Easter 2, 2026
Sunday April 12, 2026
The Rev. Rod Sprange, St. Andrew’s Woodhaven
Faith is both a gift from God and a decision to accept that gift
I speak to you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Amen.
A few weeks ago I gave you a quiz. I asked you what was the most important day of your life. The answer I was suggesting was the day you were baptised. Today I won’t give you a quiz, but want us to think about what is the most important day of the Christian year, and why. Here is a clue, it’s not Christmas! Yes, Christmas is certainly a very significant day, if we use it to acknowledge and give thanks to God for the gift of Emanuel - God among us and not just as an excuse to get together with family and overindulge. Christmas marks the beginning of a whole new chapter in our relationship with God. But I find it interesting to note that two of the four gospels in our Christian Bibles, don’t see the need to mention the birth narrative at all. There was no celebration of the nativity. Food for thought and maybe something to talk about another day.
The most important day of the Christian year is of course Easter, and Easter is the most important season. Easter begins with Easter Day - the Day of the Resurrection and continues for seven weeks until Pentecost. It is a time to reflect on the meaning of what happened on that first Easter Day, to be amazed, and to be filled with radical gratitude for what God has done and is doing for us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This was the beginning of God’s new creation. God had started the process of making everything new. A process which continues today and into the future.
It’s also a time for us to be challenged and changed by this incredible event like the first disciples, and to take our part in preparing the world for the completion of God’s new creation. God is making everything new and we are called to be part of that renewal just as the disciples were commissioned by the Risen Christ that first Easter evening. This doesn’t have to be some great act; every act of kindness, empathy acted upon, generosity to those in need, act of love, proclamation of the Gospel is cumulative, and is part of the building blocks towards God’s new creation. Nothing in God’s creation is wasted.
Let’s visit that upper room, where the disciples have gathered in secret, behind closed doors. This evening, John tells us, was the first day of the week - and that’s significant. John wants us to get that the resurrection is the beginning of a whole new work of creation. Remember in Genesis, we learn about the first six days of creation, on the first day God said, Let there be light, and there was light. On this first day of the week, Christ is risen - Christ the light of the world. The disciples were witnessing the very first days of the world being recreated by God.
Here they are huddled together in the upper room, all except Thomas for some reason. Today, I want us to hear about the story a little differently. Like the way the writer of Deuteronomy recalls the passover in chapter 5 verse 15 he writes “Remember that you were a slave in the Land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you”. The Jewish Seder is presented in a similar way - the idea being for the participants to re-experience the event as their own story. In the Seder the leader tells the story of the exodus not as a history lesson about something that happened to their forebears, but as a re-experiencing of what happened to them. How God saved them from slavery. I’d like us to think about the Gospel story in a similar way, not as something remote that happened to a strange group of men and women some two thousand years ago, but as part of our own story.
Remember when we were in the Upper room together, it was three days after the Lord had been killed. Remember being terrified the Judaean leaders would find us arrest us too. Do you remember how confused you felt, you were in grief over the agonizing death of our rabbi, teacher healer and friend. Remember how you were feeling totally deflated and lost as the one who we all thought was the messiah, the saviour of Israel had been arrested and shamed and shown to be helpless. Remember the guilt you felt because we had all run away and abandoned him? And then more confusion. Remember how Mary Magdalene, this morning, had come running from the tomb to tell Peter and John someone had stollen the body of our Lord. Remember how Peter told us he and John had run all the way to the tomb, John being much younger getting their ahead of him, and them finding the tomb empty just as Mary had said.
Remember how later Mary had run back to us and said she had actually seen the Lord, alive! She told us he had called us his brothers and to let us know that he was ascending to his father and our father, to his God and our God. Remember how we argued amongst ourselves about whether all this could possibly be true? Surely she was hallucinating in her grief and shock at finding the tomb empty.
And remember how as we were arguing and grieving, even though the doors were shut, suddenly He was there. The Lord stood among us. How? Then he said “Peace be with you”. Remember how the tears came. Oh what joy we all felt. Remember he told us that just as the Father had sent him to the world, he was sending us, and how he said again “Peace be with you”. Then he breathed on us and we were changed somehow.
Do you remember how Thomas, who had been absent at the time didn’t believe us when we next saw him. How he told us unless he could see and touch for himself he refused to believe? But the next Sunday we were all together once more, including Thomas, and Jesus suddenly was there again. You were a witness when he called Thomas and invited him to see and touch his wounds, and saw how Thomas fell to his knees and declared “My Lord and My God”. What an incredible moment that was, Thomas, who had doubted the truth was the first of us to recognize and declare that Jesus was the Christ and God.
You heard Jesus gently tell Thomas, “Thomas, have you believed because you have seen me, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”.
What a glorious time that was. Everything had changed forever.
Of course in that last comment to Thomas about those who haven’t seen, yet have come to believe, Jesus is talking about us, now, two thousand years later. And John then gives the original ending to his version of the Gospel saying that all the signs and wonders that Jesus did, that John has included in the book are written there so that we may come to believe and in believing have life in Christ’s name”.
What an incredible experience that must have been. As we try to re-experience it what can we discern about the resurrection and about the role of doubt. Clearly the resurrection is not about the separation of the spirit from the body. After his resurrection Jesus was in a solid, real body. No ghost. You can’t reach out and touch a Ghost. And as in another of the gospels ghosts do not ask for and eat some fish. Jesus didn’t glide through the wall or float through the closed door, he was just there, physically there. And later he was no longer there. So a real bodily resurrection, but clearly with abilities that we have never before or since experienced. Scientific proof requires that we can repeat an experiment and get the same results. No one can ever scientifically prove or disprove the resurrection, it’s a matter of trust.
So we are stuck with faith, belief and doubt. Thomas was unable to overcome his doubt and to have faith until he had physical proof. His failure was not in having doubt, doubt is a good thing. His failure was in refusing to even contemplate that the stories of the Risen Christ were true. As we read this morning he said that unless he could actually see and touch he would not believe. Not could not, but would not. A matter of will, our greatest sin is our wilfulness. If we close our minds to the possibility of miracles we will never see one. We will always try to rationalize anything unusual. Without doubt there can be no faith. We have no doubt that this pulpit is here and is real - we don’t need faith to believe in its existence. It’s only things that we cannot prove, that we cannot fully understand that need faith. Faith becomes a decision. Faith is first a gift from God, but it requires a decision to accept that gift.
This Easter let’s follow the lives of those first disciples and see how firmly they believed in Jesus, and the resurrection, and how almost all of them eventually gave up their lives for refusing to stop proclaiming the Gospel, the truth. These were the first-hand witnesses and clearly they had developed complete faith in the Risen Christ. This poorly educated group of men and women changed the world, hallelujah! What will we do? amen
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