we remember back to earlier readings in the church year we had the confrontation when Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath with t the words “Your sins are forgiven. “  Jesus today is not just claiming that power for himself as the Son of God but he is delegating it to the Disciples and to us.

Jesus understands that forgiveness is an essential part of our being.  He understands that we need love and forgiveness to be whole.  God knows that we are not perfect.  We make mistakes.  Jesus came to us to let us know that God can forgive our mistakes if we are willing to love God and to let go of them.  God knows that we have difficulty loving when we feel that we are unlovable because of sin.

And what about Thomas?  How would you like to go into eternity with a nickname of “doubting”?  But then again don’t we all have times when we doubt?  There are times when all of us doubt.   I believe that we have doubt because the world is filled with ambiguity.  We don’t, in general like ambiguity.  Most of us want as yes or no answer to life’s questions but with god sometime the answer, as Verna Dozier a great teacher, prophet and advocate of the ministry of all the baptized states.  Sometimes the answer with God is Yes and No.  Verna wrote in “Confronted by God, the Essential Verna Dozier” “With Jesus, goodness is ambiguous; Jesus did not make little golden rules.  He took the world as he found it , and I think that many times he was not saying, “This is what you should do.”  Many times he was saying “What can you learn from this?”

To me ambiguity embraces the totality of reality.  There isn’t any one position that can do this – it is only one part of the total reality. And that is the most difficult thing for us simplistic humans to accept.  I remember I had a student who was so annoyed with me because I was always pointing out another possibility.  She would say. ‘Miss Dozier, just tell be what you want and I will do it.’

The comic strip Kudzu poses the issue very succinctly, The preacher and a young friend are sitting on a mountiaintop.  The young man sighs, “Life is full of ambiguity.”  He turns to the preacher “Right Preacher? he asks and the preacher answers “Yes and no.”

In my life there always seem to be more than one answer to the questions.  In science it seems that just as we seem to have the answer ready to be written in stone some little exception, or some new information comes along that stands us on our heads and sends us back to the test-tube, so to speak.  It is the same way with god.  Just as we think we have everything figured out, if we are so bold as to even think that we can figure out God, God does something to send us back to our hypotheses.  To keep looking and asking questions.

That God is not fixed is very troubling to some of our companions on this journey of life.  It is much simpler if we can just be told what is right and wrong.  Take the 10 commandments and keep them.  Simple, straightforward stuff!  But even those simple commandments had enough ambiguity that they spawned the various codes and laws on what they mean.  That is why I believe, and I think many of you at St. Paul’s believe, that we need all sorts and conditions of humankind in our doors.  We need those who, like the disciples in that locked room, have seen Jesus with no ambiguity, and those like Thomas who need to see God in black and white but we also need people who have not seen and still believe.  We need people who have a faith that asks questions.  We need the doubters in our faith as long as the doubt does not paralyze them.  Doubt, when it is good, sends us out to look for answers.  It makes us turn over the rocks.  To ask what Jesus would do today given the new and different landscape that we have shaped.  Doubt is not the opposite of faith.  Ambiguity is not a bad thing.   Some of us would like to cling to a simplistic Sunday School faith.  A faith of pretty pictures and simplified explanations.  But that is not our faith.  Our heritage of belief as Anglicans rests on a belief in Scripture, tradition, and reason.  All three.  It is a faith that should, and does ask questions.  I believe that it is a faith that challenges us to look at all of our world and ask what would God have us do.  It is a faith that requires that we not check our minds at the doors of our church.  It requires that we practice a radical hospitality of inviting in the doubters and the sure.  It requires that we reach out and bring all perspectives under our roof.  This is not comfortable for some of us.  We want a rule book that is fixed.  We, like Thomas, want proofs.  As I see it God is not going to be pinned down by our narrow minds.   He is going to keep challenging us to grow and in order to grow we need to reach out and ask questions.  We need to listen to all of God’s people.  Even, as I have said before, those people with whom we disagree for they too have part of the answer, or at least, part of the question.  We need to keep turning over the rocks in our life and seeing what is under them.  Our answers to life’s questions rarely satisfy.  They frequently raise more answers but that is why we have faith.  We have faith that, in all our questions and life’s ambiguities that God is with us.  I would invite all of us to leave that locked room where Jesus found the disciples in today’s Gospel, to throw open the doors because just as Jesus commissioned the disciples saying “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” I believe we are commissioned.  Commissioned to go forward out of this place, into the world with all of its ambiguity and questions but secure in our faith that God is with us even, and perhaps, especially when the answer we perceive to life’s questions are “Yes and No”! 

Amen