Disbelief

John 20:19-31

Think about something you don’t believe.

That the Moon is made of cheese, maybe.

Some things seem so self-evidently untrue – at least by the time we’ve steered imagination into adulthood – that you almost can’t imagine anyone believing them. These ideas become an easy cultural reference for things no one believes.

Or maybe you don’t believe that, say: 

any gecko lizards actually speak English and have preferred auto insurance companies. 

that “reality TV” is a completely unscripted documentary.

That a handful of kids and some flying bikes can and will get an extra-terrestrial being home again (or, if your formative movie years were different from mine, maybe that ruby slippers will get you home, or that broomsticks fly and school is magic).

Some things we don’t actually believe, but enjoy by suspending our disbelief. And maybe some of these are things that you would love to believe, even though you’re sure they aren’t real. (I’m not entirely immune to the temptations of time travel myself).

Then there are the other unbeliefs:

Some bitter disbeliefs – like when you don’t believe that a news outlet, government office, or friend is telling you the truth. 

Some very practical disbeliefs – like not believing it’s safe to eat a picnic in the middle of Route 73. 

Some disbeliefs that keep us from achieving dreams – ways that we don’t believe in our own capacity to grow or learn or do important things, or don’t believe you can trust others to help make your dreams happen.

And some disbeliefs that keep us out of trouble – like not believing that I can break every law and get away with it, or that I can wave my hand and cure cancer or bring the dead back to life.

So if someone told you that a beloved friend, maybe the most important person in your life, had gotten up out of their grave and come back for a visit, I think it’s more sensible to ask which kind of disbelief you’re feeling, rather than whether you believe it. At least right at first.

Maybe it’s a very practical disbelief – protecting you from additional grief, or the possibility of losing your sense of reality. Maybe it’s the confident, self-evident disbelief of the cheesy moon – where you don’t believe the person telling you this could even imagine it’s true. It’s self-evidently a joke.

Maybe it’s that kind of yearning disbelief – the thing you know isn’t true but oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if it could be, even just for a moment.

Everyone who appears in our gospel story this morning has had to experience this. (Well, everyone but Jesus.)

Every one of the disciples in this story, just like you and me, first hears that Jesus is alive, again, from someone else. Thomas hears from the excited or stunned reports of the whole group who greeted him with “hey, while you were gone, we have seen the Lord.”  And that whole group had heard the same unbelievable thing from Mary Magdalene, earlier that same day. And I suspect few, if any, of them believed this resurrection was real, physical, and undoubtable, even if they believed Mary had seen something improbable., and probably didn’t believe it when they heard it.

Because it’s impossible.

Talking geckos, flying bikes, cheesy moons have nothing on this story of a person you have seen and known to be dead coming back to life.

Of that experience revealing something divine. Something nobody seems to be able to put into specific words – until Thomas says it – but which John keeps trying to show us anyway.

John doesn’t tell us anything about how the general group of disciples responded when they first heard the impossible news from Mary, John focuses in, instead, to tell us just how Thomas responded.

That Thomas, hearing good and glorious news that’s both impossible and improbable, demands to experience it for himself.  To know and believe by the direct experience of his senses.

He could be the precursor of the scientific thinker who needs replicable experiments before accepting conclusions.

But I suspect that Thomas’s clearly stated demand for experience to believe is not an expression of skepticism or resistance to belief. I suspect it’s the demand of someone who deeply, urgently wants to believe. 

To have not only an intellectual acceptance that his friends are telling him the truth as best they can describe it, but to believe with his whole heart, soul, and body, to live this impossible possibility with the same unconscious certainty that you and I have in gravity – the certainty that your foot will come down on the earth again when you pick it up, and that you won’t be left hanging in midair. 

I’ve felt something like that before – that deep aching yearning to experience the powerful connection, the confidence in God’s promises, the absolute bedrock reality of Jesus’ love that I’ve seen in someone else’s life or story. Maybe you have, too.

And so, when Thomas has this experience – when Jesus brings him exactly the tactile certainty that takes belief out of the realm of mind and thought and into the very pores of your body – I hear elation and relief and homecoming, I hear profound fulfillment, in his response naming Jesus as God. My God.

And I believe that that’s what Jesus and John both want for us – for you and me, each time we encounter this story.

Some of us come to this story secure in our own belief. Hear it with a heart-rooted certainty of Jesus’ reality, divinity, and resurrection. For that some of us, this story is a reminder of just how extraordinary that certainty is, and a chance to renew the elation of that belief.

