SECOND SUNDAY of EASTER

May 1, 2011

Text: 20:19-31

Pastor Dale G. Bauer

After one of the services during Holy Week, I got home in time to catch part of that film which comes around every year at this time: The Ten Commandments. I was just a kid when it came out and I was enraptured by its scope, special effects, and story. Even though I had heard the Exodus story many times growing up in the Church, the film made it come alive. It was as if I was there: at the burning bush, the confrontations of Moses and Pharaoh, and the separating of the Red Sea. Remember? Here’s a trailer from the film.

If I had only been there, I thought, how easy it would be to have faith. And how easy it would be for others. I often wonder if the massive pageants and dramas of Christmas and Easter in places like the Crystal Cathedral aren’t an attempt to pick people up out of their seats and put them back there in the time of Jesus so that they can believe.

Maybe that’s all Thomas wanted. To have been there. To have seen the companion once dead, alive, speaking to them, calling them to peace. To use that old phrase, “seeing is believing.” We can sympathize with him. If someone told us that a dead friend or family member was walking around alive, we would be skeptical, at least. So he voices his disappointment bluntly: unless I touch him, see him breathing and
scared, I cannot believe.

We are hard on Thomas. We call him “doubting Thomas” because he just couldn’t believe in a resurrected Jesus without some firsthand proof. But he was one of the twelve original disciples, personally chosen by Jesus. He is mentioned in the gospels three times. Tradition has it that after the Ascension of Jesus, he went and preached to the Parthians. No small task since they were descendants of the Persians and had defeated every Roman army sent against them. It is today called Iraq. Tradition also holds that he made it as far as
India, founding the church there. Sounds like he did a lot once he believed.

Now, we know that even being there doesn’t seem enough. Firsthand experience fades so quickly. Humans, according to Rick Warren, have only a 28-day memory. God pried the Hebrews from the hands of Pharaoh and they forgot within an amazingly short time. God divided the Red Sea to save the Hebrews and destroy the Egyptians, but that was not enough. They forgot. God brought them to Mt. Sinai, safely, to forge a relationship and they got impatient and started worshipping a golden calf. Many, not only Thomas, could not believe that Jesus could be raised from the dead, from that day to this day.

So, remember these words? Remember Scripture?

Blessed are those
who have not seen

and yet have come to believe

Jesus is introducing something amazing. We can experience the risen Christ as surely as did those first disciples did, and as did Thomas. Really. It is called contemporaneousness. It’s not my idea. It is the words of Scripture distilled into one word by the father of existentialism, Soren Kierkegarrd. Other historical figures,
from Caesar Augustus to Abraham Lincoln, are prisoners of the past. But not Jesus of Nazareth. They experienced him 2,000 years ago and you and I can experience him now, as contemporaries.

How is that possible? Because he is the resurrected and living Lord of heaven and earth. He is not bound by time. Or space. Or any of the dimensions of creation. He was alive then and is alive now.

How is that possible? In many ways. Really. It is through prayers that we come into contact with the real Jesus of Nazareth. In worship, like we experienced this last Sunday, Easter, Jesus comes to us. It is by living the Law of love that Jesus of Nazareth enters our lives.

How is that possible? There are no second-hand Christians. We are, each one of us who call ourselves followers of Christ Jesus, in his presence. As surely as were those ten in the located room, and then those eleven, with Thomas present.

My friend, the crazy Dane, Soren Kierkegaard, suggests the quickest way to be contemporaneous with Jesus is to suffer for him. To reject the values of this world. To call him alone Lord of life. To be driven by our sin into the arms of a living, loving Lord.

Some of you know I experienced the resurrected Lord here one night ten or fifteen years ago. He was the Christ described by the book of Revelation: in a white robe, hair white as snow, sword coming from his mouth, and his voice like the roar of a waterfall. I guess I could have been hallucinating, or projecting, or something. God knows. But he was the same Christ then as he was back then. Contemporaneous.

Amen.