John 20:19-31 19 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. 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. 24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 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. 26 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. 27 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. 28 Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God! 29 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. 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 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. 1
04.27.2014 An Impossible Hope In the days immediately after September 11, 2001, New York felt like a different place, at least different from what it had been for me the previous six years that I had lived there. The mid to late 1990s had been very good for New York. The economy had rebounded from recession. The crime rate was going down each year. Times Square had been cleaned up. Gone were all the porn theaters and DVD shops. In their place were theaters that hosted Broadway shows. The Yankees were even dominating baseball, having won four World Series in five years. The city was booming and full of optimism. And then 9/11 happened. Overnight the city became a war zone. I mean that literally. Military jets flew overhead. The National Guard sealed off the neighborhood around the World Trade Center. You needed to show ID to get beyond the military checkpoints and into your apartment to gather essential belongings or a pet who had been left behind. I remember because Sandy and I lived just two blocks south of the twin towers. The previous summer we bought a studio apartment in Battery Park City, the neighborhood at the southwest tip of Manhattan. The apartment was small, but the neighborhood was gorgeous, with quiet tree-lined streets, the Hudson River just a block away, and the World Trade Center, with its shops and subway station just two blocks north. I used to do all my clothing shopping in the mall in the basement of the south tower. I still have several shirts that I bought there. Below the mall was the subway station, where I sometimes met Sandy so that we could walk home together. On the evening of September 11, after spending the afternoon in a friend s apartment uptown, I made my way back downtown to get as close to the towers as I could before reaching one of the checkpoints. From a few blocks away I could see the wreckage of what had been, until that morning, the tallest buildings in New York. 2
Smoke rose from the heap of twisted metal. A chemical smell pervaded the air. In fact, the fires beneath the wreckage would continue to burn for days. There were a lot of emotions running through me as I stared at what was left of the towers: first and foremost was anger that someone could do this to my city, to my neighborhood, to my home. I also felt relief, because as close as we lived to the towers and the fact that Sandy was home while it was all happening we were not harmed. There was also disbelief that this could even happen. Terrorists had tried to take down the towers back in 1993 with a car bomb in the basement of one of the towers and had failed. Who thinks they re going to bring down the World Trade Center? Not a chance! The emotion that seemed to dominate, however, was sadness. It was inescapable. In the days immediately after 9/11, before the number of dead had been confirmed, the streets were filled with flyers for the missing [SLIDE]. Friends and relatives posted flyers with photos of their loved ones and descriptions of what they were wearing on 9/11 [SLIDE]. The flyers were seemingly everywhere downtown: on lampposts, storefronts [SLIDE], bus stops [SLIDE], and the sides of buildings [SLIDE]. The sadness was because their loved ones were not coming back. That was the reality. They weren t missing, they were gone. Yet people were not yet ready to let go of their hope. They hadn t had a chance to say goodbye. The gap between hope and reality could not have been further. After September 11, 2001, New York was a city in mourning. Whether or not you personally knew anyone who died from the events that day, you were in mourning. The whole country was. All of the National Football League games scheduled for that weekend were postponed. Major League Baseball didn t have any games for a week. Financial markets were closed for several days. 3
This week the city of Ansan and the entire Korean nation are in mourning. We mourn the lives of 302 souls who were lost in the sinking of the Sewol ferry last Wednesday. Our mourning is intensified by the fact that the majority who perished were teenagers whose lives had only just begun. I don t have any children, so I cannot imagine the grief that those parents are feeling right now. It s heartbreaking to watch. And to be honest, I find it somewhat disturbing that we even can watch such raw emotion of the worst imaginable suffering from the distance of our televisions. Parents should be allowed to mourn free from the prying eyes of television cameras. The emotional ride these parents have been on is heartbreaking. I don t know what other word to use. From the happiness of sending their children off on a class trip, to the panic of learning that the ferry capsized, to joy when initial media reports were that everyone survived, to fear when they learned