Feast of Doubters

During the Easter season, our lessons often focus on what happened to Jesus two thousand years ago in all this business of the Resurrection, and rightly so. How did it happen? Where did Jesus go, how did he get back? Our narrative is focused around the story itself: Jesus, the reaction of the Apostles and the subsequent sequence of events.

However, a week into the magnificent and glorious season of Easter, when our alleluias continue to ring strong, I want to focus on what the Resurrection means for us, today. How do we understand this story not just as a narrative of events that occurred in the distant past, but as a calling in how to live our daily life here and now?

I especially want to explore the significance of the Resurrection for us through the lens of our doubt, as illustrated by Jesus’ appearing to the disciples, and to Thomas.

If you struggle with understanding the Resurrection as historical narrative, if you aren’t sure that you can be part of the “club” because you have doubts, or after years of participation your beliefs, or your beliefs about your beliefs, have begun to unhinge you rather than complete you, unsure if the ancient story still bears meaning, let me encourage you. Do not let your doubts stop you from your participation in Resurrection. Don’t dismiss them, but don’t fear them. Don’t allow these doubts to condemn you.

St John of Chrysostom begins his famous Paschal homily with a magnificent call of grace to all people: come to the feast, he cries. Whether you have fasted or not, whether you joined at the third or the eleventh hour, come one and come all to the feast of the Resurrection. You don’t need to worry about having all of your assents assured, because this is the good news: you are invited to the feast.

The Resurrection is a great banquet, a great throwing-open of redemptive opportunity for all people. If you struggle to touch the Resurrection in your mind, try to touch it in your spirit. Do not stop participating because you have doubts.

Doubter or not, every Easter we are given the opportunity to meditate on how we are invited to integrate the narrative of our lives today into the festal reality of Ressurection as described by St. John of Chrysostom. You are invited to the feast.

If we limit ourselves to using Easter only as an opportunity to defend these magnificent events within their historical context, then we miss the point. We sacrifice the spiritual impact that they should have for us in the here and now, in today’s world.

Jesus wasn’t resurrected so you could say the creed, he is resurrected to bring you life.

When Jesus appeared to the disciples, especially later to Thomas, he allows them to touch his wounds. But as Thomas moved into a spirit of belief, pay attention to the language of some translations, that the words poured from his heart. We aren’t given a description of Thomas making some quick biological calculations of affirmation. It is his heart that believes. This is what Jesus affirms in all his future believers.

Why is this important? Why is how we walk toward belief important?

Often in today’s religious culture belief has become synonymous with intellectual assent. You either believe something as a series of facts, or you disbelieve it as such. Or, belief is described as something that stands in opposition to intellect. You believe despite your intellect. I don’t think that this is the type of belief Christ is trying to call out in us.

Jesus gives his disciples the Sacred Breath of the Spirit. The word for breath here is the same word used when God in the Garden of Eden breathed life into Adam. This is the life-giving breath of creation. And with this Spirit, Jesus charges the disciples to go out and forgive sins! Heart belief in the Resurrection somehow enables us to forgive sins. It doesn’t give us a cushion upon which to rest our intellectual superiority. Jesus didn’t say to the disciples, you have been given the breath of God so you can go prove me to the heathens.

Breath gives us the power to create. Breath is the force of life. It gives us the power to forgive one another. It gives us the power to invite one another to the great Paschal Feast.

As Jesus allows Thomas to put his fingers in his wounds he tells him not to give in to his doubts any longer, but just believe. This is actually quite strange. Jesus here is providing physical evidence to doubting Thomas concerning the Resurrection. If we follow today’s model of evidence, Jesus shouldn’t be calling Thomas to believe, he should be calling him to see the evidence of proof. Stop doubting, but conclude in your mind: here are the facts.

But this isn’t how Jesus works. Even now in resurrection just as throughout his ministry, Jesus is interested in the transformation of our hearts. Belief is less about assenting to crazy things as it is opening ourselves up to receive God’s life-giving breath. Think back to that classic sinner’s prayer, or even our own sacrament of Confession, there is no magic in the words themselves. The deep magic, if you want to call it that, is in how we allow our words and beliefs to open us to the things of God.

It is this opening-up that allows us to receive the Sacred Breath.

So if in this Eastertide you are struggling in your intellect, or even if you are struggling in your heart and mind to understand some crazy things. It’s okay, you are welcome here.

Stop, and take a breath. As we say the creed remember that we are also breathing together. Creating and living in our very breaths. Remember that you are already invited to the feast. Remember that Jesus gives his people the Sacred Breath in order to forgive one another. To love one another. Remember that even as Jesus allows doubting Thomas to touch his wounds, he isn’t trying to change his mind, he is trying to open his heart.

The power of the Resurrection for today is not just its claim of historical fact. The Resurrection is a claim of unshakable hope. It is a claim of creation. It is a claim of forgiveness. Even if in our doubts, we are hoping and creating and forgiving.

So what happens in the Resurrection? Death could not hold God. God met humanity in death and pulled us out with him. Trampling down death by death. He pulled us out so we could believe. He pulled us out so we could forgive. He pulled us out so we also could pull out all people. As St. John of Chrysostom celebrates in his Easter homily:

“Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward.

O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy!

O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day!

You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today! The table is rich-laden: feast royally, all of you! The calf is fatted: let no one go forth hungry!

Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness. Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Saviour’s death has set us free.”

Alleluia, Christ is risen.

Amen.

Homily delivered to the English Church in Villars, Switzerland.
28 April 2019, The Second Sunday of Easter