Bible Text: Acts 4:32-35, John 20:19-31 | Preacher: Rev. Jenn Geddes
As many of you know my family are big music lovers. Although the rest of my family is quite musical I’ve just managed to maintain a love of music. Our love, however, is quite diverse. My Father the blues fan, my Mother the Canadian folk fan, my brother the electric fan and I run the gambit. There was, however, one artist that we could all agree on when I was growing up. One artist who was able to span our musical tastes and genres. One artist who has had a a number one single on the Billboard chart in each of the past six decades. She is so accomplished that she is known as the Goddess of pop. To date she has released 25 albums. She has also had a fairly successful movie career winning an Oscar, Emmy and three golden globe awards. Any guesses on who it might be? It is Cherilyn Sarkisian, also known as Cher. I know its hard to believe. Incidentally Cher will be 70 next year. I know that seems hard to believe. Well, in 1998 the Goddess of Pop released her 22nd album. The title track “Believe” was my family’s favourite. It was certainly a departure from her usual successes and adopted more a dance-pop vibe. Critics claim that it was this song, that resurrected her career, revived her ability to be a chart topper, gained her a following among younger fans and cemented her as one of the greatest. The song “Believe” was also the first commercial recording ever to feature the now much over used audio processor software called Auto-tune. The song is about overcoming a tragic heartbreak and gaining a sense of self, having the ability to live life again after such a crushing relationship. The chorus is a question, “Do you believe in life after love?” and there is no way I am going to attempt to sing in her signature contralto voice. But this question, do you believe in life after love? Is rather appropriate for this week.
For the disciples it was difficult to live life as it had once been. Our passage begins with them locked in a room, afraid, and not sure what to do. Despite stories of the resurrection and rumours of visions of Jesus by the women among them they aren’t quite ready to believe it. After all, it seems hard to believe in life after what they have witnessed in Jesus’ death. The crucifixion was a crushing defeat in their belief and relationship with Jesus.
It is the week after Easter, or what is called in the church season, the second week of Easter. In fact, the season of Easter is 10 days longer than the season of Lent in the church year! But we often treat it as a one week event and the lectionary, the tool the reformed church uses to assign Scripture lessons each Sunday. doesn’t really help us here. This happens to be the only Sunday in the entire 3 year cycle that contains the same Scripture passage every year. So in reality if you’ve been to one service on the second Sunday of Easter in your life, you’ve been to them all because the Scripture doesn’t change. We know the story. We can all go home. But that is part of the challenge for today. The story is as familiar to us as a top 40 hit song by a musical legend that’s been playing over and over in our heads. What more is there to learn? As with any Scripture lesson our interpretation is influenced by our tradition, doctrine and experience and as a result there is much for us to gain from hearing the story again.
Jesus appears and offers peace to the disciples. He shows them his hands and his side, sends them forth into the world and gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit. With God’s grace to guide them, they witness to Christ’s resurrection, sharing their gifts with those who are in need. This is John’s version of Pentecost. This is John’s version of the birth of the church. And Thomas is missing. Imagine missing out on a great historical event that all your friends have witnessed. Imagine those friends telling you all about it and how amazing and life changing it was. “Oh Thomas, you should have been there! Jesus was right here among us, he showed us his wounds, and then he left us with an incredible gift. Oh, Thomas you really missed out!” I understand Thomas’s response. He’s disappointed, offended, discouraged and feels left out.
If you were to ask Thomas, do you believe in life after love? His initial response would be, No and I don’t think it was entirely due to his doubt but to the fact that he felt like he had been forgotten. Thomas is given a bit of a bad rap in that he is the only one coined as a doubter when in reality all the disciples were in a room afraid and doubting. I know I promised not to do this but in Cher’s immortal words. “No matter how hard I try, You keep pushing me aside, And I can’t break through, There’s no talking to you”
I find that there is something appealing about Thomas. He is our kind of guy. We, and certainly our modern culture, can identify with this scepticism. I have to admit I kind of like Thomas for this reason. There are numerous times when I’m not willing to buy into a belief just because someone says I should or tells me about their own personal experience. We are trained not to believe everything we read or everything we are told. There is a lot of misinformation out there and we are encouraged to be sceptical. Thomas refuses to believe in the resurrection based on mere hearsay. He wants physical proof and he wants to experience it all. Thomas wants to see. Thomas wants to touch. Thomas wants to witness. That’s not much different from what we want.
Thomas’s response to the disciples is harsh and negative. It is actually harsher than we realize in the Greek translation. Thomas says, “I will not believe” but the Greek is a aorist subjunctive. Meaning it is a classical form that emphasizes an emphatic negative in the future. So, in reality Thomas is saying something more like, “Never will I believe”. This is then contrasted with Jesus’ appearance, Thomas’ touching, and Jesus’ words, “Do not doubt but believe.” In this experience Thomas has a complete turn around and exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” That one remark is called the climax to the Gospel of John because it is the first time that Jesus is acknowledged as God. Through his experience Thomas is able to have faith in God.
The desire for experiential proof is completely normal and a part of our expectations when it comes to what people tell us. Mike and I are always telling our friends back East, its one thing to see pictures of Goose Spit, the Comox Glacier, and Nymph falls. Its a whole other thing to experience it. In this age of proving hypothesis through experiments it is totally normal to ask for proof. Proof is what everyone prefers. If that were not true we wouldn’t have the kind of debates we have had of late about things like climate change. I would argue that sometimes it doesn’t even matter how much proof is out there about one thing or another. It will never be enough until it is fully experienced.
That’s the reality for us. God, in God’s infinite wisdom, has deemed that we are not to be the ones locked up in a room with the other disciples but rather disciples sitting in a church millennia later. We can not experience the resurrection with Thomas or the other disciples. We live in an age of wonders but when it comes to resurrection faith ours is not and can not be based on sight, feel or even witness. But it can be experienced. That is the true gift of the Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit comes the truth of God’s love and it illuminates our faith and even our scepticism.
When Jesus breathes on the disciples it alludes to the 2nd chapter of Genesis when God forms humanity out of dust from the ground and breathed into Adam’s nostrils with the breath of life. This commissioning by Jesus with the Holy Spirit is a creation story. Life is not something to be proven but experienced. Faith is not something to be proven but experienced. It is experienced by the breath of God, by the Holy Spirit flowing through us and being breathed upon others by our faith in action.
The concluding verses in our passage, “that these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah” move us from one of needing proof to experience. The grammar is also important, here the Greek employs a perfect tense. These things are written, indicating the book’s continuing validity. Writing in the ancient world was strongly connected with auditory activity. While only a handful of people could read the text many more could hear the text. Reading in silence was almost an unknown activity. As a result this Gospel story moves us from a need to see or touch or feel to hearing and experiencing and believing.
Do you believe in life after love? Do you believe in faith after experience? Amen