Embodied Faith

John 20: 19 – 31
When it was evening, the disciples had gathered together, but, fearful of the Jews, had locked all the doors in the house. Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, "Peace to you." Then he showed them his hands and side.

The disciples, seeing the Master with their own eyes, were exuberant. Jesus repeated his greeting: "Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you."

Then he took a deep breath and breathed into them. "Receive the Holy Spirit," he said. "If you forgive someone's sins, they're gone for good. If you don't forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?"

But Thomas, sometimes called the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’

But he said, "Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the mark of the nails, and stick my hand in his side, I won't believe it."

Eight days later, his disciples were again in the room. This time Thomas was with them. Jesus came through the locked doors, stood among them, and said, "Peace to you." Then he focused his attention on Thomas. "Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Do not doubt but believe" Thomas said, "My Master! My God!" Jesus said, "So, you believe because you've seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing." 19
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Last week, between Easter services here, I ran down to Safeway to get a bite of breakfast. It’s 8 am, Sunday, EASTER Sunday. There are about 10 people in the whole store. Not much need for a lot of checkers. But then, the single cashier’s register break. It just shuts down. He shifts everyone to another register, calls up a second cashier, and keeps trying to get his register to come back to life. All this happens before I step up to the register. Just as I put my juice on the belt, the cashier call me over to his line, now open. “I can’t explain it,” he says,” but it just came back to life.” On Easter morning? What better words could possibly be spoken.
Resurrection happens.

Last week resurrection happened for Mary Magdalene. This week, resurrection happens again for the disciples. We are IN the season of Easter, of Resurrection, of Spring, of rebirth. A time when life springs suddenly from the waiting of a rainy winter. Resurrections surround us. It is certainly no coincidence that Spring and Easter come at the same time. Early Church fathers connected the two on purpose. But to the disciples in our reading this morning. Easter was not joyful and celebratory. Easter was not a season, Easter was a shock that the Divine had been crucified. We know that Jesus is resurrected, but these men, had nothing but hope that Jesus was not just gone from the tomb, but resurrected. Well, nothing but hope and the word of Mary Magdalene who is the only one who stood around the tomb long enough to talk with the angels.

So here we are, dropping into the middle of dinner party, afraid for their lives, and not fully believing the word of Mary, the disciples of Jesus sequester themselves in a safe space. Lock the door, to keep the world out, and just be together. That space I’m sure had healing properties. It was the only place they could be themselves, truly and wholly. And into that safe space, walks…. The divine.

Resurrection happens.

Jesus stands among them, talks with them, lets them see his tortured flesh, so that they believe. Without the physical proof, how could they understand? And in fact, they couldn’t. We typically say this passage is about poor doubting Thomas, but in fact, all the disciples need the same physical proof.

After Jesus introduces himself in the first visitation, with Peace be with you, he shows them his personal identification, the marks in hands and side. But Thomas wasn’t there. Jesus had to appear again, to repeat this miracle. It wasn’t that Thomas didn’t believe. Thomas did believe. In fact, he believed so strongly that his beloved friend and teacher had been killed that even when confronted with the miraculous story of his return repeated to him, he could not believe it. He needed further proof. His doubt in the word of his friends is a sign of his belief, his belief in the grief of loss; a loss he might have felt was without hope. We might criticize him for his lack of faith, but what would you do if the unexpected walked into your door?

Resurrection happened to Thomas

In the 1500s, Italian artist Caravaggio painted Thomas’s revelation as he saw it. Caravaggio’s depiction portrays with intimate detail the incredoolity of Thomas and his fellows. The fraying of their clothes, the plainness of their cloaks, the confusion on the faces of the two in the background, the otherworldliness of Jesus’s bright white cloth, wrapped around him, the peace on Jesus face. In this piece, Jesus in fact PULLS Thomas’s hand toward him to touch the wound.

There is a little artistic license here, in the text, no one actually touches Jesus’s wound. I see this as a way to show that God will not only meet us where we are, but will in fact surprise us by being present in our lives. Rather than this being a story of Thomas, maybe this is a story of just how far God will come to help us believe. This reading, for me, is about the journey of faith. Believing in something is not a static state. It is dynamic and changing in each moment. The journey of faith seeks new ways of seeing, of experiencing, and yes, of questioning the signs. The journey of faith is also the journey of resurrection. In each journey, there is much that must be given up to allow a new understanding to take root.

The Greek word used is actually not doubt, but unbelief. Doubt is about seeking faith. To doubt something requires that you look closely at what you see and how it makes you feel. This IS faith to me. This is Belief to me. So the image of doubting Thomas just doesn’t fit for me. The disciples moved from unbelief to belief by the experience in that room. Because God wanted them to know the divine, God came physically to them, embodied by Jesus’s resurrected body.

God still comes to us today, revealing Godself in times when we see only the temporal world. The divine reveals itself to us in new ways, through our gathering together, through the new growth in the garden, and through the continuing resurrections of life.

This past week, a family’s life was resurrected in Miami. At the time of the earthquake in Haiti, Jenny, was a two month old baby. The family lived in Port Au Prince. She and her mother Nadine were buried in their home when it collapsed on them. Nadine found her way out of that broken place, but Jenny was buried in the rubble of her home. She survived a skull fracture, several broken ribs and crushing blows to both arms. And…. five days of waiting in the destroyed house. She was freed from the rubble and taken to a United Nations triage hospital, but without her parents. Thinking she was an orphan, she was sent to Miami to be hospitalized. Her father Junior had searched for her in that rubble, every day after the earthquake while Nadine was treated for her own injuries. And more than that, they fought the longer battle of explaining that the orphan child was indeed theirs.

But last week, months late and only after DNA testing to prove they are her parents, Junior and Nadine were finally allowed to reunite with their miraculous daughter, the survivor. How the child stayed alive in that place, I have no idea, but she did. How her parents knew that it was their child that was this miraculous baby in Miami, I have no idea, but they knew.
Resurrection happens.

Resurrection takes many forms, but it is here and is being revealed to us through the many miracles of life. The resurrection of Jesus to the disciples is only one of the miraculous examples of God’s magnificence in our lives. The resurrection of Baby Jenny’s reunion. The resurrection of plants as they spring from the ground. Resurrection, reunion, miracles and blessings happen all around us, and in Easter, we are most likely to look for them. What resurrection might you witness today? Where might your journey take you? The journey of faith is the same as the journey of recognizing moments of resurrection and reunion with God. The most important thing we can remember is to pay attention to the moments when we see them.

Resurrection is Happening. May it be in our lives this day.