Trusting the Resurrection
John 20:24-29
In the history of
church, Easter Day is an eight day celebration, known as Easter Octave, in
which the wonder and excitement of that first Easter morning is savored. Think about it. We have already put up our Easter baskets and
bonnets; marshmallow peeps and Cadbury eggs are on sale fo
I don’t know about
you, but I spent 40 grueling days of Lent to get to Easter, and I’m not about
to let the day, much less the event pass so quickly. I want time and opportunity for the message
of Easter to sink into my bones and enliven my soul. We get that opportunity with the liturgical
season of Eastertide. The fifty days
between Easter and Pentecost. Fifty days
to relish in resurrection!
The religious
tradition in which I grew up had a pretty narrow view of the resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead meant my
guarantee of life after death. It meant
if I believed, I was going to heaven. I
had fire insurance. That view of the
resurrection was good for what I call, “in the sweet
by and by” theology, but it didn’t do me much good in the here and now—in the
everyday challenges of my life.
What I have come
to learn over the years, with the Spirit’s help, is that the resurrection is not
just some event long ago, that guarantees some event
in the future. More importantly, it is the
promise, the reality, of Christ’s continual presence in my present. It is eternal life, and new life offered
eternally. That is why we have stories
in the New Testament that describe Jesus’ appearance to his disciples for 50
days afte
This story of
Jesus’ appearance to Thomas is always read on the second Sunday after Easter. I think it is assigned to be read and
preached on in Christian churches all over the world because it deals with a
core issue we have about God, each other and ourselves: TRUST.
How many of us
have attended workshops or retreats that have featured trust building
exercises? You know, things like ropes
courses. I can remember a profound
experience I had a few years ago, when I participated in a trust building exercise. I was with a group of people that went on a
trust walk. We paired off and one person
was blindfolded, while the other was charged with leading the blindfolded
person on a long walk down flights of
stairs, out into a parking lot with cars, potholes, concrete curbs….Well if you
haven’t figured it out by now, I was the one blindfolded.
I had no idea who
was leading me, nor of her ability to know where we were
going. Or whether or not she had previous experience or training in this kind
of exercise…. What I learned was, in
those moments that I was willing to trust the person leading me, the walk
became easier, and less intimidating.
But as soon as I tried to second guess the person leading me, or resist
and tense up, I became fearful and disoriented.
When I could trust and let go to the person guiding me, the walk seemed
effortless. When I tried to control the
situation, the walk became treacherous for me and the person leading.
You know all of
us have opportunities to trust. When we
buy a used car, or an antique, or a work of art we have to trust somebody about
their reliability, or authenticity. When
we take a course, or read a book, or go to a website, we have to trust on some
level the accuracy of the information.
Then there are the relationships we have with friends, significant others,
co-workers, congregants and family that offer opportunities for trust.
Each of us also
has a history of trust. Our past experience with caregivers, institutions,
mentors and parents will influence our ability and willingness to trust others,
ourselves, and even God.
The thing we
remember about this story in John’s gospel is ‘doubting Thomas.’ On the surface this story seems to be about
Thomas’ skepticism about the resurrection.
Scholars and preachers have used it to argue the importance of faith in
believing the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I believe this story is ultimately
about trust.
·
The
disciples’ ability to trust Jesus again after the horror and let down of the
crucifixion.
·
Thomas’
ability to trust God more than himself.
·
Trusting
in the work God is doing in the community of believers.
·
God’s
trust in the disciples, when they receive the Holy Spirit.
We read at the
beginning of the story that the disciples are gathered in a house with the door
locked for fear of the authorities. It
is Easter evening, and even though they have heard the report of the empty
tomb, and some have even seen the empty tomb, I can imagine they are having
some trust issues with Jesus right about now.
These disciples
had risked leaving their families and their livelihood, to follow Jesus. They had tried letting go of their
traditional upbringing to embrace Jesus’ radical teachings about the realm of
God. They listened hard to what Jesus
kept telling them about himself and his relationship with God. They traveled with Jesus, ate with him,
laughed with him, and gradually learned to trust him.
Then they watched
as Jesus was arrested, tortured, humiliated, executed, and buried. What a shock to their system. How confused they must have felt. And now they were being asked to trust again?
To trust in a new experience of Jesus, to stretch themselves
one more time, to go beyond what they have been able to comprehend, categorize
or name. When Jesus appears in their
midst, he is inviting them to trust God in a new way.
You would think that
with all the difficulty we have trusting human beings,
it would be easy to trust God. But I
have found in my own experience, and in countless conversations with others,
that people find it hard to trust God.
For some of us it is hard to trust God because of the picture or belief
we have of God as a judge, or jealous, or wrathful.
Some of us are
unwilling to trust God because we are afraid of what God might ask us to
do. We might have to give up a career, a
habit, a relationship. Those of us with
a poo
Harvard educated
theologian and philosopher Sam Keen has written a wonderful book about trust, Learning to Fly:
Trapeze-Reflections on Fear, Trust, and the Joy of Letting Go. In the book he talks about the life lessons he
discovers when he decides to take up the practice of the flying trapeze at the
age of 63. The basic components of the
flying trapeze are the flyer and the catcher.
Of course, you can add other people and stunts to the flying trapeze
act, but it all begins with one person who is willing to let go of one trapeze,
and be caught in mid-air by another.
