This morning’s lectionary passage comes on the first Sunday after Easter.  It is the famous passage about “Doubting Thomas”.  I’m sure hundreds of sermons will be launched this morning about Thomas.  How he lacked faith, he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, didn’t believe the other disciples, and was kind of a smart-arse about it.  I’ve always kind of thought Thomas got a bad rap.   I mean, how faithful were the other disciples?  They were all holed up in a locked room afraid the Jewish boogieman was going to get them.  Maybe Thomas was the only one bold enough to go back into the world and engage life again?   As for Thomas having to see for himself, let’s cut him some slack. Resurrected bodies are kind of one of those things that it is okay to be a little skeptical of.  If the disciples would have said, “We just saw a red-headed woodpecker on our front window!.”  Thomas would have probably said,  “Okay, I believe you.”  O maybe even something more bazaar. “Hey, Thomas, we just saw Ned Perme sneaking into a movie at the Market Street Cinema.” Thomas might say, “Sounds crazy guys, but okay, I believe you.”  But the disciples were pushing it a little. “Hey Thomas, guess what? Dead Jesus just walked through the wall in a resurrected body.”   You’d have to say, “Okay guys, wait a minute.”  Besides, all of the other disciples had to see Jesus body and touch him too before they believed. And when Thomas actually did see and touch Jesus he instantly gave his life to him, saying “My Lord and My God!”  Maybe Thomas would have fared better if he had been in Missouri.   Then they might have called him the “Show-Me Thomas” instead of the “Doubting Thomas.”  It doesn’t really matter because Thomas is not what the story is really about anyway and not what I’m going to preach on.

Before I read this passage, I thought I knew this story really well.  I remembered Thomas not being there and Jesus walking through the walls, which by the way, it doesn’t really say he did.  But I’d never paid attention to what it was that Jesus said once he appeared to them.  Could any of you have told me what Jesus says 3 times when he arrives? 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Every time he appears he says the same thing:   “Peace be with you”

Jesus and peace go all the way back to his birth and the singing of the heavenly host, “Peace on the earth, good will to men.”   Jesus kept the peace train running throughout his life. “My peace I give to you”, “Blessed are the peacemakers”.  But when he appears resurrected to the disciples, why does he keep repeating this refrain?  Some say it was a common greeting at the time.  Okay, that’s probably true.  Some say that the use of the word peace which in Hebrew is “shalom” would link him to the Divine.  Okay, maybe.  Or maybe one can never truly announce the coming of “peace” until death has been conquered.  Jesus taught peace, lived peace, and sought to bring peace through the cross.  But not until he himself had been raised from the dead could he finally and fully announce to the world that peace has come.  “Peace Be with You.”

Working a good 50 hours a week at 2 hospitals and ARORA, I rarely go through a single day without dealing directly with death and facing its reality.  Sometimes I only deal with it on the phone. Sometimes it is what we call a “good death” that brings some measure of comfort to the family.  But like it or not, I’m going to be reminded of death before I can finish each of my seven cups of coffee a day.  After a person dies and you are in the room with family, they always want to say, “He looks so peaceful.”  The truth is, however, there is very little “peace” in the process of dying.  We’re watching my grandmother head into the homestretch right now.  All week long, I’ve experienced very little peace.  All I’ve seen is my angry conflict with her doctor, my mom pulling her hair out, my grandmother’s mental condition fluctuating like the Nasdaq, constant stress about who can stay with her, how we can all juggle our jobs, where she will go now, how much we should do for her, and profound sadness in the few minutes we don’t have something stressful slamming us in the face.  Unfortunately, most people don’t die “peacefully”.   We see our loved ones grasping to breathe, trying to eat, and sometimes moaning in pain and disoriented discomfort.  Not a lot peaceful about death, at least leading up to it.

Probably not much “peacefulness” in the locker room with the disciples that night either. The doors are locked to keep the leaders from killing them too.  Their faith and hope wrecked by a bloody cross and a failed messiah.  There was tension among the disciples as to why they didn’t do more to help Jesus and tension in themselves as to why they had each jettisoned their mustard seed faith.   I’m sure there was a fair share of family drama going on in that room, too, as the disciples had to figure out how to make a living again and decide whether or not to tuck their tails and go back to their wives and hometowns….The disciples weren’t just sitting around in the upstairs room, eating cheetos and waiting for Jesus to return.  They were in a mess, a peace-less mess.  And in through the fear-ridden locked doors of their lives, strolls a risen Jesus, saying just one thing.  “Peace be with you”.

This passage is not ultimately about doubt, but about our faith in a risen Christ who keeps reappearing to us.  Jesus didn’t just rise from the dead, make a grand appearance and then shoot off to heaven.  He chose not to have one big comeback performance.  Instead he scheduled a whole reunion/farewell tour.  He appeared in Jerusalem in the graveyard, showed up twice to the disciples in the upper room, made breakfast on the beach, and went to Galilee and appeared to hundreds of people before ascending to heaven.

The amazing thing about Jesus’ resurrection appearances is not how totally different his resurrected body was from his old body, or from ours.  What’s interesting is how similar it was.  He ate, drank, cooked, spoke, traveled, and touched.  Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension were part of an overlapping process.

