Real

 John 20:19-31; 1 John 1:1-2:2; Acts 4:32-35

Hearing the familiar story of Jesus and Thomas and his friends again this year, I started to wonder if the doubt for which today’s gospel story is famous really belongs to Thomas, after all. 

I wonder if this is a story about how the belief of the other disciples was missing something.

After all, the other disciples saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes last week. Jesus showed them his hands and side - offered them tangible, vivid proof of Jesus’ conquest of death. They felt it with their skin and lungs as Jesus breathed God’s Spirit into them, and heard with their ears as Jesus told them to continue his own work of demonstrating God’s presence and inviting others to believe.

And when Thomas returns, they say that they’ve had this extraordinary experience, but they can’t or don’t share the miracle with him. Resurrection isn’t real in their story – the experience hasn’t changed them, affected them enough for Thomas to see, feel, and experience those effects and be changed himself – to believe.

Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe, Jesus says when he returns to Thomas and all the other disciples.

But how are those who do not see Jesus in the flesh supposed to believe?

I think Jesus knows that the only way anyone who wasn’t there that one specific day in Jerusalem can believe is by seeing and touching and feeling what the resurrection has done to those who have experienced it, who do believe.

John explicitly says that, writing this story.

Jesus comes back – to Thomas and to the others – so that the reality of resurrection can be transmitted to us through Thomas’ visceral and fervent response; so we, too, can believe. Be caught up in the presence of God both then and there and here and now.

Because belief is an experience, a state of being, a changed life. Not an intellectual acceptance of a report.

There’s a strong emphasis on the practical, concrete, shareable effects of faith in the stories and prayers of this week.

Both times that Jesus visits the disciples, he emphasizes the physical signs, the sheer reality of his flesh. I think that’s on purpose, so that you and I, hearing the story later, can have a vivid, physical, tangible (and yes, slightly gory) sense of the reality of resurrection.

The first letter of John begins with tangible emphasis: Listen, what we are telling you is what we’ve seen, and heard, and touched, with our own hands, ears, eyes. The writer (the community that has experienced transformation) wants you and me to share the real, physical, concrete, vivid sense of fellowship, of communion with Jesus, with God, that conveys the forgiveness of sins and the renewal of life that they have experienced: felt, touched, heard and seen. They want us to experience the realness so that the joy they experience in God will be complete.

It’s not enough just to experience resurrection. We complete ourselves, our joy, by sharing it with others.

And in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us how fellowship with God has measurable, practical effects on those who share the experience of resurrection. “The believers shared one heart and soul,” a complete and joyful sharing of resources in which no one has any need that is not met, as they share their experience of the resurrection of Jesus. 

Unity and plenty – and popularity in the neighborhood, too, Luke tells us.  These are the effects of sharing the reality of resurrection. It changes the world – or at least the community.

And at the beginning of the service today we prayed for this for ourselves, asking God to ensure that all of us – all who are baptized, all who are part of the church, the Body of Christ – will actively demonstrate in our lives the effects of our faith. 

So, what did you tell other people about the resurrection you experienced last Sunday?  

How did you demonstrate Easter in your life, so that other people might see and believe?

I’ve talked with several people who told me they feel more connected this week, or grateful or uplifted, by our Easter services – video, phone, and outdoors. I’m hearing that souls were nourished by the music, or by seeing and hearing one another, or the altar bright with flowers, or the gospel proclaimed.

And my soul is also fed by hearing and seeing the hearts filled and spirits lifted by the celebration we shared.

But who else will see, touch, hear, or feel the reality of resurrection, or the presence of God in the world, by seeing, touching, or hearing your life?

What vivid reality of transformation can people hear in your words, your stories?

What inspiring, or calming, or heartwarming energy, rooted in your own experience of God, can people feel for themselves, by knowing you?

What actions of care, patience, generosity, kindness, or justice, will other people see for themselves as you do them, because God is present and real in your life and heart?

Your primary resurrection experience might not be the story in scripture. Your transformative encounter with the presence of God might not be an Easter church service. The experience of resurrection comes in all kinds of ways. For you, it might be an encounter with someone who listened to you when no one else heard. Or a miracle of healing, or a gift of not actually needing a cure. It might be a slow trickle of peace into your life from years of prayer. Or something else I’m not thinking of.

But however your life has been shaped or fed or transformed – slowly or all at once – by the presence of God, it has to show. 

It matters, to God and to our community, that other people can experience the reality of God through us – in other words, that through our lives and words, others may come to believe, to experience God’s reality for themselves. 

This matters, not just for others, but so that our own joy – our own renewal, forgiveness, and unity with God and one another – may be complete: full and satisfying and life-giving.  Just the way the community of John wrote to their friends, nearly two thousand years ago.  

So – with that in mind – I’ll ask again: how are you sharing your resurrection experience – your experience of the real presence of God, in a way that others might see, touch, feel, or hear?

You might not know that right off the top of your head. 

I don’t always know for sure myself.

But think about it now, today: what are the real effects of your faith in your life? what are the practical results of your trust in God? the noticeable results of whatever (tiny or dramatic) experience you have had of God being real?

For me, the accumulated experience of resurrection – of hope made new, and the presence of God made vivid – over many years, has made me more grounded, and more joyful, in ways that I hope may be visible to others.  Sometimes my accumulated experience of resurrection means I’m able to look at an incomplete project, a failure, or an emptiness in my daily life – or in the life of our community – and see not a dead end, but an opportunity for God to act. And when I act on that confidence, or share that sense of opportunity, perhaps others can see, feel, or touch that sense of hope for themselves.

I know that my sense of our connection as a community, through this last year of physical absence, has everything to do with the reality of God’s presence. And if my sense of connection has helped anyone else keep their own sense of connection just a little stronger, or more real…

well, that’s what John and Jesus are talking about, faith that sparks faith, just like we read about and prayed for today.

Maybe for you, that experience of resurrection, of God’s reality, shows up in actions like caring for a sick or vulnerable friend or acquaintance. Like giving twice as generously as you thought you could. Like inviting others to read the Bible with you, and being fed by that yourself. Or being able to accept forgiveness, and give it.  The ability to tell a story of your own miracle, so that others feel as if they were there. So that Thomas could believe.

All of those are ways in which our experience of resurrection may show in ways that others can see, touch, feel, believe.

Whatever you have seen of resurrection, however you have come to believe, is meant to be shared in practical, tangible ways. Because God is always working – with us, beyond us, through us – to bless those who have not seen, so that they too may come to believe.