Spirit of the Heartland

A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter
The Rev. Patricia A. Gillespie

Acts 2:14a,22-32
Psalm 111
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31

The apostles John and Peter are talking on Sunday afternoon after the visit to the empty tomb. The gist of their discussion is : "Well, looks like there's some good news and some bad news. Good news is it seems that the Lord is risen. Bad news is that I bet he's pretty upset about how we behaved on Friday."

We are told that the disciples are hiding for fear of the Jews. But if they were really thinking about what was going on, considering what happened that morning and their behavior on Friday, there's one particular Jew they might be anxious about – Jesus. If the Lord is alive, how will they face their beloved leader, knowing that in his suffering they denied knowing him and ran away? You can bet there were some really mixed emotions in that locked room that day: "Maybe he'll be angry or disappointed in us, but, thanks be to God, Christ is alive!"

So what is it that Jesus first says in this room full of fear and joy? He addresses the disciples' fear with reassuring and soothing words, saying: "Peace be with you." But a second grader suggested another perhaps equally good entrance line for Jesus, one that reflects the other piece of the disciples' mixed emotions: their surprise and joy that their Lord is alive. Jesus appears among them and says, "TaDah!"

My Old Testament professor in seminary claimed that every bible study group and every church should have a resident second grader: someone who is not burdened with our cultural fears and blindfolds, someone who is direct and open, and who says exactly what they think.

In the Gospel according to John, the designated second-grader is Thomas. The Bible doesn't call him Doubting Thomas. He is referred to as "the Twin." So where's the other twin? Some traditions suggest that Thomas was Jesus' twin. Now that doesn't necessarily mean there were two babies in the manger. But perhaps Thomas looked enough like Jesus, that often people mistook him for Jesus. In the days before newspapers and televisions broadcast the faces of famous people, engraving them on the people's memories, it is easy to imagine people in the crowd trying to point out the rabbi from Nazareth. "Is it that one over there? He looks like the guy I heard preaching from the boat that day." "No. That's his buddy Thomas." "Oh. He could almost be his twin." Say it often enough, and the nickname sticks – Thomas, the Twin.

And Thomas the Twin wasn't there when Jesus first appeared in the locked room. That makes me wonder if perhaps the "doubting" belongs not so much to Thomas as to the other disciples. After all, they knew that some of them had trouble recognizing the Lord at first. Did some of them secretly doubt, wondering to themselves, "Just where was Thomas the Twin when the Lord appeared to us last week? In our grief and fear, we couldn't have mistaken Tom for Jesus, could we?"

If so, they must have been relieved by Thomas' need to see Jesus for himself. And even more relieved to see the two of them in the same room. Even if they were not worried about having been confused when they first saw the Lord, Thomas' insistence that "seeing's believing" may have been a relief. Thomas expressed a very human desire that they may have shared – to see, to touch, to be reassured that the resurrection is real.

Thomas may be the twin of the whole group of disciples, expressing their fear and uncertainty for them. Perhaps "Doubting Thomas" is our twin, too. Like a naive and fearless second grader, he expresses for us the unspeakable doubts most of us have had at one time or another.

When we dare not, kids can speak the truth and ask the hard questions that we keep secret. You know how it goes: The sermon gets long, the adults continue to sit in silence, but the second grader announces everyone's truth in a loud voice, "I'm hungry! When's communion?"

Thomas the Twin is open and childlike (that's different from childish). He took the risk to question and to challenge. His questioning is not naive but courageous.

As Episcopalians, Thomas is sort of our patron saint. He's our twin. While some denominations find the answers to everything in Scripture and others rely heavily on their tradition, Episcopalians consider not only Scripture and Tradition but also rely on reason help find answers. We are a tradition that values both questions and reasoning. Our faith is a faith that seeks understanding. Now, that doesn't mean that we can prove our faith.

Issues of faith are not concretely provable – if we could prove it, we wouldn't need faith. Anything that can be ‘believed' can also be doubted. In fact, doubts are a way of recognizing when something is a matter of faith.

And what we learn from Thomas is that the person who has the courage to risk verbalizing their doubts is the same kind of person who may have the courage to risk believing. It is Thomas who is able to say to Jesus not just "I have seen the Lord" but simply and profoundly, "My Lord & my God!" The one who truly speaks his questions and doubts is the one who finally sees clearly and truly confesses his faith.

But today, unlike Thomas the Twin, we are not faced with the wounds and the resurrection of a well-known friend. Our risk to believe may be even greater because we are those who have not seen. And the second grade twin in me has had her share of doubts: It seems insanity to proclaim as "My Lord and My God" some wandering carpenter from across the world two thousand years ago. It is unprovable foolishness.

And we live in a seeing-is-believing culture. Yet we, too, long to come to believe that Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God. Because, as the Gospel insists, it is through believing we may have life in his name. We want to believe because we want to live. Because we want the good news.

My second grade twin shouts, like Thomas, "Show me!" But so far, Jesus hasn't walked through the walls that I hide behind and he hasn't shown me his wounds.