Reid Hillin 4-12-26

Good morning, church. I'm Reed Hillen and I'm one of our student ministers here. And I am excited to get to preach to you today. If you don't like the preaching, don't worry, somebody else will be here next week, so come back anyway and give the next person a shot. I think Amy is preaching next week and she is great.

This is Easter Tide, as Jeff mentioned at the beginning. And if you grew up in the churches of Christ like I did, you also didn't know what Easter Tide was until maybe two or three years ago when we started doing this. And it might be new to you as well. This 50 day period on the liturgical calendar where it's like special time set apart to remember the Resurrection. And it's like, well, in the Church of Christ we celebrate the Resurrection every week.

We don't need an Easter Tide. Don't bring that in here.

And I think the formation that happened for me in that, in that way of thinking was actually that I started to view God as a machine that would produce the resurrection I wanted week over week. And so we sang the song not in a Hurry today because I made us sing it. If you hated it, too bad.

That song has become for me a core centering song that I go to. Because life is fast and life is hard and I find myself frantically running after things that I think are the most important thing and they probably are really important stuff, really important things that I need to do. And that song in its own way reminds me that if I'll slow down, if I'll rest for just a minute, that God is still speaking, I just might be missing it sometimes. It's not because I'm bad. It's not because I'm so sinful.

It's because I'm in such a hurry. And our cultural waters are to be the most in a hurry. It's actually a badge of honor we wear, right? Like politicians used to have those big buttons they'd wear around. I think ours now is like, I am the biggest hurrier.

Watch me be the busiest. No one can compete with I. I shall win the busiest competition. You are losers. I am the winner, right? Like, it's unbelievable how much we want to be in a hurry, how bad we want to sprint from thing to thing to prove our worth to everybody we meet.

And in this community, in these doors, when you walk in here, we don't have to hurry.

The risen Christ is here.

There's no rushing, there's no earning. There's presence and there's kindness and there's peace and joy.

And so despite God's KPIs and ROIs, key performance indicators and return on investment, feeling low in our data analytical world compared to an Amazon that delivers in 48 hours or a Netflix that assuages us at any moment for any ailment we might have or any sense of discomfort. Bump.

God is faithful. It might not be how I expect God to be faithful, but God is faithful. And today I want us to enter into the story with the disciples and then with Thomas. And I want us to see two things. It seems to me that John wants the early church to walk away with two messages here.

The first one, obviously of sending. Right. With the disciples. When he enters the room, he sends them. He says, I send you as the Father sent me.

He even gives them the power to forgive and retain sins, which is weird, but anyway.

And then he encounters Thomas with the blip in the middle, where Thomas is like, I won't believe unless. But I want us to slow a roll just a second, because the story before this, Jesus has already appeared to Mary Magdalene that morning.

And when he appears to Mary, she is weeping outside the tomb.

She's experiencing the grief of losing a deeply loved one. And in her grief, she is met with the one she thinks is the gardener. And she doesn't recognize him until he calls her by name. This is where you participate. And he says her name.

It's pretty good. I imagine it was probably soft, too. Mary. And then she says rabbani, or teacher. So he appears to one, she responds with one word, teacher.

And then I would imagine she goes back to disciples. She's like, I saw him. I saw him. I saw him. Right.

She's got to be so excited. And as we tend to know, the men don't always believe the women. I don't know if you're aware of this or not. We're historically very bad histor. I mean, like bad.

When the women come with a message, we're like, mm, I don't think so. I don't think so. That can't be right. No, I'm Peter. He would have come to me first.

Right? Anyway, so she comes back and she tells them, like, I saw the. I'm guessing John doesn't include. This is me totally guessing. She must have told them.

And they're huddled together that evening, I'm assuming John tells us, because they're afraid of the Jews leaders, which, by the way, is totally logical. They just watched their dear friend, who they've been following for three years, who is obviously the most powerful among them get arrested, tried, crucified, and they had no power to even start to slow the process. And so they're doing the thing that makes the most sense possible. They gather in a room, they shut the door and probably lock it. And then they just are like, I don't know what we're going to do.

What do we do? And they're in this room and they're huddled together. And John wants us to see something really important here. Jesus appears in the room and still bears the wounds.

He can appear in a room that's locked and door shut and still bears the wounds. He's fully human and fully God. It is paradoxical. It is supposed to be. This is not a 50% human, 50% God.

This is not a marvel superhero situation. This is is God in the flesh, which John has, from the beginning of his Gospel, wanted us, the reader, to know. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And here he is dwelling among his people. And he must know how afraid they are, because I don't know if you noticed in the reading, his first word, his first word is peace.

Peace be with you.

I think Jesus in all of his greatness, I think his greatest attribute in my eyes, is he is able to take the anxiety of all and hold it within himself and it never goes to someone else.

He is the safe place.

So whatever it is you bring in the room, whatever it is that you thought you were dropping at the doors when you came into worship today, please don't drop it. Stop dropping it at the doors. We need it in here if we're going to be authentically God's people. For us to heal, we have got to bring who we really are in here first. If all we're doing is playing church, which I don't think we're doing, by the way, but if all we're doing is playing church, then we're missing the boat.

