Sermon for April 27th

Sermon for April 27th

We are often hard on Thomas. We shake our heads and wonder why he didn’t have more faith. Why did he doubt? After everything that he had seen Jesus do, and all the miracles that the disciples were privileged to witness, he still doubts. Come on man, how much more do you need to witness before this sinks in?

Even the term “Doubting Thomas” is a pejorative one. To be a Doubting Thomas is to be someone with little or no faith. Oh, you of little faith, why can’t you trust? Why can’t you just get on script with the rest of us?

But lets give Thomas the benefit of the doubt (no pun intended). He wasn’t there when Jesus shows up to the other disciples. He doesn’t have a chance to experience the risen Christ. He may well have thought that they had experienced a mass delusion, brought on by stress and the desire to see their beloved Jesus again.  He would want proof because their claims are so fantastical. Would any of the disciples, if they had been in his place, acted any different? Would we have?

There are many reasons that we might doubt an experience like this, if we had been in Thomas’ place. But I want to focus on one that I think is universal to our human experience. It is the case for us and it was certainly the case for Thomas. And that is our inability to trust in hope and the consummation of hope in the face of the world we live in. Our world and our lives are plagued with difficult moments. That may, in fact, be a rather vast understatement. Our world is being torn apart by war and authoritarian governments, focussed on their own greed and wealth. The natural world continues to degrade. Farmers look to the coming summer with a sense of nervousness. Will the rains come? Or will the scorching, awful heat we have been experiencing for the last few summers continue, crisping  our crops even as they struggle to survive?

And there are so many things that challenge us personally. Our health, both physical and mental is always a concern, as is the health of our loved ones. We struggle to makes ends meet. We struggle as the institutions we have relied on fall apart and disappear.

Thomas lived during a time when most people lived in crushing poverty. He would have worked hard all his life to provide for his family, only to die young, never knowing much of the world, or of peace, or of real hope.

Yet he had known something different as he journeyed with Jesus. He experienced a different reality of community, love, and hope. How wonderful must that have been!! Yet all that was taken away from him. It was like he had lived in a dream and then he had awoken to the hard, painful reality he had always known.

Although this would have been disappointing, it would have made sense. He shouldn’t have expected anything else. Jesus and his way were a pipe dream, something to be forgotten, as it was now dead. He needed to move on and let go of the beautiful, painful dream that was Jesus.

When the disciples shared the good news of Christ’s return, Thomas couldn’t deal with it. It was easier to deny the possibility of what they were telling him and just ground himself in the here and now. Yes, it was painful. But better the world he understood than engage with a dream that would only lead to more pain when that dram was not realized. So, he pushed it aside. He denied the validity of the story. He demanded proof and went on his way.

When the pain of our lives is suddenly given reprieve or when a world event resolves itself in an unexpectedly hopeful manner, can we really believe it? Or are we always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Its too good to be true, we think to ourselves. Something is going to come up and abrogate what has just happened. Things don’t just work out for the best. There is always a catch, and that catch is always a painful one.

If we read Thomas’ story from that light, he becomes less of a maligned character and more of a person we can relate to. Our human response is to mitigate pain, and we often do it in two ways. Either we become overly optimistic and believe everything will simply work out, or we settle for our reality as it is and deny the idea that things could ever truly become better. Optimism or resignation. We don’t always seem to find much of a happy medium. Given that fact, we can understand where Thomas is coming from. We may have approached it in the same way.

I have mentioned this term before, but in the works of JRR Tolkien, he comes to coin a phrase called Eucatastrophe. A eucatastrophe is the opposite of a catastrophe. It is a moment when a seemingly hopeless situation is resolved with a sudden and often unexpected moment of goodness. Tolkien, an ardent Catholic, saw the cross as the ultimate example of a Eucatastrophe. When all saw defeat and an end to all that God was trying to do through Christ, God acted and brought victory out of that apparent defeat. Christ’s resurrection from the dead was the ultimate Eucatastrophe. Good triumphed, even when it seemed that the darkness had been victorious.

As humans, we seem to be more hardwired to see and expect catastrophe, even when the darkness has lifted. We can’t wrap our minds around the fact that good may in fact be triumphant. We are always looking for the darkness to rear its ugly head again. And like Thomas, we may hear the story of the resurrection and hear testimony of the risen Christ appearing to people post-crucifixion, but we, like Thomas, can’t truly fathom this.

That is, until that good news becomes a living, breathing reality in our life. For Thomas, the good news came alive when Christ did come back to the home of the disciples and did make himself known to Thomas. Despite his best efforts, Thomas couldn’t deny what he was seeing. Jesus was alive, in front of him. The darkness had not overcome the light. Jesus was not lost to him but standing in front of him.

Thomas would be transformed by the power of this encounter and would take the good news as far as India in his travels. He would live his life as one transformed by the great Eucatastrophe of God. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.

We might not have fully come to believe in the living hope of our faith, especially in the light of the world as it is. We may come to believe that we need to put our heads down and just endure. Its painful, but its less painful than living in false hope. But then we encounter the living Christ, and we come to know, like Thomas did, that the hope of Christ is still alive and is still at work in our lives.

I can’t presume to know how or if you have had this encounter. I only know that it comes, like so much God does, in unexpected ways. For me it has come in the care of a loved one, or the words of encouragement from a parishioner. It has come when I stand in awe of the created world, or when I feel the peace of Christ simply wash over me, unexpectedly and without any warning at all. I haven’t met the risen Christ as Thomas did (or if I have, I was not aware of the encounter). But I have felt the power of Christ in my life. And it has often felt the most profound in the moments of greatest darkness, when my soul is ready to give up and acknowledge that the darkness has won. It is then that the light of Christ shines all the brighter, sometimes in ways that I can not even name or put words to. Christ is just there, and the anguish and resignation lift and I have hope again. Its almost as if Jesus entered into the locked room of my heart and said “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And as he did for the disciples, so he does for me. He breathes new life into me, a life of peace and hope. He shows me love and lets me see that God’s great eucatastrophe means that there is always hope.

Amen