About ten years ago, my eldest son Ian was involved in the Civil Air Patrol. The Civil Air Patrol is the Air Force equivalent of the Boy Scouts, a organization that teaches teenagers how to fly. In addition, they learn first aid, navigation, and other skills that are important for the CAP’s main mission, which today is finding airplanes that have gone down.
As these things go, you get involved – Saundra found herself as Cadet Commander for the Parkersburg Wing, and we became friends with Ron Harmon, the Wing Commander, and Billie Harmon, his wife.
Ron and Billie were also very involved in the Mid-Ohio Valley Players, Marietta’s local theater company. Billie directed plays, Ron fashioned most of the sets, and then Billie heard me sing. And as one thing led to another, I found myself sitting in an auditorium with about a hundred people, waiting to audition for the Sound of Music for the part of Captain Von Trapp.
Now, I’m not an actor, but I had been persuaded that my singing voice might be just what was needed for the part of the Captain. And so I went to the audition, thinking about how this might become a new chapter in my life’s story – playing the dashing, handsome Captain Von Trapp.
Well, I was asked to sing a song, and of course, that wasn’t a problem. But apparently I didn’t look quite the dashing, handsome part, so the director asked me to read the part of Max, the Captain’s music producer friend, who doesn’t have song in the movie, but does in the play. Max is a much more comedic part – I guess the director thought I looked funny.
But thankfully, there was another guy there who COULD act and was much more funny. So my grand career in the theatre ended that day because, after all, the play wasn’t about my story and what I wanted in my life’s story, but it was about the director and what the director wanted in her version of the story on stage.
We often enter into stories in our lives. We often are focused upon what is happening in our story, with ourselves as the main character in our story, wondering where our story is going.
Like Thomas the Twin. Didymus means Twin
Thomas was a disciple of Jesus. He had been with the group since very early on, he’d been at Cana where the water was turned into wine and he’d seen many of Jesus’ miracles. And Thomas had heard Jesus’ claims. In fact, just that winter Jesus and the disciples had gone to Jerusalem for Hanukkah, when several people asked Jesus to tell them plainly if He was the Messiah or not. Jesus told them that He had told them, but they had not believed. Then in John 10:30 Jesus made a very strong claim: "I and the Father are one!"
The people picked up stones. Jesus asked them why, and they said, “It’s because you are claiming to be God.” Now the people tried to seize Him, but he escaped from their grasp and Jesus and his disciples, including Thomas went back across the Jordan River to the place where John had baptized in the early days.
A couple of months went by and word came from Mary and Martha that Lazarus was sick. Jesus waited around for a couple of days and then told the disciples they were going back toward Jerusalem. The disciples asked, “Didn’t the Jews try to stone you there, and you want to go back?”
“Lazarus is dead and I have to go wake him up.”
And then the disciple John records that Thomas … said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” I think it was around that time that Thomas began to emotionally "check-out" of the Jesus Movement. You see, Thomas had seen what happened to John the Baptist and how he had lost his head. Thomas had seen other religious movements fizzle and die when their leaders were arrested. And Thomas saw a bad end coming to this Jesus thing. And so, he emotionally began to leave the group.
We don’t hear anything else about Thomas for the next few weeks. Eventually, Jesus is arrested, executed, and the disciples scatter. That first Easter evening, Thomas is missing in action – He is no where around to be found when Jesus appears.
Thomas, apparently, had better things to do that evening. After all, Jesus was dead and there was no point to going to a do-nothing meeting. Thomas had decided weeks ago that this Jesus thing was going to end badly and when Jesus died, Thomas decided he needed to hang around with a different group of friends. He had given up on his community of friends – Things weren’t going well and Thomas wanted to start a new chapter in his life story. After all, nothing more would happen now that Jesus was dead.
But then some of his friends ran into him. “Jesus is alive! We saw Him last Sunday evening.”
John doesn’t record the entire conversation, but he does record that Thomas said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
For centuries, Thomas has been known as “Doubting Thomas”. But Thomas doesn't sound like a doubter to me - he sounds very, very certain that Jesus is not alive. And we might want to think a minute why Thomas put forth such a strong response: , “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
For three years, you see, Thomas had walked with Jesus.
For three years, Thomas had walked with the other disciples.
For three years, Thomas had eaten with them, he had slept beside them, he had even joked with them.
For three years, Thomas had been a member of a small group of students being taught by the greatest teacher of the day, as almost everyone in the Holy Land recognized even at the time.
But for three years, Thomas had never completely trusted the men in his group.
For three years, Thomas had kept apart in his mind, in his emotion, in his feelings. He had never really felt that he should let go and really, really, REALLY become one of the group of disciples.
He might have trusted Jesus – But Thomas didn’t trust his fellow disciples. He was still living his own story – he was not living the joint story that the other disciples were – and he missed out on that first Easter evening appearance because he had never surrendered to being a member of that disciple group.
Has that ever happened to you?
