ACTS 2:14,22b-32
PSALM 118:19-24
1 PETER 1:3-9
JOHN 20:19-31
Sermon – 4/7/02
“Taking God’s Check”
How many people here have ever taken a check from someone in payment for something? How many people work for places that take checks?
Taking
a check in payment for something is an act of faith. That’s something I suspect the vendors and
employees of Enron, K-Mart and a few other companies have come to recognize in
the last few months, but it’s always true.
I think that’s why “check cards” have caught on so much, because taking
a check is an act of faith, especially if it’s from someone you
don’t know or in unusual circumstances.
Last
summer Elda and I rented a cottage in a small town in Maine, and we were
astonished that the local restaurant took our (out-of-state) check. More typical is the sign I once saw in a
small business: “In God we trust; all others pay cash.”
Well,
the Apostle Thomas took that one step further.
He wanted God to “pay cash.”
That is, he didn’t want to take the resurrection of Christ on faith; he
wanted direct, personal, tangible proof. It was as though he were saying, “Not only do I want cash, but I
don’t want paper money either.” (That
requires faith in the government that printed it.) “I want silver dollars, morgan silver dollars made with
real silver, in payment. I want proof
which doesn’t take any faith at all.”
It’s
interesting that the disciples didn’t argue with him. After all, they had seen Christ, although the Gospel of
John doesn’t say they touched him on Easter evening.
It’s
also interesting that the disciples did not try to offer Thomas “tangible
proof” through artifacts, as people have tried to do over the
years, most notably through the famous “Shroud of Turin” which some people
believe is Christ’s burial cloth, miraculously imprinted with his likeness
(perhaps at the moment his dead body was being resurrected).
Well,
for all the extraordinary energy which has gone into looking for and promoting
supposed relics in the past 2,000 years, at the time the shroud (and the Holy
Grail and the True Cross and everything else) were actually readily available,
no one paid any attention to them. The Gospels report that the shroud was left
in the tomb – appropriate, as it was the burial cloth for someone who was now alive.
No
one ran and got the shroud to show it to Thomas in an effort to prove Christ’s
resurrection to him. You want to touch
something, Tom? Check this out! Didn’t happen.
Nothing
to do with Jesus’ death was proof of his being alive. Instead, the proof of his being alive was –
for starters, the disciples.
They
didn’t argue with Thomas.
These
guys, who had spent time competing with each other during Jesus’ ministry with
“I’m the greatest” speeches, who had vowed during the Last Supper
to stick with him through thick and thin, and who had almost universally disappeared
on Good Friday, were experiencing something new: humility. They just shut up. They figured, “Jesus is The Man, not Peter or John or anybody
else. Jesus will bring Thomas into the
loop in his own way.”
The
disciples also began to experience safety and security. On Easter evening they met – but with the
doors locked, “for fear of the Jews”, which in John’s Gospel always
means “the Jewish leaders who were opposed to Jesus” since the apostles
themselves were Jews, too. On the
Sunday after Easter, the doors where mere closed, not
locked. The only thing that had
changed was that they knew Christ was alive.
Their lives were still as much at risk, but they were no longer
terrified.
The
disciples experienced community.
Getting together on Sunday was becoming a habit, a habit those
who are here today appreciate the value of! When the disciples gathered together in community on Sunday,
suddenly Jesus was there in the midst of them.
Sounds like a good reason for coming to church.
The
disciples experienced joy.
John’s Gospel says, “The disciples rejoiced when they saw the
Lord.” That’s putting it mildly. After profound depression and fear on Good
Friday, they knew joy beyond their wildest dreams.
And
finally, the disciples discovered the meaning and purpose of their lives. They were sent by Jesus as his
representatives, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
But paradoxically, to understand their mission fully, they needed to
hear Jesus’ response to Thomas, the doubter.
Remember
Thomas, the one who “wanted to be paid in cash by God”? So Jesus did return on the next Sunday
(which is why this Gospel passage is read on the second Sunday of Easter season
each year).
There
Jesus was, inviting Thomas to touch the holes in his hands and his side. We don’t know whether Thomas, in fact,
actually did; all we know is his words – the fullest expression of faith
in John’s Gospel. “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!”
There’s
lots that can be said here about how caution and doubt can be a precursor to a
more profound faith, and how nothing “second-hand” beats a personal
experience of Jesus Christ.
But
I’d like to focus on Thomas’ interest in Christ’s wounds. Thomas didn’t merely say he wanted to see if
Jesus was alive, he wanted proof that the same body that was
mortally wounded was now alive – which was what Jesus had showed the others on
Easter.
And
it was so. Thomas discovered what the
others had already found out about God’s approach to triumphing over pain and
death. When Jesus conquered pain and
death, it wasn’t because God “pushed the rewind button” to get Jesus back to
the way he was before he suffered; no, Jesus triumphed by going through
suffering and death and out the other end to new and greater life. He still had the scars to prove he
was the same person as the one who had suffered and died, but those past
experiences no longer had any power over him.
That is what he offers us. Not that our lives will be pain-free if we
believe or that we won’t die, but rather that he will be with us, through our pain and through our
deaths and then enable us to come out the
other side to new and greater life.
To
believe in Christ’s promise to us requires faith. We can’t see it until we experience it ourselves, and we aren’t
as likely to experience new life unless we believe it first.
It’s
kind of like depositing a check. It
takes faith. We can settle for what
materialism offers and see it all, in cash: loose change compared with what God
offers, but all in cash.
Or
we can believe in God’s promise of new life to all who believe and “accept
God’s check” which has a limitless value. The check is marked “p.o.d.” (“payable on death”) so we won’t be
able to experience its full value in this life. BUT, as soon as we accept God’s promise of new life and believe
in Jesus Christ – in this analogy, as soon as we “deposit the check” – the check starts earning interest here and
now.
Remember
what the ten disciples started feeling in just a week: safety, security, joy,
identity, community, meaning and purpose in life. And that’s just the interest
on God’s gift to them. And Thomas
started “earning interest” also as soon as he believed.
“Now
Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not
written in this book. But these are
written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of
God, and that through believing you may have life in his name”
(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard