Reflection: Doors

“Doors”

Raven Creek Presbyterian Church

April 27, 2025

10:15 AM

Thomas as he is known for, says:  show me.  Like most of us, he gets it backwards.  

All the miracles, all the showing – it didn’t change anyone in the Gospel.  What changed them was when they heard what Jesus had to say. 

Whatt is needed is an attitude to receive.

John Calvin, father of Presbyterianism, spoke about it as predisposition.   Now I know when you say, “John Calvin,” the buzzword, “predestination,” comes to mind; yet to Calvin the word, “predisposition” is far more prominent.

…and that there is here no reason to lose faith in the promises of God,

who does not stop the rain from falling from heaven,

although rocks and stones do not receive the moisture of the rain.

---John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV:XVII:34

Are you impervious rock, resisting?  Or soil ready to receive the sun and rain?

Are you pre-disposed to have a good time when you go out to a party?  Or are you pre-disposed to be miserable?  Grumpy?

If you have to stand in an hour long line waiting to go through the metal detectors at the airport, are you pre-disposed to be angry, upset, inconvenienced? Or can you be grateful they want to make sure you don’t get blown up halfway across the Atlantic?

When you come to a church are you pre-disposed to get or to give?  No wonder a fair number of persons flit from church to church hoping, looking, for the real church that will really show them God and really give them what they are looking for.  How many come to church looking for affirmation? I know here they will love me.  Until, of course, somebody in the church disappoints them.  Then this church is really unloving and unfriendly and they really don’t know Jesus.  And so these sad souls bumble bee about the garden hoping for pollen. 

Predisposed to keep an open minded?  Open doors?

Ah, yes, or ever searching for the answers that suit us, or fit what we want to hear, little realizing the right question is far more interesting. 

Thomas says:  show me.  Like most of us, he gets it backwards.  

Like falling in love.  Did you first understand everything there is to know about him or her so you could fall in love?  Or did you realize you had fallen in love and then wanted to know all you can?

For I do not seek to understand in order to believe,

but I believe in order to understand. 

For this too I believe, that unless I believe I shall not understand

--Anselm’s “Proslogion:”

Listen please -- John 20: 19-31

19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews,
	Evening – Sunday, the first day of the week – every evening breaks to a new dawn. Doors locked. If you’re locking others out, you’re really locking yourself in.  Lots of talk by Presbytery these days about dealing with the changes afoot.  But is this fear, fear?  Or is it worry. Frustration.  Disappointment Their fear in that room – phobos in Greek, phobia – was being abandoned by Christ and rounded up by the Jewish bosses for themselves to be crucified. That’s fear.  What we’ve got is worry, anxiety.  They feared real hardship.  As a wise old missionary said to me one day about missionary hardships:  “Lacking a good refrigerator doesn’t mean you are carrying the cross of Jesus.  Don’t confuse inconvenience with sacrificing for Christ.”
Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
	Traditional greeting, salutation.  We hear it still today with the Hebrew ‘shalom’ greeting or the Arabic ‘salam alekim.’ I picture Jesus grinning mischievously: “Yup, it really is me.”
21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
	Yes, repeated, so this is more than a traditional greeting or salutation – he really means it – and by giving them his peace he is commissioning them to be his ambassadors, sent forth to speak for and as him – ‘apostylein’ in Greek;  in English for ambassador, apostle.   The sent ones
22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
	This is John’s version of Pentecost – very Trinitarian!  The breath filling them, insipiring, inspiriting them.  Father, Jesus, Spirit! Who, how, when!  From, through, by! Hold your breath.  Go ahead, give it a try. Tough to do.  Every instinct demands that you breathe.   You can’t live on your own life support system, your own closed system.  You only build up carbon dioxide.  Truer now those diseases that makes breathing difficult.  No breath, no living; no living, no doing: Ÿ  And the last thing each of us will do is exhale Ÿ  And the first thing we do is inhale.  I had the privilege to see all three of my babies born and that moment of their first breath.  Before, in the womb, it was the oxygenated blood via umbilical cord. Ÿ  Bornn of the painful freedom from mom -- apartness. Ÿ  Blue babies becoming ruddy Ÿ  That first wonderful gulp Ÿ  Womb fluid draining from lungs Ÿ  Air filling Ÿ  Ball of flesh, this ball of blood, needing breath to be alive Our first dog’s renal failure left little choice.  Good thing he was a dog and wasn’t burden by selfconsiousness. I embraced him as Chip our vet prepared to inject him.  My palm pressed against Earthquake's chest.  Chip proceeded.  I could feel Earthquake's heart slowing, slowing, then it stopped.  The fibre that held his body intact fled.  Earthquake's firmness, his muscular tightness, evaporated.  His body became fluid in my hands. It is that breath that holds us together.
23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
	Now, there’s two ways we can take this.  First is fairly one-dimensional – giving the disciples (aka the church) the ability to judge or forgive.  You got the power!  And the established church said, “Thank you very much.”   Now we can be in control. Second, we dip deeper into the well where this really is a warning to them, coming from the guy who said from the cross to those who put him there: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” If you forgive, when you forgive, they are forgiven and thus you open up doors, freeing you from being controled by the hurt and evil.  But, and here’s the warning:  if you fail to forgive, if you retain their sin (holding the sin against others), then all suffer and new life is stifled for them and for you.  You both remain trapped, imprisoned. It’s up to us to decide how we will act.
24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
	The Twin.  His nickname. I wonder where his twin brother or sister is? For this conversation, Thomas gets tagged as ‘Doubting Thomas.’  Really?   Fact is, Thomas wants to believe.  He wants it to be true.  It’s just that he’s a common sense kind of guy and this makes no sense at all.  He needs tangible proof, not of Jesus, but of their testimony.  He’s not sure of them, of what his other disciples, his friends, are telling him.  He needs to see it, feel it, touch it, hold it, for himself.  Is this doubt or caution?  Doubt or wanting the good news to make sense? Thank God for those who ask questions. Well, the funny thing is how you and I never have gotten what Thomas gets.  John’s gospel was written decades after Jesus, written at a time, such as ours, when nobody saw anything.  They only heard about Jesus.  And that’s enough.  The Living Word.
26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
	Attorneys will tell you that eye-witnesses are the least accurate of witnesses at a trial.  What’s more interesting is that Jesus delays manifesting himself for a week. For a week! Yes, and guess what?  Thomas is still there! He’s committed to his friends.   He’s hasn’t run away or abandoned the possibility.  He’s committed to the possibilities…even the danger. Jesus indeed has a way of ignoring the doors we shut in his face.
30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
	What is this all about? So that we many have life.  This is a special word, this word life.  It’s not ‘bio’, meaning biological life. It is ‘zoe,’ meaning spiritual life.

It’s the difference between ‘bio’ and ‘zoe.’  The difference between the creature and the created.  Biology:  this world, this nature, this confinement.  Zoe:  spiritual life, this freedom.  Jesus of the present tense. 

The new human born when the old self dies.  This old nature of ‘bio,’ biology, obviously needs more than improvement – more than vaccines, dialysis, hip replacements, pacemakers, dieting, blood  pressure medication -- it needs replacement, transformation.  It needs ‘zoe,’ the Greek word for spiritual life.  A new creation -- not of matter, for matter must follow matter’s physical destiny of decay -- this I know when I count the gray appearing in my hair, this bum knee -- but a new human of the spirit within this bio body, breathing in new life by Holy Spirit, the breath for a new humanity born from us joining his cross and grave. 

Birthpangs of new life.  That’s the Trinity – all action toward us.  The Trinity isn’t how we understand God, it is how God dynamically comes to us, through all sort of shut doors. 

Real humanity, at last!.  Life finally fulfilled as only Jesus defines life. 

Jesus redefining for us what it means to be powerful, , to be wealthy, to be successful, to be happy, to  be religious. 

Momma, in giving up herself – as my daughter is experiencing daily these days  -- gives the infant the gift of first birth.  Christ, in giving in blood and breath of Holy Spirit, gives them the gift of second birth, setting the infant free from the world into which it has been born, free from all that tyranny of biology of class, race, gender, fear, sin, mortality.   Now free for life in God. 

Resurrection means freedom.  Easter means freedom from so we can be “freed for…”.

Free from all that clutter and baggage this world brings, free to be God’s peculiar people.  Free to give people reason to praise God.  Besides, The only body God’s got is us.  

…not as the world gives do I give to you…

John 14: 27b

The real lesson from Thomas isn’t that he doubted (when he really didn’t).  The real lesson is that Thomas hung in there.  He waited with them, he remained, hoping to see Jesus. 

And guess what?