April 19, 2020

Susan Adams

Easter 2     John 20:19-31

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

We come now to the story of the final ‘witness’ to the events of Easter.

To the story of the last disciple to experience the resurrection of Jesus – he hadn’t believed what he’d been told.!

 This gospel reading, the week after the hype and excitement of Easter, is a thudding back to reality... dead men don’t get up and walk ... to say they do is ridiculous.

This year, in my mind, the ‘doubt’ the writer of John’s gospel tells us Thomas experiences in the face of stories about Jesus walking about, resonates with a question raised by the book ‘Searching for Sunday’ which was the book, the group I was part of, was reading in Lent.

In it the writer raises the question “What if we made this up because we’re afraid of death?” (p.187). (This being the resurrection). She was reflecting on her own Easter experience, noting the bravery it requires to raise doubts.

I’m not really concerned with trying to investigate the background of Thomas. Cate has noted previously that although he has been named in other gospels, he is likely to be simply one of the characters in the story John wants to tell.

It would seem ‘John’ has imaginatively created the character of Thomas for the purpose of this story – he is a symbolic figure. The story itself does not appear in any of the other three gospels – nevertheless, it raises a very important issue about faith!

We need to remember here that historical accuracy is not this writers main concern, but rather faith and theology are. 

We have heard many times that doubt is not the opposite of faith but rather an essential component of faith.

            It may seem counter intuitive to say this, but certainty has no part in faith!

            If we are certain about something we don’t need faith!

This is what John is reassuring the persecuted community of early Christians, who were his audience, about. While they could have no certainty about how the future would unfold, they could have faith there would be life after the pain and difficulties – albeit a different life from the one they had become used to.

Scholars suggest to us, that though the story of doubt is focused on Thomas, he represents all the disciples, and the communities of followers – and probably us too, if we are honest.

I would hazard a guess most of us have wondered at some time or other, and perhaps still do, what the our Christian faith is all about;

what the good news of God is all about; ...

what it is we struggle to have faith in ...

what the resurrected life is that the disciples, and Thomas, with all his doubt, point us toward?

It seems a pertinent question today as we try to live with some sense of normality while the Covid-19 virus rages and our normal everyday ‘life support systems’ are not available to us and we have to keep our distance from friends and family, stay home as much as possible.

How, now, shall we live?

It is easy to be fearful that we too might succumb to the virus, and even die because of it. It is very easy to be fearful of leaving the security of home and the walls that keep ‘others’ out, it’s easy to be suspicious of ‘others’ to worry they might inadvertently bring illness and perhaps even death as a consequence.

Ordinary expectations are being shaken – we cannot buy just what we like when we like because others have stripped the supermarket shelves before we arrived. There is not even one tin of bake-beans for us an there is no flour, nor any certainty!

How now shall we live?

Life is in danger of being reduced to isolated self-protection while the enemy rages.

The authors of the book we call John’s Gospel (scholars tell us there more than one author) in preparing their material probably in the mid 70s CE – in that time of Roman persecution of Jewish people, a Jewish leadership collusion with Roman overlords, and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem – may well, like us, also have asked “How now shall we live?” while hiding themselves away in their homes and isolating themselves from others in fear.

The locked room we can understand, the frightened disciples we can empathise with, Thomas’s response to their fantastical story of having seen Jesus risen from the dead, might well be our response – who wouldn’t dismiss such a thing!

But John was not setting out facts of history. He was not describing an event, he was telling a story to inspire the frightened early Christian community. He was offering reassurance, drawing attention to the way life continues even in the face of fear and death.

He was emphasising ‘life overcomes death’: locked doors and solid walls cannot keep life from happening; nor the walls of fear and doubt.

Jesus moves through those walls in this story. Not a resuscitated dead man who will die again one day, but a life resurrected from despair, set free from fear, and fear of death.

The risen Christ is the image John uses of life inviting us to live boldly to live without fear even in the face of death and an uncontrollable world.

Our world will likely be different from the one we have known.

This is how we will live now: boldly, considerately, kindly, taking care of each other and telling stories of hope.