“When it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week…” That day when the ground shook as an angel of the Lord rolled away the stone blocking the tomb, that day when the guards shook, and became like dead men, that day when the women went quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and went to tell the disciples that he has been raised. “When it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week, [pause] the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked, for fear of the Jews.”
Today, the second Sunday of this seven week season of Easter, is traditionally called Low Sunday. Now the joke is it’s called Low Sunday because, in contrast to the huge crowds on Easter, attendance is low on this Sunday. But that’s actually not the reason. And our attendance is pretty good today, so that wouldn’t make sense anyway. It’s called Low Sunday, because unlike the pomp and circumstance of the high liturgy of the First Sunday of Easter, this morning, this Second Sunday of Easter like the rest of the Sundays in this Easter season, feel less like Easter and more like normal church. And it can feel like a bit of a let down. Without the pizzazz of the big holiday, without the trumpets, the lilies, the big hymns and the bold words, we may wonder if resurrection really happened, or if we just got swept away last week by the show of it all.
The disciples were certainly wondering that. In the morning there’d been a lot of excitement, when the women came with the miraculous news that the stone was rolled away and Jesus was not there. But it was evening now, and things always look a little less hopeful in the evening, a little more unclear. And the disciples might have been wondering if they’d gotten swept away in the excitement of it all. So they found themselves locked away, in fear.
Before we go any further, there’s one thing we need to break down here. The text says the doors were locked, “for fear of the Jews.” But that doesn’t make any sense, because remember, these guys are all Jewish, Jesus was Jewish. So it can’t be a blanket statement “Jews” that the disciples were afraid of. The word here in Greek is iudeon, Judean, a regional identity rather than a religious one. But even that is not quite there. Think from a power perspective, who has power here, who has the kind of power to create the kind of fear the disciples were experiencing? It was not your run-of-the-mill Judean citizens. The disciples had just watched their leader and teacher be put to death in the manner of a Roman political prisoner to preserve the power of Rome and those who’s authority came through Rome. If the disciples were locked away for fear of the Jews, it was because power has an insidious ability to pit us against one another, to distract us so we cannot see the real source of control, the real force of which we ought to be afraid.
So the disciples were behind locked doors in fear, when Jesus came and stood among them. I love the way John writes that, with so little fanfare, as if there was absolutely nothing extraordinary about Jesus showing up inside the locked doors. For some reason, in my imagination the disciples are always standing shoulder to shoulder like in a football huddle, when suddenly someone says, like, “hey guys, why are we whispering,” and they look up, and it’s Jesus. As an aside, you know that line about how Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart and all you have to do is let him in. I always get a bit of a chuckle when I hear someone say that, because clearly this passage is proof that Jesus doesn’t have the best manners when it comes to waiting politely outside until someone gets around to opening the door for him. If Jesus feels like there are folk on the other side of the door that need some peace, he’s not above just letting himself right on in. In fact, not even letting himself in, just showing up inside, forget the door.
So Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.” Peace be with you is a standard greeting, like hello, or good morning, but it’s more than that. Back in John 14, when Jesus was giving some last promises to the disciples on the night before his crucifixion, he’d said to them, “peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.” So now he was back, fulfilling the promise he’d made to them, that he would give them his peace. This, incidentally, is also what we do on Sundays when we share the peace with one another. Yes, we are greeting each other, like hello or good morning, but we are also giving peace to one another, we are giving each other a measure of the same peace which Jesus gave to us on the evening of his resurrection.
After Jesus said Peace be with you, he showed him his hands and his side. And then, after seeing the proof of his resurrection, then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
But Thomas, who, for reasons that are never made clear, was called the twin, was not with the rest of the disciples when Jesus appeared to them. A mistake which forever got him labeled “Doubting Thomas.” Which I think is a wrong label for a whole host of reasons. First off, because Thomas didn’t ask for anything more than the other disciples had received. When Jesus came among the disciples in the locked room, he showed them his hands and his side, and it was only after seeing that, that the text tells us “the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” Thomas didn’t demand some special sign of wonder, he simply requested no more and no less than what the others had received, to see the wounds of the crucified Lord.
But my biggest gripe with the label Doubting Thomas is this. Where the word doubt is in verse twenty-seven, “Do not doubt but believe.” That’s a bad translation. In Greek, the second word is pistos, which is belief, that part’s right, but the first word is apistos, which is unbelief. What Jesus said was “do not be unbelieving, but be believing.” It may seem like a subtle difference, but belief is not the opposite of doubt; the opposite of doubt is certainty. I’m going to say that again, because it’s important. Belief is not the opposite of doubt; the opposite of doubt is certainty. You can believe, and you can doubt your belief, you can wonder if there really is anything there. In the same vein, you can not believe, and you can doubt your unbelief, you can wonder if there might be more than you know. If you are certain, on the other hand, there is no space for wonder in certainty, no room to grow, no opportunity to be moved. Jesus cautioned Thomas not against doubt, but against certainty, against the conviction that the kingdom of God could be limited by what he personally could see and touch.
Jesus warned Thomas, but he also opened his hands to him, showed him his side. Jesus met Thomas where he was at, showed up behind the locked doors of Thomas’ conviction, and like Jesus had done with so many others throughout the course of his ministry, led Thomas from conviction to doubt to belief. And Thomas, without, it should be noted, ever reaching out and touching Jesus, despite insisting his belief would require that, but merely seeing the offering Jesus was making, gave the fullest confession of faith to be found in the New Testament, “My Lord and My God.” Thomas let go of his certainty, and Thomas believed.
And this, verses thirty and thirty-one inform us, is the purpose of this Gospel. This Gospel was written so that we, like Thomas, may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and that by believing we may have life. But even in that statement, the Gospel leaves just a little bit of wiggle room, a little space for wonder, for doubt, for growth. See the Greek is ambiguous in that phrase “come to believe.” It may be come, or it may be “continue to believe.” The Gospel may have been written to bring us to faith, or to move us along the road of faith. And truth be told, as a good Lutheran, I think the answer to the “come to believe” / “continue to believe” question is yes. I think the Gospel, and really the whole of scripture, in all it’s beautiful and messy complexity is an invitation to, like Thomas, find just enough proof to marvel in the unprovable, to be moved from the framework we thought we needed, to be moved from certainty, and to move into the uncertain wonder of belief. Because for every High Sunday there is a corresponding Low. For every moment of hope, there is a period of fear. For every rush of promise, there is a time when the promise seems unkeepable. And conviction is too inflexible for such times. And so, instead of conviction, Jesus invites us into the openness of wonder, and meets us with open hands, to give us as much as we need to get us there. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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