Can t go over it. Can t go under it. Oh No. Gotta go through it.

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1 Gotta Go Through It John 20:19-31 PRAY As a dad of a little girl who loves books, you become intimately familiar with the books she loves. Painstakingly intimate. Severely familiar. I now possess what I call, the Knowledge. The Knowledge is the internal logic found in children s book that one must submit to in order to be able to withstand repeated repeated repeated readings. For instance, did you know that if in the span of one day you eat one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon, not only will you have stomach ache, but you will also turn into a beautiful butterfly? Just like a certain very hungry arthropod you might have heard of. Also for your consideration: Did you know that juvenile rabbits are prone to run away from their mothers and can shape shift in order to blend in with their surroundings? And in other such contexts, in order to fall asleep, said juvenile rabbits must say good night to, in order: their comb, their brush, nobody, and a wasted bowl of uneaten mush if there is any hope in them ever falling asleep. I could go on, please don t get my started on a post-colonial critique of Curious George or the psychological dynamics at play in Where the Wild Things Are. I want to focus on just one of these stories today. We re Going

2 on a Bear Hunt. You heard me read it earlier to the kids. It s a classic. I actually learned it as a repeat after me camp song. The refrain in the book is, Can t go over it. Can t go under it. Oh No. Gotta go through it. The family in the book and on the cover of the bulletin encounter each obstacle, even a snow storm they seem very unequipped for and a spooked, rampaging bear, the same way: Pushing through it together. I wish there was a montage of what each of the Disciples did for the three days they thought Jesus dead and gone. Sad, slow music playing over images of each of them doing things like glumly kicking a can down an alley, sitting alone crying on an non-teetering teeter-totter. But there isn t a montage so we can only imagine the intense grief they must have felt. The whiplash disappointment of being a prominent part of a growing movement that just crumbles beneath their feet. The confusion of not knowing what to do next. The fear of knowing that following the man you thought was going to save you could be the death of you. I wish we had a copy of one of the disciple s diary where they recorded their thoughts and feelings. How foundational those days spent in the depths of despair must have been. The inward reflective work they had thrust upon them: Can t go over it. Can t go under it. Oh No. Gotta go through it. I think this refrain from the book exemplifies this life of faith we try to live. We too can t go over it. We can t perch on high above the fray of this world. If we strive to live faithful lives we can t buy our way to some place that

3 removes us from needing something bigger than ourselves, something like God, in our lives. We are in this. We can t not be. And as much as we try to go over it, gloss along without interacting with this world or getting our hands dirty, the realness of our lives catches us. We are in this and it hurts. We are in this and it feels impossible. We are in this and it is so so hard. But the realness of God catches us too. God is in this and it hurts. God is in this and it feels impossible. God is in this and it is so so hard. Even the realness of God doesn t remove us from the realness of our lives, but our faith in God roots us, give us hope for guidance when the grass is too high to see, the mud is too thick to move, and the forest too tangled for travel. Can t go over it. We can t go under it either. The time for burying our heads in the sand has passed. There s no avoiding the very real issues that surround us. We can scale that as big or small as we want from the Global threat of Climate change, to the ceaseless red state/blue state harangue of our national politics, to the fact that all of these creaky old pews here are gonna need some work soon and we don t exactly know where the money for it is going to come from. There is no starter gun letting us know that the life of faith has begun because it is not a race. It is just our lives. Think of the disciples. They were living their lives and Jesus just told them to follow him and they did. They lived their lives in a new way and Jesus dies and they thought it was over. Then Jesus shows back up with them in that room breathing Holy Spirit all over them and life goes on. The life of faith often finds us as much as we choose to live it. Can t go under it.

4 Gotta go through it. Like the family in the book. Like the disciples locked in that house going through the biggest trauma of their lives together (mostly, we ll get to Thomas). Can you imagine all the can t s they are hemmed in by? Can t keep the movement going without their leader. Can t go back to their old lives because everyone wants to kill them. Can t even unlock the door and then Christ comes! Christ, having recently died and then undied, doesn t have to care about can ts or locked doors. Of course their first emotions must have been a mixture of shock, fear, excitement, but what do you think it was after those wore off? I wonder if it wasn t a bit of relief. Oh my God. He s back. Thank you Jesus. They must be thinking Now he can explain all this, do some Son of God magic on our Roman overlords and we can get over all of this. Nope. Can t get over this. Can t go under it, Disciples because Jesus has a new job for you. Christ breathes the holy spirit on to them (weird, but ok) and they are commissioned to go out and forgive sin. Gotta go through it. Here, go to all those people who were plotting to kill you, who did kill your leader, and forgive them. Can t go over it. Can t go under it. Gotta go though it. Go through it together. But wait, what about Thomas? I don t know where Thomas was the first time Jesus appears, but I don t think that his demand to see the wounds in Jesus hands and sides comes from a lack of faith. I think Thomas wants to fully experience Jesus resurrected. He doesn t want to skip over or avoid the full human reality of

5 his God conquering death. Thomas is our role model, not some cautionary doubting tale, our in going through it. His desire to see Christ bodily alive should be our desire as we come to this table to encounter Christ s body in communion. His recognition of Christ in the flesh, My Lord and my God should be the same recognition we take with us recognizing Christ in the tangled mess of bodies and wounds and life we call a city. What Jesus says about seeing and believing is not to shame Thomas, but as a blessing for those to come who will have to go through this recognition moment without the benefit of the man himself, in the flesh, incarnate in front of them. Blessings are never for shaming others. Let me repeat that. Blessings are never for shaming others. Blessings are for acknowledging the presence of God in places and times where we need to pay extra special attention. It is this blessing that we can t go over, can t go under. The life of faith is living through this blessing that, without any visual, empirical confirmation, we ve experienced an alive Jesus, an alive deity in our midst that loves us, lives with us, suffers with us and we ve believed. At least on good days most of the time. Whether we believe all the time or not we go though it. We ve gotta go through it. That s a command, an opportunity and a way of life all at the same time. It s a command to serve others, an opportunity to do that worshipfully in community (next Sunday 9am), and a way to live outwardly

6 seeking justice for people. It s a command to teach language skills to immigrants, an opportunity to put our welcome into practice with our building, and a way to live that backs up everything on that sign we put up in the yard. It s a command to reimagine the way we re going to be a church in this community, an opportunity to explore new visions for ministry in this building, and a way to live that is always listening, always growing, always faithful to what God is calling us to do. We can t go over the love of God. We can t go under the Grace of our risen Christ. We Gotta go through it together as a family with the breath of Spirit on us fresh and alive. Amen.