Sermon preached by the Reverend Nicholas Lang, Rector

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

2^nd Sunday of Easter, April 15, 2007

In the Name of our wonderfully resourceful, imaginative God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Imagine, missing church one Sunday, and coming back to hear someone say, “Guess who showed up while you were gone?” Would you believe it?

We don’t know why Thomas missed the gathering behind those locked doors on that Sunday Evening of the Resurrection. Maybe he was so disheartened that he needed to be alone or so grief stricken that he sought out his twin with whom to share his confusion and anguish. Maybe he was the designated person to pick up the Chinese Food for dinner. (Well, they had to eat.) We really don’t know the answer.

Notice that it is the Second Sunday “of” and not “after” Easter. Easter is a church season of a full fifty days not just one Sunday and during it we hear several stories about the appearances Jesus made after his Resurrection. This story about Thomas is the Gospel we hear every year on this Second Sunday of Easter.

I’m reminded of the rector who told the story of a person who came to church once a year and always on Easter. She shook his hand heartily as he left the church. “Great to have you worship with us today!” she said. “Really?” he responded. “Sure. It’s always good to have you with us on Easter.” He scratched his head. “Well, maybe I’d come more often if you’d preach about something different!”

So today I’ll preach about something a little different. Today’s Gospel actually contains two of these post-Resurrection stories – one without and then one with Thomas present. Many sermons delivered on this Sunday focus on Thomas as the “Doubting Disciple.” Let’s just say this much about Thomas: he absolutely refused to say that he understood what he did not understand. He was just being honest and Jesus appreciated that virtue in his character.

I would like to talk more about those closed, locked doors. Have you ever visited someone who lived in a big city, perhaps in a large apartment building that was not in the safest of neighborhoods? Most likely, you have to get “buzzed” in on the ground floor after you have identified yourself.

Once you arrive at the apartment you may still need to verify your identity to the person, who may have learned the hard way not to be too careful. “Who is it?” Then begins a long series of “click, click, click” and one lock unlocks, then the chain, then the deadbolt, then yet another lock – all designed to keep you out and keep the person inside safe.

Locks come in all sizes and shapes and they can be invisible as well as tangible. If you have suffered some ordeal, if you have experienced injustice in your life, or been the object of discrimination, it is likely that you may have wanted to lock yourself away to protect yourself from additional assaults. I wonder if those graceful young ladies on the Rutger’s University Basketball team weren’t feeling a bit like that this week.

People have locked themselves in the invisible closet for all sorts of reasons as their coping mechanism to avoid the intolerance and bigotry so prevalent in society. A teacher in an inner city school, for example, might look into the faces of kids who have so little hope of breaking out of the stereotype created for them, that he is desperately trying to find the key to unlock their minds and show them the potential they really have.

Today’s Gospel also presents this image of a group of people who are cowering in fear behind locked doors. It’s night, a dangerous time in most big cities. Candlelight throws huge shadows on the wall and they all huddle around a table, speaking in little more than a whisper. “Who’s next among us?” one of them asks. “Andrew? James? John?” What have they gotten themselves into, they are all wondering. Perhaps they also feared the scorn of friends and family for giving up everything to follow Jesus. Then Jesus appears in their midst and greets them – not with a rebuke for their faithlessness or their lack of loyalty and support – but rather with the Shalom of God: “Peace be with you,” words that unlock doors.

The great champion of lay ministry and author Verna Dozier wrote that “Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Fear is. Fear will not risk that even if I’m wrong, I will trust that if I move today by the light that is given me, knowing it is only finite and partial, I will know more and different things tomorrow than I know today, and I can be open to the new possibility I cannot even imagine today.”

I wonder if what really happened that day in Jerusalem is that Thomas, refusing to surrender to the fear which kept the rest of his friends locked behind bolted door, ventured out for fresh air, to clear his head from the devastating thoughts – and then had the courage to return to the community. And there Jesus met him exactly where he was – and would have shown up a third, fourth, or fifth time if necessary to sustain and strengthen Thomas’ faith.

As it often does, the Gospel raises some questions for us to ponder. Have we cowered behind invisible locked doors created by our own fear – even understandable fear – based on experiences we have had, perhaps intolerance or injustice we have endured because of some aspect of our lives or individuality?

Are we aware of how even the church has operated behind closed doors, excluding people from its life and ministry out of some irrational fear or lack of understanding, and in that process actually keeping Jesus from getting in and living among its members?

What can each of us do in the little “churches” where we preside – our home, office, school, business, neighborhood, and right here in this community – to remove the bolts, the obstacles, the deadlocks that may be keeping someone from experiencing the Shalom of God, the peace of the Lord, the radical welcome of the Risen Jesus bringing them from fear to faith?

The Resurrection tells us that there is much more to come – many more little resurrections as our everyday world of life and death collides with the world of heavenly grace – a divine phenomenon from which none of us can hide. Robert Farrar Capon writes in his novel Between Noon and Three: “Grace is the gift unearned, the wonderful unanticipated present, the blessing undeserved. It is sunshine in a place where only the darkness can be explained. It is a bursting presence of love at a time when we have the right only to expect condemnation or emptiness and aloneness.”

We are the sunshine in the midst of the darkness. We hold the keys to those locked places in which people cower, those bolted doors behind which they live in fear hoping for the blessing of release and liberation. Jesus may indeed be present everywhere, but it is within the community gathered that he is most visibly and powerfully present.

And so, on this Second Sunday of Easter, in the midst of this community, a community whose doors are wide open, where fear is banished, where oppression and intolerance will find no home, Dylan, William, Henry, and Keira will receive the gift of new life that Jesus breathed on the disciples that Easter eve. We will impart to them, and begin to teach them little by little, the good news that the great truth of Easter is not just that we are going to live newly after death, but that we are able to be new here and now by the power of the resurrection. Here, in this community where Jesus abides, they will discover more and different things tomorrow than they know today and to be open to the new possibility they cannot even imagine today. And how will they best learn all that? By watching us.