THE RESURRECTION AND THOMASES Gerald J. Gregg

John 20: 24-31 Broad Street Prasbyterian Church
Mark 8:31-33; 9:30-32 Columbus, Ohio

April 10, 1983

As you will hear, the first scripture lesson takes place the week
after the first Easter Day. The leading character is the disciple whom
history has dubbed, because of this event, as Doubting Thomas. However,
if one reads the gospel accounts carefully, it turns out that Thomas
had been one of the most Toyal of the twelve. On one occasion he alone
was willing to risk his life to follow Jesus when the ather eleven held
back, petrified. by fear. But on Easter Day Thomas had not been with
the other disciples when the Risen Christ appeared to them. So, the
Gospel according to John reports in Chapter 20:

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them
when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen
the Lord." But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the
print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails,
and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." Eight days
later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with
them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them,
and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, “Put your
finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place
it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing." Thomas answered
him, “My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, “Have you believed
because you have seen me? Blessed are these who have not seen and
yet believe.“ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of
the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are
written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God, and that believing you may have life in his name.

Most Bible scholars believe John's Gospel originally ended with
those words. By telling about Thomas's reaction, the gospel writer was
describing just how all succeeding generations were to react to the news
of the Resurrection. Thomas is offered as the prototype for every Chris-
tian man and women. Rather than blindly accept some second-hand faith,
believers are to be like Thomas--to question and discover at first hand.
Especially that applies to our understanding of the Resurrection, the
central article of our faith. We are not to ignore or gloss over questions
and doubts we have. But we are to confront them squarely and work with
them honestly because, as the Gospel of John indicates, that is the way
to lasting faith.

Each person has the freedom and responsibility to develop his or
her own way to reach for God's truth. Many diverse methods are quite
valid. That is a basic tenet of Presbyterianism. What I propose to
do in the next few minutes is to offer one person's method of understanding
the scriptural accounts of the Resurrection and to urge you to branch
off from that on your own, to sharpen and clarify your own ideas about
the Resurrection,

-2-

persuade God to be gracious - are empty, meaningless, a waste of time

and energy. There are no conditions, no more bills to be paid, no more
obligations to be fulfilled to convince God to love. Jesus Christ has
taken care of all that. What remains, Paul said, is to hear that incre-
dible bit of news, really to hear it, to be converted by it in fact, from
a person worrying about pleasing God to one who is overwhelmed by joy

and because he knows that God is pleased. What remains is to hear that
in a way that allows it to generate some related behavior - love, joy,
peace, patience. There aren't any rules about this behavior, Paul said.

Now, in any age, it is very good news to hear that God has given
you your salvation - you are safe. And as soon as these Galatian Gentiles
began to appropriate it and enjoy it a bit, they were visited by teams
of teachers from Jerusalem, dispatched by the church ~ which was strongly
Jewish ~ to follow Paul and to tell the new Gentile believers that in
order truly to be a disciple of Jesus Christ a person had first to conform
to the law of Moses. When some of the new Galatian Christians, men and
women with whom Paul lived and worked and came to love very much, became
confused: when some tried to adapt to the dietary and Sabbath regulations
and submitted to circumcision, Paul wrote a blistering letter which is
angry and at times vindictive. “I wish thase who were confusing you would
mutilate themselves..." he wrote, and that is a polite translation of what
Paul actually said he hoped these earnest people would do to themselves.
The letter fs magnificent: it is the cornerstone of the idea of Christian
freedom. It was the foundation of the Protestant Reformation and it has
spoken to the millions upon millions of Christian men and women who have
heard the good news in political or economic bondage and in those circum-
stances have learned the meaning of freedom. It has spoken to millions of
Christians living with a heavy load of personal guilt, unable ever to do
enough to create for themselves a blessed sense of forgiveness, redemption.
It has been salvation for many.

