It is the Sunday after Easter and the crowds of the curious and the searching and those dutiful to grandmother’s insistence they accompany her to church on those two Sundays marking Jesus’ birth and resurrection—i.e., Christmas and Easter—the C and E’ers have vanished from whence they come only to repeat the journey come December.  I suppose most of them come out of some feeling of “should” or “supposed to” or to keep peace in the family. Few of them probably come because someone invited them.  Fewer because they think the outmoded institution of the church has something to offer to make their lives easier or more meaningful.

    The truth is, I have a heart for these C and E’ers.  It is doubtful whether many of them have ever been invited out of fear of offending their modern sensibilities.  Yet, because of their precise twice-a-year visits, they only ever hear the beginning and end of the story; they never hear the healing miracles or the good news concerning the poor and wretched’s being favored by God or the moral teaching that gives strength to the spiritually weak. They never hear of the promise of forgiveness and escape from the grinding judgment of our brokenness and the means of salvation into an existence of eternal peace where there shall be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain.”  As if all there is to the story is an overly sentimentalized tearless birth in a manger immediately followed by a sanitized, bloodless empty tomb.

    Thus, such visitors to the story miss out on all the compassion and hope and strength and power that could make a real and significant difference in their lives for the better.  And it is all the worst if this is because someone who knows better has never taken the opportunity to invite them into hearing the rest of the story.  The work of Easter begins after the dyed eggs have been made into egg salad sandwiches and the chocolate bunnies have been consumed and the halleluias have faded away.  The work is the invitation into the story for the inquisitive from believers who know better, who know that C and E’ers receive nothing if the beginning and the end is all they ever get.

 

When 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, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’

After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’

When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

So 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.’

A 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.’

Then 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.’

Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’

Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.

But 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.

 

When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them,

saying, ‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.’

But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.

The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.

God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Saviour, so that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.’