Listen to how
Keen describes the moment one lets go:
The flyer swings out to the highest point of the pendulum, waits
until the catcher shouts, ‘Hep,’ releases the trapeze
and flies. The gap between two pairs of
outstretched arms is only a few feet that could be traversed in a millisecond. But between the ‘Hep’
and the catch there is a journey across an abyss. No footbridge leads from reason to faith,
from doubt to trust. Prior to the leap,
fear seems more justified than trust, isolation more fundamental than
communion, and the flight of the spirit an impossibility.
The short leap from the trapeze to the catcher is a flight from
primal fear to basic trust, from I to Thou, from
autonomy to communion, that can only be made by a total commitment of the
self. Flying, like faith, hope, and
love, is an existential act that cannot be accomplished by a spectator. Without the mutual trust and action of flyer
and catcher, there is no art, no transcendence of individuality and isolation.
Jesus appears to
the disciples in that locked house, and speaks peace in the midst of all their
fear and shaky trust. He speaks peace
and breathes the Holy Spirit on them. The
power of the resurrection is that God is continually at work in us, inviting us
to deeper and deeper levels of trust. We
are invited to trust in God as the ultimate catcher. When we release ourselves into God’s care,
God transforms us and enlarges our capacity for trust.
In the last line
of that quote from Keen, he says, “Without the mutual trust and action of flyer
and catcher, there is no art, no transcendence of individuality and
isolation.” The mutual trust of the
flyer and the catcher…. Eventually, trusting
God means that somehow we trust ourselves.
This trusting of ourselves is not a
self-centered egotistical thing. It is
trusting in our willingness and capacity to hear and respond to God. It is trusting God’s work of redemption in
us.
I can imagine
that was a big part of Thomas’ struggle.
Thomas the twin. He had been so used to being mistaken for
someone who looked just like him. He
knew how confusing appearances could be.
What if this person who had appeared to the disciples was not Jesus, but
someone who looked a lot like Jesus? How
could he be sure it was Jesus? How could
he trust their report?
I have countless
people in my office for pastoral appointments who struggle with how much to
trust themselves and their perceptions of God.
Some people are so sure of an experience they have had with God. Others second guess themselves, “Is this
really of God, or is this my own agenda, my own projection, and I am just
calling it God?” And some of us find
ourselves in circumstances where we are so confused,
the best we can do is describe the situation to God in prayer and ask for grace
and clarity.
In all of these
situations, whether we trust ourselves too much, not enough, or we are just
plain confused, we have the promise of scripture that God will work in us to
will and do God’s good pleasure. The
writer of Hebrews tells us, “The God of peace, who brought back Jesus from the
dead, will make us complete in everything good so that we may do God’s will,
working among us that which is pleasing in God’s sight through Jesus
Christ.” (Hebrews 13:20-21)
I believe the key
to mutual trust between ourselves and God is that we ask God for what we need,
then believe and cooperate with God’s Spirit to make it a reality in our
lives. I think that is what Thomas
did. He asked for what he needed—“I need
to see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my hand in his side….” And Jesus responded to his request—Jesus met
him in that place of trust where he needed to let go in order to fly.
When Thomas lets
go into trust he is able to share in the joy of the other disciples. He is no longer the disciple who wasn’t there
when Jesus showed up. He is with them
all in the house, receiving the peace Jesus gives. When we trust God and ourselves we experience
community, communion, with God, and with each other. When you or I let go into trusting God, we
move from isolation to community.
This is how Sam
Keen describes it:
There is no way to enjoy the comfort of faith or the ecstasy of
love without making a wholehearted, existential commitment of the self. Faith, love, and flying all depend on a
relationship that can be created only by an act of trust that involves taking
the risk of falling into the void…. It
is only after a successful flight to the arms of the catcher that the risky
decision to trust is seen as the essence of wisdom. It is a willingness to move beyond solo to
soul.
Moving from solo
to soul means that not only do we learn to trust God and ourselves, but we
learn to trust others. Sometimes that is
a difficult thing. Initially Thomas did
not trust the report of his fellow disciples.
It was only afte
Our encounters
with the risen Christ are the basis for knowing that God works in other
people’s lives, just like God works in ours.
We don’t need to tell God how to work in others lives, we need to trust
what God is doing in all our lives.
Well, I’ve spent
this entire sermon talking about trust from our perspective: our trusting God, our trusting ourselves, our
trusting each other. But did you ever
stop to think that God has to trust us?
Trusting is a two way street. God
trusts us with the power of the resurrection.
Jesus breathes on the disciples and tells them to receive the Holy
Spirit. The action reminds us of
Genesis, when God breathes breath into the body formed out of clay, and it
becomes a living soul.
When Jesus
breathes new life into the disciples he sends them out to continue his work in
the world. “As God has sent me, so I
send you.” As the church, enlivened by
the spirit of the risen Christ, God entrusts us with bearing God’s presence,
voice, values and actions to the world.
And probably the
most radical trusting of all, is that God trusts us
with forgiveness. Jesus says, “If you
forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they
are retained.”
That is the
miracle of Easter, God trusts us with 365 days of the year. Whatever is bound, enchained, enslaved, or unfree, can be loosened, liberated, and freed through our
forgiveness.
My prayer is that
God will find us all trustworthy.