2nd Sunday of Easter - 8:00am Holy Communion

In these days of Easter, as we ponder the mystery of the resurrection, we might also be asking ourselves how well we know the risen Christ.

And we look to the stories in the Gospels to help us in our knowledge.  The stories of people encountering the risen Christ for the very first time.

There’s Mary in a garden who sees the risen Lord but mistakes him for the gardener. 

It’s only when he calls her name, that she knows it is him.

There are the disciples on the road to Emmaus – they are joined by a stranger along the way; they never know he’s the risen Lord until, sharing their supper with him, he breaks bread.

Peter and the disciples go out fishing.  A man calls to them from the beach, encouraging them to cast their nets on the other side of their boat where fish are to be found in abundance.  Only then do they recognise the Lord.

There’s the disciples in the locked room, hiding out of fear for their lives. Jesus comes among them and offers them peace and reassurance, and the sight of his wounds.  Then they rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

And then there’s Thomas, whose particular story we heard today.  He wasn’t there when Jesus appeared to the disciples in that locked room.  Listening later to his friends recounting their experience of seeing the risen lord, Thomas is incredulous. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, for myself, and put my finger in the mark of the nails, and my hand in his side I will not believe.’ 

Thomas is not content to believe a second-hand story, he wants the real thing.  He wants to know the risen Christ for himself.

So Jesus returns, a week later, to Thomas, and offers him exactly what he asked for.

‘Put your finger here and see my hands’ says Jesus, ‘Reach out your hand and put it in my side’.  

These stories of resurrection are the stories that help shape our knowledge of the risen Christ.  

But if these stories, as wonderful as they are, are the only things that shape our knowledge, we will only know the risen Lord second-hand.  We will only know him through other people’s eyes and ears and taste and touch, and not through our own.  

Thomas’s stubbornness is a spur for us to know the risen Lord for ourselves.

But let us not fall into the trap of imagining that our own encounter with Christ has to somehow follow the same template as these Biblical stories.  That’s not to say it won’t.  But there are few people have had the experience of their name being audibly called by Christ, or the experience of Christ walking physically beside them, or even of Christ sharing his wounds with them…. ….all of these are possible, but they’re not necessarily what we should be looking for or expecting.

 For if we look at all the stories of resurrection in the bible, we find that they are not so much about how the first followers of Christ encounter the risen Lord, but about how the risen Lord encounters them.  

And in each story, Jesus deals differently with those he meets.  

What he does to help them see him and know him is dependent on their situation and their circumstance, and each time, without fail, he meets them where they are.  

He knows their needs before they know themselves.

Sometimes it takes a word, sometimes an invitation, sometimes a simple action, but each time the Lord is with his people before they know it, and each time, it is his move and not theirs that draws them into the knowledge of his presence.

 This, I think, brings some relief. As Christ’s disciples, intent on knowing the risen Lord, and following him, we are not called to a great search and an earth shattering experience, we are called simply to allow Christ to reveal himself to us.  Called to let him enter the often locked room of our heart and to meet us there.  What he does will be up to him.  But we can be sure that it will be his move that draws us into the knowledge of his presence.