We're missing the risen Messiah, who John is making a point. Appears when they gather in his name.

He appears when they gather.

He's there. He's present. I want to read you a poem. If you hate it, too bad.

The beginning will be confusing. I think it's intended to be. It's by Gerard Manley Hopkins. If you're somebody that knows poetry, you'll be like, yep, yeah, that guy's confusing. I was reading about it this week and they call it Hopkins Ease.

So don't sit here and try to, like, figure it out now. Go home and Google it later. I read it this week and then I just kept reading it and kept reading it and kept reading it. And I could not get it out of my head of how it was capturing what I wanted us to sit with today. Gerard Manley Hopkins writes this as kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw fire flame as tumbled over rim and roundy wells stones ring like each tucked string tells each hung bell's bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name.

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same deals out that being indoors Each one dwells selves, goes itself myself it speaks and spells crying what I do is me for that I came, I say more. The just man justices keeps grace that keeps all his goings, graces, acts in God's eye what in God's eye He is Christ. For Christ plays in 10,000 places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his. To the Father, through the features of men's faces, We are witnesses of the Christ who plays in 10,000 places.

We meet Thomas. His friends have seen Jesus. Maybe he feels left out and they come to him and I'm assuming they're saying what Mary probably said to them. Again, that was me guessing.

And he is pretty hardlined. I won't believe unless.

You know, sometimes when they do. Emphasis added. It's parenthetical. Emphasis added. I won't believe unless I my fingers in his hand and my hand in his side, which makes me think they told him.

He showed us his hands and his side. It's really him. I won't believe unless.

I don't know if you've ever felt that. That level of doubt or.

I don't know, it feels more than doubtful. It feels like there's this deep seated hurt and you don't know where to take it.

I grew up with a sense that Thomas was really, really wrong and that he was even sinning. In this moment where he says this, I don't know where I got such an idea.

Because if you see an encounter with Jesus, I think I'm way harder on Thomas than Jesus is.

Who am I to treat somebody in a way that Jesus wouldn't?

We even call him Doubting Thomas. And I wonder if I'm projecting my own shame into him in this story because I don't know what to do with it.

I think this morning I want you to hear this. Our faith does not seek to eradicate doubt.

I spent a lot of my life thinking that was the goal of church, that we would come in here, we would believe all the right things together. We all believe the right stuff together. Then Then we'll experience the risen Christ.

I think Thomas is in here to remind us when you doubt, because you will bring it in the room. And the risen Christ who appears when we gather, will meet you there. And you can take those doubts and anxieties right where they belong, into his wounds, into him who is the safe place.

They belong with him. They belong to him. He already knows that it's happening. When he encounters Thomas, he says this.

It's the same thing he said to the disciples. Peace be with you. I want to invite you to do something.

It might feel silly, but I want you to, if you're comfortable, close your eyes. If not, closing your eyes, that's fine. You can imagine in your mind's eye. I want us to kind of relive the scene for a second, like Thomas.

You're Thomas. You watched Jesus get crucified.

Your dear friend, your mentor, your teacher, has died publicly in the most shameful way possible. And then you miss it when your friends gather and apparently he appears and they're so excited to tell you, we saw him and he showed us his hands, and he showed us his side.

And you say, I won't believe unless I can put my fingers in the nail marks and my hand in his side.

And then for seven more days, because God's not in a hurry, you hold it and you sit with that. It's a very logical thing, your actual honesty about the response.

And you still show up the next week to gather, as is your habit, and you're in the room. And for dramatic effect, I want you to imagine that your back is turned and you notice a shift in the room.

It's like God moves slowly until God moves. And then God moves like the wind. And then you hear his voice. Peace be with you. I can only imagine he said it really slowly when he then says, thomas.

And you're looking in his eyes and you don't know what to say, Thomas, put your fingers in my nail holes. Put your hand in my side. Don't doubt, believe.

And your response is, I believe. It's the first time somebody calls Jesus God in John's gospel. My Lord and my God.

My Lord and my God.

The doubts did not bother Jesus.

I think Thomas feeling excluded, like he missed the boat, feeling like an outsider, probably bothered Jesus.

And it seems that he appears just to talk to Thomas. He doesn't talk to anybody else.

There's this quote from Henry Nouwen from his book the Wounded Healer. And he defines a wounded healer. This. A wounded healer is someone who can listen to a person in pain without having to speak about his or her own wounds.

Jesus holds for Thomas.

Not only does he not speak about his own wounds, he says take your woundedness and put it right here and mine that already exists.

I don't know if you have a friend like this, a parent like this, a grandparent like this, somebody who has done that for you, who has been a wounded healer for you. They have seen their wounds all the way through to the backside and have healed and have this unshakable joy that holds them in a way that doesn't actually compute. Like you should be upset right now. And it's not that they're Pollyanna. They are rooted and grounded in love and joy and this is the joy we seek today in Eastertide.

I think we're held by joy. I don't think we hold it.

I think it holds us both individually and collectively.

And may we like Thomas speak my Lord and my God.