SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER B

[cappie]

In today’s gospel reading, St John describes the reaction of Jesus’ followers in the first days after the events of Holy Week and Easter. We might imagine those frightened and confused disciples as the earliest post-resurrection community. Seeking to regroup following the loss of their beloved leader, they have gathered in shock and despair. Imagine their astonishment when Jesus, whom they have seen dead and buried, appears among them. Yet here is the proof: seeing the wounds in his hands and his side with their own eyes, they cannot disbelieve their truth. Jesus lives! Their response to the good news of the resurrection is God’s peace, through the breath of the Holy Spirit. Their faith that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing they will have eternal life, is steadfast and secure.

Nevertheless, the news that Jesus is raised from the dead is difficult to wrap one’s head around. Some have witnessed, but many have not, and Thomas shows us a different reaction to the good news. He cannot believe until he sees the proof with his own eyes.

Jesus is patient. He reappears. He reassures Thomas: Do not doubt, but believe. In this moment, we can see that God honors the doubters, the honest response. Thomas, relieved and overjoyed, cries out in absolute faithful certainty: My Lord and my God! These earliest Christians, through different paths, have received the message: Jesus is Lord, Messiah, and bringer of salvation and eternal life.

The Book of Acts, which appears in our lectionary during the Easter season, is unique in the New Testament canon for offering a narrative of the life and work of the emerging early church in Jerusalem. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Peter has boldly and confidently proclaimed that Jesus is Lord and Messiah. The response of the crowd is awe, and according to Acts 2, many were baptized. The language describing the growing community of believers is warm and beautiful. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common. Day by day, they worshipped and ate together with glad and generous hearts, praising God.

By the fourth chapter of Acts of the Apostles, the passage we read today, Peter has been brought before the Council, and seeing the proof of his power to heal, the assembled rulers, scribes, and elders cannot condemn him. The community of believers responds to this news with increased faith, filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking the word of God. “With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.”

The response of the early church community to the news of the resurrection, delivered by eyewitnesses, is great grace and harmony. Sharing wealth, food, and worship in a communal setting is a model of Christian community. The certainty that Christ is Lord and Messiah, that he is one with God the Father as evidenced by his resurrection, and that his Word is Life is the glue that holds the early church, those first believers and converts in Jerusalem, together.

I believe that the creed I profess with countless other Christians on Sunday mornings tells me something essential and true: we believe in “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” If we abandon this belief, we’ll do so to our impoverishment and our peril.  

I worry [that] … if we Christians lose our belief in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, we will also lose   our hope,  after all, how will we pray for God’s kingdom to come, and how will we credibly usher in that kingdom in whatever small ways we can here and now, if we don’t believe in its ultimate fulfillment?

Thomas names the paradox of Jesus’ resurrection and continued woundedness:  If the resurrection really is the best good news that has ever hit the planet, then its goodness doesn’t depend on us.… The tomb is empty. Death is vanquished. Jesus lives. Period. We are not in charge of Easter; God is.  

In fact, Jesus’s own resurrected body speaks to the importance of lament in the midst of joy. Even in the most triumphant story ever told in Scripture or history, scars remain (John 20:27)…. Resurrection is a way forward from the grave that honours the scars we carry, helping us to bear them with resilience and hope.