THE RESURRECTION AND MISSOURIANS Gerald J. Gregg
Matthew 20:19-31 NEB Broad Street Presbyterian Church
April 22, 1979 Columbus, Ohio

It seems to me that the resurrection of Jesus is the sermon subject called for
not only on Easter Day but also on the Stu..”.y after Easter, That is the way «he

Gospel according to John tells the story, : ‘cer all, Among the followers of esus
there was one man, who when told that Jesus was risen, said, in cffect, "I'm trom
Missouri; you'll have to show me." Listen ow to his story in the 20th chapter of

John, It begins on the evening of the first Easter,

"Late that Sunday evening, when the disciples were together behind locked doors,
for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them, 'Peace be with you’ he said,
and then showed them his hands and his side, So when the disciples saw the Lord,
they were filled with joy, Jesus repeated, 'Peace be with you', and said, ‘As the
Father sent me, so I send you.’ Then he breathed on them, saying, ‘Receive the Holy
Spirit! If you forgive any man's sins, they stand forgiven; if you pronounce them
unforgiven, unforgiven they remain, '

"One of the Twelve, Thomas, that is ‘the Twin', was not with the rest when
Jesus came, So the disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord.’ He said, ‘Unless
I see the mark of the nails on his hands, unless I put my finger into the place where
the nails were, and my hand into his side, I will not believe it.'

"A week later his disciples were again in the room, and Thomas was with them,
Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them, saying, ‘Peace be
with you!' Then he said to Thomas, 'Reach your finger here; see my hands, Reach
your hand here and put it into my side. Be unbelieving no longer, but believe.'
Thomas said, 'My Lord and my God!' Jesus said, ‘Because you have seen me you have
found faith, Happy are they who never saw me and yet have found faith.'

"There were indeed many other signs that Jesus performed in the presence of
his disciples, which are not recorded in this book, Those here written have been
recorded in order that you may hold the faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God, and that through this faith you may possess life by his name,"

The first thing to be said about the story of Thomas is this: The author of
the Gospel according to John held this story to be of utmost importance, These
verses constitute the end of John's account as it was originally written, He chose
this to be the climax of his story,

John tells us that all the disciples had given up, Jesus had been executed on
a cross and then buried in a tomb three days before. The disciples were completely
disillusioned, Their leader was dead, They were defeated, beaten men, They had
surrendered all hope, locked themselves behind barred doors in fear and trembling,
There was no future for them, And then the resux~ection happened! Shockingly,
Jesus was with them again! Not because of anyt.....g they had done -- they had given
up -- but entirely because of God's power, Jess was right there with them again!

I emphasize the disciples' mood of complete despair for a reason, That is,
no matter how each person of us may think about the resurrection of Jesus, no
matter how we may try to understand what happened, to explain it or intellectualize
it or even rationalize it, still the fact remains that the resurrection was a
direct, forceful, completely real experience for the disciples, They were not ex~
pecting it; far from it, It was certainly not something they could have schemed

oP

and invented, for the fact is they were completely caught by surprise, They were
bowled over to find Jesus with them again,

Today's scripture emphasizes that truth, Thomas was not with them on Easter
evening and when they all told him about it, in all their excitement, he pooh-poohed
them, We can imagine how Thomas must have reacted: "You guys are higher than a kite,
You've either had too much of the grape or you're suffering from some mass hysteria,
You'd better come down to earth and face facts: It's all over, Don't pull my leg any
more." A good honest reply from a man whose hopes were dead, And then, seven days
later, it happened again and this time Thomas was there, It happened to him so
powerfully that, on seeing Jesus, Thomas could only blurt out, "My Lord and my God,"
His experience of the Risen Lord could not be denied by the man who had to be shown
first, Even for Doubting Thomas it happened so powerfully that he was bowled over,

As is true of so much of the Bible, this story has passed into our common
language. "Doubting Thomas" is a common term of scorn, It points a finger at a
person who bull-headedly refuses to accept what is considered an established truth,
He always has the chip of disbelief teetering on his shoulder, Society would run
smoother without Doubting Thomases, we think, Life would be more agreeable without
stubborn Missourians who demand to be shown,

The truth is that we all have something of Doubting Thomas in us, And maybe
we aren't too happy about that, We have been told to have faith, just believe,
Asking pushy questions about religion, raising doubts and objections -- we've been
taught that is the opposite of having faith, Is it? Let's take another look at
the original Doubting Thomas,

In the same Gospel accordine to John, in chapter 11, there is an earlier
episode concerning this same Thomas; Jesus has just received news that his friend
Lazarus became sick and died and so he plans to journey to Judea in order to bring
Lazarus back to life, raise him from his grave, The Gospel record tells us that
the last time Jesus was in Judea he had barely escaped violent death by stoning,
The story goes like this: After receiving word about Lazarus, Jesus "said to his
disciples,'Let us go back to Judea,' 'Rabbi,' his disciples said, ‘it is not long
since the Jews there were wanting to stone you, Are you going there again?',,,But
Thomas, called ‘the twin', said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we
may die with him,'"

