Year C, Easter 2 (John 20:19-31)
St. Anne’s Episcopal, Conway
April 27, 2005
Video starts at 33:30
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
(The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!)
Good Morning –
I love our Gospel reading today. In the reading, John describes for us what the earliest church looked like. It was a church characterized by two things – love for one another and, what I term, an apocalyptic orientation. I’ll define this term in a moment.
And in thinking through the nature of the church that John presents to us, I could not help but see that this is the type of church that I have been blessed to be a part of over the last several months. I have experienced and observed that St. Anne’s is just this type of community as well. A community grounded in love with an apocalyptic orientation.
Let’s set the stage. It’s Easter evening. Mary discovered the empty tomb. Peter and John followed. But after they had left, Jesus appeared to Mary only. She was the only true witness to the Resurrection. Jesus had not appeared to anyone else.
That evening, the disciples gathered again in the Upper Room. This is the room where it all happened. Only a few days prior, this is the place where Jesus had given his last and “New Commandment” that “you love one another even as I have loved you.” This is the room where the disciples shared the Last Supper of Jesus’s body and blood.
The doors are locked. Everyone is there except for Thomas. We don’t know where Thomas is – he may be on a beer run or maybe visiting his mom for Passover. He’s not there. Then, Jesus appears to the Ten (the twelve less Judas and Thomas). He appears to them. He shows them his wounds. And then he breathes upon them the Holy Spirit. As you probably know, in both Hebrew and Greek, the word for “spirit” also means “breath” or “wind.” Jesus then disappears.
Thomas shows back up. The disciples are excited to tell him of their experience. They tell him, “You won’t believe what happened!” and Thomas says, “You’re right. I don’t believe what happened.”
Fast forward to next Sunday, the Sunday after Easter, where we are today. One of the biggest miracles is about to happen. That evening, the disciples are again in the Upper Room – the same room where it all happened. Everyone is there, including Thomas.
Jesus again appears to the disciples. He shows Thomas his hands that were broken and nailed to the Cross. He shows Thomas his side where the centurion’s spear had pierced it, and blood and water flowed. At that moment, Thomas not only believes in the Resurrection but gives the most significant confession in all the New Testament: “My Lord and my God.” Nowhere else will anyone – Peter, John, Paul or anyone else – explicitly state that Jesus is God. Doubting Thomas does.
So let’s look at this community of disciples gathered in the Upper Room on the Sunday after Easter, and let’s look at this community of St. Anne’s gathered here in a refurbished bookstore on the Sunday after Easter as well.
First, the disciples are a community grounded in Jesus’s final commandment that “you love one another even as I have loved you.” As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.”
We see this love in the disciples’ continuing embrace of Thomas. Thomas did not believe. He did not have the same experience as the others. And yet, the disciples did not exclude Thomas from their number. That is the biggest miracle.
They didn’t strip Thomas of his membership in the group because he doubted. They never said to Thomas, “You are not one of us because you do not believe the way we do.”
And to Thomas’s credit, he did not leave them either. Thomas and the other disciples believed differently, but they were still a community because their communal relationship was not based upon a shared agreement on certain specific theological or historical propositions, but because their relationship was based upon their love for one another. A love that comes from Christ’s love for them.
A community, like that of the early disciples, that is grounded in the love shown by Christ for his Church can bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. No one is pushed out or leaves because they doubt. No one is pushed out or leaves because they believe differently. Christ’s love, not abstract theological concepts, is the glue that holds the community together.
Second, the disciples are a community with what I call an apocalyptic orientation. “Apocalyptic” doesn’t necessarily mean fire raining from heaven, but simply means an unveiling or revelation. This unveiling is not limited to the spiritual warfare taking place in the heavenly realm, as we see in John’s Revelation, but is an unveiling that discloses the very nature of the Divine. An unveiling that discloses who Jesus is and who we, as the church, are. An apocalyptic orientation means a community that has an openness to further revelation and an openness to seeing what the Holy Spirit is saying now.
At the end of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes, “For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face, for now I know in part, then I shall understand fully.” In his first letter, John writes that love casts out fear.
A community based in love lacks the fear that further revelation or unveiling of a deeper truth will bring. It lacks the fear of gaining in knowledge and understanding. A community grounded in love has this apocalyptic orientation that eagerly looks forward in anticipation of deepening its understanding of itself and of Jesus. A community that looks forward to seeing through the glass more clearly.
We see this openness to further revelation and understanding in Thomas. Thomas didn’t “believe,” but he had an apocalyptic orientation. He didn’t believe, but he remained open to further revelation because of his love for the other disciples and his love for Jesus.
Therefore, when Jesus appeared to him, Thomas no longer simply knew in part; rather, he saw face to face and understood fully. His apocalyptic orientation allowed him to receive knowledge beyond that of the other disciples – Jesus is not merely Lord or the Son of God, but is God. Jesus is both fully Divine and fully Human. This is the revelation that Thomas received. And he received this revelation within his community, grounded in Love.
On this second Sunday of Easter, here in Conway, South Carolina, this is the type of community that I have experienced and that I see at St. Anne’s. I not only attend services here, but I also attend vestry meetings, and talk with Kevin and many of y’all outside of Sunday morning. I see the great love that y’all have for one another. A love of each other and for Jesus that drives out fear and allows you to have that same apocalyptic orientation as Thomas. You have Thomas’s openness to what God is doing here and now. An openness to see with unveiled eyes how the Holy Spirit is moving within this building and within the Conway community.
I spent a good portion of time with your Vestry at their retreat several weeks ago. For the several hours that I was there, I never heard any bickering, but only respectful discussions grounded in love. And what I heard were discussions about how you, at St. Anne’s, allow your Christ-centered community to remain open to the further revelations of Jesus. What I heard were discussions about how do we expand our community for those people who doubt, for those who have not experienced the Resurrection, or for those who have been told that they don’t belong in a Christian community and have been expelled.
When I look out on this congregation today, I see a community with a heart for people like Thomas and a community with a heart of people like Thomas. A community grounded in love with an apocalyptic orientation. A community with an expectation that the same Spirit that Jesus breathed on his disciples is continuing to lead us today into a greater and deeper understanding of what this community can be.
It is a blessing to be with y’all and a great privilege to be with you on your journey.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
(Inspired Quote: “In fact, there is no way to remain faithful to the tradition, if indeed it is a living reality, other than this same openness to the future – this same fidelity to the impulse of the past toward a last end whose final meaning cannot yet be fully seen, but in the light of which that past becomes ever more intelligible – this same gratitude for a treasure that has been entrusted to those who believe in it, but that has yet to be wholly poured out.” David Bentley Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse – An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief, p. 158)