Have You Seen Jesus?  Doubting Thomas
Rev. Marti Zimmerman
Smoky Hill UMC

John 20: 19-30   The Message

Later on that day, the disciples had gathered together, but, fearful of the Jews, had locked all the doors in the house. Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, "Peace to you."

Then he showed them his hands and side.

 The disciples, seeing the Master with their own eyes, were exuberant. Jesus repeated his greeting: "Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you."

 Then he took a deep breath and breathed into them. "Receive the Holy Spirit," he said. "If you forgive someone's sins, they're gone for good. If you don't forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?"

 But Thomas, sometimes called the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, "We saw the Master."

 But he said, "Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won't believe it."

 Eight days later, his disciples were again in the room. This time Thomas was with them. Jesus came through the locked doors, stood among them, and said, "Peace to you."

Then he focused his attention on Thomas. "Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don't be unbelieving. Believe." Thomas said, "My Master! My God!" Jesus said, "So, you believe because you've seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing."

Prayer 

His dad was a Methodist minister, but he was just a kid  who loved to play outside,  climbing trees,  jumping out of the swing at midair,  rolling around the grass with his dog.  Each evening his mom called him in for dinner and reminded him to wash up. But one night as the family gathered at the table to say grace,  his mother said,  “Young man,  let me see your hands.” 

He rubbed them quickly on his blue jeans then held them up.  Mom’s face gave the verdict. 

“How many times do I have to tell you that you must wash hour hands before you eat?  When your hands are dirty, they have germs all over them and you could get sick. After we say the blessing, I want you to march back to the bathroom and wash your hands."

With that everyone at the table bowed their heads and the father said the blessing. Then, the little boy got up and headed out of the kitchen. He stopped at the kitchen door,  turned and looked at his mother and said,

"Jesus and germs! Jesus and germs! That's all I ever hear around here and

I haven't seen a one of them."                      

That’s  Thomas.  He was out the first time Jesus made his appearance

to the fearful group behind the locked doors of the Upper Room. 

We don’t know if he was shopping,  or checking out the danger level to the disciples now that Jesus had been crucified,  or maybe he was the kind that needed to be alone to grieve. All the others had been convinced, but Thomas still had his doubts. 

A week later, Jesus shows up again. Like before, his first words to the disciples are “Peace be with you.” 

Peace  or  shalom. In Hebrew  the word captures God’s vision of society, 

perhaps the Kingdom of  God that Jesus kept preaching about,  the place where according to the prophet Isaiah (65:25)  “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” One of my favorite Old Testament scholars, Walter Brueggemann writes,  “Shalom at its most critical can function as a theology of hope, a large-scale promissory vision of what will one day surely be.   

Peace,  shalom.  It’s used 486 times in the Bible,  and that means  it’s important. There are two kinds of shalom the first offered promise and hope to those in pain or living in the midst of injustice,  like the Hebrew people under the tyranny of Pharaoh. God hears the cry of those whose hands reach out in pain and promises “shalom.”  

The second form of shalom described in II Sam. 7:8-17, according to Robert Linthicum is for those whose lives are essentially secure yet eager to faithfully use the resources a generous God has placed in their hands.    

If I asked to see your hands,  which “shalom” would they show?  Would they be dirty from your involvement in the world?

Lynne Hybels,  the wife of prominent preacher Bill Hybels of 25,000 member Willow Creek outside Chicago, discovered she wasn’t too proud of her hands. She had grown up to be a people-pleasing pastor’s wife until she met the lead singer of a rock band names U2.  "It took a very unlikely prophet named Bono to shake me up. It really was a challenge from him that sent me to Africa and really turned my life upside down. It's a shame that it took an Irish rock star to call the church totask on this, but I'm really glad he did. … [In] many of the great global issues like poverty, AIDS, and refugees,  women are disproportionately impacted by all these great social global tragedies, and I would like to see women become disproportionately engaged on the solution side. Personally, that is my call to evangelical women, to pay attention to what's going on in the world andget involved."  Lynne Hybels now looks at her “shalom” hands as change maker hands,   confident that God is using them and the resources she can assemble from the evangelical community for those who suffer from HIV/AIDS in Africa and the US.

What do your hands look like?  Is God using them for shalom work?

