Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2003, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

John 20:19-31; I John 1:1-9; Acts 4:32-35

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul.

                      –Acts 4:32

     Thomas will not believe until he sees and touches the wounds, the death-wounds, the wounds of a man who was crucified and now lives. That's the only thing that will convince him. Sort of a grisly exercise he puts us through here, isn't it?

     Let's face it, one of the most difficult things about Christianity is all the blood and gore. Protestants feel a little superior to Catholics in this respect because at least we don't hang a great big crucifix up here with Jesus suffering and bleeding all over it. Some folks justify this theologically: they say the cross should be empty of Jesus' body because the really important thing is the Resurrection, not the Crucifixion. But if you ask me, I think we just feel like images of the Crucifixion are messy and yucky and sort of in bad taste. We're squeamish.

     But all Christians including Protestants have to deal with the gruesomeness of the Gospel story. It doesn't go away on Easter morning, not for Thomas, not for any of us.

     Thomas didn't have to subject himself and us to this display. He deliberately asked for it. He insisted on it, he needed this to make the Resurrection real to him. How about us? What do we need to make the Resurrection real to us, so that we can not just talk and sing about it but live in it?

     What did they feel when he showed them his injuries? Well, of course: This is really Jesus, a human person whom I know personally, in the flesh, and not some ghost or disembodied spirit, not some heavenly being who's invulnerable and feels no pain — and so they would feel relief, and joy, and wonder. But they had to be aware of one other thing, didn't they? A thing that runs through the whole Passion story: This man was put to death with extreme brutality for crimes of which he was not guilty, and we let it happen, we helped it happen, we ran out on him, we disowned him, we let him down, we broke faith with him. His wounds accuse them, and you can bet they know it.

     But when he speaks there is no accusation. He says, "Peace." Peace to you. And if I had been one of them, the million-dollar question for me would have been, Why isn't he furious with us? Why isn't he punishing us? Why doesn't he want to kill us, or at least make us miserable? Why and how is he forgiving us?

     That's the truly impossible thing about Easter: The forgiveness. Next to that, a dead man walking is a piece of cake.

     And then there's this other thing he says: "Just as God sent me to you, now I send you to everyone else. Go out and do for them what I've done for you. If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven; if you hang on to anyone's sins, they are left hanging."

     That last part is the most horribly misunderstood sentence in all of Scripture. For two thousand years most Christians have taken it to mean that the church somehow has authority to say who is justified and who is condemned, who is saved and who is damned, who is included and who is excluded. We have been telling the whole world that we are authorized by none other than the resurrected Jesus to be prosecutor, judge and jury for its sins. As though the world was to be at the mercy of the church.

     And the church has exercised that authority with zeal and enthusiasm, and not just to the Jews, either; also to Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Communists, to name a few. Catholics and Protestants do it to each other. And everyone who does it claims to be acting in the name of this person who died and lived breathing peace and forgiveness to those who did him wrong.

     What he was really saying about their power to forgive or to retain sins was this: "You have a choice about how you live the rest of your days. You can deal with others the way I have dealt with you, or you can deal with them the way people always have. It's up to you." The implication was supposed to be obvious: You now have the freedom in the Holy Spirit, to do to others as Jesus has done to you. Do you have the courage to use that freedom, or are you going to throw it away because you don't dare? But the church didn't get it.

     The reading from the Acts of the Apostles tantalizes us with this quick snapshot of the newborn church, so new it's not even called a church yet: The whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul. What do you suppose it means for a bunch like them to be of one heart and soul? Does it mean unanimity, uniformity, conformity? Does it mean everybody sees everything the same way so there's no conflict, no pulling in different directions?

     Of course not. That's a ridiculous standard for a community, to expect them to agree about everything. It's a setup for disaster. This isn't about unanimity, it's about belonging.

     Who do you suppose this group is, anyway? When Jesus appeared among the disciples in the place where they were hiding in terror, and gave them peace and forgiveness and the Holy Spirit, and said God sent me, now I send you, this is to whom those disciples went. This is the group of people that has received from the disciples the same thing the disciples received from Jesus.

     That's what holds them together: They have received that stunning gift of forgiveness, and it binds them to Jesus and to each other. That's all they have in common. But it's more than enough to turn them into the first church, not the First Congregational Church, not the First Church in Exeter, but the first church on earth.

     Living the Resurrection is a simple matter of breathing in that peace and forgiveness that Jesus breathed on his frail, fading, fallible friends, and then breathing it out on everyone who crosses your path. And if you think this is a cheap or overly facile interpretation of the text, just try to do that simple thing with any consistency at all, and see what success you have.

     You will fight back. Fighting back is what we do. It is necessary to our survival. That's precisely the point: Jesus declined to do what was necessary for his survival, and we are supposed to believe that doing likewise will save us, save our world. It's a lot to ask. Jesus never said it wouldn't be.

     There's an old legend that says later on Thomas was the apostle who took the Gospel all the way to India. I came across a poem about it, written by a fellow named Lascelles Abercrombie. It's entitled "The Sale of Saint Thomas.". In it Thomas is negotiating for his passage to India with the captain of a ship that's bound that way, and he strikes a deal to become the ship's carpenter, but then he starts to chicken out of the whole idea, when suddenly a Stranger comes along who butts in and tells the captain that this Thomas the carpenter is actually his escaped slave and he wants him back. The captain then cleverly strikes a deal with the Stranger: He'll buy Thomas the slave from the Stranger. That way he can take him to India even if he'd rather not go. The Stranger is Jesus, of course, and the poem ends with the Stranger telling Thomas what happened to him. It goes like this:

Now, Thomas, know thy sin. It was not fear;
Easily may a man crouch down for fear,
And yet rise up on firmer knees, and face
The hailing storm of the world with graver courage.
But prudence, prudence is the deadly sin,
And one that groweth deep into a life,
With hardening roots that clutch about the breast.
Prudence refuses faith in the unknown powers
Within our nature; shrewdly bringeth all
Their inspiration of strange eagerness
To a judgment bought by safe experience;
Narrows desire into the scope of thought.
But it is written in the heart of man,
Thou shalt no larger be than thy desire.
Thou must not therefore stoop thy spirit's sight
To pore only within the candle-gleam
Of conscious wit and reasonable brain;
But search into the sacred darkness lying
Outside thy knowledge of thyself, the vast
Measureless fate, full of the power of stars,
The outer noiseless heavens of thy soul . . .

. . . Send desire often forth to scan
The immense night which is thy greater soul;
Knowing the possible, see thou try beyond it
Into impossible things, unlikely ends;
And thou shalt find thy knowledgeable desire
Grow large as all the regions of thy soul,
Whose firmament doth cover the whole of Being,
And of created purpose reach the ends.

     Wonderful words. Beautiful words. Beautiful words of life. So down with reasonable brain. Here's to rampant imprudence. Here's to moving beyond the limits of safe experience. Here's to searching the sacred darkness that lies outside our knowledge of ourselves. Here's to the outer noiseless heavens of the soul. Here's to impossible things. Here's to the inspiration of strange eagerness. Here's to the adventure of living the resurrection. Forgiveness is freedom.

     Amen