Prior to the last six months, I was living in Texas.  And as they say in Texas, “It is like a whole other country.”  And besides being big enough to be a whole other country, the world is just different there.  Having grown up in Oklahoma I was unaware, to certain degree of the history of this state.  I knew that there had been a battle at the Alamo, but I did not know very much more than that.  If you live there for any amount of time, the details of the story start to fill in.  How one of the leaders sent to get reinforcement, but with no luck.  How no reinforcements came later either.  How the soldiers bravely stood there ground and were killed at daybreak. Having grown up in Oklahoma where this story is not taught as thoroughly, I will admit that because the battle was remembered at all, I just assumed that the Texans won.  It was much later when I realized that the Alamo was a battle lost in the Texas revolution.  And that the reason the Alamo was remembered at all had a lot to do with Sam Houston beating Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto a month later and his famous battle cry:  “Remember the Alamo.” 

I love history for these moments when all seems lost.  The kind of moments where the early Texas settlers lose battle after battle until one triumphal day, one battle and one victory changes history.  I like them because they are like James Bond movies.  It isn’t until Bond has the laser about to cut him in half that you know he is about to beat the super villain.  I like these moments because it suggests that we can move from moments of crisis to moments triumph. They are hopeful moments that show us no matter how many days like the Alamo we have where all is lost, we will also have days like Sam Houston’s at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Last Sunday on Easter we saw the resolution of another crisis.  Jesus dies horribly on the cross on Good Friday.  Then Easter morning comes around and Jesus is risen.  Jesus is lifted up from death to life by God, crisis to new life, new reality.  This Sunday resolves another crisis in the life of the early church.  After Jesus is resurrected, the disciples have yet to see him.  They are still grieving.  They do not know what has happened. This Sunday is about the movement of the disciples from grief over Jesus’ death to joy and hope over what will happen next.  Our passage today is about their encounter.  But that is not all. It is about us too, about the consequence of that resurrection for us.  It is about our resurrection faith.  This Sunday is about the passionate belief that it is from these moments of crisis that we too will be lifted up into newness of life.

Jesus’ resurrection is not the first place that God shows this habit of using moments of crisis to radically change people’s lives.  Our bible is filled with stories like that.  Think of the story of Joseph in the Old Testament in Genesis from chapter 37 to 45. Joseph is hated by his brothers because his father loves him more than all of them.  So they plot to kill him, but end up making the pragmatic decision that selling Joseph into slavery will offer a better profit. So they do just that and tell Jacob that Joseph is dead. Meanwhile, Joseph is taken down to Egypt where he rises to great power and serves as pharaoh’s right hand man.  When a drought and famine strike the Eastern Mediterranean Joseph’s brothers are sent by their father Jacob from Canaan to Egypt to buy food.  Joseph is in charge of selling the food so he is able to save his family and the fledgling nation of Israel. Then comes Joseph’s famous line to his evil brothers: this thing that they meant for harm, God has meant for good. Only because Joseph was a leader in Egypt was his family spared from the famine. Or to put it another way, only because Joseph was sold into slavery was his family saved.  God is there with Joseph in this crisis working in and through the actions of the brothers and pharaoh to bring blessing on Joseph and eventually his family.  It is precisely in this moment when all seems lost, when Joseph is in slavery and his father thinks that he his dead, that God moves most actively in their lives, lifts Joseph up into power, and saves his family.

          The disciples find themselves in the midst of another crisis moment.   Jesus, their leader, whom they have followed for years has not only died, but died a horrible death on the cross with them looking on.  The image is burned into their minds.  So they sit in a room together mourning.  They do not know what to do.  They do not know whether they should go back to their former lives or somehow move forward into something new and undiscovered. The disciples are at a crossroads. But it is in the midst of these tears and anguish that Jesus enters the room saying to them “Peace be with you.”  //   Peace be with you is not the message you want to hear when you are in crisis.  But God chooses this moment of crisis as the time for the resurrected Jesus to reveal himself to the disciples. God chooses this crisis moment as the entry way and the starting point of a new chapter in the lives of the disciples and in the lives of the church. 

Most people will read this passage and only remember the doubting Thomas portion.  That’s fine.  It is an important part of the message here.  But lost in this passage is John’s sending of the disciples.  It is here in this crisis state that God does something new in the lives of the disciple.  Jesus Christ appears to the disciples to send them out into the world.  Somehow part of this resurrection appearance of Jesus is an almost literal lifting up of the disciples into new life.  Jesus breathes his Holy Spirit into them and sends them out.  How fantastic is that?  How extraordinary is it that this moment, this crisis, this lowly and sad time is the moment where the resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples, shows them that he is alive, and also sends them into the world.  It boggles my mind. 

          It boggles my mind because when you are in that moment of crisis you want to stay there.  My grandfather died over Christmas break a year on Christmas eve in fact.  I did not want to celebrate Christmas.  I did not want be happy.  I did not want to think about what’s next.  I just wanted to be still.  I wanted to be quiet.  I wanted to sit there and watch television and be numb for hours. The last thing I wanted was more change.  The last thing I want to do was for somebody to lift me up off of that couch and kick me out  the door to go do something. But that is where our passage finds the disciples.  In the midst of their grief and in the midst of their crisis.  The doubt the disciples feel and that Thomas, in particular, epitomizes is not so much a product of unbelief, but rather of being so entrenched in the crisis that they cannot fathom yet another change disrupting their world. Let me say that again:  The doubt the disciples feel and that Thomas, in particular, epitomizes is not so much a product of unbelief, but rather of being so entrenched in the crisis that they cannot fathom yet another change disrupting their world.

          Unfortunately, that is exactly what God is doing.  These two stories of Joseph and Jesus claim that it is precisely in those times of crisis that God is most active in our lives. It argues that God is working in and through human history.  It makes the argument that God really does care about what is going on here among us and that God is not some clockmaker that created the world and then set it on shelf to work on its own.  God is here with us. There are going to be times when it is easier to believe that.  We all know it is easier to believe God cares when your family is healthy, when you have job and a nice house, but it is so much harder to believe when things are going badly.  It is much harder to believe when you lost your job.  It is much harder to believe when you are about to get a divorce.  It is much harder to believe when you had a death in the family. And not to put too fine a point on it, it is hard to believe when you look around at the empty space in the pews.  But that is exactly what these stories suggest that we do. Believe, have hope. Because often it is in and through these moments of crisis that God works most profoundly in our lives.  It is in and through these moments that God not only takes care of us, but lifts us up into new life, and send us out into the world in new ways.

          This church, our church here is in one of these crossroad moments, moments of change. Transition.  We are moving from moments were we sitting locked in our room like the disciples grieving and being still.  The difference is though that we have the benefit of knowing the story.  We know the Good News, know that Christ is risen, know that our Risen Lord is here among us working in and through us, know that we have been lifted up.  We know that these crisis moments are just the prelude to a new life, a changed life.  Will we doubt?  Of course!  The disciples had the resurrected Jesus right there in front of them and they still doubted. Resurrection faith is about believing in what will come next.  It is about believing that God works through crisis to bring us into new life.  It is about believing that just as God lifted Jesus up from death into life that God is lifting up this church this very moment.  It is about hope.  It is about tomorrow.  It is about being moved by the power of the Holy Spirit not only in times of happiness and stability, but in these moments of crisis too.  Move from this place.  Know that we have been lifted up and sent into the world.  Amen.