Second Sunday of Easter
By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, April 27, 2025)
The name of our God, who has made us and who has redeemed us and who goes with us along our way. Amen. So today is the second Sunday of Easter. As we've said, it's traditionally known as Low Sunday. Sometimes I'm not sure why it's called Low Sunday, maybe because of the attendance on Sundays. You all are the most faithful folks, you hear today. Also, just it's a huge event last week, multiple events. I mentioned last week’s sermon, 13 services over eight days. And then, with a kind of triumphant and majestic and glorious celebration on Easter morning, a letdown is predictable. And on the second Sunday of Easter, we have a three-year cycle of readings. We're supposed to read through all these different readings every year, but the second Sunday of Easter is always this reading from the Gospel of John. Low Sunday is always the story of doubting Thomas.
Now, the cynical side of me wonders if the church puts it there just so our record of apostolic doubt is told to the fewest people. I think it also may be just that this is how it feels, right? It's easy to feel the energy, and the joy, and the power of resurrection in the midst of all that drama of holy week. And then we go back to our lives, back to this world, back to all the difficult things that I described last week, and that you don't need me to describe for you. And now we come back here and we're still triumphantly calling out the Lord has risen indeed, but maybe doubt has started to creep in.
It's like they know we might be faltering on the second Sunday of Easter. And so they want to tell us about Thomas, known as Doubting Thomas. I was actually ordained a priest on the feast of Thomas, the doubting apostle. I don't know what that says about my bishop's opinion of my ministry. But this week, the shine has worn off a little bit, and the same tension is actually going on in the gospels. If you listen to the gospel lesson that Karen read so well this morning, it starts, it says, "That day", at the beginning of the gospel, "The disciples," except for Thomas, "The disciples were all gathered in a locked room that night." That night is Easter night.
So this gospel lesson begins with appearance. Jesus has not appeared to these men yet that day. He appeared to the women at the tomb in the morning. The women came and told these disciples, they had trouble believing them, and then Jesus appears to all of them, and this is the story of that appearance on Easter Day, but Thomas was not there. And so we get the doubt creeping in over the week. Thomas saying, unless I see the wounds, unless I place my fingers in his side, in those wounds I will not believe. Doubt creeps in, in this week. And then the second half of the Gospel lesson is this encounter between Thomas and Jesus.
Now, Thomas is not actually, if you're reading the Gospel of John for the first time, he's not the one you would predict would be a doubter. In some ways, the Gospel record from John suggests he's the most faithful, the most committed, the most loyal of these disciples. In John 11, when Jesus goes to Bethany to the house of Mary and Martha to raise Lazarus, they're going back towards Jerusalem. They know they're in trouble in Jerusalem. The disciples are scared to go to Jerusalem, and it's Thomas who lifts his voice and says to the rest of them, "If we must go to Jerusalem and die with him, then let us go."
Thomas seems uniquely ready for whatever Jesus asks of them. He's the first one to head to Jerusalem with Jesus. He's not the one we would predict might doubt, but then we have this exchange and Thomas doubts, and he sees Jesus, and Jesus has this kind of teaching blessing at the end, blessed to those who believe without seeing. And I want to think about the relationship between seeing and believing, but I think I'd be too hasty if I went right there and didn't reflect upon the first half of this lesson because I think we can only understand the exchange between Thomas and Jesus if we also read closely the exchange between Jesus and the other 10 who see him Easter evening and believe right away. They have to be read together. Otherwise, the profound and important thing that's going on between Jesus and Thomas, I think, might be lost.
So what happens in the first half of this reading? Jesus comes among the 10 who are gathered there in a locked room and he says, "Peace be with you. Receive the gift of the Spirit." This is different. John's version and this is often the case, but John's version of events is very different than the other Gospels. In the Gospel of Luke or actually the kind of sequel to the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles, the gift of the spirit is not given for many weeks. The spirit is not given to the followers of Jesus until Pentecost 50 days after Easter. We will celebrate Pentecost here 50 days after Easter, and that's known as when the spirit is given to the disciples, is known as the birthday of the church because the spirit is given to the disciples.
They are commissioned at that giving to live out Jesus's ministry. It's not 50 days later in John, it's that night. Jesus returns and the first thing he does is give the gift of the spirit to these 10 and he actually says what that gift is, "Receive the gift of the spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. "This is what the gift of the Spirit looks like. This is what the ministry of the church of the followers of Jesus is supposed to be. Forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. Retain the gifts of any, they are retained. I think it's hard for us who are Christians or who are familiar with the Christian tradition, these 2000 years later to understand how radical a teaching this was. At the time, forgiveness was not something a human could do.
How could a human undo an indelible act of the past? How could a human have the power to undo something that had been done before, to take away sin? Only God can take away sin. Jesus had claimed this authority for himself, which is why he angered so many people and now here he is saying, "Forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven, retain the sins of any they are retained. This is the gift of this spirit and it now belongs to you." The church decides. The church is made the judge of what is forgivable and what is not. Fair enough. We become judge and boy have we.
I feel like we spent a lot of the last 2000 years retaining, retaining and retaining sins and even sometimes inventing some that we might want to retain when our list got too short. This lesson though, I mean as I said last week, these lessons, these little vignettes are not meant to be read abstracted from the other stories around them. I think we can't read this gift of the Spirit. Forgive, retain. I think we can't read that unless we read it in the context of what has happened to these disciples in the last three days. It is Easter evening, their last supper with Jesus is still fresh in their minds. It's a few days ago that they were sitting with him and eating with him and uniquely in the Gospel of John, he gives them a final commandment at that last supper, "Love one another as I have loved you."
