Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 11, 2010

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.

Thomas doesn’t want to believe it. His friends, people with whom he has been together for something like three years, people who like him have given up everything in their former lives—family, friends, work—to follow Jesus, people we’d expect him to trust tell him “We have seen the Lord.” And he doesn’t want to believe it. I get that, and maybe you do too. I can pretty easily put myself in Thomas’ place, and not only because my name is his and I too am a twin. I can easily imagine myself saying: “Yeah. Right. You’ve seen the Lord. What kind of a fool do you take me for? He’s dead. We all know that. They crucified him. End of story. So stop kidding me. This isn’t funny. Seen the Lord? I don’t think so.” His friends have told him the truth, but Thomas is resisting. He doesn’t want to believe it.

John’s famous story of “doubting Thomas” makes it clear that Thomas doesn’t want to believe that Christ has risen from the grave, but the story is totally silent on the question of why he doesn’t want to believe it. Rather, the story, I think, invites us to ponder for ourselves why Thomas is so resistant to the truth his friends are telling him. I suppose there could be lots of reasons. Maybe Thomas is just skeptical by nature. Maybe he’s the ancestor of people from Missouri, the “show me” state. And of course what his friends are telling him is pretty strange. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to believe. Maybe that’s all there is to Thomas’ resistance to the truth of Christ’s resurrection. But let me suggest to you a different, deeper reason for why Thomas is resisting the truth. I think it is possible that he is thinking to himself: “What if it is true?” And maybe, just maybe, he sees what it would mean if it were true not as blessing and promise but as threat? Have you ever thought of Christ’s resurrection being a threat? I think there’s good reason to, and that’s what I want to explore with you this morning. What if it is true?

If it is true that Christ has risen from the dead, then Thomas—and we—have something extraordinary, something amazing, something unheard of to deal with. We have to come to terms with the impossible having happened. We have to come to terms with God having done something unique in human history and God having done it precisely with Jesus of Nazareth. If it is true that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead we have to take a long, hard look back at who Jesus was and what his resurrection means for our understanding of God and our understanding of life and death. If God has done this remarkable thing with Jesus, then death is no longer death. Trying to make sense out of that is a monumental task indeed. Maybe Thomas just didn’t want to deal with it. That would be easy enough to understand. But maybe he saw through to some of the answers to the questions Christ’s resurrection raises, and he felt threatened by what he saw. Maybe we do too.

Because the first thing that Jesus’ resurrection says to us is: He really was the one. God didn’t raise just anybody. God raised Jesus. The first thing that means is that God is saying to us: This is the one. This is the one you must listen to. This is the one you must follow. I have put my sign and seal on him. I have shown you that he was my messenger, my prophet, my Son. I have shown you that he was speaking my truth. There were signs that this was true during his life; but now, after his death, I have shown you in an unmistakable way that he was the one.

He was the one, and who was he? He was the man who stood the whole world on its head, that’s who he was. He was the man who said: Violence is never God’s way. God’s way is peace. God’s way is assertive, creative, but always nonviolent resistance to evil. God’s way is justice for those whom the world calls sinners and outcasts. The man who said the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The man who said that fullness of life comes from denying the self, taking up the cross, and following him. The man who said the established authorities of the world, both political and religious, have gotten it all wrong. The man who said forsake your family if that is necessary, but follow me. The man who said sell all you have and give it to the poor. The man who said blessed are the poor but woe to the rich. The man who said to sinners “your faith has made you whole.” The man who truly stood the whole world on its head. And now, if it is true, God has said: He was the one.

That’s bad enough, but, if it is true, his resurrection gives us even more to deal with than that. If it is true it says: Death does not have the last word. God is stronger than death. Life with God is stronger than death. And that means that death is not something we need fear. We can live, truly, fully, authentically live with no fear of death. And that means we have no more excuses. We have no more excuses for our timidity in proclaiming God’s truth. We have no more excuses for our failure to live lives like Jesus, lives of peace, compassion, and justice for all. If it really is true, then we have no more excuses for not living the life that Jesus showed us.

That’s bad enough, but if it is true, Jesus’ resurrection gives us even more to deal with than that. He said that his death and his resurrection would mean that our sin has been forgiven. It would show us that our sin has been forgiven. And if it is true, it has happened. We have been freed from sin. That means that we now must live lives free from sin, and that’s so hard. It means giving up so much. Thomas didn’t know the Billy Joel song that we know, the one with the line “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints; the sinners are much more fun,” but I’m sure he knew that sentiment. Giving up sin means giving up a lot of what we do; and now, if it is true, we have no more excuses.

In short, if it is true that Jesus has risen from the grave, everything has changed. The world has been turned upside down. God has broken through and shown us the way; and the way is a very different way from the way we live, from the way Thomas lived. Christ’s resurrection, if it is true, makes an absolute demand on us. It demands that we change our lives. It demands that we change our lives in ways that the world resists, just as it resisted Jesus. It demands that we change our lives in ways that the world rejects, just as it rejected Jesus. It demands that we change our lives in ways that can get us killed, just as those ways got Jesus killed. It demands that we give up a lot of what we have always known to be true, to be right, to be proper. It demands that we take risks for the Kingdom of God.

And that’s really scary. It demands courage. It demands self-sacrifice. It demands emptying ourselves just as scripture says Jesus emptied himself to become one of us. It demands our being willing to lose everything for the sake of God and God’s people.

I don’t know if Thomas sensed all of that, or any of it. John’s story doesn’t say, but I think he might have. If he did, it sure would explain why he was resisting the truth of Christ’s resurrection. It’s a big part of the reason why I resist the truth of Christ’s resurrection. If it is true that Jesus has risen from the grave, everything has changed. Nothing is the same as before. The world has been stood on it head.

And here’s the really scary thing. It is true. Amen.