In the name of the Risen ☩ Lord. Amen.
The cardinal rule for preaching on Easter Sunday is “keep it simple.” So, last Sunday my point was essentially “Easter is God’s glorious and joyful joke.” The thing that you never want to do in an Easter sermon is to try to explain the Resurrection. For one, the Resurrection is beyond explanation, so any attempt to explain is going to fall flat, which is not what you want when you have a church full of people. And another reason for not explaining the Resurrection is that it turns the Resurrection into a historical event that people can either believe or not. It turns the Resurrection into an intellectual exercise instead of an experience of grace. Easter Sunday really is all about entering into the joy of Easter, not explaining it.
But this is the Second Sunday of Easter, not Easter Sunday. Now, it’s still not a great idea to try to explain the Resurrection, but given today’s text from John, this is a good opportunity to explore the Resurrection a bit more fully than we did on Easter. This passage from John comes right after the Easter morning passage in that Gospel. And while I very much believe that Easter morning is about joy, if we’re honest with ourselves, this part of John is actually of more interest to us than the actual Resurrection story.
What is the Resurrection all about? What does it mean for my life? What does it mean for my death? Did Jesus really come back to life? I won’t speak for you, but those the questions that Easter often brings up for me; and those are the sort of questions raised by this passage about Jesus and the disciples.
It has been said that “without faith, no evidence is sufficient; with faith, no evidence is necessary.” And that may well be true, but we live in a world where facts matter. Students learn to “show your work” or “cite your sources” because evidence matters. We want to know that what we believe is true. If we’re going to spend time at church and give our money to the church, it’s nice to know that we’re not wasting our resources. And since the Enlightenment of the 1600s, we have tended to view the world through the lens of science – is it observable and is it repeatable?
Through this approach, the Resurrection of Jesus doesn’t pass muster. Other than stories written by his followers, we have nothing that we would call documentary evidence for the claim that Jesus appeared after his death. And as far as repeatability, Jesus would be the only case we have where a mass of people claiming that someone appeared alive after death.
So one approach to the Resurrection is to mythologize it. Some Christians will say things like “The love of Jesus continued on in his disciples so that it seemed as if Jesus was still with them.” That approach, clearly, is not the tradition of the Church and leaves us with no basis for the Christian faith. And then on the other side, other Christians will insist that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. But this is an unsatisfying ditch to die in because that claim is for resuscitation more than Resurrection.
This uneasiness around the Resurrection is not a modern phenomenon. Since that first Easter morning, people have struggled with these questions. And we can read these struggles as unfolding between the lines in John. John makes it clear that Jesus was not appearing as a ghost or some other less-than-physical being. Jesus comes and shows the disciples his hands and his side – very real and tangible marks. But in this very same passage, Jesus is made to pass through locked doors – suggesting that he now is more-than-physical. The Resurrection is something beyond the realm of physics.
The Resurrection is not only symbolic nor is it only historical – it is both. Our scientific approach is great at calculating launch angles to send a rocket into orbit, or to predict the path of a hurricane, or to develop economic theory. But this approach doesn’t work for Easter because the Resurrection is simply not an event like any other event. Our approach of observing and hypothesizing doesn’t get us to the truth of the Resurrection. You cannot predict the unpredictable and you cannot prove the unprovable. By definition, the Resurrection is utterly new, just as what God can do in your life is unprecedented grace. So even if things seem hopeless, even if it seems that you’ve run into a dead end, even if you are out of options – the Resurrection reminds us that God always has another move, even when we are stuck. This is the grace of the Resurrection, that it isn’t dependent on our actions, our rationalization, our possibilities.
As I said on Easter Sunday, the Resurrection isn’t a story only about Jesus, it’s a story about all of Creation. The Resurrection is the inauguration of the New Creation. While the Jesus’ appearing to the disciples is certainly at the root of the Resurrection, that is not the totality of the Resurrection. Think of it in terms of a tree – without the roots, the tree has no foundation, no health, no stability, no life. But the purpose of the roots is to provide life for the tree, that it might grow and bear fruit. Reducing the Resurrection to being only about whether or not people actually saw a physical Jesus after his death is like only looking at the roots of the tree and never tasting its fruit.