I suspect, though, that many of us come to this story, this week, with some kind of disbelief.
Maybe the cheesy moon kind of disbelief – a sense that resurrection is so unreasonable it doesn’t even matter what Thomas, or the other disciples, doubted.

Maybe a protective disbelief, the kind that keeps you from being disappointed that something this miraculous doesn’t happen to you, or that keeps you from having to consider all kinds of impossible things as possible, once you accept this one.

Maybe the suspended disbelief that lets you fully enter a story, but not expect it to have a real impact on your own life.

All of those are ways to let the story go on, a chance to look for the gifts of God, a relationship with Jesus, in other ways.

But I think John tells us this story, I think Jesus intentionally returns to Thomas, because they are inviting us to share that yearning for belief. Inviting us to set free our own – often suppressed – longing for the impossible reality of resurrection, the personal assurance of God’s power for me. I suspect that Jesus would be delighted to see you and me demand to experience resurrection and to know for real, to believe in ways that change the center of gravity in our lives. 

Because to do that is, already, to believe.

To act as if the impossible is real, and we can share it, too, is believing already.

To long for and even demand that deep tangible certainty of what we’ve heard is happening, and want to be true, is an act of faith, a leap of trust.

To reach our own physical hands toward the impossible physical reality of wounded, divine, resurrected Jesus is, in itself, an act of belief. Insistent, faithful belief in what we have not yet seen. 

With that hope, that reach for what we so wish to find true, Jesus can look at you and me, saying, “blessed are we who have not seen and yet, now, yearningly, insistently, believe.”

Happy Ending

Matthew 28:1-10

If Disney were making a movie about Jesus, I expect they’d use Matthew’s version of the story for the ending. 

Mark gives us the empty tomb as a cliffhanger. Luke shows it as a high point in the final episodes setting up a spinoff series. John writes it as a set of open-ended scenes that pave the way for more complex theological narratives. 

But Matthew? Matthew gives us a classic happy ending.

It’s got drama: an earthquake breaking the stillness of the dawn; a brilliantly super-human messenger, the startling collapse of the tomb guards – we have all the special effects to make the scene exciting. 

The angel moves the action along quickly, offering the women reassurance, an invitation to see for themselves, and the command to carry the happy news away, almost all at once. Seizing the dismay and uncertainty you’d naturally feel, seeing a dear friend or family member’s grave wide open, and pushing it to action, resolution.  

(“It’s okay. See? Let’s go!” I can hear the background music swelling…)   

And so the women leave the tomb, carrying us with them in the heightened emotions of narrative climax, and here 

– at last, so quickly –

 is Jesus.

Risen Jesus.

Not dead, after all. Living Jesus.

The tragedy of Good Friday, of death and abandonment, is resolved, the tension of the empty tomb is released, because here is Jesus,

himself, alive, returned.  

[All better?]

Whose first word is “Rejoice!”

For these women, for Jesus, “chairete” would have been as commonplace and unremarkable a greeting as “hello”, or “good morning” is for us – but, literally, it’s “rejoice!”

This is a happy ending.

A joyful ending, in a world – and a faith – where lots of endings aren’t  happy, and some stories have no end in sight.

This reunion of Jesus and the women – which I cannot help seeing in bright, warm, happy-looking light – offers more reassurance, and more promise. They will see this renewed Jesus again, when they gather their friends in Galilee, able to be confident once more that all God’s promises will be fulfilled. That all will be well.

Where we stop reading this morning is not quite the end of Matthew’s story. He pauses to stamp out a rumor that resurrection is just a trick, and finishes with this morning’s last promises fulfilled. 

The disciples do gather in Galilee, as invited, 

and do see Jesus, as promised, and the story is complete with a look toward the future, with a commandment to share the story and bring others into the fulfilled promise. 

All of it a happy ending. A sense of completeness.
An assurance that that all will be well, that ever after is real, and meaningful, and we can rejoice in it.

I love a happy ending.

I’m a re-reader, especially of stories that have a happy ending, a resolution that makes the future look bright, and whole, and joyful.

I go back to those stories because I need that touchstone of reassurance – from fiction, movies, and true stories – that things can work out even when everything has gone wrong. 

It helps me keep going, stay hopeful, keep the faith. 

