Easter 2B  John 20:19-31                                                                     April 19, 2009

Christ Church Riverdale

                When I was a kid, I was a terrible basketball player.  Actually, I was pretty awful at ball sports in general.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons I became a dancer -  it didn’t require the same kind of hand eye coordination.  Or killer instinct.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was the one who was always chosen last for a pickup game.  But I was a benchwarmer at best, someone who never quite measured up. 

And that was okay.  In fact, it was probably a good thing, because I was used to doing well in other aspects of my life.  We all need to have places where we wish we could do better.  It keeps us honest.  We aren’t perfect.  And for that reason - I have to admit – whenever I hear this particular gospel passage, I sympathize with Thomas.  Because he’s so clearly been left out.

                Jesus appears to the other disciples – but Thomas isn’t there.  He’s late for the meeting.  He misses out.  Even worse, he doesn’t believe them when they tell him about it later.  He’s not content with the second hand version.  He wants more.  He wants the experience itself. 

                How many of us have heard the classic expression, “Doubting Thomas”.  What do we think of when we use it?  I don’t know about you, but for me, it usually has a negative connotation.  Thomas was someone who was “too weak to believe without concrete proof.”  Because people who are have faith “don’t need proof.”  If we were true believers, we wouldn’t even ask for proof.  Whenever I heard this story as a kid, I always cringed inside.  Because I didn’t buy any of those lines.  I understood where Thomas was coming from.  “Well,” I would think, “guess this is just another time when I don’t measure up.”  Belief is great, but proof, wow, that would be really nice.  But is that what this passage is really telling us - that we must have blind faith?

                Let’s take a closer look – let’s go beyond our gut reaction and really listen to the story.  Let’s look at what actually happens, not just to what is said. 

First of all: Why wasn’t Thomas there?  We are told that the disciples have locked the door for “fear of the Jews”.  What exactly does that mean?  As we all know, John’s gospel was the last one to be written – most scholars think about 90 CE.  By this time, the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed.  Having lost its sacred geographic center, Judaism was in a state of enormous upheaval.  The writers of John’s gospel would not have identified themselves as “Christians”.  They were Jews who were also followers of Jesus.  As a result, they had an evolving faith that was challenging some of the other existing models of what it meant to be Jewish.  This was an internal struggle – the two groups would not have yet seen themselves as practicing different religions.  Yet there was tension.  Perhaps those who did not follow Jesus were afraid that this new model of Judaism would threaten the fragile balance they had achieved with the Roman government.  Perhaps there had been public arguments.  Maybe Thomas was late because he had to come by a roundabout route to avoid confrontations.

                Or perhaps he had a far more mundane reason.  Maybe he was busy doing something important, like helping his elderly parents.  Maybe Thomas’ occupation kept him at work later than the others.  Maybe he had been sick recently, and needed to rest before coming to the meeting. 

Or maybe, just maybe, we don’t know because it isn’t important.  Maybe the writer needed a fall guy in order to make a point, and Thomas happened to get singled out.  Maybe there’s a larger pattern at work here.  Let’s dig a little deeper and see what we find.

                Just before this passage, Mary has gone to the tomb, and found it empty.  Jesus has appeared to her, and she has mistaken him for the gardener.  It is not until after Jesus has called her by name that she recognizes him.  This isn’t a case of a quick glimpse in a crowd – she can’t explain away her lack of recognition by saying she didn’t get a good look.  Jesus is right there in front of her, and she doesn’t recognize him until he speaks.  After she does, Jesus asks her to stop holding on to him.  Clearly, she has touched him.  So, even her eyes and ears aren’t enough – she has instinctively felt the need to establish physical contact. 

                A few lines later, when Jesus appears to the other disciples, he speaks to them and shows them his hands and his side in order for them to recognize him. 

They don’t recognize him until they see the marks of his crucifixion.

                After this, Jesus breathes on them – again, as with Mary, the visual recognition is followed by an actual form of physical contact.

                And finally comes the story of our friend, Thomas. 

Thomas says: “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.”

What is Thomas asking for?  He wants to feel, to touch.  What did Mary need?  What have the other disciples experienced?  Exactly what Thomas is requesting.  And how does Jesus respond?  He gives Thomas what he wants.

“Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.  Do not doubt, but believe.”

                Three stories, all of which affirm the tactile, comforting, wonderful and necessary joy of being in the flesh.   Because in our limited, all too human experience, what we can touch seem the most real to us.  Jesus’ actions affirm the importance of this experience. 

                Three stories that tell us that our need to touch, to taste, to see, and to hear do not diminish us.  They are simply signs of who we are.  Markers of our limitations and our boundaries.  Markers of our humanity.  Our five senses are how we learn to know and understand. 

                Three stories in which every one of the people we are hearing about gets to have physical contact with Jesus.  First Mary, with sound and touch, then the disciples with sound and breath. When a writer repeats the same motif three times in a row, it sends a very strong message.  By the time we get to Thomas, John has spelled it out so clearly that he’s almost banging us on the head.  He wants to make sure we really hear him.

The flesh matters.  Our humanity matters.  The incarnation matters. 

Jesus was made man.  What greater affirmation of the flesh could there be? 

God did not choose to share our human nature on a whim. 

As the Hindu writer, An-ant-anand Ram-bachan said,

“A world that is presented as bereft of value to its creator cannot have value for the created.”

That’s not the case in this story.  This creation is not bereft of value to the creator.  It matters.  This earthly life matters.

The story of Thomas is telling us that the experiences of the flesh are important.  God clearly values creation very much indeed.  As should we.

                But what then to make of what Jesus says – the line that always made me cringe as a kid?

“Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and have yet come to believe.”

                As I said before, John’s gospel was probably written around 90 CE.  And written by those who had not had the experience of physical contact with Jesus.  They were what we would now label “2^nd or 3^rd generation” Christians.  And they were faced with the perennial dilemma of any community that has formed strong ties through collective experience: How does one keep the immediacy alive? 

About 12 years ago, when I used to live in an apartment in Riverdale, I was introduced one day to an older woman who also lived in my building.  After a very brief but normal exchange of names and pleasantries, she did something I found to be very unusual.  She rolled up one sleeve of her shirt, and held her arm out for me to see.  On it, was a simple tattoo – a number.  She was a Holocaust survivor.  The number was her prison camp identification. Neither of us said anything for a long while – but we looked at each other with understanding.  There were no words that could have expressed what she was trying to convey.  Her story was there – literally engraved in her very flesh.  It was clearly vitally important for her to have younger people bear witness to it.  This is a story I can tell my children and grandchildren.  I have seen that number on her arm.  It is vitally important for her and for me that it not be forgotten.

                So was the story of the risen Christ for the earliest Christians.  It was their story.  It is our story.  They wanted to pass on the immediacy of their experience so that it might remain alive.  So that it would be vital now, today, in our flesh.  When we tell this story, we are reminding ourselves to value the creation just as our creator does.

To focus on what is vital and good.

To focus on what we can do now, here, in this life, to make it better for others.

Did I have to be in a death camp to grasp the essence of my neighbor’s experience:  not at all – the testimony of the number on her arm was enough.

Do I have to see the risen Christ myself in order to believe that there is a transcendent creator who dearly loves our universe?  Not at all: the witness of the early Christians is enough. 

Because it points us in the right direction.  It tells us that it is okay, like Thomas, to ask for proof. 

Because if we listen – we will hear.

And if we look, we will see. 

The writer Tzvi Freeman tells a wonderful story of  Menachem Mendel Schneerson – the Hassidic Rebbe who died in 1994.

In his later years, the Rebbe would stand for hours every Sunday, as thousands of people, both Jew and non-Jew would stand in line to receive his blessing.  The Rebbe would look each person intently straight in the eyes for an eternal moment, often smiling….  All agreed that the spectacle was entirely supernatural.  As the line went on, the Rebbe became more and more vitalized, as though he himself was receiving life from these people.  It happened that an elderly woman waited in line, sitting upon a chair which she moved ahead together with the line.  When she finally arrived before the Rebbe, she could no longer contain herself and burst out, “Rebbe, I am younger than you…  and I only sat… and you stand here and greet each person…. And just look at you!”

The Rebbe beamed and replied, “When you are counting jewels you don’t get tired.”

If we listen, we will hear.

If we look, we will see.

What jewels will you find today?