Comprehending a resurrected Jesus who walks around with open wounds and has ready access to a Star Trek ‘Transporter’ is certainly one of the biggest challenges we face as we unpack this Sunday’s Gospel.

But the bigger challenge goes much deeper.  As we know, Christianity is not about believing 6 impossible things before breakfast, rather it’s about a living, breathing, relationship with Jesus – something that the story of Doubting Thomas tells us all about.

After the resurrection, Jesus’ disciples were scared – locked up – fearful about what their allegiance to Christ might mean.  Would they lose their families, their jobs, their lives?  All because of Jesus?  They feared the answer was ‘yes’ – as they sat, cooped up in some safe house, tired, hungry, and desperate - trying to figure it all out.

We all know that place.  We’ve all lived in that place.

We modern day disciples also face the fear of going deeper with Christ.  It’s not arrest and torture that scares us, it’s the loss of those things that brings us security, comfort, and peace.  If we devote more of who we are to Jesus, will we too have to give up everything?

Maybe the question scares us because we don’t consider the whole answer.  Christ appeared to Doubting Thomas to assure him that everything he’d heard about Jesus was true - that the powers of fear, worry, trepidation, death, and every evil force you and I can imagine, will lose.  And that hope, mercy, compassion, love, and every good and perfect word and deed that we will ever witness, wins.  The locked doors and safe houses of our minds are what Christ breaks into today to tell us that following Him may be scary, but that everything is going to me OK – that the Jesus way means that when it’s all over we will not discover that we lived our lives in vain, but that every sacrifice we’ve ever made for the sake of the cross, has been worth it

What’s keeping us from believing today?

What worries do we need to surrender?

In what ways might we move past doubt and go deeper with Christ?

The Misunderstood Jew – Amy-Jill Levine

Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott

How They Did It – Robert Jordan