Divine Mercy Sunday 2024
John 20:19-31
Some of you experienced the Tridium, the three days leading up to Easter Sunday. I woke up Sunday morning feeling like I had really accomplished something. I’d been to the mountaintop! I’d participated in each of these services, wore red on Thursday, purple on Friday, white on Saturday. The washing of the feet, the honoring of the Cross, the confirmation of two members of our parish. I felt very holy. Of course not everybody can do the Tridium, especially families with small children. Going to these services would have been too much. For all of us though, Easter Sunday seems to mark a new beginning. Christ has risen. Now it’s a week later. How are you and I different? Do you see the world in new ways? I must confess I don’t feel as though things have changed for me. Except of course I don’t have to abstain anymore, so I’ll miss those lobster dinners we had every Friday.
But I guess we aren’t alone. The apostles have witnessed the empty tomb; they’ve personally spoken with the risen Jesus, and received reports from Mary Magdalene and the other women and the two disciples who met him on the road. As you’ve just heard, Jesus sent them forth and gave them the power to forgive sins. So here we are a week later, and the apostles are still inside that room. And John will tell us about even later when some of these apostles have decided to go back to fishing. It’s as though the resurrection didn’t make any difference in their lives.
But of course we know that it did. We wouldn’t be here in this church today if it hadn’t completely changed their lives, so much so that they died rather than deny the truth of the resurrection.
Christ’s resurrection is a big deal; the empty tomb is a life-changing event. The resurrection should make a difference in our lives. But it takes time.
Thomas will be known as “doubting Thomas” for the rest of human history. And even after he fell on his knees and declared his faith -- he’s the first one of the apostles to recognize that Jesus is not just the Messiah, but God - John tells us Thomas is out there fishing with Peter and the others on that lake in Galilee. It’s as though this event, this moment when he recognized the divine in Jesus, didn’t make much of a difference. But we all know it did. Thomas brought Christianity to India, and when Portuguese missionaries visited India in the fifteenth century, they found a thriving Christian community which claimed Thomas as its founder. The liturgical language was Syriac, which is very similar to Aramaic, the language Jesus and Thomas spoke. Thomas, like all but one of the apostles, died a martyr’s death.
Resurrection makes a difference in our lives; but it takes time. It’s not so much an event as a process. Through cooperation with God’s grace, we become resurrected people.
The empty tomb is a fact, Resurrection is a story. Facts are like snapshots; stories are more like movies. Facts are starting points for stories. Whatever the facts of my life, of your life, today, that’s the starting point for our resurrection story. Wherever you are now, that’s the room that Jesus enters into your life. Maybe you are going through a health scare, or the loss of a loved one, or difficulty with a family member. Maybe you are being blessed by good fortune. Where you are today is your locked room. The great tragedy for the apostles is not that they haven’t done anything. The tragedy would have been if they had remained in that locked room, if they had refused to get out of the house.
Jesus comes into our locked rooms, invites us to embark upon the great adventure of resurrection. He will keep coming back, offering us peace, hope, courage; and when we accept those gifts, we can unlock the door, we can become resurrection people.
What doors are locked in your life? Are there things that have kept you stuck in the same place? We made resolutions at the beginning of lent, and maybe didn’t keep them that well. That’s ok. Maybe we need to make resolutions at the beginning of the Easter season. What can we do to become people of the resurrection?
