But Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

Some of the most awkward moments in life get covered up by saying “Well, I guess you had to be there.” How many times have we tried to tell a story to someone about a special moment, a moment that caused our hearts to race with joy or break with sorrow, a moment that appalled us or appealed to us, a moment of great delight and satisfaction or a moment of great disappointment and failure, a moment of laughter or a moment of tears?

And we tell the story and no one reacts, the telling of the story fails.

Whoever we are speaking to clearly understands that we felt the joy, the sorrow, the revulsion, the attraction, the victory, the defeat, the humor or the tragedy, but they listen to our words and they feel none of it.

And in the awkward silence that follows we offer the old wisdom “I guess you had to be there.”

Multiply that by 100 and you know how I feel most Sunday mornings.

It is that way in life, the greatest experiences need to be experienced, whether it is the pleasurable moments or the painful ones, you had to be there to understand it.

Just hearing about things, or reading them, can’t match a personal experience. I can read about Bethlehem’s cradle and it can’t touch the way I feel in this room on a Christmas Eve, I can read about Golgotha’s cross but it can’t match the way I felt a week and a half ago as Chris read the words that Christ spoke from that cross. We could trade stories about how we spent yesterday and I will never know whatever joy was yours on that warm Spring Saturday, and I could never explain the joy that was mine as Debi and I cut the shrink wrap off of our boat and replaced it with canvas as the sun beat down and the salt and marsh smells filled the air.

Not that story telling is unimportant. I can, and do, tell you the stories of the places I’ve been and the glimpses of God I have seen and the miracles that I have witnessed, I can show you the exact spot where I made a diving catch of a sinking line drive to seal a victory and I can show you the back stop that I actually threw a pitch over one evening in my relief pitching debut, but in order to understand any of it the way that I understand it, you would have to have been there with me. And I could look around the room and tell you story after story about ways that God has touched and healed and blessed so many of you, but you will never know what it was like to be there with a person at that moment of realization that God is with us.

You see, I tell the stories to encourage you to recall your own stories, to recognize and name your own holy moments in your own sacred places, your own miracles experienced and to encourage you to tell your stories to the people you love.

All with the warning that they will never touch others in the way that they touched you, because in order to encounter the holy presence of God, you had to be there.

Which brings us to Thomas because Thomas wasn’t there.

But Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

Thomas remains one of my favorites among the disciples, a man both clear and complex, like most of us.

We don’t know where Thomas was on that first Easter night, we only know where he wasn’t. Some writers say that he was afraid of being caught up in the inevitable aftermath of the Roman/Jewish plan to crush Jesus and his followers. Others speculate that he lacked faith and so was the first of the disciples to try to get on with his life, now that the great adventure was over. Still others speak of his sorrows that drove him to solitude.

I go for that third explanation. I don’t think it was fear, nor do I think it was a stoic “let’s move on” acceptance of the unfairness of life that we all experience, that kept Thomas away from the upper room. I think it was a dark and deep sorrow that wanted no company, no consoling words, just the private corner that he found to lick his wounds and cry. You see, Thomas, perhaps more than any of the disciples, expected the cross, he knew what was coming and he didn’t back down. When Jesus, after the death of Lazarus, proposed going toward Jerusalem it was Thomas who said to the others “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Thomas understood what Jesus was saying and was willing to place his life side by side with his Lord’s life. Never mind, for now, that he didn’t stand up for Jesus in the Garden, the game was over by then. Focus on the fact that his love for Jesus was strong enough that when the other disciples tried to dissuade Jesus, Thomas challenged them to follow him, even to death. What Thomas expected to have happen, did happen and he didn’t handle it well.

Just as we often don’t handle things well.

Sorrow and anger and disappointment drive us to solitary lives, we dig moats and build walls and separate ourselves.

But joy is only and always found in community, the resurrected Christ came to the followers who were together. Joy belongs to the plural. God’s revelation comes to the two or more who gather in the name of Christ.