But there is another side to this matter, and Paul gets to it near
the end of the letter. "You were called to freedom...only do not use
your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants
of one another." How in the world can you be free and a servant at the
Same time? What does it mean to be free if you can't do what you want to do?

Some of the Galatians and their cousins over in Corinth particularly,
heard the Gospel of freedom as permission to do whatever they wanted to
do. “Hurray!” they said. “If God isn't going to love us any more for
obeying the rules, why bother? Let's do our own thing!" And they did.

In the name of Christian freedom they lived it up. Over in Corinth they
drank too much communion wine and turned the sacrament of the Lord's
Supper into an orgy. "Why now? God stil] loves us. Paul said sa - they
reasoned, with some logic.

Something important is missing from that argument, obviously. Freedom
may be that which makes us human: it may be the differentiation between
human beings who can decide what to do and animals who simply answer hormones
and instincts. But raw freedom - pure freedom - the simple absence of
necessity not only isn't the point in a Christian sense, it has a way of
becoming anarchy, in the final analysis seems to give rise to a new kind of
bondage.

-3~

Now. we take careful note of one Important fact. We know that several
additions and changes were made in the books of the New Testament as
they were gathered together in the first centuries. It. would have been
a simple matter to edit all references to the Resurrection so that a
uniform picture was given. Such editing was a common thing. But no
such editing was done here, although the difficulties in the accounts
are very transparent. Why didn't one of the compilers smooth things
over?

There are two reasons: First, the crucial fact in all this is that
Christ is triumphant over death, that he. is risen to rule forever as
the Living Lord of all life. This basic faith is profoundly represented
in all the varying accounts jin spite of discrepancies. Left alone, each
account vividly conveys the author's faith in the Risen Christ. Editing
for uniformity would have destroyed that,

I believe the second reason early Christians did not edit away,
smooth aver the discrepancies is this: They understood, perhaps better
than anyone today, the absolute need for each individual to express the
basic truth of his or her own faith. They recognized that personal des-
criptions of deap faith in Christ and in his resurrection would differ
in detail, and they knew that those differences would point out the insig-
nificance of the details and emphasize the supreme importance of the
Faith basic to all-that Christ is their Risen Lord and Savior. They
were So certain of Jesus' resurrection, so secure, that they did not
need to insist on uniformity in expressing it.

That is what I conclude as I read the inconsistencies in the five
resurrection accounts. Now let's go on to examine a different kind of
evidence: What can we learn when we look at the points of agreement?

We ask, as a test question, “What did the disciples themselves ex-
pect?" We know that a person's expectations very definitely color what
that person sees. Well, then, did the disciples believe because they
were expecting so hard?

Qur second scripture lesson speaks to this very point. We hear
of two occasions during his ministry when Jesus was teaching his disciples
about the fourthcoming Resurrection. Note especially how the disciples
reacted to his teaching.

And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many
things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and
the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And
he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him.
But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said,
"Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of Gad, but of
men."

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he would
not have any one know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying
to them, "The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men,

4.

do my thing and you do yours and let's not get in each others way” was

the new social contract a few years ago. Self discovery, self affirmation,
self assertion became a plague of simple selfishness in which doing only
what one wants to do looked like Strength and freedom. But that badly
misses something precious about our humanity, our potential as persons,

and it flies squarely in the face of the only ethical wisdom we Christians
have, namely the obligation, the requirement, the necessity of love.

We do not codify our morality. We do not attach conditions to God's
lave and make salvation dependent on the basis of the rules we have kept.
"Be good and God will reward you." is the oldest but most persistent theo-
logical mistake in the book. Goodness is its own reward. Ged already
loves you - is how it is im Christian faith, and Paul fought the battle
early. The heresy is durable, however. And so we need reminding. We are
Saved by grace and we are free to the degree that we commit ourselves in
love to the service of others,

“Love, and do as you please" is haw Augustine, 4th century Bishop
in North Africa, said it. As a young man he had struggled with how to
reconcile what he wanted to do with what religion told him he had to do.
He indulged his appetites, lived as a libertine, sank deeper and deeper
into meaninglessness, returned to the faith - and saw that all he was
doing was submitting to a different kind of bondage. In his Confessions
he put it memorably: “Love, and Do as You Please". St. Augustine saw
it clearly: Christian freedom is proscribed, hemmed in on all sides by love.