In every church I’ve ever been in, I’ve seen how some people really trust each other, how some people work together with some friction, and how some people sit aside, never really making the decision to fully let go of their own story and join in the community’s story of being disciples together – not disciples who come together once a week, but disciples who are learning together, who are teaching each other, who are walking with Jesus together in a group.
Our Easter story shows us the women going as a group to the tomb. Our story shows Peter and John racing to the tomb together. Our story shows ten of the eleven disciples joining together Easter evening and suddenly Jesus was there with them! Those ten disciples understood that they had come together because of Jesus, but Thomas was not there, because Thomas did not consider himself to be part of the group, but only as a person who had once followed Jesus.
The ten disciples saw Jesus appear. The ten disciples heard Jesus say, “Peace be with you!” The ten disciples saw His hands and His side.
But Thomas was not there. He was living his own story. He had better things to do, he thought.
The ten disciples heard again: “Peace be with you!
The ten disciples heard: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
And the ten disciples saw Jesus breath upon them and the ten disciples heard him say, “Receive the Holy Spirit. “ and those ten disciples smelt and felt that gentle breath settle into their lungs and hearts.
But Thomas was not there. He was living his own story. He had left behind his friends, because he was not really one of them.
The ten disciples heard from Jesus: If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
And then the ten disciples watched him leave.
But Thomas did not know about this for hours, perhaps several days, because Thomas was on his own, he had never felt part of the disciple group.
And then, he ran into them on the street, and let himself be eventually brought back, reluctantly, it appears, to be with the ten disciples, perhaps one last time before Thomas went back to Galilee and his old life there.
A week later, this time Jesus’ ten disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. I say it that way because I think that’s how Thomas felt – the ten had convinced him to come to the house, but he wasn’t really one of them.
Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
If Thomas had not come to the house that second night, would he have ever believed? Or would he have continued to insist that Jesus come to him on his terms, touching scars, putting a finger into the hole a spear put in Jesus’ side? Would there be another footnote to the story of the disciples, like the footnote that describes the loss the suicide of Judas Iscariot, the traitor? Would we also have to look at a second footnote about Thomas, the disciple who was too busy to be blessed?
As we go about our daily work, our daily routines, our daily and weekly rituals on this planet, it seems to me that we should consider if we are individuals who are living alone in this world, perhaps in a family, or are we truly part of the great body of disciples in the world? Do we attend our church – or are we part of our church?
You and I have both heard stories of people who look at the church in almost the same way that we look at a favorite store or restaurant – do they treat me well, what do I get out of it, do THEY take care of my needs, is the restroom clean enough?
But that is not supposed to be the way we look at church, the assembly of disciples. For we are each supposed to become integral and integrated into the organism that is the body of Christ. A church is not simply a crowd of believers who get together once a week or so. Instead, a church is a group of people who depend upon each other, who lift up the parts of the organism who are hurting, who are so interdependent and interlocked and intermingled that the successes of one part lifts the remainder, and the failures of any part pulls the remainder together tightly around the person or persons who are in trouble.
Yet that degree of closeness, that degree of disconnectedness, that degree of intimacy requires that each one of us become vulnerable. We have to open up ourselves to the possibility of being hurt if we are to truly be blessed.
Thomas did not show up that first Easter evening because he had been hurt. His hopes and dreams were tied up with the great "Jesus is Messiah" movement that had hit town a week before on Palm Sunday. And when Jesus died, Thomas’ dreams died, and since they were his dreams, his own story’s future – Thomas missed out on the blessings that the others experienced that first Sunday.
If you wish to become fully blessed, you must accept that there will be meetings that will be sad. If you want to be fully blessed by Christ, you will need to come to the meetings where nothing much is expected to happen, as the ten disciples did that first Easter evening. If you want to experience the ultimate in the blessings, to receive the movement of the Holy Spirit, to see Christ – you will need to come to those meetings you most dearly do not want to come to, for it is at those meetings, when no one expects anything much to happen, that Christ and the Holy Spirit show up and the miraculous happens!
The ten disciples had journeyed with Jesus for three years and seen miracles. So had Thomas. But what brought them back that first night was their understanding that they were all “in it” together, that they weren’t individual disciples of Christ, but that they were His designated legacy, that they were the body of Christ upon earth, that if anything positive was ever going to happen, it would be up to them. And they found out they had not been left alone.
Over the next few weeks, we will have different opportunities for you to become part of the disciple group in a stronger way than you have in the past. Consider joining our Holy Spirit study on Wednesday evenings. Consider just what your story has to do with the story that is developing here, about the continuing actions of Jesus Christ on this earth.
But then again, perhaps what we all really need to do is to forget about our individual stories, to stop spending so much time on our stories, and instead focus upon His story, the story of the Christ who has given you life. After all, isn’t that what His-story is all about?
Holy Communion is about the body of Christ coming together, to take Christ into us and to become One body of Christ. As we receive the elements, the body and the blood of Christ, consider how you can become more than just a person who attends church. Consider what it means to be part of the church, the Body of Christ.
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