Hello, you're listening to Second City Sermons,
a ministry of Second City Church in Midtown Harrisburg.
This epiphany in Lent, we're back in the Gospels,
specifically the Gospel of Mark. We are seeing
the revelation of God in Jesus. Mark is showing
us the true King becomes a servant for us. He
says right at the heart, the Son of Man came
not to be served, but to serve and to give his
life as a ransom for many. And Mark is nearly
always asking his audience, what do you make
of that? So, what do you make of this good news?
We'd love to meet you and we hope you'll consider
coming and joining with us each Sunday morning
at 10 a .m. in the heart of Midtown Harrisburg.
You can find us online at secondcitychurch .org
and on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. We hope
you enjoy this sermon. God bless. Lord, we thank
you for your word this morning. We thank you
for this beautiful account of how you met your
disciples there in that locked up room full of
fear and and unbelief and I pray that you'd meet
us in our fear and in our unbelief and draw us
more and more into the great story of your redemption
of the world in the death and the resurrection
of Jesus in whose name we pray. Amen. All right,
so I'm just going to make this comment that I
occasionally make at the beginning of sermons,
and I'm not going to say everything there is
to say about this passage, okay? There is a lot
here, and there's a lot of wonderful things that
could be said. You may have heard that religion,
again, is on the rise. I wonder if you've heard
this. It's true. There have been a number of
studies, actually a good number of studies and
fairly rigorous studies that have shown The decline
of religion has sort of reversed. It's sort of
over, if you will. For the most part, over the
last 25, 30 years, year after year, religious
adherence, faith has been in the decline. In
fact, probably some of you heard this, but in
the year 2021, the membership in churches in
the United States for the first time in recorded
history dropped below 50%. Okay, so it had been
sort of steadily going down, and yet these studies
have shown that this has changed over these last
four or five years, and it has not just stayed
sort of steady, held steady, but has actually
been on the increase. Two weeks ago, maybe you
saw this article in The Guardian, that British
newspaper. It was quoting a British study that
was just done, and it actually showed us that
over the past six years, Church attendance in
England and Wales was up 50%. Guess what the
age group that made the largest jump? Anybody?
What was that? College age. 18 to 24 year olds
made the largest increase in that regular religious
adherence going to church. And then actually
it was 65 and up. They made the next jump up.
But a huge percentage of people that are more
interested in churches in the UK. It seems as
though religion and belief seem to be on the
rise. Now, here's another thing. If you've kind
of been abreast of these conversations, what
you probably also heard is in some ways it was
never entirely in the decline. In fact, what
we have done is we've sort of moved our beliefs
and our religious practices and those things
which we adhere to. So quite a number of people,
maybe you've read this, have said that what we
have done is instead of getting what we've done
is we've shifted our devotion to God and to religious
practice and our hope in God to political figures
political practice the sacrament of vote we wear
our badges proudly don't I vote Pascal famously
wrote there is a god -shaped vacuum in the heart
of every person Children, that is not referring
to a vacuum that you clean with. It just means
an empty space. There's an empty space that God
alone fills. But the truth is, and this is what's
being argued, is that we try to fill it with
all kinds of other things, in all kinds of other
ways. Maybe you saw this, or maybe you read this
article by Lauren Jackson. used to be a Mormon
and doesn't adhere to any religious practice
now. She wrote an op -ed piece in New York Times
a couple weeks ago. The title was Americans Haven't
Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion. That's
what she wrote. She said that she spent her 20s,
quote, worshipping at the altar of work. And
we all know that that's an alternative. to religion,
place where you find your meaning and your hope.
Place your dreams there. But she shares with
us how she gave up her religious ardor and her
desires over to her workout practices, her practicing
mindfulness, therapy sessions, saunas, mindfulness
apps. Here's what she writes specifically. But
even as people left religion, mysticism persisted.