It certainly isn’t easy: it surely is not permissiveness. In fact
it is much more strenuous to live by the necessity to Tove - than simply
to follow the rules.

{It is not easy toe know how to live as a Christian. The issues with
which we must deal are difficult, and the futurists are promising that
the complexity will increase. “Pro Choice - Pro Life" on the abortion
question almost pales by comparison with the ethical choices future genera-
tions will make about genetic engineering, for instance. Simple rules will
not be helpful.

What will be helpful is the idea of Christian freedom: a freedom
that does not exist in the abstract, but which literally comes into being
when combined with the discipline of obligation, loyalty, commitment, and love.

Qne of the wisest teachers I ever had was Joseph Sittler, Professor of
Theology, University of Chicago. In a book of essays published on his 75th
birthday, he commented on the relationship of freedom and obligation, par-
ticularly in the context of human relations.

“Bach produced greatness within the strict musical limits of his
time: indeed the severity of the limits called forth the magnifi-
cence of the accomplishment. dust as Bach accepted limitation and
discipline in musical composition, so marriage means limits. With-
out limitation there is no expansion...The trouble with temporary
relationships ts that when there is a way out, the couple deprive
themselves of the deepening effect of going all the way in...

~5-

A very troubling question for some people is this: In what form
were the appearances? That question is answered when we recognize the
mature of first century thought in Palestine. For Jews and Christians
alike then, there was simply no idea of separation of distinction between
body and spirit. Our modern concept of the soul being separable from
the physical body--that idea has Greek origins. But for the Hebrews ,
body and spirit were completely fused, Therefore, there can be no doubt
that, however a modern person might have seen the appearances, for the
disciples--Hebrews, every one of them--Christ appeared in bodily form.
That was the startling evidence which forced the sullen, discouraged
disciples to throw off their despair and do a complete turn-around. In
ppite of all they had believed and in spite of all their tradition, Christ

ad risen!

All right, we say, the disciples were finally convinced. That's
fine for them. What happened was obviously very real for them. But
is there anything more? Is there any way to corroborate their evidence?
Is there anything to back them up?

Consider this: If the appearances had been merely psychic phenomena,
we would expect the belief that Jesus was alive to have grown less vivid
as time went on. As the disciples ceased to "be in touch" and as skeptical
third parties came into the picture, conviction would have weakened if
the appearances had been merely illusory. But, in fact, the conviction
became only the more settled, all the stronger, once the appearances
had ceased. Those who had not seen were won over to just as living a
faith as those who had,

Their continuing religious experience was based, not on reports
from others, but on their firsthand awareness of the living Christ. That
is what made and sustained the Christian Church. The existence of the
church from the very first to now is itself a major part of the evidence
for the Resurrection. And think what is behind the Easter stories in
the New Testament: After all, why did people write the gospels? Pre-
cisely because they themselves believed in the Resurrection. They went
on to put their lifeblood behind that conviction,

_ From all this, then, 1 conclude that the Resurrection is a definite
historical reality. It is a fact which all the evidence proclaims. I
do not pretend to understand it; neither can 1 explain how it came about.
But then [I know human knowledge is limited, especially in the realm of
things which pertain to God's power. it is not surprising that I cannot
explain the power behind the Resurrection.

The faith that lies behind all the descriptions of the Resurrection
is the faith which began the Christian Church. It is a faith so firmly
rooted in truth that men and women lived and died for it. It is a faith
which proclaims that what is important is not uniformity, but instead
importance lies in each individual's personal relationship with God,
expressed in one's own terms. It is a faith which is alive for us today
if we seek for it honestly and openly, as loyal disciples like Thomas.