And if you were here for the Maundy Thursday service, you'll know also that at that supper he says to them, "This is the glory of God. What is happening right here at this meal is what God's glory looks like." And what happens at that meal? He tells them to love one another, and he also does some things. He washes all of their feet, all of their feet. Judas's feet too.
He shares his meal with them, with all of them, with Judas too. Love one another as I have loved you. And guess where he is now? He has returned to these men who abandoned him and who ran away from him and Peter who denied him, and he comes to them first and the first words out of his mouth are, "Peace be with you." All of you who let me down, who ran away, who did everything wrong, peace be with you. If you forgive anyone, those sins are forgiven. And before we even get to the retaining part, remember how I have loved you, remember my command to love as you have been loved.
So what is the gift of the Spirit, the gift of the church? It can only be in the context of what these 10 men have just gone through. It can only be to love as they have been loved, which in this exact and particular instance means to forgive as they have been forgiven without judgment, without vengeance, without reserve. This is the spirit that is given to them, and this, I think, is exactly the spirit of love which needs to frame the exchange between Thomas and Jesus a week later. We read it on its own or we think about Doubting Thomas or we even look at some of the words of Jesus in this passage and it sounds like Thomas wants to say, "Hey, seeing is believing." And Jesus responds, "Blessed are those who believe without seeing," but I actually think it's less about seeing or not seeing, less about the relationship between believing and seeing than it is, you're going to guess what I'm going to say here, than it is about love, than it's about the relationship between love and belief.
It's important what Thomas says when he tells the other disciples what it will take for him to believe. Sight is not enough for Thomas. Thomas says, "Unless I see the wounds and also place my fingers in those wounds." And the proof that Jesus offers sight is not enough. He says to Thomas, "Place your hands in my side. Put your fingers in the wounds in my hands." Indeed, everything we have from the gospel suggests that sight is not super reliable. In the Gospel of Matthew, during the resurrection appearances it says some saw Jesus and some didn't see Jesus and some believed, and some didn't believe. In the Gospel of Luke, when the disciples are seeing the resurrected Jesus, it says that, "Even those who saw sometimes did not believe." And when Jesus shows up to Thomas, he doesn't say, look at me, just look, don't touch.
He says, "Reach out to me. Witness the places of my suffering." Reach your hands out towards that suffering. Jesus asked, "Have you believed because you have seen?" Thomas might reply, "No. It's because I touched you, because I reached out to where you are wounded, and in reaching out to your wounds, I have found faith." I think what's being suggested here is that there's this inextricable overlap among all these things, belief and love, and faith, and action. And as I said, these lessons are not meant to be read separate for one another. Next week we're going to have more resurrection appearances. I don't want to scoop the children's sermon next week too much, but Jesus is going to appear again and he's going to appear to Peter, Simon Peter this time and he's not going to ask Simon the question, Simon Peter, do you believe in me? He's going to say, Simon Peter, do you love me?
Three times he's going to ask and three times Peter is going to say, "Yes, Lord. I love you," undoing his three denials and every time he says, I love you, Jesus says, "Then feed my sheep." Whatever belief is, it's deeply bound up in love and whatever loving God or loving Jesus is, is deeply bound up in love of neighbor. I think we tend in the way we intellectualize these aspects of our faith, we tend to separate belief from love or faith in God from faith in action or love of neighbor from love of God. It's part of our Christian history, this whole argument between faith and works. What saves us? Faith and works, but close attention to what's happening in these stories, especially in these resurrection stories, suggests that all these things are deeply intertwined and deeply overlap.
To believe in Jesus is to be actively engaged in the suffering of others. To be the church is to reach out towards the world's suffering. As I said last week, to reach out fearlessly towards all those places where the body of Christ bears its wounds in our world today, all the places I name from this pulpit so often, our prisons, our streets, war-torn areas like Gaza, and Ukraine, and Sudan. We don't believe first and believe by believing go to those places. We go to those places, reach out to those places, and something of our work there, our encounter there, our touching there touches us and gives us vision.
I don't think that faith is something we have and then act upon. I think faith is something that is revealed to us when we love. We act with courage and love in the world and then in that act we are given a glimpse, a glimmer of new life in Christ and that inspires us to act more just like the women last week who go to the tomb. I think it bears repeating, I know I said it last week, but it couldn't be more important. These women who go to the tomb they love, they're literally going to place their fingers in his side, to touch the wounds in his hands. That is why they're going to the tomb, to feel the mark of the nails. If they believe anything on Easter morning as they go to that tomb, it is that love still matters even when all else seems lost.
To me, that is what faith is. That's what faith looks like. It's the courage and the conviction to reach out towards suffering. And because these women act upon that courage and because Thomas finally does too, before long all of them are given something marvelous and miraculous to see. "Blessed are those who believe without seeing," Jesus says. We might also say blessed are those who find the courage to love, even though they cannot yet see, even though they can barely imagine what good that love might do, what worlds it might help build. May we who hope to follow Jesus be so blessed, may we who follow Jesus become to the world that sort of blessing.