More people have begun identifying as spiritual
but not religious. In 2015, researchers at Harvard
began studying where those Americans, sorry,
where these Americans were turning to express
their spirituality. Reporters did too. The answer
included yoga crossfit. Now I know we don't have
a lot of crossfitters here. I'm telling you,
I have quite a few friends that are crossfit
people and it fits. Soul cycle. It's a type of,
you know, cycling. I love the name even, soul
cycling. Supper clubs and meditation. She says,
Oprah tried sound baths, Gwyneth Paltrow advertised
energy healing. More than a third of American
women under 30 have downloaded the personal astrology
app, CoStar, according to the company. Now she
quotes from Ethan Shagan, a historian of religion
at UC Berkeley, secularization in the West was
not about the segregation of belief from the
world, but the promiscuous opening of belief
to the world. We have a God -shaped vacuum. So
during this Easter season, we're looking at some
of the accounts of Jesus and his disciples post
-resurrection. And in these accounts, we're asking,
what does it mean for us? What kind of people
are we to be? How does Jesus interact with us
as a church? Last week, I suggested to you that
from that story of Jesus and the two disciples
on the road to Emmaus, we're to be people that
actually receive the questioning word of God,
allow God to ask his questions to us. We're to
be people that are to receive the given word
of God, the Holy Scriptures, as they've been
given out, inspired by, breathed out by the Holy
Spirit. And we're to be those who receive the
suffering word of God, actually Jesus in the
flesh suffering for us, his body broken for us,
and his blood shed for us. But this morning we
have one of the other great stories of the resurrected
Christ and his disciples. And this story is often
referred to by one man's name. Who's that? Thomas
and his nickname, which we give. Nickname Downing
Thomas, right. And that's kind of... That's kind
of interesting and it's a little bit odd because
what is overwhelmingly true of this story is
that what Jesus is inviting us into and what
John desires for us to be is a people of belief.
He actually says at the end of the story, these
things are written down so that you may believe.
And belief actually, this word pisteo, which
is the same word that we often translate in the
New Testament, faith, that word that was mentioned
three times in the Romans chapter one passage.
Pisteo here is mentioned some seven times. In
some ways, the emphasis of this story is the
idea of belief. So, we're going to look at this
passage. Again, I said we're not going to look
at everything that we could in this passage.
But I want us to look at it through the idea
of a believing community, okay? A believing community.
And first, I want you to see where Jesus meets
his disciples, okay? And the first place that
Jesus meets his disciples is in a place of fear.
So, open up your Bibles with me. If you don't
have one, you can grab that one in front of you
in the pew. And if you don't have a Bible, please
take that Bible home. Or if you know somebody
who's just interested in maybe reading the Bible,
grab one of those, bring them for them. You can
take them and have them and give them to your
friends. Okay. So if you look with me down there,
verse 19, where our passage began, chapter 20
of John. On the evening of that day, the first
day of the week, the doors being locked, Excuse
me. Where the disciples were, for fear of the
Jews, Jesus came and stood among them. So the
first thing we learn about is that Jesus comes
to these disciples who are so fearful that they've
locked the door. And I want to suggest to you
first that this is a very understandable place
for them. The disciples living in fear, okay?
There's lots of reasons for fear here. It says
that they were fearful of the Jews. But that's
to say that they were fearful of what could possibly
happen to them, or maybe what could be said of
them, or how they might get caught, or how they
might, actually at this point, they haven't seen
Jesus. Two of them, Peter and John, onto the
place where his body had been laid, and they
had been told about him. And they've heard these
rumors, but maybe they're thinking, you know
what? What if they think that we took the body?
There's all kinds of legitimate reasons for these
disciples to be full of fear. They're gathered
together, they're huddled together. Maybe they're
talking over the news of what had happened, how
they'd seen Jesus die, and how they had heard
of this news, but there's no way it could have
happened. But what could possibly happen to them
now if they were found out? Maybe they would
be blamed for taking the missing body. And the
point is that they are living in fear and in
a way that their disbelief in what God has done
and what he said he would do is manifesting itself
now in fear in them. And let's just admit for
a moment that this is actually a state that we
often find ourselves in and that we are overcome
by and that we actually want to lock doors to
protect ourselves, right? Because we often actually
live in fear. We hear Jesus tell us in Matthew
chapter 6, right in the middle of the Sermon
on the Mount, that we're not to worry about tomorrow
because tomorrow has enough worries of its own.
And I hear that and I'm like, wait, that's exactly
why I'm worrying. Because it has enough worries
of its own. You know, we have all kinds of reasons
we can think of to simply lock the door and live
in fear. We've heard about the risen Christ.
but then we've also heard about people being
canceled and smear campaigns and bankruptcy and
being shunned by one's friends and adult children
not speaking to you anymore and all Innumerable
things that we go that is fear inducing Lock
the door We have friends my friends that have
lost jobs and taken 18 months to find their next
job Friends that have lost homes, lost spouses.
If there's one thing that is sort of understandable
and that we are unbelievably good at, it is fear.
You all have heard the stats about anxiety, how
it's unbelievably risen recently, largely with
the rise of secularism. The anxiety is just blowing
up all over the place and we know the reasons
for it. So, my point with you, and for us today,
is that Jesus meets these disciples in this place
of fear, okay? The second place that he meets
them is actually in this place of unbelief. Or
at least, he specifically meets one of his disciples.
