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

My wife and I recently watched a movie on the last days of Hitler.

It showed his life in an underground bunker as he tried to keep his nihilistic vision of world domination from collapsing.  I sat awed as Hitler grew increasingly paranoid and out of touch with reality.  He refused to believe reports that his armies had been defeated.  He blamed the German people for bringing defeat on themselves.  He was so convinced of the betrayal of his officers that he spent his last days ordering the deaths of his own loyalists.

But what was more disturbing than this was the people around him.  More than once my wife asked, ‘Why doesn’t someone just shoot him?’

Simple.

They couldn’t.

Hitler had constructed such a complex and convincing web of reality that those closest to him refused to leave his side, and some even joined their Fuhrer in taking their own lives.  We left the film not just overcome by the unfathomable tragedy, but also utterly chilled at the impact one’s surroundings can have on otherwise sane minds.  It’s stunning to think about the impact one’s worldview, culture, and immediate relationships can have on one’s life. 

We can be poisoned to do unspeakable evil.

But we can be also inspired to do immeasurable good.

While the world that surrounds us today has little in common with Germany during the War years, we do find ourselves faced with the same conviction - that the worldview we choose to embrace makes a huge difference in our lives.

This is why I believe in the Church.

This is why I believe churches are so important to our lives.

This is why I believe that the redevelopment, restoration, and reigniting of the local church is our best and greatest hope for the world.

Since the beginning, Jesus’ followers gathered together on the weekly anniversary of His resurrection to worship, to learn, and to remind themselves of a worldview that is good for them and good for the world.  They formed this vital community, with Jesus in the middle, that served to remind them that the secret to life was not getting, but giving.  The Scriptures they read and the Sacraments they took, deeply shaped and formed them.  And so they went out, and they helped their neighbor, who helped their neighbor, who helped their neighbor - until this movement had an unprecedented impact on the world.

Of course, church is boring, it’s full of weird people, songs I don’t want to sing, and meeting at inconvenient times when I’d rather be doing something else.  We all have excuses for not committing to a faith community.  We all have a reason why the deepest impressions on our souls, week in and week out, are not coming from a church.  But if the story of Jesus is really the story we believe, is this how we want to treat our lives?  Is this how we want to treat the world?

For the sake of our souls, for the sake of everyone else’s, find a church, go to church.

We are profoundly shaped by the things that we choose to surround us.  Let’s surround ourselves with good.

One of the scariest words in Christendom is ‘Evangelism’-

Tainted as it is with notions of slick salesmanship, in which, the innocent and unsuspecting are hoodwinked by glad-handed, overly reassuring, questionably motivated Christians with seemingly permanent smiles plastered on their faces.

Evangelism has become a word with such creepy overtones that even many Christians don’t like to use it.  But just as the remedy for bad theology is not no theology – it is good theology.  The same is true for evangelism.  And we get no better lesson in good evangelism than by this Sunday’s reading from John’s Gospel when Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well.

‘Give me a drink’ says Jesus, as he strikes up a conversation with a woman who will soon begin following Him.  This conversation goes on for some time, becoming one of the longest dialogs in the Gospels.  This is done on purpose: Jesus is building a relationship, making a friend, and will end up spending a few days in this woman’s village laying the foundation for a new community and winning an entire town over to follow Him.

Not long ago the United Bible Societies polled 500 Christian converts – asking how they came to faith.  Researchers concluded that in most cases it wasn’t done overnight - that “belonging comes before believing.”  Establishing friendships, building community, is where faith takes root and grows.  The still-popular model of ‘Presentation, Decision, then Fellowship’ does not hold a candle to the format presented here by Jesus of ‘Fellowship, Conversation, then Commitment.’

‘Belonging comes before believing.’  That’s why many churches baptize babies, welcoming them into the fellowship of God’s people, nurturing them into community, believing that a time will come for adult commitment.

People aren’t projects that serve as tallies on some TV preacher’s tote board.  People are a crown of creation, of inestimable worth, and value to God.  In what ways are we seeing our churches as sacred communities to show forth this love, compassion, and hospitality for those around us to come to know Jesus more deeply?  When was the last time we invited someone to experience our faith community?  Who might we bring to church, and deeper into relationship with Jesus, this weekend?

Reading
The Celtic Way of Evangelism – George Hunter

Faith of the Future – Harvey Cox

Radical – David Pratt