Back in my hometown, there’s a church that stopped saying the Creed. Not as in they left it out one Sunday, or banned it from their worship services – they actually stopped saying the Creed in the middle of saying the Creed. Somewhere between “We believe in one God” and “We look for the resurrection of the dead,” this big group of people ran out of steam, collectively, and instead of picking back up and finishing, everybody just turned and looked at one another. Somebody who was there explained it like this: “we didn’t know if we actually believed what we were saying, and we realized it all at once.”
There’s no better time of the year to tackle issues of belief than Easter. During Easter, everything we claim to believe is right there, in our faces, every time we walk through those doors. At Christmas, we focus a lot on family and friends, and on themes that are very comforting and affirming, like birth and adoration. But Easter packs a big theological punch with less of the softening effects of cultural celebration. Easter is all about church, and church at Easter is all about death and resurrection, or in those creedal words: “For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures.” Each of our readings today is pounding home this message of resurrection and the imperative to believe: Peter tells a crowd about the resurrection and persuades them to join the community of believers. Then he writes a letter to another group of Christians, reminding them that Jesus’ resurrection means hope and commending them for believing in him even though they weren’t there to witness his ministry or see his resurrected body.
And then there’s Thomas, the church’s poster child for doubt and belief, who misses out on Jesus’ appearance to the disciples, and has to hear about it second-hand. When he does, Thomas doesn’t hug his friends and jump up and down, laughing because things are working out just like they’re supposed to. No. He says, “Show me. Let me see. In fact, let me touch Jesus, and I’ll believe, too.”
Ray does a good job of dispelling the image of Thomas as a doubter. A couple of weeks ago he called him Courageous Thomas because he was willing to go to Jerusalem and be killed with Jesus. And sure enough, here in our story we can see that the popular image of Doubting Thomas isn’t quite right. Thomas is more needful than doubtful. Notice that he doesn’t say to the disciples, “You’re lying,” or “You’re drunk.” He doesn’t ask them to prove how they knew it was Jesus. He just says, “I need to see him.” Thomas needs something tangible. And frankly, this was true for all of the disciples. It doesn’t seem that the report of the women at the tomb had fully convinced this nervous group of people locked away together on Easter night. But nevertheless, Jesus appeared to them. He didn’t write them off for requiring something more. He didn’t send a mole to tell them that he was alive, testing to see if they’d accept the news without balking. Jesus came to them and showed them his hands and his side. They got to see him, and believe. Thomas is asking for the same thing.
We can’t escape the fact, though, that despite whether or not the disciples could believe one another’s testimonies, what happened to Jesus – his resurrection – is something that he had told them to watch out for. Before he was ever arrested and crucified, Jesus said that he would die and rise again on the third day. So it’s Jesus’ own words about himself that his appearance to his disciples literally substantiates. Jesus understands that these physical people need to see his physical body in order to believe in the resurrection. And this isn’t some instance of divine condescension, God getting down on our level so that we get it. Jesus came back as a body. Jesus didn’t come back as an idea, or a thought, or even a ghost but as a person with arms and legs and hair, and a person is meant to be seen and touched. Jesus wasn’t a vending machine of signs and wonders who simply gave anybody what they wanted whenever they asked for it. Jesus appears to the disciples and to Thomas, not because they demand it, and not because they can’t believe, but because that’s how they believe. When Jesus says, “do not doubt, but believe,” he’s not chastening Thomas for needing to see him; he’s acknowledging what Thomas needs.
But then Jesus nods in our direction, doesn’t he? He throws in something for those of us who are left, two thousand years later, standing up every Sunday and reciting our belief in the resurrection with no wounded man standing in front of us, holding out his palms and turning to show us his side. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” So if the disciples get to see, if Thomas gets to see, if Jesus doesn’t begrudge them their need to be in the same room with him, in the flesh, what about us? What do we get? We’re every bit as human as they, so we still need to encounter him – we can’t go on thoughts and ideas alone. But how? How do we see Jesus? How do we believe?
Well … it’s different for us. It’s not harder, because seeing Jesus wasn’t the whole picture, even back then. The disciples could look at Jesus, but they still had to see him for who he was – they still had to recognize him as “Lord.” We have the testimony of all of the Peters and Thomases who stood with this man and knew him to be God, so when we look for Jesus, we know what to expect. Here, incidentally, is how our job is different: we have to look for him. We have to seek him out, and to be aware of when he is seeking us out. And there are some things to know about this.
For one, it isn’t easy to do. It requires looking at our lives in a different way. It requires a paradigm shift, where we stop seeing the world in terms of failure and success, profit and loss, beginning and end - all of the ways we’re used to thinking about things - and start seeing the world in terms of death and resurrection: dying with Christ and rising with him to a new kind of life.
It also requires cultivating, nurturing within ourselves a constant sense of expectancy. It means we’re ready and waiting for Jesus to appear in any situation at any moment. In the room where an infant is being born and in the room where an aged person is dying; on a street bright with morning light, and on a street where a man is wandering without purpose, alone and ill. In the promises that two people make in a marriage ceremony, and in the tired shoulders of the spouses whose partnership is floundering. Jesus isn’t the infant; he isn’t the man or the couples or the dying person. But this is where he shows up. This is where he is waiting for you, in the flesh, asking you the only question that really matters: “Do you believe in Resurrection? Do you believe that I put death to death? Do you believe that all of this can live again? Do you believe that my risen body means eternal hope?”
This is how we see Jesus. Our answer to his questions is how we believe. Think what you want to about the church that stopped saying the Creed – if nothing else, they make a point that belief is not robotic assent to a list of propositions. Belief is living your life – your new kind of life, risen with Christ – committed to hope, committed to healing, committed to reconciliation … committed to resurrection. Belief is hearing the news that Jesus is risen – just like you heard in these Scripture readings today, and you’re hearing in this sermon now – and also seeing it. Also opening your eyes and your heart to the people and places all around you that need your hope, your health, your peace … your belief … and looking there for the body of the resurrected Jesus.
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Blessed are we because we see him differently – we see him all around us, he permeates our world – and where he is, there is our belief.
