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The urge to be a part of what is going on is very powerful. Or to say it differently, to be on the outside looking in can be unsettling at best. Just remember the last time you came into a room and found a group of people talking excitedly about a news event or something that happened to someone else in the office. You probably went right up to those assembled and in some way signaled your interest in their conversation.

Or think of it this way. Whenever you have been part of a group of three -- perhaps at work -- there have probably been moments when you have felt like the odd person out. Maybe you have been ill and while you have been absent, business has gone on and now upon your return to this group, you feel like an outsider. It's no fun being out of the loop.

If you can identify with anything I have said so far, you know something of how Thomas felt. All the other disciples were privy to the news of Easter and had experienced it firsthand, but for some reason Thomas was not there when that happened. Maybe he had the flu, or was out of town, or had a doctor's appointment. The point is, the other disciples experienced something he hadn't. "We have seen the Lord," they tell him and Thomas finds that absolutely incredulous. It's bad enough to be out of the loop, but it's even worse when -- having been given the inside scoop -- you find it impossible to believe!

I suspect that there are Thomases here today; or, if you will, I suspect that Thomas lives with varying intensity within us all. Well, I have good news: Easter is for Thomas, too. Thomas is our friend. In fact, Gerrit Scott Dawson has called Thomas "a forerunner for all of us who were not there."1

So if you came here today with a certain reserve or skepticism -- wanting to celebrate, but not sure if you should -- you have a very good friend in Thomas.

Let's not be too hard on Thomas about his low threshold of disbelief; we are often just like him. Think of how frequently we say, in response to something we are told or hear about, "I can't believe it." News that comes to us can either be so good, or so bad, that for a time our powers of credulity are strained. Time is needed to process and integrate. "How Great Thou Art" is a hymn that celebrates the salvific work of Jesus and it contains a line that runs, "I scarce can take it in ..." Events can be so powerful and moving, that for a time we are in disbelief and "scarce can take it in."

I commend what we can call the "elevator theory" of doubt. I deem it a mode of transportation that can either take us downward to a level of deeper truth, or upward to a level of higher awareness. Doubt is faith's employee, not faith's nemesis.

What's more, just because we are historically removed from an event does not mean we cannot believe in it. Most of us don't remember the moment of birth, but the very fact that we are here is living proof that the birth occurred.

There are many things we believe that are historically distant from us and we know they are true because we have the testimony of those who witnessed what happened firsthand and their experience is undeniable.

In not that many years, there will be no one living who was at Dachau or Auschwitz. While regrettably we have people like David Irving and a handful of others who are Holocaust deniers, there are legions of people whose recorded testimonies will be the truth on this matter forever.

There are still people living who could show us photographs they took of liberated concentration camps at the end of World War II. We could hold those photographs in our hands and be transported back to a heinous reality that took place a half-century ago. We believe that such camps existed because there is evidence they did. So too we celebrate the resurrection of Christ Jesus because we see the evidence that it is so! "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe," says Jesus. And Thomas says, "Amen!"

Strange it is that we have no problem seeing evidence of destruction. A spring tornado rips through a community and completely destroys homes and buildings. The evening news carries graphic video; the morning paper has gruesome pictures. By the same token, the signs of resurrection are slower to be seen. It takes months, and sometimes years, to see the work of resurrection become increasingly visible.

So much of the time, the signs of resurrection are so slight as to be imperceptible. But God's resurrecting activity is ongoing. It's timetable may vary, but God's intent does not.

While people naturally experience God in a wide variety of ways, there is an Old Testament notion that it is life-threatening to behold God face-to-face. You may remember the story of Jacob's nocturnal wrestle with an unknown man. The battle continues, but the dawn is coming and the man with whom Jacob is wrestling later becomes identified as God. As dawn approaches, Jacob's adversary says: "Let me go, for the day is breaking" (Genesis 32:26). For Jacob, that kind of daytime seeing would have been more than he could bear. In the wake of the struggle, Jacob says: "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved" (v. 30).

How could we stand face to face with God at high noon and survive the intensity of the moment? Would not God's light blind us, God's intensity consume us, God's holiness shrink us, or God's "mysterium tremendum" send us packing? That doesn't mean we can't hear and see God, but it does mean that God's presence is always a mediated one. It comes to us "in" and "through." Through the bread and through the cup; in Christ; through this set of circumstances; in this musical composition or in that verse or thought; in this dream or through that hunch.

So it is with resurrection. It is God raising us in this or through that. But let there be no equivocating about who it is that is doing the resurrecting.

Show me a repaired relationship, and I'll show you resurrection. Show me a person with an attitude baptized in the fount of humility, and I'll show you resurrection. Show me a son or daughter who defiantly went off to the far country to waste and wander and is now on the way back, and I'll show you resurrection. Show me a community where people from distinctively different camps have found a common ground of promise, and I'll show you resurrection. Show me a self-righteous person who suddenly discovers her own shadow and weeps copiously, and I'll show you resurrection. Show me someone who has wrestled with the black dog of depression and has lived to tell about it, and I will show you resurrection. Every congregation is full of resurrection stories, if we will but take time to note them. And just because your story seems to be a modest one, don't be fooled: Modest stories are mighty in their own right.

We weren't there for the first Easter -- only a handful were. But like Thomas, we don't have to be. Easter is for Thomas -- the Thomas who lives in me and you, too. We have had, and will continue to have, moments when the presence of the risen Christ is made known to us; and like Thomas, we will only be able to say: "My Lord and my God!"

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have comed to believe." Blessed indeed!

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1. Gerrit Scott Dawson, Writing on the Heart (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1995), p. 132.