Greg Mortenson has rough hands.  He used them to climb K-2.  He almost made it to the top of the world’s second highest mountain  but when one of his climbing partners signaled for help,  pink froth pouring from his mouth,  lungs flooding in the high altitude, Mortenson, used all he had to bring his friend down to the safety of a helicopter rescue. Exhausted and feeling like a failure, he started down, losing his way across the glaciers. Nonetheless, a wrong turn led to a transformed life. His rough hands found healing in the tiny village of Korphe, Pakistan. That poor community took in the infidel, fed him, covered him with heavy quilts and nursed him back to health.  In thanks he gave away all he had, Nalgene bottles, precious flashlights, his camping stove and a wine-colored L.L. Bean fleece. 

Just before he headed back to the capital and on to the States, he saw 82 village children on a vast open ledge, kneeling on the frosty ground,  K-2 rising in front of them,  doing their homework in the open. The town could not afford the dollar a day salary, so the teacher only came “three days a week.  The rest of the time the children were left alone to practice the lessons he left behind” …copying their multiplication tables with sticks in the dirt.   “I knew I had to do something.” 

Greg Mortenson used his hands once he got back to San Francisco to type letters begging for money to build a school and pay a teacher.  It was children in his mother’s 4th grade class back in Wisconsin,  who first responded with   “Pennies for Pakistan, ” collecting 62,345 cents or $623.45 dollars in two 40 gallon trash cans.  His rough hand returned to Pakistan to work with the Korphe community to help build the first of many schools in the mountainous valleys.

John Wesley,  the founder of Methodism some 250 years ago,  urged his followers to use their hands to touch the lives of those who suffered.

“What shalt thou do? ... Do good. Do all the good thou canst. Let thy plenty supply thy neighbor’s wants; and thou wilt never want something to do. “Canst thou find none that need the necessaries of life, that are pinched with cold or hunger; none that have not raiment to put on, or a place where to lay their head; none that are wasted with pining sickness; none that are languishing in prison? If you duly considered our Lord’s words, "The poor have you always with you," you would no more ask, "What shall I do?"

Rick Reilley uses his hands to write columns for Sports Illustrated. In 2006 while on a trip to Africa he learned,  like our remarkable fasting youth last March, “that each day 3,000 African children die of malaria for the very sad reason that they can't afford mosquito nets over their beds. Didn't seem right to us.”  he wrote,  “Sports is nothing but nets – lacrosse nets, cutting down the nets, New Jersey Nets. So Sports Illustrated started the Nothing But Nets campaign. Doctors guaranteed that if you sent in $20, you'd save at least one kid's life, probably two. It was the alltime no-brainer. Skip lunch; save a life. Buy the Top-Flites instead of the Titleists; save a life. Don't bet on the Redskins; save a life….”

In less than 7 months, 17,000-plus persons chipped in more than $1.2 million – enough to buy 150,000 nets, which the United Nations Foundation and the World Health Organization and the United Methodist church started hanging all over Nigeria, so that kids younger than five would no longer get murdered by mosquitoes that come out only at night.

Jesus-- off the cross and out of the tomb said, “Shalom.”  “Peace be with you.” 

Thomas wanted to know -- to know how and where to find the peace of Jesus that he had known before. He just wanted proof that Jesus was really back, willing and able to sustain those who are called to continue the work of shalom. Holy doubt was honored by Jesus as a part of the fabric of faith.  And Jesus breathed on them, with doubts and belief,  giving them the power to represent God’s vision of shalom in the world.  Doubting Thomas can see Jesus with the eyes of faith, then looking at his hands and later heads off to India  one of the first missionaries starting to share God’s promise of shalom,  peace to comfort and sustain those who suffer,  peace to share for those with resources to give.  Which shalom do you need this morning?

Jesus still enters our room, ready to offer the comfort of God’s shalom to those hands in pain.  Jesus is willing to breathe into us the power of the risen Christ to use our hands to share shalom  with a hurting world.  “As the Father sent me, so I send you.”   And stands our hands, in the hands of God, can bind up the wounded wherever they appear in our world.  What will your hands,  in the hands of God do to share the peace of God,  shalom in our world?

story by Robert Allen from  esermons.com

Brueggemann, Walter.  Peace (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001), p. 5.    

Robert Linthicum. Shalom Bible Study from Partners in Urban Transformation..  Web citing,  4.5.08. http://www.piut.org/shalombiblestudy.htm.

Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Three Cups of Tea:  One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time. Viking Penguin Group. NY. NY.  2006.  P 32)

John Wesley. On Worldly Folly

Rick, Reilley.Nothing but Thanks.Posted: Tuesday November 28, 2006.  Sports Illustrated blog.