May 1, 2011 | 8:00 a.m.

Grip of Resurrection

Kerri N. Allen
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 16
John 20:19–31

The point isn’t that you believe in the resurrection.
Any fool can believe in a resurrection from the dead.
The point is that you trust in the resurrection.
And that’s much, much harder to do.

Diana Butler Bass

This year on Good Friday I had an interesting opportunity to participate in worship and fellowship with the Near North Ministry Alliance. A number of weeks prior to Holy Week, my colleague Vicky Curtiss asked me to fill in for her. I agreed without hesitation, thinking it would be an interesting experience. And about Monday of Holy Week, when I read more thoroughly the email she forwarded, I began to realize just how interesting it would be when I noted that I was, in fact, supposed to preach!

This was not an ordinary worship or prayer service. It was a walk through the Cabrini-Green neighborhood, marking the Stations of the Cross. You might or might not know the Stations of the Cross is a spiritual discipline frequently observed in the Roman Catholic traditions, marking scripture lessons that articulate Jesus’ final hours of life, his death on the cross, and his being laid in the tomb.

This was probably not even an ordinary marking of the Stations of the Cross. That Friday was rainy and dreary, and I remember commenting that it was liturgically appropriate weather. So here we were, a ragtag group of preachers—a Roman Catholic, Methodist, a few Lutherans, a couple conservative Evangelicals, a Baptist, a couple of Pentecostals, and a Presbyterian—making our way from one street to the next, reading scripture, preaching and praying.

Whoa, this mainline Protestant for one did not know what to make of preaching on the street corner!

But as we arrived at our first location, I realized that this event was beyond any expectation that I had. We were marking the Stations of the Cross, yes, but marking them in locations where lives were lost to violence.

As I stood in one location after another where someone had been murdered, it evoked many thoughts and emotions. Many things were flooding my mind and, in fact, my whole body. It literally made me feel ill to think that this small geographic space had been subject to so much violence. And as we made our way into the streets and came along the row houses that sit in front of where the high-rise buildings once stood, it was clear to me that it was Good Friday every day in this community.

My heart ached as I was gripped by the reality I stood in, and I wondered to myself, Where is God in the midst of all of this? Where is the Easter message? Where is the resurrection hope in this place?

As a stood in the midst of this world, a world that is so radically different from my own, a world that many of us cannot begin to comprehend, asking myself these questions, do you think that somehow, some way meant that I didn’t believe in Easter? Or do you think that might have meant that I doubted the resurrection?

Our Gospel lesson today is a passage that appears annually in the lectionary. It solicits jokes about those who are “stuck” preaching on the Second Sunday of Eastertide, the Sunday in which this passage inevitably rears its head. I noticed one colleague commented that today was International Associate Minister Day—you know that high holy day when the senior pastors need respite after a busy Holy Week, so any number of other associates or assistants, and I suppose residents, are afforded the privilege of preaching. Karoline Lewis, a homiletics professor, jokes that it’s the Sunday when, if you’re fortunate enough to have a seminary intern, you decide it is her turn to preach. Under these circumstances, I’m not sure what to make of my appearance in the pulpit this morning.

In spite of all of this hyperbole, I was drawn to preach on this passage this week. The Holy Spirit led me to this passage. The most common precept associated with this passage is that Thomas is implicitly suggesting doubt about the resurrection in his questions and request to see exactly what the other disciples saw.

For some reason, throughout the years Thomas has been tagged as doubting Thomas because of this word that from the Greek apistos means “unbelieving.”

You may be thinking it’s all the same, Kerri, and maybe I’m, in fact, splitting hairs in some linguistic nuance. But for this Gospel writer it is important that we split these hairs. For John, “believing” is always a verb and never a noun and it is always a statement of abiding in Jesus.

Or as Karoline Lewis says, “To believe in Jesus is not an assertion of certain doctrinal commitments, nor is it something that is strong one day but wavering the next. To believe in Jesus is the same thing as saying ‘I abide in you and you abide in me.’ It is a creedal assertion only insofar as it affirms the existing relationship between Jesus and the believer.”

In John’s Gospel, belief is a statement of faith that Jesus is the Word made flesh, yes, but it is likewise an ontological reality that a confession of faith is a confession of relationship.

So with that in mind, what else might Thomas be saying here in this passage? Is he now suggesting that he doesn’t believe in Jesus? Do the questions suggest that Thomas must not be a man of faith?

These are certainly some assumptions that people have made about Thomas over time. This is some of the bad rap that Thomas has gotten through the years. After all seeing is believing, right?

Thomas is saying to all of his friends, “Listen, unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won’t believe it.” So Thomas is saying, “I gotta see it for myself so I can believe it” right?

Well, let’s step back for a moment. This was the experience that his friends described they had with Jesus; this was their testimony of the risen Lord. So what happens next? Eight days later Jesus appears to Thomas. Jesus does not rebuke Thomas, but Jesus says, “Peace be with you.” And he tells Thomas, "Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving. Believe."

And Thomas confesses his belief in a radical way, saying, “My Lord. My God.” Radical, I say, because “My Lord” was a term that was reserved for Caesar in this first century.

So maybe this encounter isn’t emphasizing what we might assume from a first reading of the text. Maybe this passage isn’t as much about a doubting Thomas as it is about a realist who had an encounter with Jesus that caused him to confess his faith and confess his relationship. And maybe this passage is suggesting that Jesus is not rebuking our questions and our doubts, but blessing us, saying “peace to you” as we’re faced with the daily human realities that raise all kinds of questions about the presence of God. Jesus is offering us life in the midst of turmoil.

Yes, maybe this story is about Thomas, the realist. We all have a little realist in us, don’t we? It was the realist in me that even as Holy Week drew to a close and the dawn of Easter Sunday beckoned, that I felt, standing on the streets of the row houses in Cabrini-Green, that the darkness overshadowed the light.

It was the realist in me that knew that this was a community that has been abandoned on so many levels, in so many different ways, that they too must have a hard time drawing on some hope for the future.

Did I really need to see the nail holes to believe? Diana Butler Bass in an upcoming book suggests that “the point isn’t that you believe in the resurrection. Any fool can believe in a resurrection from the dead. The point is that you trust in the resurrection. And that’s much, much harder to do.”

I think this may help explain the important message in this text—the notion that we move beyond a passive idea of believing into an active role of trusting, an idea that we participate in our relationship through the confession of our faith, through the confession of relationship—trusting and believing that the resurrection is about hope of new life. It is about hope that there is a future, not just in somewhere in the afterlife, but in the world we live in. Believing—as John’s Gospel encounters—believing is about Jesus being the resurrection and the life.

Life that grips us and pulls us in. Life that triumphs over death, that speaks to me, as I stand on the street corner in Cabrini-Green with a group of other disciples, making a confession of faith, making a bold claim “My Lord. My God.” Standing with others as a way of marking time and claiming that the space where we stand is holy ground. As a way of saying that we believe, we trust, and we have hope for the future of this community. As a way of actively participating in the resurrection.

S, on this first Sunday after Easter Sunday, these words are for us. You can believe in the resurrection all you want, but in the end that’s not the point. The resurrection is not only just the resurrection – yes that is incredible in itself – but Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

These things are synonyms in John’s Gospel—belief and life. And synonyms because it is promise for our future, yes, but even more it is our grace in the present. All thanks be to God. Amen.