Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 27, 2003

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

This morning’s Gospel reading, popularly known as the story of "Doubting Thomas," has become one of my favorites. I suppose that’s a good thing given the fact that it is the Gospel reading in the lectionary for the Sunday after Easter every year. Anyway, I don’t think my fondness for this story flows from the fact that my name too is Thomas and that I too am a twin. And I don’t think is has much to do either with Thomas’ initial doubt, his demand for physical proof, and his later belief, although I guess, come to think of it, that I have taken that journey too. Rather, I am quite powerfully drawn to the image of Christ appearing to the Disciples as they cower in fear behind locked doors , how he appears to them, says "Peace be with you," reminds them of what he’s been through, and says in effect: Get off your duffs and get out of here. Get out into that world that you’re so afraid of. That’s powerful stuff, some of the most powerful in the New Testament And, like any powerful Bible story it is powerful not primarily because it is about something that happened to somebody else two thousand years ago, but because it is very powerfully about us. This story is powerfully about us because we are those Disciples cowering in fear behind locked doors desperately needing Jesus to come to us, bless us with His peace, and get us out of our locked rooms and moving again. Let me explain.

Recall what is going on here. It is the day of the Resurrection, the Sunday after Jesus’ crucifixion on Friday. The risen Christ has appeared to Mary Magdalene, but he has not yet appeared to any of the male disciples. Peter and that mysterious figure of John’s Gospel known only as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” have seen the empty tomb, but they have not yet seen the risen Lord. (The women always get it first, don’t they guys?) So the men are hiding out. It has gotten really dangerous out there. The Romans and the Temple authorities have just crucified their leader Jesus. Those guys knew Jesus had followers. They knew his followers were Galileans. They probably didn’t know exactly who they were. Peter and the others hadn’t been giving interviews on CNN so that their faces were widely recognized, and their photographs weren’t pinned on the wall in the local post office. Still, there was a pretty good possibility that the Roman authorities and their Jewish collaborators would be out looking for Jesus’ followers, and definitely not to buy them a hot meal and a bus ticket back to Nazareth. No, these men had every reason to fear that the powers of the world that had just crucified Jesus would be nailing them to crosses next.

And so, in their fear, and in their grief over the political murder of their friend and leader, they shut themselves off from the world. They went inside a room and locked the doors. They went into hiding. They went underground. They lay low and prayed that the authorities would not find them. Faced with a threat, a fear, a danger, faced with uncertainty and risk, they withdrew and locked themselves off from a world they did not think they could face. They shut themselves off from the rest of their community, from their families, and from the possibility of doing anything out in the world.

And they are us, aren’t they? Oh, we probably don’t close ourselves off because we fear that the Romans are going to crucify us, at least not literally. It’s been a while since I’ve seen an Imperial Roman soldier around here. Yet we all live with things that cause us to hide behind locked doors, that cause us to withdraw and try to lock the world out the way those disciples of Christ did so many years ago. For example, have you ever had the experience of knowing someone you think of as highly capable, bright, creative, outgoing, somebody everybody likes only to find out that he or she is full of self-doubt? I have. I’ve had that experience again and again. I think most of us doubt our own self worth, at least at times. That doubt keeps us from being the whole person God wants us to be. Just the other night I heard a woman say that she always wanted to be a painter but that she had never tried it because she didn’t think she would be "good enough." Her doubt about her own abilities was keeping her stuck in a room behind locked doors.

Many, I should probably say most, of us harbor within our souls some deep hurt from the past. We are all wounded in some way, psychically if not physically. For a great many of us, especially for women, that wound is the result of physical or emotional abuse in childhood. I was stunned to learn how many of my women colleagues at Seattle University had had that tragic experience. Those wounds make us fearful of the world. They cause us to withdraw into ourselves, into our self-constructed shells, so that we won’t get hurt any more, or so that no one will know the shame or the pain we carry with us every day. I think every one of those wonderful women seminarians at Seattle University had resisted the call to ministry because of the pain and the self doubt their tragic childhood experiences had caused in them. To protect ourselves, we lock ourselves off from the world, just like the Disciples in this morning’s story.

Or maybe we lock ourselves in to unsatisfactory careers or other life situations because we have convinced ourselves we don’t have a choice. I know that’s what I did. For years I knew that God was calling me to something other than the law; but I kept saying to myself: You can’t do that. You’re too old, and you can’t afford it. I used those excuses to lock out the world, to avoid taking the risk of stepping out into the world as I knew God was calling me to do. I locked myself behind a door of my own making, but I was locked in just like the Disciples were.

But of course the disciples being locked behind that door isn’t the end of this story. What happened? As they were locked in there, cowering in fear, the most miraculous thing happened. As John put it so simply: "Jesus came and stood among them...." That locked door that we hide behind may keep the world out (although in truth it isn’t very good at doing that either), but it won’t keep the risen Christ out. Jesus entered their hiding place of fear and hopelessness. He can enter our hiding places of fear and hopelessness too.

When he got there, what did he do? First he said "Peace be with you." Peace? How were they supposed to know peace under those terrible circumstances? Well, they were supposed to know it because Christ was there with them. When Christ enters our dark places of fear and hiding he brings with him God’s peace.

Then the showed them his hands and his side, the hands that had pierced by the nails of the crucifixion and side that had been pierce by the spear as he hung on the cross. Why would he do that? Was he just being morbid? Of course not. By reminding them of the crucifixion, Jesus was saying to them: I’ve been through worse than this, and God did not ultimately abandon me. I’m not going to ask you to do anything that I haven’t done myself. I’m not going to put you through anything I haven’t been through myself. Because I did it and was raised, you can do it too. That’s what Christ says to us when he enters our rooms of fear and darkness. He says: I am the crucified one. In me you know that God enters the darkness and the pain with you and overcomes it. I have been where you are and worse, and I have come to show you the way out.

Now, the Disciples would probably have been happy enough just to have Jesus there in their locked room with them. His presence would make the locked room a much nicer place to be. It would feel even safer than before. We’d probably want to go out of it even less than before; but Jesus is having none of that. He says: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." As the Father has sent me? How did God the Father send him? Well, John’s Gospel teaches that the Father sent him into the world to make the Father known in the world. (See John 1:1-18) The Father sure didn’t send him to sit behind a locked door feeling good because God was behind that locked door with him. God sent him into the world to proclaim the Good News or rather, to be the Good News. So Jesus is sending them to be the Good News in the world as well.

There is much that could be said about what it means to be the Good News in the world. This morning, however, I want to stress simply that when Jesus came into that locked room he told the Disciples to get up off their duffs and get moving. Get out of here. This locked room is not where you belong. It is not where God wants you to be. Your call is out in the world. You will find your wholeness, your salvation, out in the world, not here in this locked room.

And he calls us out of our locked rooms of fear and darkness as well. He calls us out into the light of day, into the world where we can live as the whole people God intends us to be. God doesn’t want us sealed up behind locked doors, not in our personal lives and not as a church. That is not the life that God intends for anyone. With the significant exception of true mental illness, those locked doors that we all have are mostly of our own making. The great Good News of this morning’s lesson is that Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Lord and Savior, can enter those rooms with us and lead us out of them into wholeness of life-mind, body, and spirit. We can of course shut him out if we want, or perhaps more correctly, we can refuse the peace he offers and refuse to follow him out into the world. God gives us the freedom to do that. Let us pray that when we see Jesus standing in our locked rooms of fear and darkness we may have the courage to accept his peace and follow him out to that wholeness he offers us. Amen.