Saint John 20:19–31
Prayer
Alpha and Omega, our beginning and our end, you break through the locks of gated communities that harden hearts; accept our doubts, heal our desire for certainty and, by your Sprit’s gentle touch make us a people faithful and forgiving; through Jesus Christ, the Giver of Peace. Amen.1
Dr. Scott Black Johnson is a majestic preacher and the Senior Minister of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York city.
Last year he told the story about his seminary roommate who at some entirely random point on Easter calls him up and without pleasantry or introduction announces: “Jesus is on the loose!” and then hangs up. It’s his quirky way of saying “Christ is risen!”
Dr. Black-Johnson continued: “Over the years other friends have joined in the tradition. Now I get all sorts of texts and emails declaring that ‘Jesus is on the loose.’”
Then he turned to his congregation last Sunday and said: “Some of you, even in the middle of the night texted me and emailed me. Please,” he begged, “I need my Easter sleep and my phone is buzzing ‘Jesus is on the loose.’”2
I was going to tell this story and make these observations last week, but we had company and my family always told me that when we had guests everybody was to be on their best behaviour. So I saved it for this week when it is just us.
It comes from my years of working in a funeral home.
I began in high school, continued working in one during college and seminary and when I approached my retirement from the ministry {Which does not seem to have lasted very long!} I bought a hearse and founded William Randolph Hearses. {You may need to think about that one for a while.}
What I am about to tell you should come as no surprise, but all of the bodies entrusted to our care did not move on their own but always stayed right where we put them. We didn’t come in one morning and find that the person we placed in chapel A was in chapel B. They didn’t change places in the middle of the night just to play with our minds. No, if there was one thing we could count on it was that no one who had breathed their last moved so much as a muscle unless a member of the staff moved it for them.
So, what was happening on that first Easter morning and first Easter evening was astonishing to say the least. Jesus was on the loose!
Jesus was on the loose that first Easter and he shows up when the disciples needed him most. They were locked behind closed doors in fear. Afraid of the authorities but also, I think, that the events of that day were too good to be true.
Remember friends, we have had hundreds of years to work through this Resurrection business, and I don’t think we can fully comprehend it. They only had twelve hours and probably were working on a couple of nights with little sleep. To be confused, frightened, unsure is a perfectly natural reaction to a life-changing event, good or bad.
So, they rush back to a safe place, lock the doors, take a deep breath and ask each other, “What the heck just happened?” It is not an unreasonable response.
Poor Thomas has been called the “Patron Saint of Doubters” but I think a better title would be the “Patron Saint of the late arrivers.”
If anything, “I remember Thomas more for his bravery and his straight forwardness. He didn’t sugar coat things and he didn’t run away. He wasn’t huddled behind a locked door scared and afraid that day. I bet he was out getting on with his life.”3
The only thing Thomas is guilty of is tardiness on that first Easter evening when Jesus made one of his appearances to the whole group of disciples. They were all gathered together but Thomas is not there.
Perhaps he got tired of the endless speculation about what happened. Perhaps he was as confused - as we can sometimes be - by all the stories of resurrection encounters with Jesus. Perhaps he was just tired of staring at the wallpaper and wondering what to do. Perhaps he needed a breath of fresh air. We don’t know what Thomas was doing. All we know for certain is that he wasn’t in the room where it happened when Jesus made his grand re-entry into the disciples’ lives.
Upon his return all Thomas does is wonder if what his friends are saying is true.
Thomas walks into the upper room, and everyone says, “Oh my gosh, guess who was just here? Jesus! He breathed in our faces, OK that was weird, but then he showed us his wounds! It was really him!”4
Remember, what they are telling him is that his friend Jesus who was stone cold, definitely dead a few days ago is on the loose, running around making guest appearances to everybody Thomas knows. Everybody that is but him.
We’ve been celebrating Easter for all of our lives and while the story has not lost one bit of its power experiencing it for the very first time must have been an entirely different matter. This is not something that is taken in easily and Thomas is not sure he can believe it just based on word of mouth.
It is then, I believe, that faithfulness begins to appear. It is visible and invisible. Faithfulness is there in what is done and left undone.
The disciples who were there do not try to persuade Thomas that they are right and he is wrong. They do not berate him for being gone when the big moment came. They don’t even doubt the sincerity of his doubt. They just keep the faith for him and isn’t that what we do?
I am sure that there were lots of people who came to this church last Sunday that we won’t see again until Christmas. Where I used to attend, we called them “CEO’s” for “Christmas and Easter Onlys.”
We may wish they were here every Sunday. We wish they would walk with us and discover that there is more to this Jesus guy than a manger full of baby and a tomb full of empty, but they have decided that twice a year is plenty.
Our job is to do for them what the disciples did for Thomas. We are to keep the faith for them so that when they need it, when they want to have a real experience with Jesus, there is a place and a people who will be there for them.
That is what the disciples did for Thomas and that is our work in the world - to remain faithful.
Thomas didn’t just doubt. He hung around. This is the second invisible moment in this story that we miss.
Thomas didn’t listen and dismiss the other’s story as being out of hand. He didn’t say, “Ah, you’re nuts!” or “What have you been smoking?” He stays with his community. Even amid his doubts he sticks with his friends. He lets their certainty buoy up his uncertainty.
We do that for each other too. In difficult times when those doubts begin to creep in, at our best, we are there for each other with a word of reassurance that all is not lost and God is not finished. We can say this because of the faithfulness of Jesus.
If you don’t remember anything else I say this morning, remember this: Jesus was faithful too. Jesus never gave up on Thomas!
Jesus could have responded: “All right then, don’t take your friends word for it. Don’t listen to them for all I care.” He could have even said, “Listen I’m not going to subject myself to your cockamamie tests. Either believe or don’t believe but don’t you go poking me.”
Instead, Jesus says: “Whatever you need Thomas. Poke, prod, ask, talk, do whatever you want. While your doubts may have rocked your faith a little I have never lost faith in you.”
As you know we follow a three-year cycle of readings called the lectionary. Very few stories appear more than twice, most only once but every year like clockwork on the second Sunday of Easter we have Thomas.
As the sound of the trumpets have died out, as the crowds have returned to their normal size, there is the story of Thomas because he is us.
Sometimes we doubt. Sometimes we believe. Faith is a struggle. It waxes and wanes. Faith is sometimes strong and sometimes weak.
In this story we hear Jesus tell us. “Yes, you weren’t there to see my miracles firsthand but here you are in church anyway faithfully working your way through your doubts and opening your eyes to faith.”
When that moment comes and faith triumphs over doubt maybe we will be able to say with Thomas - perhaps in a shout, perhaps only in a whisper - “My Lord and my God.”
In that moment when doubt becomes belief you know that “Jesus is on the loose.”
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