Second Sunday after Easter

Is there life after death? What a question! That this question has persisted even now is testimony to the hardness and stubbornness of the human heart. Haven’t we all heard statements like, “When you’re dead, that the end?” or “Nobody’s come back from the dead to tell us about it?” It’s as though the gospels and two thousand years of Christian experience never happened. Yet, all we really need to know about life after death is right here in front of us in this morning’s gospel.

The disciples encountered the risen Jesus. It was not his ghost. Saint Luke goes to great pains to show that the disciples touched Jesus’s body and that he ate a bit of fish in their presence. Jesus’s resurrected body was the same body as before – even down to the wounds in his hands, his feet, and his side – but it was a body transformed. It had been freed from the constraints of space and time. But it was, nonetheless, still Jesus. He did not vanish into nothingness, nor did he lose his identity in some vast, undifferentiated pool of disembodied energy. And he certainly was not reborn into yet another body. Jesus maintained his unique identity yesterday, today, and forever . . . and so shall we.

Jesus lost nothing of the person he was as he transitioned from death to life. Both Saint John and Saint Luke stress that the risen Christ is the crucified Christ. He bore the wounds and scars of everything that happened to him in the course of his life, including his crucifixion. In fact, it was by his wounds that his disciples recognized him. Like Jesus, it is our own unique individual histories that have made us the people we are today and all of that passes through death with us. Nothing of it is lost. When it comes to our wounds and scars – visible and invisible – you really can take it with you. In fact, it’s our woundedness that makes up our identity and that’s how we’ll recognize one another once we leave this life, just as the disciples recognized Jesus.

I’ve often said that, although the gospels tell the story of Jesus, at the same time – and maybe even more importantly – they tell our own story as well. Thomas is far from the only sceptic in the room, after all. Like Thomas, we want tangible proof. And yet, what kind of proof are we looking for? We know very well that our senses present us with an illusory world. We don’t see things; we react to reflected light waves. We don’t hear things; we react to sound vibrations. We don’t even touch things; we react to pressure from molecules pushing against us. Like Thomas, the proofs we seek are no proofs at all.

The Judeo-Christian Scriptures aren’t “proofs” of anything, either. They’re faith documents. They tell the stories of men and women who’ve had personal encounters with God, and they invite us to share those life-changing experiences. It changed the despairing women who found the empty tomb. It changed the discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus. It changed the frightened Eleven in the upper room with the doors locked. It changed doubting Thomas. And it changes us.

We don’t believe in a god who X or Y or Z. We encounter a loving, caring God who guides and loves and supports us. You can’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus. That kind of intellectual belief does no one any good. No. Instead, we encounter the resurrected Jesus. It’s an encounter that moves us from despair to joy, from discouragement to hope, from fear to trust, from doubt to faith. That is a faith that lives. That is a faith that works.

In today’s gospel, Jesus breathed on the Eleven and they received the Holy Spirit. It was the same breath that breathed over the waters of creation and the same Spirit. But now, it’s a new creation, no longer bound by time and space or even death itself. It’s that Holy Spirit himself who allows us to recognize the risen Christ in the midst of our human frailty. It’s that Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead who has raised us up and united us to him in a new and transformed life. It’s that same Spirit who allows us to see the grace of the Father at work even in the shambles of our own lives and empowers us to say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”