Dipping into fictional or true remembrances of joyful outcomes helps me navigate through the real world in the places where nothing gets finished, the times when you have to accept that some things stay broken, as well as in the places where the happy ending is still possible.

And that’s what Matthew offers us.

Matthew invites us today to re-live that experience of dramatic resolution, that reassurance of promise fulfilled, to rejoice in the happy ending for the grieving women, the lost disciples, for God and you and me.

It’s not always enough.

Sometimes what we need from Easter, from the impossible defeat of death itself, is not reassurance, but provocation. Open-ended possibility or new questions.

Sometimes we need God’s power not to tie everything up neatly, but instead to yank us out of our comfort, upend our assumptions, and change everything.

All of that is there, every Easter Sunday.

Every time you or I turn our attention to the fundamental impossibility of what still must be true – that Jesus, truly dead, vanished from the tomb in which he was sealed, 

and lives again, in power beyond our comprehension – 

every revolutionary possibility we need to jolt us alive is there. 

And sometimes even the joy and reassurance of a happy ending – the confidence and hope of all things made well – can be the jolt or disturbance we need when we’ve gotten adapted to hopelessness and everyday tragedy, when we’ve lowered our expectations to rock bottom, or stopped spending the energy to even imagine a better world.

Easter – resurrection – does not let us get stuck in the things we’ve always known.

But sometimes what we do need from Easter is the simplest truth of a happy ending.
A moment when we can’t help but smile, even when life doesn’t seem to offer anything to smile about. 
A deep breath of satisfaction – never mind that every single thing at work and home is incomplete. 

Sometimes we need that reassuring sense that all can become well,
that the end of the traumatic, messy story you or I may be living right now can also bring a whole-hearted opportunity to rejoice. 

[Because what God wants - for the world, and for you and me particularly - is that our joy may be complete.]

So we tell this story.

We read, remember, retell this dramatic, strange, bright and powerful happy ending  Matthew offers us this morning.

When no end, happy or otherwise, seems in sight, we can let this be our touchstone, a solid reassurance kept in our pockets for our fingers to brush, or a token that lets us measure what in the world we can hold true:

That God’s promises are fulfilled.

All can be well. All may already be well.

You can return to this happy ending as often as you might need it to build up your strength for another day of unhappy middle-of-the-story work or waiting. 

I can return as often as I might need to exercise the muscles of hope and trust in my heart and soul.
We can repeat this story – to ourselves, to others, as we do today – to renew the promise and invitation of joy in a world that almost always needs more joy.

We can re-read, re-watch, re-live this happy ending – and I believe we should – not only when we need and long for it, but when things are ordinary, average, and boring, too. 

Because the joy that Jesus invites us to – the joy and assurance that grow our hearts, expand our spirits – opens up space in the world for more and more joy. 

More of the longing for a happy resolution that moves us into action instead of passivity. 

More of the confidence that risks transformation,

more of the hope that opens our hearts, and invites others into joy.

So rejoice with me today. 

Hear Jesus’ joyful greeting, and celebrate, even if joy isn’t quite the story you’re living today.

Receive reassurance, confidence and hope today, even if you didn’t ask for it.

Accept balm for your grief, even if you are not grieving.

Enjoy a visit to happy ever after, even while you’re keeping your eyes and actions on resolving the injustices here and now.

Because today before our story ends, before your storyline resolves, before you’re ready:

living, renewed, resurrected, impossible Jesus comes to meet us, looks at you and me in our unresolved, ordinary lives, in whatever fear and hope we carry,

and says to us, “Rejoice!”

And today, wherever we are in our stories, you and I get to respond, “Alleluia!”

Mistaken Truth

John 18:11-19:37

It’s a case of mistaken identity.

No one in this story knows who Jesus is.

(No one except Jesus himself.)

They just know who they think he is. Or who they think he should be.

And that’s why they kill him.

 

The religious governing council think Jesus is a political and theological opponent. A liar, someone taking God’s name in vain by claiming to be God’s son, God’s self. A deluded and dangerous man who says he’s king.

(At least, that’s what they’ve convinced themselves they think.)

 

Peter’s confused about who Jesus is to him right now. And who he is to Jesus.

Things are changing. He knows it’s all dangerous, and any certainty about Jesus that he used to have has deserted him.

 

Pilate doesn’t hesitate to announce that he doesn’t know who Jesus is, or what all this has to do with him. 

He asks Jesus outright.

Asks the people who bring Jesus to him.
Asks Jesus again.

Still doesn’t know.

 

In the end, the mistaken identity is publicly declared, with a sign “posted on the cross”:
This is Jesus, the Nazarene, the King of the Jews.

Which is true, in that deep theological sense that God is King, and Jesus is God.

But isn’t what anyone truly meant, anyone at all, about Jesus – who he is, who he says he is, or why they’re killing him.

 

Scene by scene, all the way to the cross, all the way through the cross, John tells us that Jesus is killed by the force of mistaken identity. That nobody really knows who Jesus is.

 

And perhaps, we don’t really know who Jesus is, as we make our own way here today, coming to the cross through shared memory and story, through the needs and hopes and challenges of our everyday life.

 

We may know – like Peter – who we want or need Jesus to be. Friend. Teacher. Powerful miracle worker. Distant legend or close companion. 

We may know why we have trouble with Jesus, that stirrer-up of dissatisfaction with the way things are, like the religious governing council knew.

We may be really clear that we have questions about this Jesus, about this whole process, about why we’re even involved, the way Pilate has questions.

 

But there’s a good chance that we – in our own minds, our own lives – have made some mistakes about who Jesus is. 

A good chance that we don’t know the truth that Jesus knows about himself.

 

Perhaps because we can’t know that truth except in the brief, piercing perspective of crucifixion and resurrection. A timeless moment in which truth is revealed via the mistakes and uncertainties of people so enmeshed in uncertainty and untruth that they have to ask “what is truth?”

 

So, today, we gather at the cross and we watch what we don’t know or understand. 

We look, we listen, we pay attention, for this moment.

Because in the gathering, the looking, the paying attention, we meet truth.

Some raw foundational truth about Jesus, about God, about ourselves is here, in front of us, among us, today. On the cross, at the cross.

 

We might not understand, or be able to explain, the crucifixion.

We may still not be able to understand or explain who Jesus is.

But the act of paying attention – of making ourselves present for this raw, messy, mistaken judicial killing, this ancient moment here and now – the act of being present to this story, this time, can reveal truth.

Truth we can feel, if we can’t voice it or explain it. 

 

The grief, or wonder, or anger, or gratitude, or fear you or I may feel as we enter this moment – the unnamable stirring in your heart or gut as we open ourselves to the cross – those are the ways that unexplainable truth gathers us in. All those are raw edges of the experience of love – of the experience of truth recognized in being here, where the incomprehensible happens.

 

Because we are here today – with the beloved disciple, with Jesus’s mother, with unnamed others at the foot of the cross – not to understand, but to attend, to be here, to pay attention. 

To let truth be present to us, in the midst of life’s mistakes and uncertainty.

To see truth, to know God, without having to grasp it or explain it.

 

As we gather around the cross, it would be satisfying for me to be able to explain why Jesus had to die. To be able to answer questions like “how could a good God let, or make, this happen? What’s this supposed to do to improve my life? What does it mean for Jesus’ death to save us?”

But none of those questions are answered at or on the cross.

 

Nothing is explained today. All the ideas we’ve come up with about Jesus, all the labels we, or the religious council, or Pilate and the secular government can put on the cross, are mistaken.

 

But that brings us here, anyway.
Here, where instead of explanations, there’s just experience.

Truth that makes itself felt in our being present, in Jesus’ presence, in this one heart-wrenching and inexplicable time and place.

Truth that happens in our hearts, the deep roots of our soul, as the piercing presence of God meets us in grief and wonder and fear, in the unexplainable and the things we still don’t understand.

 

Perhaps our being here today, our staying at the cross, is practice for the patience and presence and attention that help us recognize truth, recognize God in the everyday messiness of our own ordinary mistakes and uncertainties. The raw openness to love and awe we can experience here – letting compassion and grief reach deep to your heart’s root, letting astonishment and wonder expand our souls – may be making us more able to receive gifts of love in small, unremarkable ways; more able to perceive the power and glory of God in the daily details of our own work and rest, tragedies and triumphs.

 

Perhaps this moment is enough, by itself.

Enough that the mistakes and uncertainties of Pilate and Peter, Annas and Caiaphas, of unnamed others, and of our own lives, have brought us here to a place where truth – the sheer unexplainable reality of God at work – is all around us.

 

And perhaps, gathered around the cross, our mistakes still unresolved, our questions still unanswered…

perhaps we, in this moment, with Jesus, are complete.