Second Sunday of Easter

Today's text is John 20:19-31 , read by Rev. Dr. Phil Snider. This morning's sermon was delivered by the Rev. Emily Bowen-Marler.

Lead Pastor: Rev. Dr. Phil Snider (he/him)

Associate Pastor: Rev. Emily Bowen-Marler (she/her)

Youth Director: Paije Luth (she/her)

Children’s Church Coordinator: Valerie Bush (she/her)

Executive Assistant: Wacey Rivale (she/her)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Our scripture reading this morning is from the Gospel of John, the 20th chapter, verses 19 through 31. When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Judean authorities, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. But Thomas, who was called the twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord. But Thomas said to them, Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe. A week later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with him. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe. Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. May we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

So there is a whole lot that happens in that text that Phil read this morning. And I learned a whole lot as I was preparing for this sermon, and I learned some new things, or I maybe gained some new perspective that I'm excited to share with you all. So this story that we heard this morning follows the initial resurrection narrative in John's Gospel, where Mary Magdalene is the first to discover the empty tomb. And then she ran to tell Peter and the beloved disciple. And then once they saw the empty tomb for themselves and left, Mary stood weeping in fear and grief, wondering what had happened to the body of Jesus until Jesus called her by name. And then she knew death did not have the last word. Jesus had risen and she must go and tell the others. This resurrection story has some intimacy to it. When I read it, I can understand why people talk about Jesus as their friend, who comforts them in their sorrow, who calls them by name. Jesus' revelation of himself to Mary is a very personal one. It's one-on-one, and it happens through an ordinary act. Him speaking her name. Something familiar, something comforting, and it gives her strength and faith to step out and tell the others. Now I don't know what transpired after or when she told the others. I don't know if they believed her or if they were wanting to see for themselves. We're just told that the disciples were still gripped by fear because they locked themselves in a room out of fear of the ones who had killed Jesus. And who can blame them? Things got real on Friday. Real in a way Jesus had warned them about, but perhaps real in a way that the disciples didn't fully anticipate. I imagine it might be similar to the fear felt by people in Minnesota when they went out to protest ice to bear witness to ice detaining folks without questioning or warrants or due process, and then found themselves bearing witness to a violence they hadn't fully anticipated. A violence that had them screaming out, holding up and recording with their phones, crying out, What are you doing? And shame. I imagine there were some who bore witness to these acts of violence and then locked themselves in their homes and didn't go out the next day or the day after. And who can blame them? They needed to give their nervous systems and their pounding heartbeats some time to settle down. They needed to spend some time recovering from what they saw, to rebuild their courage. This is the goal of state violence. To humiliate, to intimidate, to serve as a warning to those who might dare stand up for those who are being marginalized or mistreated or worse. This was the goal of Rome when they crucified people. Those crosses were out for all to see. A warning to not go against Rome. Now, before I go any further, I want to mention something about the translation of a particular word that we find in this passage. Some of you may have noticed that we changed that for this reading because it's something that every time I read this passage, I bump up against it, and I just have to wonder if that's really a faithful translation. And so I did a little digging, and when you're looking at the New Revised Standard Version, which is the version we, the translation we read from, what you find is when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews. And now that phrase may sound familiar to you. John uses the Jews a whole bunch of times throughout his gospel, but I've always found it jarring. I mean, weren't the disciples Jewish? Wasn't Jesus Jewish? So why would they be referring to the Jews as separate from them? The disciples didn't understand themselves as a different religious sect. But John's gospel writer does this several times. And it doesn't feel right to me to read the Jews as though whatever claim is being made could apply to an entire race of people or an entire religion. And knowing the violent history of antisemitism at the hands of Christians who somehow felt justified because of phrases like this in the Bible, as though the death of Jesus could be laid at the feet of an entire religion, there is a need to talk about this out loud right in the middle of my sermon. So when looking at the original Greek, it is more appropriate to translate the word Eudean, or I don't know how to pronounce Greek, but you know, that's my closest, my closest interpretation. It's spelled I-O-U-D-A-I-O with a long line over it, N. So maybe someone else knows how to pronounce that better than me. But that word would be appropriately translated in this context as Judean authorities, as its occurrence here and other places in the Gospels almost never refers to all Jews, but instead to a very specific sect of religious Judeans whose interests were aligned with Rome, which is exactly what we see play out in this gospel story. We see specific religious authorities working with the Roman government to arrest, try, and execute Jesus. This wasn't an act of all Jewish people. It was an act of a few who were concerned more about amassing power for themselves than they were about faithfulness. We are swimming in a culture that presumes certain things about people based on religion or race, and it's important for us to take a step back from those assumptions and examine what it is that has informed those assumptions and recognize when it is prejudicial thinking that must be dismantled in order for us to consider people on their own terms, as human beings in their own right, and not just part of an assumed whole. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program. We find the disciples locked in a room out of completely understandable fear in the wake of Jesus' execution at the hands of the state. Was someone coming for them next? Were they safe to move about? What if people saw them and identified them as followers of Jesus? What would happen to them? They weren't sure what to do next. They needed time to grieve, to think, to be together, to process all that had happened, and staying in a room behind a locked door felt safe. And now there's this news that Jesus has risen and they aren't sure what to make of that. Well, into that locked room, Jesus appears. He stands among them and says, Peace be with you. Like he did with Mary, he addresses the disciples with familiarity, saying words he said to them before. Remember when he told his disciples that he was going ahead of them to prepare a place for them? He said, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. They heard those words echo through their memories as the risen Jesus said to them, Peace be with you. They felt their hearts swell and settle within them in a way they had not since that terrible Friday. And then to prove to them that it is really Him, He shows them the scars from that Friday, the scars of state violence right there, visible on his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced as the truth of it all broke upon them, and Jesus said again, peace be with you. This is no ordinary peace. In fact, this is a profound statement, coming in the time of Pax Romana, a very different kind of peace that was maintained through control, violent control that was evident in the marks on Jesus' hands and on his side. The peace that Jesus gives is not the peace that Rome gives. And the disciples can feel their fear melting away. Jesus breathes on them and says, Receive the Holy Spirit. What a beautiful gift. And then he follows it with something that I admit has me scratching my head, because while I can see the beauty and part of what Jesus says next, I also know ways some of these words have been used by people of faith to bring harm and not peace. Jesus says, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. That certainly seems to invest a lot of power in the disciples, a lot of power which people of faith have taken upon themselves in the centuries that followed. What is Jesus saying when he says this? Is he giving the community authority to exclude people? Or as one preacher muses, is he describing a communal process of healing, accountability, and reconciliation? Christians have used this text in very different ways across history. Sometimes it has supported practices of restoration. At other times it has been used in harsh and harmful ways. As people who read the text through the lens and way of love, it is more loving to see this commission as a means of healing and restoring community. Healing and restoring community would certainly bring a new kind of peace to that community as well. After this transpires, we learn that one of the disciples, Thomas, the twin, was not there. The other disciples couldn't wait to tell him. You know how it is when you get to experience something that your friend didn't get to see, you can't wait to tell them what happened, right? So they run to Thomas. Thomas, Jesus was here. He was really here. He stood among us and breathed upon us and gave us his peace. Well, Thomas didn't know what to make of it all. He wanted to see for himself. And who can blame him? We ourselves live in a time where we can't believe everything we hear. There are agents actively pushing disinformation to keep us fearful and divided and distrustful. It's not a bad thing to want to want some scientific see it with your own eyes, kind of proof. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm pretty sure I'd be the Thomas in this scenario. I don't know if anyone else is with me on that, but I would definitely want to see for myself. So Thomas says, I need to see this for myself, and I need to feel the marks in his hands and in his side. Otherwise, I just cannot believe this. So now it's a week later, and the disciples are once again in the same house. Now the text doesn't indicate if the door is locked this time. So perhaps the disciples are feeling less afraid now, buoyed by time and the peace that Jesus gave them, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, he breathed on them. So we don't know if the doors were locked, but we do know that they were closed, because suddenly, without a door having been opened, there is Jesus again standing right there with them, saying, Peace be with you. Now Jesus must have known that Thomas was looking for some proof since he wasn't with the disciples last time. And so he turns to Thomas and says, Here, touch my hands. Reach out and place your hand in the wound and my side. And do you know what Thomas does? He proclaims, My Lord and my God. He just believes. He doesn't need to touch Jesus' wounds as he claimed before. Jesus' presence was enough. Jesus taking Thomas's concerns seriously was enough. But there is that one that I mentioned earlier where Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them. And Thomas responds with a question How will we know the way? And in that moment, Jesus didn't mock Thomas for his question or berate him. He met him where he was and answered it sincerely. Jesus knows Thomas. He knows he has a questioning mind and he honors it now in this room, just as he honored Thomas's questioning before his death and resurrection. It is another beautiful example in this string of resurrection appearances in John's Gospel, where Jesus meets his followers where they are and offers them a glimpse of the intimacy they shared before his death, speaks to them at a personal level, and that intimate, personal encounter is what leads them to believe. In this moment, it is enough to have Thomas cry out, My Lord and my God, which is not just a statement of belief in this Roman Empire, it is also a political one. It is Caesar who demands these titles, but Thomas is giving them to Jesus. Jesus is Lord. Caesar is not. Thomas's allegiance is with the one who gives peace in a way that violent and controlling Rome cannot. And as one scholar points out, Thomas's proclamation provides a beautiful bookend that completes the ark begun with the opening words of John's Gospel. This preacher writes: the gospel opens with a theological claim about Jesus' identity and closes with a human response to that same truth. Thomas is the disciple who was absent, who doubted, and who wanted concrete bodily evidence. And that's what makes this claim so powerful. It is he who speaks these words, my Lord and my God. Through his encounter with the risen Jesus, he arrives at the same conclusion the gospel announced from the start. Thomas often gets a bad rap, being called doubting Thomas, even though the text never gives him that name. He's just curious. He has a questioning mind. He demands intellectual integrity. But through this story, the gospel writer is speaking to all of us. For as one preacher reflects, we are all in Thomas's position. We rely on testimony, tradition, and lived experience without direct access to the original events. What then do we do with our belief that is formed out of testimony, tradition, and lived experience? How does that inform our living out of our belief? So here my sermon's gonna take a little turn that may seem disconnected from the story we've been focusing on, but I promise it's not disconnected. Something that is easy to forget when we have one big Easter celebration like we had last Sunday, where the sanctuary is filled to bursting, where everyone comes in their Easter best, and choruses of hallelujah fill the air, is that Easter isn't just one Sunday. It's an entire season. It's made up of seven Sundays. And more than that, our Christian tradition treats each Sunday as a little Easter, a little resurrection day. It's why we don't count the Sundays in Lent. When we're counting those 40 days of Lent, the Sundays are not included. Those little resurrection days are beautiful interruptions throughout the 40 days of Lent, reminding us that the worst thing is not the last thing. Our Christian faith is rooted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The birth of Jesus to an unwed young woman, a woman of great courage, but little power, born in a manger in the muck and the mire of barnyard animals. His birth was announced by the angels to ordinary shepherds. He was greeted by the magi as though he were a king, even though there was nothing surrounding his birth or parentage that indicated such status. He grew into a man who challenged the systems of power by healing without boundaries, by dining with the undesirables, by telling stories that revealed the kingdom of God to be an upside down kingdom, illuminated through the actions of poor widows and grains of mustard seed and landowners who played, who paid the same wage regardless of hours worked. By welcoming children, by including women, by showing great love to people who were suffering at the hands of an oppressive empire. And for that, he was arrested and tried and executed. But the story doesn't end there. The worst thing was not the last thing. And this is the foundation of our faith. We are gathered here on the second Sunday of Easter celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, the power of love that is stronger than death, the victory of love that cannot be silenced by violence. The disciples gathered in that room behind a locked door because they had just seen the worst thing happen. Their beloved teacher, leader, and friend was arrested, tried, beaten, and executed. All felt lost. And then on that first evening of the week, Jesus was standing there among them, breathing peace upon them and showing them that Friday was not the end of the story. The worst thing was not the last thing. Caesar's way of domination and violence did not have the last word. That is the resurrection promise. And the disciples felt hope again. They found courage to face the storm. They found strength to put one foot in front of the other, to live the love Jesus had taught them, to know that the love of God cannot be silenced, that the peace of Christ is different from the peace that those in power promise. It's a peace that can still our quaking souls. It's a peace that lifts our faltering spirits. It's a peace that binds us together in community, reminding us that we are not alone in this world. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is God telling us that the worst thing is not the last thing. There is more to the story. Death does not win. Hate does not win. Fear does not win. Love shatters the stone rolled in front of that tomb. Hope pours out as the tomb is found empty. Peace stills the fear that gripped Mary and the disciples. Because the worst thing is not the last thing. God's love rings out. God's peace transforms, and hope is reborn. Thanks to be to God.