Perhaps the most common and sweetest of the Resurrection fruits is peace. Jesus comes to the disciples and says “Peace be with you.” Peace is a deeply profound concept. So often, we tend to think of peace not on its terms, but rather by its opposite – conflict. Peace is usually defined as the absence of conflict. In the ancient world, as well as our modern world, war was seen as the default status of the world, and a time of peace was the anomaly. There was a saying in Greek literature – “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.” But peace is about so much more than the lack of something.
The Hebrew sense of peace, or shalom, which Jesus was conveying, is rooted in completeness, wholeness, health, and joy. Certainly, this understanding of peace also includes ideas of security and tranquility, but it’s about so much more than the lack of warfare. One of the phrases that undergirds my faith comes from Julian of Norwich who said, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” That abiding sense of trust and hope is rooted in God’s reconciling and restoring peace. I’m sure many of us have encountered this sort of unexpected and unexplainable sort of peace. It’s a peace that allows us to find hope even in the midst of despair, light when we are surrounded by darkness, joy in the midst of pain, serenity though chaos is all around, forgiveness after betrayal, and new life coming out of even the most dead of situations. The source of this sort of peace is the Resurrection. This peace is what roots us in our faith in the Resurrection.
This peaceful sense of health and wholeness is what we see in Jesus. He comes and offers peace to his disciples, who, just a week ago, betrayed and abandoned him in his darkest hour. Jesus refutes the idea that peace comes through conflict or punishment. Jesus never condemns them for their fear or their failures, he never demands an apology, and he trusts the future to them by saying “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” He doesn’t first make them prove their allegiance or make them promise to never again waiver. Instead, he comes still bearing the scars of their betrayal and his death and invites them into his healing peace.
And this peace transformed the disciples. Jesus’ followers, like him, never tried to punish the Jewish and Roman leaders who killed him, they only sought to bring them into the community of God’s love. That’s the sort of unprecedented New Creation that Jesus’ Resurrection brings into being. And this peace is what is awaiting us in the Resurrection.
So often this passage is butchered when we think it’s about “Doubting Thomas.” It’s not. For one, the word “doubt” never appears in the Greek of this passage, rather it says “Do not be unbelieving.” And throughout John, the language of belief is shorthand for being in a relationship. It’s not that Thomas thinks that the stories of the Resurrection are what we might call “fake news;” no, it’s that he’s struggling to figure out how to be in a relationship with a dead man or a Resurrected man. Because the Resurrection is utterly new, he doesn’t have any frame of reference for what this means for his life. And notice that Thomas never actually accepts the evidence of Jesus’ scars; he doesn’t actually touch Jesus. Rather, the first word that Jesus speaks to Thomas is “peace,” and that peace begins the process of transforming him and allowing him to enter into the grace of the Resurrection. Once he’s experienced this peace, Thomas enters into a relationship with the Resurrected Jesus and rises to faith.
The reason why the Resurrection makes sense isn’t historical evidence. People through the ages haven’t been martyrs, missionaries, and evangelists because of an isolated historical event. Faith in Jesus Christ and his Resurrection is not about thinking that something happened long ago and far away. No, the Resurrection was the dawning of the New Creation in which we all live, and move, and have our being. The fruit of the Resurrection is a peace that passes all understanding that brought the disciples and Thomas to faith, and this peace is what sustains our faith. Certainly, that peace is rooted in the singular event of Jesus rising from the tomb, but the Resurrection is not confined to that one moment and place; rather the Resurrection transforms all space and time.
Jesus comes into the places where we are locked away – whether its fear, uncertainty, pain, greed, whatever the reason, we are all locked up, trapped by something. The grace of Easter is that Jesus doesn’t call us to go and do something in order to find him; he comes to us, through our locked doors. Jesus comes and meets us where we are. And he comes bringing not judgment or burdens, but rather his peace. It’s a peace of restoring all that has been broken, of reconciling all that has been strained, of bridging all that has become separated, of loving beyond all measure. This is what the Resurrection is about – not wondering what you might see if you could get into a time machine, but wondering how might you be transformed today in the peace of God.
Just as the Father sent Jesus in peace, we are sent out in his peace. Ask God to plant that seed of peace within you. Nurture that peace by committing yourself to practices that lead to growth – practices like prayer, Sunday worship, generosity, forgiveness. Taste the fruit of peace in this New Creation that we celebrate in Easter by trusting that love is stronger than sin, that love is more enduring than pain or death, that love is more potent than power. So go in peace to love and serve the Risen Lord.
