April 2, 2021
One summer Sunday afternoon when I was living in Durham, North Carolina, I was driving home from church. I pulled up to a stoplight. A man stood there on the corner holding a cardboard sign: “Homeless, please help.”
I rolled down my window and asked him if he was hungry. He said, “Yeah.” I realized that was a dumb question. I told him to get in the car, and we went to the Waffle House.
His name was Ricky. I told Ricky he should order anything he wanted – he got steak and eggs. He told me his story, and I told him mine, and at one point, he looked at his plate and then at me and said, “My friends are never going to believe this.”
I wonder if Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ever thought that same thing when they wrote down the story of the resurrection. They had to realize that this story is full of farfetched ideas: Jesus was crucified. On the third day, he rises from the dead. Then he comes into a room where the door is shut and locked. He breathes on his friends, and out of his mouth comes the Holy Spirit.
Some people just aren’t going to believe it.
Thomas didn’t. The other ten disciples told him, “Thomas, we’ve seen Jesus! He’s alive!” But Thomas was skeptical. He said, “Unless I see the mark in his hands and his side, and touch the marks, I won’t believe.” And so Thomas the disciple will forever be known as doubting Thomas.
But can you blame him? Thomas didn’t believe Jesus was alive, but not because he was a doubter. He followed Jesus all along. He believed what Jesus taught him. But his teacher had been brutally killed. And now he was hurting. He was grieving his loss. He had been burned, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. In the locked room, the other disciples were guarding their lives. Thomas was guarding his heart. Like one of Ricky’s friends, he just wasn’t going to believe it. For Thomas, the resurrection was too good to be true.
A week goes by. The disciples are gathered again; this time, Thomas is with them. Once more, the doors are shut, and once more, Jesus comes into the room. “Peace be with you,” he says. Imagine Thomas’ reaction, his joy, his relief. His friends were right; Jesus is alive!
And because Jesus is alive, things are different now. The resurrection changes everything. The entire cosmos is reordered. No longer is death the end. Death and evil and suffering have been conquered. In Christ, God has won victory. The gates of paradise are opened. In Christ, all of creation is being made new.
Dear friends, believe the good news… it’s not too good to be true!
With great hope in Christ,
Pastor Brad
