We prepared for Easter during 40 days of Lent. After Easter the church gives us 50 days to process what just happened!
In our readings for this second sunday in Eastertime (Easter Sunday itself being counted as number one), we have displayed a wide range of responses to the Easter event. In the Acts of the Apostles, the second part of Luke’s Gospel, we see his continued focus on the specifics of the day to day life – “written down in an orderly sequence” as Luke explains at the very beginning of his gospel.
John on the other hand gives us a very brief account the coming of the Holy Spirit (no fire and wind here) and the very tender portrayal of Thomas who comes late to the party. (Since we are also often late to the party we can take great comfort in the way Jesus treats Thomas.) This is sufficient as far as John is concerned. He concludes with: Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
And then we have the mystic vision of the author of the Book of Revelation (probably not the same John as the author of the Gospel). This is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Luke, and shows a totally different type of response to the encounter with the risen Jesus.
The point about all these accounts is that they demonstrate that there is no single response or even type of response to the fact that God’s son died for us and then rose from the dead and continues to be with us. Many of us, I think, have a strong desire to keep life tidy, to be sure we understand things “properly”; we don’t cope well with ambiguity or uncertainty. With Jesus the key is to be clear about where the certainty is to be found and not to look for it where he hasn’t provided it. For John that certainty is simply that we “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” and this means we “have life in his name”.
It’s also worth noting that John says his purpose in writing his gospel is that we “may come to believe”. Belief is not something that happens instantly, at least for most of us. If it does it may hit us like John of Patmos who fell down “as though dead”. Paul’s experience on his way to Damascus seems to have been similar. But for most of us it’s a process. Our model is much closer to Thomas. We likely don’t get there in one moment, and we probably spend a lot of time getting confused on the way, sometimes heading off in completely the wrong direction. We come to believe over time. The Lord is always there, beckoning to us, ready to open his arms, his whole body, to us – regardless whether we see or understand that in the moment.
The certainty is that Jesus died and rose. However we respond, with all the changes in that response that come from our life experiences, that’s all good. We have life in his name.