Rev. Wesley Menke

24 April 2022 Easter 2

The disciples were on high alert. They were out of towners and the local officials, the Judeans, had conspired to crucify Jesus. They could very well be next. It was the first day of the week, Sunday, the day of the resurrection. Jesus is able to get into their locked room undetected. Was his resurrected body able to pass through walls and doors? Remember that he was not just a ghost, but his entire body had come alive in some kind of different life. What does this mean? Then when he is with the disciples he shows them his hands, feet, and side, and there is scarring where he had been hurt. You have to ask yourself how we are to make sense of this?

When people experience the death of a loved one, there is often a feeling or question as to what happened to the soul. Does the soul leave the body? Maybe. Whether or not it does, it would seem that God’s design is to put bodies back together and resurrect them. Sometimes people ask me if I feel that cremation is acceptable within Christianity. I say that it depends. If the person is still alive then it is certainly not permissible. But if we are talking about a dead body, then there is no problem with cremation. When the time comes for us to be resurrected like Jesus, then God will figure it out, God will pull together the raw material wherever it might have gone. But we don’t talk about that a lot, really. Mostly when we talk about life after death it has to do with souls leaving bodies and going up to heaven. Is it more difficult to imagine a dead body coming back to life? Maybe it is. 

Some people have wondered about where everyone will live. If all the dead from all of time were to come back to life, then where would everyone live? Would we have to build more housing? How will we get food for everyone? Food won’t be required for a resurrected body, so I suppose we don’t have to worry about feeding everyone.

Resurrection seems to bump up against what is physically possible. Everything that we know about anything is that it all dies. So is resurrection some kind of fantasyland that doesn’t even really exist? So let’s talk about Thomas, the twin. Thomas isn’t there when Jesus shows up on the first day of the week. But he is there one week later. Thomas touches Jesus and believes. Jesus isn’t a ghost, he has a body. So Thomas believes. I think that’s a pretty honest account of how faith works. We are all like Thomas in some ways. We question and we doubt, and that’s okay. The problem, if there is one, is that despite our rational brains we have these peculiar experiences that nudge us toward faith. People have dreams about Jesus. Things happen in our life, interventions, and we walk away moved to believe that Jesus is alive, real, loves us, has power, and ought to be listened to. 

In so many ways traditional Christian belief is so out of step with popular belief. Perhaps more strange than the physical resurrection of Jesus, is the not frequently discussed doctrine of no free will. Luther wrote a whole treatise called, “The Bondage of the Will.” So what? The point is that faith itself isn’t really a choice. Some people have faith and some people don’t. That’s just how it is. It’s kind of like political preferences. It is completely possible that some people are just more inclined to be liberal, and some people are just more inclined to be conservative. There may not be much choice, it’s just kind of built into people’s personalities. 

We shouldn’t judge people based on whether they have faith or not. We shouldn’t judge people on their political preferences either. Judge not; lest ye be judged. Think about Thomas again. One week he didn’t believe. The next week he did believe. People change too. Why did Thomas change? He changed because he had an experience with Jesus. Jesus changed him, and Jesus changes us too. Thomas wasn’t any more virtuous the second