First Sunday after Easter,
2011
Text:
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed
Episcopal Church
“Doubt and Peace”
Doubt and Peace. That might be an interesting title for a very long, Russian novel. But doubt and peace; there’s a strange and interesting juxtaposition of the two in this record of the disciples’ experiences with the risen Lord on those first two Sundays in the original Eastertide. But though they may seem like strange bedfellows, doesn’t that combination of doubt and peace speak to us of our own experience of the Christian life? Moments of intense struggle and questioning followed by moments of sublime assurance and faith. Or visa versa: moments of sublime assurance and faith followed by intense feelings of doubt and uncertainty. Isn’t that your experience? It certainly is mine.
But we’re in good company. For the disciples, even when they hear the adamant testimony of some of their closest confidants and friends that Jesus was in fact alive again, and even after they see the risen Christ with their own eyes and touch Him with their hands, still have doubts as to what it all means. And Thomas isn’t the only one.
I think Thomas gets a bum rap. I mean, how would you like to be known for two-thousand years of Church history only as the guy who doubted the resurrection of Christ? “Doubting Thomas” is what we call him, don’t we? But really Thomas was no more doubting than any of the rest of the disciples. You see, John is extremely economical in giving us the details of the story. He only tells us that in the evening of that first Easter day, after Mary Magdalene had come and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, the disciples had still locked themselves behind closed doors in some secret meeting place somewhere, for fear of the Jews. Any first-century Jewish reader would have sympathized: “Of course you can’t rely on the testimony of a frantic woman.” But Luke tells us that sometime after Jesus appeared to Mary and the other women, He also appeared to Peter. Peter himself had seen the resurrected Lord, and still he and the other disciples are behind locked doors not yet truly trusting their own experience.
Luke tells us again that in the afternoon of that first
Easter Day, Jesus appeared to two other of His followers as they were walking
down the road towards the town of
And when Jesus appears in that den of fear and doubt, what are the first words out of His mouth? “Peace be to you.” He speaks peace to his frightened and confused disciples. Luke adds that He asked them, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts?” What could they possibly have to doubt anymore? He was standing right there in front of them. Luke says that some of them were terrified because thought they were seeing a ghost. They didn’t even believe their own eyes at this point. But even beyond doubting their own eyes, they certainly would have had doubts as to the attitude of Jesus towards them. Because, remember, this was the Man they had all forsaken and denied in one way or another in His moment of greatest need. What would your attitude be towards friends like that? This was also the Man they had come to place all their hopes in as the only One who could give them eternal life. Remember how Peter answered the Lord when many of Jesus’ followers were turning back from Him because of the difficulty of His message. And Jesus asked the twelve, “Will you also turn away from Me?” Peter answered, “Where would we go? Who else has the words of eternal life?” But now they had turned away from Him. Would He still be willing to give them eternal life? Would He be willing and able to make them right with the God whom they’d so grievously offended by now piling on top of all their other normal sins their rejection of the Lord’s Anointed One? They doubted. And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, speaks to them the words of peace.
But He doesn’t just speak the words of peace. As He says, “Peace be with you,” He also shows them the signs of peace. He shows them the nail prints in His hands and the puncture wound in His side. These are the wounds that declare their peace—their peace with God. “The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.” They’re the death-wounds of a living Man that prove that Jesus’ sacrifice was accepted by God. For death is the wages of sin. But in His righteousness death could not hold Him. He was vindicated in His righteousness and His sacrificed declared perfect by His resurrection from the dead. And so now He conveys to His frightened, self-accused disciples the merits of His death as that which takes away their sin. It is written, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. The true terror of God’s eternal anger against sin had been taken away.
“Peace be with you” again Jesus says to them. But this time it’s a peace that comes as a commission and a charge to get out their tomb of fear and out beyond their walls of doubt and to carry His peace and to minister His peace to the whole world of sinful people. And now there’s an excitement in Jesus’ voice. This is what He’s been waiting for and looking forward to His whole life. He now gets to make Himself more present in the world than He’d ever been before. Because now He’s going to live out His new, resurrected life through them, through His Church. And He’s going to continue His ministry of reconciling the world to God through their ministry. And so He breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Just as the Spirit that rested upon Moses and gave him the power to do his ministry was then transferred to Joshua, and as a double portion of the Spirit that was upon Elijah was given to Elisha, so now Jesus conveys His Spirit to the eleven make them His apostles—His “sent ones”—to continue His ministry. It’s their ordination service. And Jesus gives them their ordination charge: “Whosesoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, and whosoever sins you retain, they are retained.” You see, they are to continue to show the wounds of Jesus to the world of sinful people alienated from God, the wounds that declare their peace, if they would simply put their faith in those wounds. And they’ll to do it primarily through the preaching of the Gospel and through declaration of absolution. But just like His was, it will be a ministry and a message that will not compel faith. It will loose some from their sins and it will harden others in their sins. And so theirs, and every subsequent bishop or priest’s ministry, is both a ministry of forgiveness and retention of sins.