It is an old Scottish custom that on the Sunday after a death in a family, even a family that doesn’t worship regularly will be in a pew in the Kirk, for it is in shared sorrow that joy emerges.

It is in fellowship with one another that we have fellowship with Christ.

Things happen to us when we are together that will not happen when we are alone.

The great American myth of the rugged individual has nurtured the great American sin of believing that our faith is a private matter between us and God. It is not. Or at least the faith of scripture and 2000 years of Christian doctrine isn’t, whatever that private religion is, it isn’t Christianity.

I know that there are people who attend worship who are not Christians, horrible people can sit in a pew and never let the words they hear change their selfish, racist, sexist, greedy hearts. These are people who have religion and no faith.

But the opposite can never exist. A person of faith, a person who is a follower of Christ, a person who would be called a Christian cannot exist without community worship. Let me put as clearly as Thomas would if he were here: Those who claim to be Christian and fail to worship are lying to themselves.

We need to be together in order that our faith can stay alive and, on the Sundays when we are not here, someone who needed us, needed our hello, needed our “how are you?”, needed our smile of reassurance, that person was deprived of what God wanted to give that day.

Do I understand that there are times when any one of can’t be here? Yes, of course I do, believe me I understand the complexity of life as we live it, but when we make that decision we need to understand that we are not only cheating ourselves, but we are cheating each other, we are denying God an opening for grace.

Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

So when they told Thomas what they had seen he rejected it.

Thomas would not pretend to understand or believe the things that he could not understand or believe. He was uncompromisingly honest.

I doubt that many of us would have been very different.

Thomas’ arguments are our arguments, aren’t they?

We look at the economy, we look at the world of politics, we look at our Church life and our family life and the messes that we make and the messes that others make around us and we say “this isn’t working and it isn’t going to work.” And from a purely practical point of view, we are right.

We are the children of Thomas.

At the table in the Upper Room, when Jesus was eloquently describing the assurance of the house of many rooms, where a place is prepared for all of us when our time in this world is finished, it was Thomas who interrupted him and asked the pragmatic question “We don’t know where you are going, how can we know the way?” as if there was a spiritual MapQuest service available. And it gave Jesus the opportunity to say “I am the way, I am the truth and I am the life and the only way to get to God is through me.” Thus assuring us that during our lives we have access to God through Christ and at the end of each person’s life, they will be met by that same Christ.

Thomas remains the model for all of us who won’t just accept the creeds and confessions of faith without asking the hard questions, without pushing the envelope, all of us for whom “it’s always been that way” is never a good enough answer.

I love my friends who have a deep and unwavering faith, they are rocks in the stormy days, foundational and strengthening. But I also love and cherish and need my Thomas friends who will doubt and question and hold back until they are satisfied. Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

Because, you see, the Thomas people of the world share not only his doubts, but his commitment when he was sure. Listen to his reaction to Jesus’ invitation to touch his wounds: “My Lord and my God!”

No dancing around the edges for Thomas, if he was in, he was in. Now he was there, now he didn’t have to rely on a story from another.

“My Lord and my God!”

Here’s where we fall short, isn’t it?

How many times do we turn to God, to each other, to the Church, when we have made a mess of things and we vow that we will remember God, each other and the Church in the good times and the calm times as well as in the bad times and the crisis times?

And we don’t.

Well, Thomas did.

He didn’t waste any time in defending himself, he threw himself into he work of Christ.

In our world of half truths and fuzzy ethical areas, the passionate faith of Thomas – tinged with doubt and with enthusiasm – is desperately needed.

Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

You have to be there.

Woody Allen once said that 90% of life is just showing up.

I think he underestimated it.

When we show up, in worship, in our marriages, at our jobs, among our friends, when we show up we all have the opportunity to be with Christ and that will take us to a joy for life that exceeds the 100% mark, a joy for life that David reflected in his Psalm “my cup overflows.”

And when we show up, Christ shows up with us:
Let your acceptance change us, so that we may be moved
In living situations to do the truth in love;
To practice your acceptance until we know by heart
The table of forgiveness, and laughter’s healing art.
But Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.