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On this Second Sunday of Easter the sermon is usually focused either on
Doubting Thomas or on Believing Thomas, either on the Thomas who refuses to believe in the resurrection of
Jesus unless he sees the evidence of Jesus’ hands and side for himself or on the Thomas who exclaims “My
Lord and my God!” when he finally does see the evidence for himself on the Second Sunday of Easter.
Today, however, I want to spend some time with Absent Thomas, with the Thomas who didn’t show up
on the First Sunday of Easter, on Easter Day, because I think this Absent Thomas tells us something
important about our life in Christ.
St. John tells us that on the First Sunday of Easter, on Easter Day, “Thomas, one of the twelve,
was not with the other disciples when Jesus came.” On the evening of the Day of the Resurrection, Jesus’
disciples gathered together, but Thomas missed the blessing of the risen Christ, because Thomas, who was
one of them, wasn’t there.
We can only speculate about the reasons for Thomas’ absence that night. It was Sunday evening,
and Jesus had been killed only two days before, on Friday. And on Friday the disciples had fled, gone
into hiding, out of fear that they might be next.
So perhaps it was fear that led Thomas to stay away from the others on Sunday, fear that it might
still be dangerous to be caught with a group that was known to have associated with someone recently
executed as a criminal and subversive. “With trouble, in trouble,” as the saying goes.
More likely, perhaps, at least to my mind, Thomas was absent that night because of his grief or
his anger. Perhaps he preferred to mourn alone, to weep by himself rather than with his brother
disciples. Because Thomas, like everyone else, simply believed it was all over. He had loved Jesus, and
now Jesus was dead, and that was that. Perhaps Thomas preferred to lick his wounds alone, to suffer by
himself.
Whatever the reason, Thomas did not come together with his brothers that first Sunday evening, and
he missed the blessing. He missed the joy of the presence of Jesus that night.
Several years ago, I read a book by an English evangelical who said that a disciple of Jesus
should be at church every time the doors are open. Now this was a man whose tradition is to gather for
prayer with fellow Christians, not just once a week on Sunday morning, but at least three times a week --
twice on Sundays, once in the morning and again in the evening, and then at least a third time on
Wednesday night. And with a sermon every time. How astonishing his suggestion sounds to those of us
whose habit it is to gather for prayer only once a week, if we can fit it in. The man must be daft!
But he’s not, of course. He’s right. And the absence of Thomas on that night of the Day of
Resurrection confirms the man’s wisdom, because on that first evening, Jesus appeared! And Thomas missed
it.
It is wise, as the evangelical pastor suggests, to be with one’s brothers and sisters in Christ
whenever they gather together. And it is wise for us today for the same two reasons it was wise in
Thomas’ day. First, it is charitable to support the Body of Christ. And second, one simply never knows
what the Spirit is going to do when the faithful are gathered together. You just never know when Christ
will be present in some special way to bring his peace and blessing for you! And if you’re not there, you
miss it, just as Thomas missed it that first night.
Can we not recognize ourselves in Thomas? One sees it over and over again, that in times of pain
or loss or disappointment we want to withdraw from the fellowship of people, and even from the fellowship
of our brothers and sisters in Christ, to suffer alone. At times of illness, or following the death of a
spouse or a child, or after some other great loss, we sometimes find every available reason not to be
precisely where we need to be, in the fellowship of those who love us as brothers and sisters in Christ.
It happens, too, at times of personal failure or disappointment, that many tend to withdraw, perhaps out
of a sense of guilt or embarrassment or anger or fear, and fail to gather with those who love them in
Christ. And just so, because we aren’t there, we often miss the peace and the healing power and the
blessing that Christ appears that very day to bring to us.
That was one reason Thomas “blew it” by not gathering with the other disciples that Easter night.
He missed the peace and blessing Christ came to bring.
But a second reason he made a mistake by being absent that night was just as important. And that
reason is that, in his own fear or grief or pain, Thomas failed to be with his brothers to support them in
their grief and need, and to share their joy.
And that’s the deeper truth for today. That’s the truth John is getting at in his short letter we
heard this morning. Go home and read it this afternoon. Not just the few verses assigned for today, but
the whole letter. It’s only four pages long, but it’s a magnificent summary of the good news of the risen
Christ -- about how the truth is that if we love God, then we will love and support our brothers and
sisters, God’s people. And about how, if we say we love God but we don’t have time for our neighbor,
then we’re simply lying, because the only way we can show our love for God is by doing acts of love for
each other.
So Thomas missed out at both ends that first night. He missed his own blessing. brought by Christ
for him, and he failed to show his love for God by being present himself to support his brothers in their
time of need.
The deep truth of all this is that we were not created to be alone. We cannot be Christians by
ourselves, anymore than we can be human beings by ourselves. We often try to do it, but it’s a great
mistake. Christian faith is the faith of a community, and whenever we try to hold on to faith, or even to
hold on to our grief or our need, as something that is just a matter between me and God alone, a matter of
some private relationship between myself and God, then we not only miss the point, but we also miss the
blessing that Christ comes to bring to the faithful gathered.
It’s just a fact of life. A bee, I’m told, cannot be kept by itself. A bee must be kept in a
hive with other bees. Otherwise, no matter how much food it is provided, it will soon die. You cannot
keep a bee; you can only keep bees. And, as someone added, “You cannot keep a Christian; you can only
keep Christians.”
Like a bee, we can live to ourselves only for a short time. And the blessings of God, the peace
and joy and support and power of the presence of the risen Christ, are found among the people of God. If
we’re not with them, we can miss what the risen Christ comes to bring; and when we fail to provide our
love and support for each other, we fail to show our love for him.
The appearance of the risen Christ to Mary Magdalene and the other disciples on Easter morning is
evidence that God never abandons us, even when we abandon him, and the great truth of the Gospel is that
God feeds and strengthens us, that God makes a difference in our lives, through the community of his
people. And God blesses and strengthens others through your presence to them, in their need as well as in
their joy.
There once was a man in need, a man lost in Germany in 1944, who found out just how strong the
presence of Christ is within the congregation of his people. His is a story that should put to rest any
question you might have about the importance of your presence to others when the people of God are
gathered together as church, a story that should put to rest any question about the power you have to
support and bless in the name of Christ.
The man was a bishop named Hanns Lilje. One Saturday in August of 1944, as he was finishing a
sermon he was to preach the next day in St. John’s Church in Berlin, Bishop Lilje heard a knock at his
door, the kind of knock that was heard all too often in Berlin in those days. Bishop Lilje knew what it
meant; he had been expecting it for some time. He went to the door, and there stood two officers from the
Gestapo.
Bishop Lilje was arrested, and within a couple of hours he found himself in a prison cell, alone
and afraid, cut off from the outside world and from his brothers and sisters in Christ.
Later, Bishop Lilje told how, when the steel door slammed shut behind him, it took all the
reserves of faith and courage and spirit he had not to lose his self-control. He was alone, in a dreadful
isolation, in a cell from which he knew so many others before him had been marched only to their deaths.
He sensed only a silent eternity stretching out before him. There was no word from God, only silence, a
deep and desperate silence. And he flung himself on his knees, and upon the mercy of God.
But then -- after the echo of the slamming door had faded, and with it the footsteps of the
retreating guard -- after what must have been only a minute, but what seemed like eternity, someone down
the dark passage of the prison began to whistle the tune of an old familiar hymn. And Bishop Lilje jumped
to his window and whistled back, whistled back the truth he knew by heart and shared with his companion
down the hall, the truth that Thomas himself sang, when he was there, on the Second Sunday of Easter:
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