We have a very organized, Western, linear way of viewing life and death.  As Christians, we are born, grow up, get saved, leave home, marry, procreate, work, retire, get sick, die, and go to heaven.  These are all specific events that happen one after the other.   We translate this to our understanding of Jesus.  He was born in a manger, grew up with Joseph and Mary,  began his ministry, was crucified, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, then we got the holy spirit at Pentecost, and now we are waiting for Christ to return..  But a close reading of scripture gives us a more fluid view.  Jesus’ life bounces around a bit.  He is born in Bethelehem, and begins his ministry at age 33.  But then the linear line starts to curve and overlap.  Jesus soon begins talking about the cross and his death, telling us to pick up our crosses too.  While he’s still in his ministry, teaching, he begins to talk about the resurrection like it’s already happened, “I am the resurrection  and the life.”    He talks about the future coming of the kingdom of God like it’s already here, “the kingdom of heaven is upon you.”  But the kingdom hasn’t really come yet.  Jesus then talks about the Holy Spirit which will come, “the Paraclete.”   This will come after he has gone on the day of Pentecost, right?  But wait a minute, in today’s passage he breathes on the disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit already?  Paul also speaks of our salvation in ambiguous chronological terms.  You HAVE BEEN SAVED, once and for all, but yet you “WORK OUT YOUR SALVATION with fear and trembling”, for you are “still being saved”.  Then there are those passages where salvation seems to be in the future.  We are awaiting our adoption as sons and daughters, we have a “hope of salvation”.   The bottom line is that our understanding of theology, Jesus, and life are all messy.  No matter how much we valiantly try to systemetize, organize, and predict them, we never can bury the surprises.  

Jesus sees the women at the tomb and says, “Fear Not”.  They run and tell the disciples and they all sing the Hallelujah chorus, Easter is here!    Then several days, maybe weeks, later he appears to the disciples again who are locked up in a room, doing anything but “Fearing not”.  He tells them to have “Peace”.  They all see the Resurrected Jesus and touch him, their faith is restored, AHH!.  Then 8 days later, they are still locked up in the same room and Jesus has to give them another dose of the resurrection and peace, this time focusing on Thomas.

Unfortunately, our inconsistent, messy selves, require more than one dose of God.  Yes, I believe I was born again when I asked Christ into my heart as a little kid.  But that one experience doesn’t do the trick.  We need fresh encounters with Christ throughout our lives.  I needed God’s grace again in college when I felt spiritually alone and nothing I did made me feel close to God.  Six years later, I needed him to walk his ghostly self through the walls of my apartment in Lampang, Thailand when my faith was about to collapse.  All my friends were happily Buddhist, my little mission church was about to self-destruct or die, and believing in Christ just didn’t seem to matter.   Six more years later, my fear doors were locked again as I watched my marriage and career in missions and ministry unravel. Once again, Jesus let me put my humiliated, cynical hands into his side.  Fast-forward six more years.  I’d been through 35 Easter Sundays.  The risen Christ had appeared to me in countless Sunday school lessons, sermons, seminary classes, Easter pageants, and even twice in Eureka Springs when I watched them hoist Jesus up into the trees surrounding the Passion Play.  None of those images came to mind when my dad died of a sudden heart attack.     All those wonderful Easter experiences suddenly were as cold and lifeless as my father’s forehead when I kissed his in a back room of the crowded ER.  That day, I needed a new encounter with the living God.  I needed to look into Jesus nail-pierced hands right then and feel his wounded side.  I had to be reassured and believe again that death has been conquered, that my dad was okay, and that life doesn’t end like this.  I needed God to come through the walls again and say his simple sentence, “Peace Be with You.”   It is this same reassurance that my mom, my family, and I have been silently craving all week as we watch my grandmother disappear before our eyes.  Unfortunately, Jesus doesn’t step into our lives as soon as we need him or as soon as we start to doubt.  Verse 26 says he didn’t come back to Thomas right away and assure him he was alive.  He waited 8 days and let Thomas sit with his cynicism and doubt for awhile.  Christ rarely comes to us when we want him to, and often fails to come when we need him to.  But he does come and when he does, he walks through whatever walls he has to, pulls us close to his crucified and resurrected body and offers us all the God we need to get us through.

This famous passage is not so much about a “Doubting Thomas”.  It is about a “Persistent Jesus.” A Jesus who comes back from the dead and appears to the same disciples that denied him and abandoned him on his cross.  A Jesus who appears to them, not just once or twice, but time and time again despite their failure to heed his words.  A Jesus who accepts his disciples and believes in them despite their fear, cynicism, clumsiness, and doubt.  And this is the same risen Jesus that came to us last week at Easter. He comes to us again this week at this place, and next week in our living rooms, our cars, our jobs, our hospitals and our nursing homes.   John 20 is not just about “Doubting Thomas” and “Persistent Jesus”.  It is also about you and me.  The chapter ends with John spelling it all out for us.  Why was this story written down and why is it in your Bible?  .verse 31,. ‘these things have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life.”  At some point, Christ has come to all of us here today or we wouldn’t be here.  Are you in need of a fresh resurrection appearance?   Has the dust gathered on your faith and hope?  Are you at a point where you are finding it hard to really believe anymore?  May Jesus Christ, the Son of God, walk through the locked doors of your cynicism and doubt.  May the risen Christ appear to you again today so that you might believe, and by believing have life. Peace be with you…Amen.