Now, we actually, we're told that this is...
week later it says eight days later most Bible
scholars actually thinks that this is emphasizing
a week later because they were gathering together
and John mentions this actually again later on
in Revelation he was taken up on the Lord's Day
John has a strong theology of Sunday being the
day of the resurrection and the people time when
people gather together, but anyway They gather
together and again We learn that the door was
locked they might be in this it might be in the
same room and And I said, you know, what's Thomas's
nickname? But it's doubting. But actually, our
passage tells us that he has another nickname.
What is that other nickname? Anyone? The twin.
It's a didymus. I mean, John's like, hey, it's
not that big of a deal. He's just Thomas the
twin. And we're like, no, we're going to give
him the doubting name. OK. Anyway. I feel like
we should reinstill the true nickname of Thomas.
He's just Didymus, the twin. Sort of mundane,
come on. But rather than doubting Thomas, or
rather than the twin Thomas, at the very least
what we could say is that he's the unbelieving
Thomas. So Thomas wasn't with the others. When
Jesus appeared to them in the locked room, they
tell him about it, about seeing the Lord, and
he says, unless This is verse 25. Unless I see
in his hands the mark of the nails, and place
my finger into the mark of the nails, and place
my hand into his side, I will never believe.
He says, I will never, and actually in the Greek
it's two words, it's ume, which is like not know.
I'm never gonna believe this. And then when Jesus
actually, Meets him in verse 27. What does he
what does he say at the end there? But do not
disbelieve which is a piste Oh Just this the
little prefix for not not believed in not, you
know, don't be the one who not believes but Pisteo
believe So what I'm suggesting to you though
is that Jesus meets these disciples and specifically
this disciple in his unbelief first their fear
and second in their unbelief so Part of Lauren
Jackson's article in the New York Times is about
her tracing the rise of unbelief. You can think
of the new atheist movement from years back.
But she says this, she says, American secularization
was an immense social transformation over this
rise of secularization. So there's this immense
transformation. And she goes on to say this,
has it left us any better off? Are we better
off for giving up on belief? She says people
are more unhappy than they've ever been, and
the country is in an epidemic of loneliness.
It's not just secularism that's to blame, but
those without religious affiliation in particular
rank lower on key metrics of wellbeing. I've
shared some of these things with you in the past.
They feel less connected to others, less spiritually
at peace, and they experience less awe and gratitude.
regularly. We know that there are probably many
factors that play with the rise of anxiety and
loneliness and these kinds of things. Okay, there's
no question about that. But what she's saying
at the very least is that we see the rise of
secularization, the rise of giving up on belief
in God, unbelief, disbelief, and the rise of
anxiety and loneliness. They seem to have gone
together on the same trajectory. And what we
see here is that Jesus is meeting his disciples
in their fear, and he's calling Thomas out from
his lonely unbelief into the belief of what God
has done in Christ. Now, this is the end of the
Gospel of John. The beginning of the Gospel of
John says this, in the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Interestingly, throughout that whole gospel,
nobody actually says to Jesus, your God. John
tells us that. In fact, John tells us that in
quite a number of ways. Some of you know that
seven times in the gospel, Jesus says, I am.
You know, the way, the truth, and the life, the
good shepherd, and the bread of life, and these
kinds of things. He's claiming the identity of
the God who saved his people out from Egypt that
met with Moses there in Exodus 3 and said, I
am. But when we look at the Old Testament, often
what we find is people living in these two things,
fear and unbelief. The idea of scarcity, will
I have enough? Will the future be okay? And unbelief
and the idea that God is actually going to care
for us. I mean, think just at the very beginning,
the very first sin in some ways were these two
things. They had all... all the trees and the
plants to eat, but they saw still scarcity. And
they said, we need to take it all. Are we going
to be okay if we don't have it all, right? And
they don't believe the words of God that are
good for them. Or if we continue on, think of
the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. God
has just literally saved them out from slavery
in Egypt. And they've just sung the song of their
redemption being brought through the Red Sea.
What happens in Exodus chapter 16? We have hamburgers
back in Egypt. Let's go back. You're like, what?
Fear and unbelief. Can God actually do what he
promised to do? Can he bring us through this
great desert? What happens when they finally
are brought back, brought through the desert?