that those reports were not true, to anger with the authorities at the pace of the rescue, to despair when their worst fears were realized. Some psychologists believe that there are five stages of grieving [SLIDE]: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I m not sure that all five stages apply to everyone at all times, and I don t think that they necessarily occur in a strict order. But the stages are helpful in that they identify what someone grieving could be experiencing. When a loved one dies, especially unexpectedly, our initial reaction tends to be one of denial as we cannot bring ourselves to accept our loved one s passing. Once reality sets in, denial turns to anger, which can manifest in different ways anger with oneself, anger with others, and even anger with the one who died. Bargaining, especially with God, is a means by which we try to reassert some control of the situation. I will be a better person, I will do anything if you bring him back, if you bring her back. Depression sets in when we realize that we cannot change the situation. We feel powerless. Finally, no matter the order in which we experience 4
these stages, the final stage tends to be acceptance of the new reality, that life goes on even without the loved one. It takes time and God s grace, but eventually most of us get there. The disciples confronted unexpected loss. Aside from John, who was a witness to the crucifixion of Jesus, the last that the other disciples had seen of him was in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was taken prisoner. Peter seems to have maintained a desire to observe what would happen to Jesus. After the arrest of Jesus Peter followed the captors from a distance. Yet when he was spotted and identified as a companion of Jesus, Peter denied that he knew him. As I said, aside from John (who is generally thought to be the disciple whom Jesus loved ), that is the last any of the disciples saw of Jesus. There was no time for goodbyes. He was taken from them in the middle of the night and a few hours later he was dead. Think of the emotions that were likely running through them. They were confused. They had, as Peter famously stated, left everything to follow Jesus. They journeyed with him, shared meals with him, listened to him teach, watched him perform miracles. They thought they understood who he was and what his mission was he was the savior of Israel. And then he was gone. What had it all meant? Had it all been for nothing since death had the final say? Rome, with its brute and merciless strength, had won. The religious authorities, who viewed Jesus as a threat to their own power, had won. The one whom the disciples thought would be the savior of Israel hung from a cross, unwilling or as some thought, unable to save himself. How could he have been the savior of Israel? Look what happened to him! Confusion and despair likely ruled the day in the hearts of the disciples. They had lost their friend and teacher and the source of their hope. If the disciples were 5
confused over the meaning of Christ s death and what it meant for their hopes and expectations, they were also subject to another emotion fear. The beginning of today s passage finds the disciples gathered together in the house where they usually met. The doors are locked because they are afraid of the Jewish authorities the men who had Jesus arrested and tried and who demanded that the Romans execute him. What if the disciples are next? What if the authorities come looking for them? There was a reason that Peter denied Christ; he feared for his life. And so the disciples are huddled together inside the house with the door locked. It is the evening of Easter Sunday, although the word Easter as yet has no meaning. Christ has been dead since Friday. The disciples are sitting around confused, depressed, and afraid. Into the midst of this emotional turmoil comes Jesus. There is no knock at the door, no announcement of his arrival. John writes that he simply stood among them. His first words are a common greeting of the time Peace be with you. Although this is a common greeting, it is also an appropriate one, given that peace is something that the disciples currently lack. To reinforce the message of peace he shows them the wounds from the nails in his hands and the wound in his side from the Roman soldier s sword. And then, finally, the veil is lifted from their eyes. They recognize their leader, who has come to them alive although he was dead, and they rejoice. Again he says to them, Peace be with you [SLIDE] But this peace is no longer a greeting but a commission. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Jesus is sending the disciples on a mission, a peacemaking one. The peace that descends upon them is not a peace that the world knows but comes to them from the Holy Spirit, which they receive when Jesus breathes on them. As a side note that you may find interesting, in both Hebrew and Greek the word for breath and spirit is the same. 6
