2 Easter

 

April 16, 2023

 

John 20.19-31

 

+ It’s hard to believe that Easter was one week ago.

 

This Second Sunday of Easter is also called “Low Sunday.”

 

Well, it’s called Quasimodo Sunday, from the old Latin Mass in which the newly baptized were welcomed “as newborn infants.”

 

It’s a time for us to truly sit back and enjoy Easter without all pomp of last Sunday.

 

Because, as we know, Easter lasts 40 days.

 

And we will be celebrating this Easter season until the Feast of the Ascension.

 

For these next few weeks, in our scripture readings on Sunday morning, we will be encountering the newly resurrected Christ.

 

As we do in our Gospel reading for today.

 

But today’s Gospel deals with so much more than that.

 

It deals with that good old friend of ours, doubt.

 

While some clergy people I know, try to avoid discussing issues like doubt or atheism, I actually gladly welcome the challenge, as you very well know.

 

You know how I feel about atheism and agnosticism.

 

I truly believe they are very valid religious expressions.

 

And important ones.

 

And I respect and admire the many atheist people I know in my own life and in society.

 

I have also been very honest with all of you about my own doubts at times.

 

I was an agnostic at one point in my life.

 

And…well…to be blunt…I still am. Kind of.

 

In fact, we all are to some extent.

 

Agnosticism, after all, is simply saying “we don’t know” for certain.

 

And I don’t.

 

That’s why I have faith.

 

I don’t know for certain about many things, but I still go forward in faith.

 

And there is nothing wrong with any of that.

 

Let’s face it, doubt is an important and essential part of our faith life.

 

We essentially can’t have real faith without real doubt.

 

We need that tension in our faith lives to make our faith valid to a large extent.

 

And to deny doubt in our lives is to deceive ourselves.

 

We do doubt.

 

I sometimes do wish at times that my faith was not pocked and spotted with doubt.

 

But, to be brutally honest,  it is sometimes.

 

And I am wary to some extent of those who have no doubt.

 

Yes, we struggle with these issues of belief in our lives.

 

Let’s face it, we don’t get the opportunities that Thomas had in this morning’s Gospel.

 

Thomas refused to believe that Jesus was resurrected until he had put his fingers in the wounds of Jesus.

 

You know what.

I’d be the same way.

 

Well, maybe I wouldn’t insist on putting my fingers in a wound.

 

That’s a bit extreme.

 

But, certainly, if someone I knew and cared for died and suddenly everyone is telling me that person is now actually alive, I would definitely doubt that.

 

And if I knew that person had died and was now standing in front of me, I would still be skeptical.

 

Skeptical of my sanity, if nothing else.

 

Or my eyesight.  

 

So, for Thomas, it wasn’t enough that Jesus actually appeared to him in the flesh—Jesus, was no ghost after all.

 

He stood there in the flesh—wounds and all.

 

Only when Thomas  had placed his finger in the wounds, would he believe.

 

Only then did he experience this amazing moment of spiritual clarity and was able to say,

 

“My Lord and my God!”

 

That’s great for Thomas.

 

But, the fact is, for the rest of us, we don’t get it so easy.

 

We will struggle.

 

It’s easy to doubt.

 

But faith, that’s hard.

 

It’s not easy to have faith.

 

I don’t have to tell anyone here this morning about faith.

 

We all know how hard it really is.

 

It takes work and discipline.

 

We made the choice to come to church.

 

We made a choice to come here this morning, and worship a God we cannot see, not touch.

 

Well, except in the Eucharist

 

We have come together to gather at this altar, to break bread and to share the Body and Blood of Jesus.

 

We made a choice to come here and celebrate an event that our rational minds tell us could never have happened.

 

And not just celebrate.

 

But to stand up and profess belief in it, even if we might have struggles with it.

 

But even if we struggle with it—it’s all right.

 

It’s all right to struggle and doubt and wrestle with it.

 

It’s all right to be, dare I say? a Christian agnostic.

 

A strong relationship to God takes work—just as any other relationship in our life takes work.

