The Rev. Mariclair Partee
When I first started seminary, not that long ago, I was confused to hear my professors and other learned church folks describe all things Christian as being “Easter-centered”.
As followers of Christ we are Easter People, defined by Christ’s empty tomb on Easter morning. Our 30 year old “new” prayer book is an Easter Prayer Book, as it intentionally re-centers our worshipping life around the resurrection of Jesus, both on the micro-level of sharing in the Eucharistic Feast at every Sunday service, and the macro-level of focusing on the promise of resurrection in every major event in our lives as a church- our holiest days, our ordinations, weddings, baptisms, even funerals where the color of vestments the priests wear was shifted from solemn black to Easter white, all to remind us that we were given life when Jesus triumphed over death.
I quickly added this to my own glossary of church speak, and on this second Sunday of Easter it resonates even stronger. This is the golden time of our liturgical year, the solemnity of Lent has been survived, and the relentless schedule of Holy Week has been completed and the lilies and brass bands and general hustle and bustle of Easter Sunday came off without a hitch and now we can sit back and relax enough to bask in the glow of what we just experienced and say:
Alleluia, alleluia Christ is Risen!
Today we are given a glimpse into what it really means to be an Easter People as Christians- literally in John’s Gospel as we hear of the life of the apostles in the days immediately following Christ’s resurrection, and more metaphorically in the message from Acts and in the Psalms, describing what it looks like to have heaven on earth, how the earliest Christian communities embraced Easter in their daily lives, as brethren lived together in unity, and no one was needy, and no one had more or less than they needed.
And in it all, we have the shadow of Thomas, and his doubt. We’ve all heard so much about Thomas that when I realized I would be preaching about him this week I mentally yawned, because what is there to say about Thomas that hasn’t already been said? In a way I feel bad for him, I see him as that stock foot-in-mouth character from tv shows and movies who has the very bad luck of having the exact person he was talking about standing right behind him. But as I sat with this story this week, I started to see more in Thomas than the blustering oaf who didn’t have enough faith, and I actually started to be very thankful that Thomas wasn’t in the room that first day when Jesus appeared to the other disciples, so that he could say, when he heard about it, that he simply couldn’t believe such a thing to be true without proof. In that moment Thomas let us all off the hook for our very human-ness, stated flat out that this risen Lord thing is a very difficult concept and he would like to ask a few more questions before he bought it, in short- he made it okay for us to be faithful and also admit that we don’t really have all the answers.
Facebook story: I recently reconnected with someone I went to high school with via that most astounding of unifiers- Facebook. After the initial round of “how’s your mama and daddy” and “you are a what?” sort of catching up, he told me that lately he had begun to have questions about the things he had been taught in church, and that he was deeply unsettled by this. He was afraid that after an entire life of unshakeable faith, he was no longer able to believe in God.
I don’t think I am breaking his confidence by discussing our online conversation from the pulpit, not just because you could never pick him out of the 500 folks I graduated with, all of whom seem to be on facebook, but because I realize that, in the unorthodox setting of an online networking community, I was given the opportunity to help someone address the questions that I know I have had and I bet everyone in this room has had at some point, the really basic ones like “How can God allow suffering and evil in the world?” and “How can a God of love condemn those who have never had a chance to learn about Jesus?” and “Is there a hell?”.
I didn’t have any easy answers for my friend, and I don’t have any for us here today. He is growing out of a particular denomination’s answers and searching, like we all have to eventually, for answers he must come up with on his own. But I was thankful for the luxury of talking about these basic parts of our faith, which too often I think we just don’t let ourselves question, afraid to ask about for fear of our ignorance being exposed, for our selves to be exposed as doubters. It is a lot easier to develop strongly held opinions about the esoteric things like incense or architecture or who really owns the church property, and avoid the shame of being a fraud.
Jesus wouldn’t let Thomas off the hook so easily- he offered up the marks of the nails in his hands to be touched and the wound in his side for inspection, and by doing so he let Thomas know that he could have all the physical proof in the world, but without faith in his heart, none of it mattered. All the proof Thomas needed, that any of us need, of God’s existence can be found in the way each of us chooses to live Easter everyday- to love God above all else, and our neighbors as ourselves, because we were shown in sacrifice and an empty tomb the triumph of a life lived not to our own glory, but to the glory of God.
AMEN.