Quite a different picture, Here Thomas is described as the most faithful,
as ready to be the first to sacrifice his life, And then, ten days or so later,
Thomas is portrayed again, in today's scripture lesson, and this time he is the
last to believe, the skeptic, the doubter: I will not believe unless I see, touch,
feel,

Both pictures are of the same man, A man of faith and yet of penetrating
doubts, Was he at one point wholly believing and then ten days later wholly dis-
believing? Of course not, Thomas was human, and being human, he had both elements
in his make-up, He believed and yet had many questions, He doubted and yet had
faith, He badly wanted to find a deep meaning in life and yet held back in spite
of his friends' arguments for fear of commiting himself to something without
reality, to what might turn out to be delusion, merely maudlin sentimentality,

-3-

Above all, Thomas was a very honest person -- honest about his feelings even
under the pressure of his friends, He honestly doubted what the others had seen at
their meeting and he said so, At least he had not had any such experience, It was
something he desperately wanted to believe, It would put meariing into everything
that had happened to him, But wanting to believe was not enough for Thomas,

We are in Thomas' position, aren't we? We want to believe, We want a faith
which makes everything meaningful, faith which completely overcomes difficulties and
sorrows, a faith which transforms every aspect of our lives from emptiness into a
deep rich fullness, S$0, we profess faith and all along, Like Thomas, we have
reservations,

We have a hard time being honest about our ambivalence, our questioning, our
doubting, We often mouth convictions we're not sure of, We pretend to ourselves
and others that our faith is greater and more unshakeable than it really is, Especi-
ally in church groups, especially here where we meet with others in precisely the
same boat,we hesitate to disclose our lack of complete understanding, our lack of
complete unshakeable faith, We hide our hard questions about faith from each
other in order to be nice and agreeable, and soon we cannot find them for ourselves,
We duck behind the false facade of positive thinking, And in doing so, we nicely
insulate ourselves from growing and maturing in true faith,

Cheek out that story of Doubting Thomas again, It is no accident that if was
the last incident in John's original account, In Thomas, John Was describing the
climax of the drama of faith, This is the way people everywhere, in all ages, must
veact to the Good News, John was saying, This is what resurrection must mean in the
lives of individuals ~- people exposing their whole selves, theix honest beliefs and
their honest doubts to the power which can then revolutionize their Lives,

In 1850 Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrate a long poem titled “In Memoriam", He
tells about a man with doubts, a man who knew he had reservations about faith, but
who was honest in dealing with them: ",,.Nou tell me, doubt is Devil-born, I know
not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touched a jarring harp
at first, But ever strove to make it true; Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out, There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me,
than in half the creeds, He fought his doubts and gather'd strength, He would not
make his judement blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: Thus he
came at length to find a stronger faith..." .

But what if it is not just a matter of doubt and questions, not just a problem
of intellect anc reasoning that keaps us separated from the resurrection? What if it
goes much deeper than that? reaches into our attitudes, our failures and inadequacies?

Tt was the same for the disciples when they got together behind locked doors,
They had failed Jesus miserably. They had slept in the garden while the soldiers
closed in to arrest Jesus, Then they had run in all directions like frightened
rabbits to save their lives, Peter three times denied knowing Jesus, but ali the
others had already fled, were not even there for the trial and execution, They knew
they were deserters, rats who had scurried from a sinking ship, Not a shred of
self-respect left for then,

~-4-

Can you imagine trusting the most important act of Cod ever to this crowd of
deserters and cowards? That is what happened, The Risen Christ burst into their
dismal, locked room, into their rav, guilty consciences, into their despair and
defeat, And his shocking presence not only said all their doubts about him were
wrong, it said so much more, His appearance to them meant he forgave them and
trusted them, Hovever poorly they had performed in the past, he was now tursting

them, sending them to carry out his work, He restored them by having confidence
in them,

When I was sixteen, I had a car accident because I was careless for 4
moment, No one was injured much, but the car was badly wrecked, While it was being
repaired, our family was without a car for several weeks, I was compietely ashamed
and conscience-stricken, Tt so happened that about a week after the accident I was
in another car with a group of young people on the way to a youth retreat. We had
gone only a few miles when the man who was driving us suddenly puiled the car to
the side of the road and said to me, "Gerry, you drive the rest of the way." I was
flabbergasted} le knew the whole story and yet he trusted me with his car and with
his Life and the others when only a few days before I had failed disastrously, TI
felt completely restored by his confidence in me,

Raise that to the nth power and that must have been what the disciples ex~-
perienced when Jesus appeared and gent them to represent him to the world, Doubters
and cowards and failures, they vere, Yet to them came the resurrection and with
it Christ's forgiveness and trust, And power, They were lifted above themselves,
above their weaknesses, and formed into the first Christian Church, daring,
courageous, unstoppable,

Sohn chooses to make this story the climax of his Gospel because he wants us
to read it and see ourselves in it, He is saying to those who have doubts and
questions and work with chem honestly, to those who fail as disciples at times
but who long to lead lives fully directed by Christ's love, to such people in this
day comes the transforming power of the Resurrection,

Our heavenly Father, we offer our deepest thanks for the new Life you give
us through the resurrection of Jcsus, Receiving your power, way ve be reborn
into lives of openness and love and justify his confidence that ve will carry
out his work,

Amen,