Bizarre, Revolutionary & True

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The Gospel this morning falls into two parts. IN the first, the dicsiples are huddled together in a locked room and encounter the risen Lord; in the second, they are back in the same room one week later and Thomas is with them. Thomas the doubter. Thomas, whose “Unless I see. . . . Unless I touch. . . .” sounds so much like us. Our eyes, it seems, gravitate to the second paragraph, the second Sunday, the eighth day.

But the whole story—both parts—deals with unbelief. Thomas is no different than the other disciples. When we meet them, they have already heard Mary’s announcement. Two of them—Peter and the Beloved Disciple—have examined the empty tomb to confirm her story.  Yet, they still do not believe. They are in the room and the door, we read is locked. It is locked for fear.

The disciples—not just the 11. John is usually quite precise here, saying the twelve or the eleven when he means just them; the disciples when he intends a larger group. All the disciples are cowering in the room. Cowering behind the locked door. Cowering because they fear the fate that had been visited upon their master would be visited upon them. The testimony of Mary notwithstanding, the evidence provided by Peter and John ignored.

The fact of the matter remained that dead people stayed dead. The fact of the matter remained that Jesus had confronted the Jewish elite, he had confronted Rome, and they had dispatched him. Ruthlessly, efficiently, and publicly. They did so in such a way as to inspire fear. They did so in such a way to communicate a very simple message: “We can, we will, you may be next.” Confronted by the facts, confronted by the powers, the disciples are afraid. The disciples are hiding behind the locked door. The disciples—all of them do not believe. They have heard the good news. But it is just too good to be true. Jesus is dead. The powers rule. The door is locked.

And all of a sudden, Jesus is with them. “Peace be with you,” he says. The locked door may be a barrier to the powers, but it is not to the Lord of Life. He is with the disciples. He shows them the wounds. They are overjoyed.

Then, he commissions them. He sends them to continue the mission on which he was sent by his father. He sends them as he was sent at his baptism—in the power of the Holy Spirit. He tells them to do the same thing he did—to forgive or to retain sins. That is, to proclaim to all the good news of the Gospel and allow them to be forgiven or judged by their own response to that announcement.

The presence of the Risen Jesus, the presence of the body that was crucified, dispels their doubt, over comes their unbelief, forces the flight of their fear. Or does it?

One week later, our text continues, they were again in the same house. And again, the doors were locked. A small detail. A trifling detail. Or is it?

The doors were still locked. They had heard the proclamation of Mary Magdalene, the apostle to the apostles. They had heard the evidence of Peter and John. They had seen Jesus! They had heard his voice, seen his wounds, felt his breath. They had been commissioned to continue the mission. And still the doors were locked. Still cowering. Still afraid.

It seems to me that the only disciple who had any justification for this kind of disposition was Thomas. After all, he was not with them the first time. And he wants to have the same experience as they. His Unless I see, Unless I touch, is not the brandishing rhetoric of the skeptic. It is the plea of the wounded lover to be on equal footing with his peers. He wants to have the same encounter as they.

And again Jesus appears. And again Jesus bids his peace rest on them. And again he displays his wounds, this time especially for Thomas. Thomas, Jesus says in this bold act, I have not forgotten you. You’re your doubting and start believing.

Then comes Thomas’s confession—My Lord and My God. Dominus et Deus Noster. A confession not rooted in the ethereal other worldly realm of ghosts and spirits. A confession not about another world beyond the material, where the souls of the righteous dwell. A confession that is, from top to bottom, political. Jesus, says Thomas, was shown to be Lord and God by his resurrection. And if Jesus is Lord and God, then Caesar is not. And if Caesar—if all the powers that are wrapped up in that one title—are not Lord and God, then there is no need any more for the doors to be locked. No need to shrink back from the mission.

And finally there is a turn to us, the reader. These things were written that you might believe.

What is going on here?

There is, first of all, an acknowledgement of just how bizarre the Gospel is. It is about a dead body resuscitated, renewed, and transformed to live fully in God’s presence. We cannot explain it—here’s how it happened—but instead, only point to it—this is what happened. And the only way to point to it is to point to the risen Jesus. A University student Rachel knows captured this truth—however unwittingly and crassly—when she posted “Happy Zombie Jesus Day” on Facebook last Sunday. It is blasphemous. It is profoundly offensive. But it gets that the Easter Gospel is about something that happened to a body. Jesus’ body. Less blasphemously, the great American novelist John Updike puts it this way: “Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body;  if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.”

Jesus showed the disciples, he showed Thomas, his wounds. The body that was hung on the cross, the body that gasped and slumped and died, was here in front of them. Alive. Fully Alive. Transformed.

And that is bizarre.

Not only is it bizarre. It is also, secondly, politically threatening. Politics—whether the politics embodied in Caesar in Rome or in Caiaphas in the Temple or Herod and Pilate somewhere in between—politics, that is human beings living together—politics runs on fear. The powers stay in power by making us afraid. The disciples cower in fear. The disciples lock the door. The disciples are terrified that they will, indeed, follow their master. And the Risen Jesus says to the disciples, peace be with you. As the father has sent me so I am sending you. And Thomas confesses that the commission comes from the One who is both Lord and God. That is radical. That, we may even say, is revolutionary.

Why?

Because it means that the power that is held over us by Caesar—that is to say, all political power—is finally a sham. The coercive power of the state, finally embodied in the state’s ability to take a life or to command some of its citizens to sacrifice them, as in war, is really non-existent. If Christ has been given power to overcome death, then Christ has been given the power of overcome those who hold the power of death. And that is threatening.

Let’s take, for example, some seemingly harmless advice given by St. Paul to the Church in Philippi: “Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.” Who can possibly be threatened by such advice? After all, Paul is giving good Canadian Christian advice. Be nice. And if we’re having trouble getting clear on just what this looks like, Paul has more advice from the same letter: “Follow my example.” Be nice. If you’re not sure what nice looks like, look at me. How harmless and inoffensive is that??? There’s just one problem. Paul writes this from jail! Let your gentleness be evident. Imitate me. Through your gentleness spread the Gospel. And if you have to, go to jail.

That is one odd kind of gentleness. A gentleness that so frightens the powers that they try to imprison it. It is a gentleness that refuses fear. A gentleness that gently but consistently disobeys the powers when they defy God. A gentleness that will go to jail for the sake of the Gospel. It is a gentleness that is revolutionary because it is a gentleness that is rooted in resurrection. A gentleness that rests on the deep conviction that if Christ is raised, then those who killed him are not in fact in control. If Christ is raised, he alone is Lord and God. If Christ is raised, we need not fear. For his peace is greater than the fear that would have us lock our doors.

It might be that we don’t really grasp just what that means. That we—we meaning you and I—that we don’t is one of the final fleeting memories of Christendom, and that’s a good thing. We don’t know the fear of the state because we have never had cause to fear it. But the “we” who don’t know what it means to be freed from the fear of the powers because we never feared them is a small number and getting smaller. Christian brothers and sisters in many parts of Africa and central Asia, Wesleyan brothers and sisters in Egypt and elsewhere regularly entrust their lives and the lives of the children to One who was raised, and who in rising ridiculed the powers he defeated on the cross.

The Easter Gospel is bizarre. The Easter Gospel is revolutionary. And finally, and most radically of all, the Easter Gospel is true. These things were written, says John, that you too (that’s you and me) might believe and in believing, have life in Jesus’ name.

But believing, as Stanley Hauerwas has rightly said, does not mean believing 23 improbable things before breakfast. It does not mean giving mental assent to a proposition for which there is less than compelling evidence. It means, rather, trust. Trust enough to entrust our selves, our lives, our deaths to him who defeated death. Trust first; mental assent will come thereafter.

That doesn’t mean it will be easy. After all, the Easter Gospel is bizarre. The powers still look like thy are in charge all too often. But there are glimpses of hope for us—the disciples not quite getting the message the first easter day, the disciples simultaneously worshipping Jesus and doubting that he was in fact alive at the conclusion of Matthew. It’s not easy. Believing—the acts of trusting and entrusting—demands my soul, my life, my all as hymnwriter said.

But we have not been left alone. The Holy Spirit whom the disciples received as the breath of the risen Jesus has been breathed on his people. He has claimed us in baptism and united us to Christ. He feeds us with the life of Christ at the Lord’s Table. He speaks to us the Word of God as the Scriptures are read and faithfuly proclaimed. Believing is not easy. But neither is it solitary. The disciples together met the risen Christ. And we, together, are invited to meet with him again today. And feed on him in our hearts by faith with Thanksgiving.