Year A
Acts 2:14a,22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31

God told Noah that it was going to rain for forty days and forty nights… that is… for a long time… and Noah and his family… and all of those animals… were in the ark in God-imposed physical distancing… and they were separated from those they knew… and all that was familiar to them… they may have felt bored… or lonely… or afraid… as some of us are feeling now… and even when the rain stopped… it would be another long time before the waters receded… and for life to resume… in the new normal…

This pandemic emerged during the forty days of Lent… and we have just barely emerged into Easter… and our experience is… to varying degrees… unfamiliar to us… we too are separated from those we know… and what is familiar to us… and we are either doing physical distancing… or self-imposed isolation… we may know someone who is quarantined… or who’s tested positive… or who’s gotten sick and recovered… or who’s died… and some of us may even wonder if Lent is really over…

But in our Gospel… when it was evening… on the first day of the week… the doors of the house… where the disciples gathered in physical distancing… were locked… for fear of the coronavirus… without any warning… Jesus came and stood among them… and he wore no personal protective equipment… and he said… Peace be with you… Be not afraid… I am the God who counts all the hairs on your head… I am the God who collects your tears in a bottle… and who replaces your perishable body… with an imperishable one… and they all rejoiced… each one of them… and Jesus said again… Peace be with you… and he breathed the healing… life-giving… Holy Spirit on them…

Though Thomas was not with them that night… the disciples told him that Jesus had come… and stood among them… but Thomas doubted… we tend think of Thomas’ doubt as a negative… as a mark against him… as a lack of faith… and faith is good… right… as Hebrews 11:1 says… faith is the assurance of things hoped for… and we all remember the passage from Genesis in which Abram believed God’s promises… and it was reckoned to him as righteousness… faith and belief make us righteous… right… but both the Greek word for faith… and the Hebrew word for believe… are linguistically related to the word trust… and trust can be grounded only in a deep relationship…

Thomas didn’t want to believe too quickly… something that was hard to comprehend… he wanted to see for himself that it really was Jesus… and he said… unless I put my finger in the mark of the nails… and my hand in his side… unless I see the evidence… and analyze the data… unless I see for myself that the curve is flattened and that death is behind him… I won’t believe… because maybe we still need to use masks and gloves… and maintain physical distance… and wash our hands…

A week later… Jesus returned… and he must have understood the value that information has… because even though Thomas said nothing… Jesus invited him to touch and to probe and to examine… and the text doesn’t say that Thomas actually did… but implicit in Jesus’ offer to be examined… embodied in Jesus’ willingness to be made vulnerable… and to meet Thomas where he was… was a remarkable depth of relationship… and I think that’s what enabled Thomas to trust… and to say… My Lord and my God…

Throughout Jesus’ ministry… he challenged the status quo… the gods that humans made… he asked those around him to look at what they believed and why they believed it… he asked those around him to consider whether they were living out God’s agenda or their own agenda… he asked them to reflect on whether their lives and their politics and their religion… like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle… could really go together only one way… and create only one image… one reality… or whether those pieces could fit together in surprising new ways… and present an image which reflected more and more of God’s Kingdom…

This pandemic is a tragedy… but it is also providing an opportunity for us to let go of those attitudes… behaviors… and the very systems themselves… which prevent us from loving our neighbors as we love ourselves… for example… we think that the systems which interact with each other… can interact in only one way… so milk producers are dumping tens of thousands of gallons of milk because schools are closed and there’s nowhere to send it… but because businesses are closed and families are out of work… food banks are facing unprecedented need… and while I’ve been told that the supply chains for commercial foods and consumer foods are different… there must be some way to stop the waste and get the food to those in need… it just takes a shift in the puzzle pieces…

When Jesus died… the disciples were in pieces… and scattered… there were reports of resurrection and oppression… people were grieving and confused… disoriented… numb… maybe even saying things like… I don’t know who I am… or who to believe…

Our culture is feeling a lot of these feelings now… there’s been a death to our way of life… not everyone knows how to react… and just having someone say it’s safe to open the states or the country back up… may not be enough without any credible empirical data… because otherwise… there will be some who believe the pandemic is over when it’s not… and some who will believe it’s not over when it is…

Pastor Martin Billmeier of St. Lucas Lutheran Church in Toledo writes… as we face this disruption of our society… with all the added anxiety it brings… which just gets piled on top of our “normal” anxieties… it’s easy to run after other gods… as the Psalmist records in v. 3… and what “other gods” tempt us… well… there’s the god of fear… the god of anger… two gods which frequently accompany each other… then there’s the god of despair… and if we look at the pantheon of Greek gods… they frequently represent emotions or passions which can rule over us… but these gods don’t serve us well… Jesus’ favorite greeting when he appears is… Peace be with you!

So perhaps… instead of labeling Thomas negatively… because he didn’t want to take on faith alone… that Jesus had been raised… which was just fine with Jesus… perhaps we can label him as a sort of hero… because he didn’t leave his brain at the door… he paved the way for us to doubt… he gave us permission to ask questions… to see the evidence for ourselves… and to trust a God… who meets us right exactly where we are… because this God is… as the Psalmist also wrote in v.1… our “good above all others.” And with a God like this… who… or what… can stand against us…