 

It takes discipline.

 

It takes concentrated effort.

 

It means living out our faith even when we also live with doubts.

 

It means loving God and loving one another.

 

Of course, that isn’t that easy either.  

 

But, for Thomas, he saw.

 

He touched.

 

It was all clear to him.

 

We don’t get that chance.

 

“Blessed are those who believe but don’t see,” Jesus says this morning.

 

We are those blessed ones.

All of us.

 

Our belief—our faith—doesn’t have to be perfect.

 

We will still always doubt.

 

Will still always question.

 

And that’s a good thing!

 

We are still the ones Jesus is speaking of in this morning’s Gospel.

 

Blessed are you all.

 

You believe—or strive to believe—but don’t see.

 

Seen or unseen, we know God is there—in some way.

 

And God breaks through to us, even in the midst of our doubts at times.

 

How many times have I shared with you those sacred moments I’ve experienced at this altar during the Eucharist, when I break the Bread or stare down into the chalice and I just know, in my heart of hearts, that Christ is present. And real.

 

How many of those sacred times have I, like Thomas, found myself exclaiming,

 

“My Lord and my God!”

 

There are moments when we really do sense deeply that there is just something there—some Presence bigger than us, some reality more amazing that us, some divine Other that is all good and all-loving, Some God who truly does know us and love us.

 

Most of you know of my affection for the Lutheran Pastor and theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber.

 

One of my favorite things that she ever wrote was a re-wording of the beatitudes directed toward agnostics.

 

It goes like this:

Blessed are the agnostics.

Blessed are they who doubt. Those who aren’t sure, who can still be surprised.

Blessed are they who are spiritually impoverished and therefore not so certain about everything that they no longer take in new information.

Blessed are they for whom death is not an abstraction.

Blessed are they who have buried their loved ones, for whom tears could fill an ocean. Blessed are they who have loved enough to know what loss feels like.

Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried.

Blessed are they who don’t have the luxury of taking things for granted anymore.

Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else.

Blessed are those who “still aren’t over it yet.”

Blessed are those who mourn. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.

Blessed are those who no one else notices. The kids who sit alone at middle-school lunch tables. The laundry guys at the hospital. The sex workers and the night-shift street sweepers.

Blessed are the forgotten. Blessed are the closeted.

Blessed are the unemployed, the unimpressive, the underrepresented.

Blessed are the wrongly accused, the ones who never catch a break, the ones for whom life is hard, for Jesus chose to surround himself with people like them.

Blessed are those without documentation. Blessed are the ones without lobbyists.

Blessed are foster kids and special-ed kids and every other kid who just wants to feel safe and loved.

Blessed are those who make terrible business decisions for the sake of people.

Blessed are the kids who step between the bullies and the weak. Blessed are they who hear that they are forgiven.

Blessed is everyone who has ever forgiven me when I didn’t deserve it.

Blessed are the merciful, for they totally get it.

 

Nadia Bolz-Weber really does get it.

 

Because somewhere in those beatitudes, we find ourselves.

 

Blessed are all of us—the agnostics, struggling to believe.

 

Blessed are all of us—who struggle at times, and doubt at times, and stumble and fall at times.

 

Blessed are all of us—who need to touch the wounds and hear the voice.

 

Blessed are us who truly long for those moments when we too can exclaim, “My Lord and my God!”

 

Blessed are us here at St. Stephen’s, who stand up and speak out and who don’t let the bureaucrats and the sycophants and the Bishop wanna-be’s get the upper hand.

 

Blessed are us here at St. Stephen’s who speak out again and again, even despite the opposition from our state government and even from our very own Church, for reconciliation for our gay, lesbian, bisexual  and transgender people in this state and in this diocese who have been mis-treated and disrespected and excluded and treated as less-than for decades by the government and church leaders.  

 

Blessed are we who really do believe but don’t see now.

 

Because we will see.

 

We will know.

 

We will see God, whom we will see face-to-face.

 

Blessed are us.

 

The Kingdom of Heaven is truly ours.