Brought to the promised land and the, you know,
the 12 spies go into the land. 10 of them come
back and they go, this is too scary. God cannot
do it. Fear and unbelief. It is the pattern of
how the story of scripture is told with regards
to God. We often engage with him in this idea
of fear and unbelief. Think with me just a few
weeks ago. We looked in Mark about the story
of Jesus with his disciples in the boat in the
storm in the Sea of Galilee. they're all fearful
they're rousing him from his sleep and what does
he say you know but you have little faith you
have little belief this pattern of fear and unbelief
and we can trace these two traits again and again
throughout the Bible and among God's people and
what we see when these two traits are actually
together is actually an increase in the same
things that we live in now. Anxiety and things
going awry and just not going well. Loneliness
increasing. Anxiety going through the roof. Reaching
after other gods. Let's make a golden calf to
fill the god -shaped vacuum in their hearts.
And yet, here's part of my point for us this
morning. This is actually a big point. Jesus
goes to them in that place. Right? He's not going,
oh, you full of fear people. Thomas, the unbeliever.
He doesn't treat them like that. So the two other
things I want you to see actually is how Jesus
does treat them. What does he do? Two things
he does. He does a couple others, but these two
things I think stand out to us. And the first
thing is something that he says to them. What
does he say? But he says it three times in this
passage, peace be with you. So he comes to us
in our fear and he doesn't just say, you fearful
people, haven't you read in the Old Testament
all the times people were fearful and what that
did for them. He meets them and he extends his
peace to them. All right, look with me again
down at verse 19. They're huddled up. The doors
locked. Jesus came and stood among them. By the
way, we don't know how he did that, okay? One
commentary said, there's way too much ink spilled
on this. We just don't know, okay? Peace be with
you. What's the very next thing he says to them?
Verse 21. Jesus said to them again, peace be
with you. If you go down to the next section
right where he is engaging with Thomas I'll start
at verse 26 eight days later his disciples were
inside again and Thomas was with them although
the doors were locked again still living in fear
Jesus came and stood among them and said peace
be with you Which is to say that Jesus knew their
fear he knows your fear He knew their ultimate
fear. He knows your ultimate fear. And he knows
that it is not going to be addressed by would
-be gods. These alternative religious practices
that we pursue. Many of them are great. I have
dear friends that genuinely love CrossFit. And
it has done a lot of good for them. I still mourn
Marie not being the cycling instructor at the
Y. I know it's not SoulCycle per se, but it felt
like it. therapy and saunas and all the rest
those are good things but he knows where we need
peace and the only place we find peace is with
him so to believe to be a believing people is
to say these other things can be good and our
hearts are bent towards finding our rest in these
other things but there is only one being give
us that is Jesus the risen Christ Faith cannot
be escaped. Belief cannot be escaped. We all,
everybody believes. Everybody gives authority
to something and organizes their life around
that something. He knows that. The question is
belief in what? And he knows that belief in him
is the only place where actual true peace can
be offered and found. In Christ. So Jesus speaks
peace and lovingly he says this three times to
them and he does not do so in shame, you know,
Jesus is gentle with them. So the second thing
that I want us to see in this is so he shows
or he speaks to them three times but he does
something else that he does twice here and that
is that he shows them his scars. shows them his
scars. So verse 19 right after verse 19 he says
peace be with you and then 20 it says when he
had said this he showed them his hands and his
side. He showed them his hands and his side.
If you go down actually verse 26 says he came
and stood among them and said peace be with you
then he said to Thomas put your finger here see
my hands. put out your hand and place it in my
side. What he's saying is he's following up the
idea of peace for them with the reality of his
suffering for them. So he's addressing, he's
addressing their fear and their unbelief by his
peace that comes through his own suffering. Jesus
wants our belief. Do not disbelieve. But believe
and John says he's written these things so that
we may believe But I want you to also see that
in all this Jesus is very gentle He's inviting
He offers you peace and he said come and see
how I've brought it about He's not it's sort
of where they are. He's not dismissing their
unbelief or their fear He's not saying doubts
don't arise. In fact, if you've been a Christian
for any time at all, you know how often they
do But how gracious is Jesus with his disciples
here? Pascal, some of you know this, did not
just say, there is a God -shaped vacuum in the
heart of every person. This is what he says.