But this is the peace that’s supposed to get them beyond their walls. But eight days later, or on the eighth day later—on the next Sunday—where are they? They’re still behind locked doors. They still doubted. Probably, if they were like any of us, they had serious doubts as to whether they could pull it all off—whether they could actually do the ministry Jesus gave them to do. Do you feel like that sometimes? I tell you, I feel like that every Sunday morning. And there’s a temptation for all of us to say in our hearts, “I can’t do this. Someone else will be able to do it much better than I ever could. Someone else will have to do it, because I’m just not going to put myself out there and open myself up to criticism and the possibility of failure.” But God knows what He’s doing. He’s given each of us a ministry, and He’s given each of us His Spirit to enable us to do it. All that’s left is for us to step out and do the things He’s called us to do. All it takes is a little courage—the courage of faith—to get out beyond our walls and see how Christ will continue His ministry through us.
And that’s where I think Thomas comes into the story. You know, Thomas wasn’t there that first Easter evening. Of all the disciples Thomas seems to have been the most devastated, the most crushed, by the terrible events of that first Good Friday. So much so that he can’t even take being in the presence of the other disciples. Remember this is the man that was so sold out in his faith in Christ and so personally loyal to His master, that when Jesus said they needed to go back into Judea to minister to His friend Lazarus—back into caldron, so to speak, where the Jews had just recently tried to stone Jesus—it was Thomas who stood up and said to the other, “Come on, let us go also, that we may die with Him.” He was man of great courage and loyalty, although he had a bit of dark side as well—one of those melancholy-cholerics who are a hard to be around sometimes, and who have a hard time being around others as well.
But then there was the Crucifixion. And now Thomas has lost all his swagger and boldness. “He’s in grief. He’s broken. His hopes are dashed. His plan to be with the Savior in the kingdom and to be a part of His magnificent band, that new movement, that revolutionary message—gone! And when he saw the blood and when he saw the nails—there’s nothing like iron and wood and blood to convince a rationalist—it’s over!” (Swindoll). And so he just checked out.
After a while he wandered back and found the others, and now he literally can’t believe his ears. They’re telling him they had seen the Lord. They have the gall to tell him that. He’s had his hopes dashed once; he’s not about to have them dashed a second time. So he grumps at them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” Then on that eighth day, when Thomas is with them this time, still behind locked doors, Jesus is suddenly among them once again. And once again His first words are, “Peace be with you.”
This is now the peace that restores hope and courage. For now Jesus turns to Thomas—“Doubting Thomas”? I think better, “Hopeless Thomas”—and says to him, “Come over here. Reach your finger in here, and look at My hands. Reach your hand in here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believe.” And in that moment, you see, all of Thomas’ hopes are restored. It’s not over! Here’s the One I was ready to die with, and He’s back from the dead! Here’s the One who I can walk with, and Who I can walk with again into harm’s way, because even if I do die in witness to Him, He can give me life-everlasting, and raise me up from the grave. What now could there possibly be to fear!” All in a moment faith and hope and courage come rushing back into Thomas’ empty heart, and he can hardly contain Himself, and the word just come flowing out of his mouth involuntarily: “My Lord and My God”—the greatest confession of faith recorded from the lips of any of the apostles.
Doubting Thomas? Believing Thomas! And I imagine that it was Thomas that finally got the others out from behind those closed doors into the world to do what Jesus had commissioned them to do. “What you all doing huddled in this tomb of fear and doubt. Let’s get out there and really live, and proclaim the risen Christ, even if we have to die for Him.” For after this appearance of Jesus to Thomas we never see the disciples holed up in that room again. And you just have to wonder if it wasn’t Thomas that finally got everybody off their duffs.
You see, the peace of Christ dispels our doubts. But where can we find that peace? Well, sometime we find it in our questioning, sometimes in our struggles of faith. That’s where the disciples where when the peace of Christ found them. The peace of Christ also comes to us as He continues to show us His wounds though a priest who waves his hands at us—His wounds that declare our peace with God. His peace continues to be given to us every Lord’s Day, when He gives us to handle and partake of His wounded body and to drink in His life-blood. It’s the same peace and the same wounds that He presents to us now, as He in those days after the first Easter.
And so what shall our response be? Let it be that His peace and His wounds restore our faith and our hopes and our courage to live as His witnesses and minister His peace to a dying world.
And so now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.