The mission for which Jesus is commissioning the disciples, and by extension the church, is one of peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness. As Paul eloquently and succinctly writes in 2 Corinthians, and as we heard at the retreat that we returned from yesterday, ours is a ministry of reconciliation [SLIDE]. Whether or not we are ordained as clergy, we are all ministers of reconciliation. Reconciliation is what Christ has commissioned the church to do. It is the very substance of the Gospel. Reconciliation to one another and to God is what Christ taught in his life and then accomplished in his death on the cross. Without a doubt we are called to the ministry of reconciliation because reconciliation is what the world needs. With reconciliation comes peace, healing, and forgiveness. Reconciliation repairs broken relationships. It restores trust. It fosters community. The news media is so filled with reports of conflict the world over that the idea of reconciliation seems an impossible hope: peace in the Middle East, relations between North and South Korea or South Korea and Japan. But we may not need to even look so far for evidence of the prevalence of conflict in the world. Many of us have been wounded by broken relationships. I don t necessarily mean failed romantic relationships but any relationship with a parent, child, sibling, friend, coworker, etc. in need of reconciliation. We may still need even reconciliation even with God. That sounds harsh. I don t mean that Christ hasn t already reconciled us to himself. That has been accomplished. But Paul writes, again in 2 Corinthians, that since God is making his appeal to the world through us, we need to be reconciled to God. Reconciliation to God is what the disciple Thomas sorely needed. He was not present in the house when Jesus appeared to the rest of the disciples [SLIDE]. Isn t it interesting the way the Bible sometimes raises as many questions as it answers? Where was Thomas? I don t know, but it s fun to speculate. I think Thomas may have taken Jesus death harder than some of the other disciples. This isn t the first time that Thomas has appeared in John s Gospel. In chapter 11, after Jesus has 7
learned of the death of his friend Lazarus, he prepares to go to Bethany where Lazarus has been buried. Bethany was a village just outside Jerusalem, where Jesus has already faced the anger of the religious authorities. Most of the disciples do not want to go anywhere near Jerusalem, but Thomas is filled with righteous fervor and declares, Let us also go, that we may die with him (Jn. 11:16). Thomas has taken Jesus death hard. Perhaps he wants to be alone and grieve privately. When he returns and hears the other disciples tell him that they have seen the Lord, he doesn t believe them. He famously declares that he will not believe unless he is able to place his hands in the very wounds of Christ. In his mind, Thomas has already fallen victim to one false hope that Christ was Israel s savior he does not intend to be deceived again. Unfortunately, this declaration by Thomas has earned him the nickname Doubting Thomas. That name is applied to anyone who doesn t believe a bit of good news. But I don t fault Thomas for doubting. If I had been among the disciples I would have been of the same mind. Let me see proof. I don t want to believe some wild story without evidence. Show me the proof! The concept of doubt has gotten a bad rap in some Christian circles [SLIDE]. Doubt is not something to be feared or shunned. God will not punish us for doubting. Look at the book of Job. Throughout the book Job questions God s justice, believing that he has suffered unfairly. In the end of the book God vindicates Job and demands that his friends, who defended God s justice, repent and ask Job to pray for them. And so with Thomas Jesus does not show anger. Rather, he offers Thomas what he asked for, to put his finger into the wounds on his hands and to put his hand in the wound in his side. Here is your proof, Thomas. You don t need to doubt anymore. Believe! Thomas, the disciple who doubted, responds with the strongest confession of faith in Christ found in all the Gospels: My Lord and my God. Thomas s transformation from doubting Thomas to affirming Thomas is sudden and profound. The other 8
disciples were similarly transformed, from people who feared a knock on the door to people who were willing to die for their faith. And many of them did precisely that, including Peter, who had once denied Christ. There is only one explanation for this rapid and radical transformation: the risen Christ [SLIDE]. Before Christ appeared to the disciples, they were confused, fearful, aimless, unsure of what their next step would be. After Christ comes to them they are like people reborn, full of conviction, energy, and purpose, ready to carry out their ministry of reconciliation. The hope that seemed unimaginable on Good Friday was fulfilled on Easter Sunday. In fact, it was Christ s resurrection that made Good Friday good. With the resurrection the disciples were able to see Christ s death with a new perspective. On the cross Christ s earthly mission was not ended but fulfilled. Christ reveals this in his last words on the cross: It is finished. It is finished the work of reconciliation is complete. Death does not have the final word not on the cross, not in the destruction of the World Trade Center, and not in the capsizing of the Sewol. No! The final word belongs to Christ. Christ himself is the first and the last word, the Alpha and Omega. This is the impossible hope that was realized between the crucifixion and the resurrection. This is the hope that supports us even in our mourning. 9