SEEING IS BELIEVING
Easter 2002
by The Rev. Carolyn Stevenson

 The disciples weren’t just afraid, they were terrified.  Jesus, their leader and rabbi, whom they had thought would bring about the liberation of Israel , had been betrayed by one of their own, hauled off and tortured, and was crucified.  They had been with Jesus for several years and everyone knew it.  Peter had told them about how several people had recognized him as being a follower of Jesus even on the chaotic night when he tried to warm his hands by the fire during the trial.  The disciples knew that their names were probably next on the hit list of the temple authorities and the Roman police.  So they sat, huddled behind triple locked doors, afraid and uncertain as to what they should do.  Some of the women, who were also disciples, ran in this morning to tell them that they had found Jesus’ grave empty and then he appeared to them.  But they had written off their story as being hallucinations by a couple of hysterical grieving females.  After all, seeing is believing, and they hadn’t seen anything.

Then Jesus suddenly appeared among them.  He didn’t chide them for failing to believe the women, but instead wished them peace. Fear was replaced by joy.  They had seen him!  Thomas wasn’t there at the time and just as the disciples had trouble believing the women, so Thomas had trouble believing the other disciples.  “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” He too, needed to see in order to believe.  Jesus obliged him, and when he made another appearance showing him his hands and side, Thomas now believed, and proclaimed the punch line of John’s gospel, “My Lord and my God!”

But what about us?  The women at the tomb, the disciples, Thomas, all first heard the word that Jesus is risen, but it wasn’t until they saw the resurrected Jesus that they believed. What about those of us who have not seen the risen Jesus or had the opportunity to touch his hands and his side?  The gospel tells us, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.” We have not seen.  Or have we?

I think there is a difference between physically seeing the resurrected Jesus and experiencing the living Christ.  Only a relatively few people saw the resurrected Jesus.  I don’t think it is necessary to see the nail marks in his hands and feet and the wound from the spear thrust in his side in order to believe.   But I do think for the Easter message to have the power to transform our lives and change our doubt into belief and our fear into joy, we need to experience the risen Christ.

We experience the risen Christ within us.  In John’s gospel before Jesus died, he told his disciples, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live , you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.”  Just as God breathed into Adam and made him a living soul, so Jesus breathed into the disciples the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the risen Christ.  When you find yourself in the pit of despair, and suddenly discover a ray of hope; when you are scared, but are able to whistle in the dark; when you are confused and scattered, and from what seems like nowhere, a sense of peace takes over – that is an experience of the risen Christ within you.

We can experience the risen Christ in community.  When I walked into St. Matthew’s the day after the parish house burned, and expected to find confusion, shock, and depression, and instead found an office set up, telephones being hooked in, the Sunday School carrying on as normal, and this community of faithful already seeing in the disaster possibilities of new life and growth – that was an experience of the risen Christ in community.  

We experience the risen Christ through the liturgy and sacrament.  When two children had water poured over their heads during the Great Vigil of Easter and anointed as God’s own forever; when last Sunday the choir sang such a moving version of Robert Thompson’s Alleluia, that tears were overflowing down Bill’s and my face, and even the restless children sat enraptured; when week after we come forward to the altar, knowing that we are somehow receiving something so much more than a wafer and a sip of wine – we are experiencing the risen Christ through the liturgy.

We experience the risen Christ through the reading and telling the stories of  other people’s experience of God.  John didn’t describe Jesus as “the Word” by accident.  We refer to the scriptures as God’s word not because we believe that God was standing over the author’s shoulders dictating what to write down.  We refer to the Bible as God’s word because centuries of experience has proven that when these stories are told and shared, they are more than a history lesson.  They somehow come alive and speak to us of the presence and action of God in our lives and in the world here and now.  We are experiencing the risen Christ through the Word.

Finally, we experience the risen Christ in people and places were we least expect it.  Just as Jesus appeared to Mary as a gardener or as a stranger on the road to Emmaus, so do we sometimes experience the risen Christ through the questions or comments of a child, in the joy of life found in a person dying of AIDS, or in the tenacity to survive in some of the most impoverished and oppressed in the world.  We experience the risen Christ in each other.

 Thomas has often gotten a bad rap as the “doubting Thomas”.  But expressing our doubts can be a good thing.  Frederick Beuchner once said that doubt is “ants in the pants of faith – it keeps it alive and moving.”  Thomas had the courage to express his doubts and demand to see resurrected Jesus, and Jesus came to him.  Jesus, too, comes to us as the risen Christ in all kinds of places and ways.  Help us to open our eyes to see him, and believe, and proclaim with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”