There is a God -shaped vacuum in the heart of
every person. And it can never be filled by any
created thing. It can only be filled by God made
known through Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters,
this is what I long for us. If we're asking of
these resurrected narratives, what does it mean
for us as a church? It means for us as a church
to acknowledge these ideas that our hearts are
eager to grab on to different things to find
our meaning in them. That we're often living
out of fear and anxiety and we're running to
all different kinds of things for it. We're often
living in unbelief and yet Jesus is inviting
us back to him and he is the only place where
peace will be found. It is only through his suffering
and his risen body where his scars were still
present. that our fears and our anxieties and
our great desires for the world will be found
is only in Him that we have peace. It's only
in Him where we have faith that God has acted,
that He will act, that He will care for us. What
the world needs is Jesus and what the world needs
is a community, communities, churches that truly
believe that Christ rose from the dead. He really
did. That we no longer have to be people that
are full of fear, living in unbelief and doubt,
but we can actually enter into this great story
of what God has done in Christ. Many of you probably
are sick of me quoting Leslie Newbegin, but he
says this. How is it possible that the gospel
should be credible? That people should believe
that the power which has the last word in human
affairs is represented by a man hanging on a
cross. That's a great question, right? How in
the world can people believe that? That the answer
for the world is somebody who suffered on a cross
long ago. He says the only answer, the only hermeneutic
of the gospel, hermeneutic meaning the way we
understand it, is a congregation of men and women
who believe it and live by it. How is the world
going to see The hands and the feet of Jesus
as the hope for their fears, as the answer to
their unbelief, as actually the thing which they're
searching for when they're running after all
these other things. How are they gonna do that?
By us believing it. By us actually understanding
the cross and the resurrection for us, that Jesus
really rose for us, that he comes and he meets
with us, and he speaks his peace over us, and
his scars are for us. That is how others will
know. There's great stories about this, of course,
through the history of the world, where people
really believed this. And out of that belief
of those congregations, many people came to faith.
One of the great stories, I'll end with this,
is from the town of Le Chambon -sur -Lignon.
I, some of you know this, I have a hard time
saying French words. Because I spent three semesters,
a year and a half, studying in France. And so
if I say it like I was taught it, some of you
are going to go like, that sounds so snooty.
Le Chambon sur Lignon. And if I don't, it just
sounds weird. Le Chambon sur Lignon. Doesn't
work. It doesn't work. I don't know what to do
about it, OK? Gosh. So Bolster -Lignon, that's
the halfway for me, is this town, this Protestant
town, this Huguenot town in Loire, in France.
And maybe some of you noticed this town wasn't
a very big town, kind of the surrounding area,
you know, smaller town. And yet it had a huge
impact during World War II, because this town
had a deep belief in the reality of what God
had done in Christ. They actually welcomed in
all these people. They were being shipped off
to concentration camps during World War II. And
it's estimated that there are about 5 ,000 lives
that were saved because of the faithfulness of
those people. Pastor André Trocmé of the Reformed
Church in France, his wife Magda, his assistant
pastor, Édouard Tays, and the rest of the villagers
just simply believing that God alone was the
answer for their fears. That he alone was the
true belief that filled the vacuum of their hearts.
And because of that, they offered shelter in
their homes and the hotels on farms and schools.
They forged identification cards for these refugees.
They guided them across the border into Switzerland.
They acted in a way that the only reality was
that Christ rose from the dead and because of
that they don't have to fear they can enter into
the story of God they don't have to give over
to the gods of the day right the power of of
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi rule or or the cowering
of the French the French at the time They didn't
have to give over those things. They said, we
can follow Jesus despite the fact that so many
others are running to other places to fill the
void of God. Now, their story, of course, has
been told many, many times. But I actually thought
about this in part because this week I was away
with my pastor's group. I have a pastor's cohort.
There are 10 of us. We meet every year on a retreat,
but then we keep up throughout the year. I can
tell you more about that. But one of my dear
friends, John Bourgeois, he lives down in Nashville.
We were meeting in Virginia and he was flying
home Friday night and he was actually sitting
next to a woman and he texted some of us and
we had been talking just a couple of days earlier
about being attentive to the spirit and he said,
guys, I was on the flight back to Nashville from
Richmond and I really just wanted to watch a
movie. And so I was sort of annoyed this older
woman was sitting next to me and she wanted to
talk. and and I ended up sharing the gospel because
she quickly asked what I do and I'm a pastor
and sometimes that opens up doors and and she
asked me why I was a pastor and she he said well,
I think people need to To see the beauty of a
believing community a community that actually
believes the gospel and he said and I told her
about the Shambon and And she said my dad was
and this woman doesn't believe My dad was there.
I've heard that story. In fact, this is one thing
that she told John, my dad was known as the Brad
Pitt of Le Chambon, which I'm not sure what that
means other than like really handsome or something
like that. But here's the really beautiful thing
is that John, my friend said, you know what,
I actually invited her to come and tell her dad's
story to our church. And so she's gonna come
and she's open to Christianity. even in her old
age of long rejecting Jesus because of a community
that believed it long ago and because of my friend
who believes it now who still believes now that
even in the fear of maybe somebody going what
you were a pastor which believe ridicule that
happens um or just the unbelief that god are
you actually able to do something That he simply
showed up and said God has spoken his peace over
me Jesus scarred hands and scarred feet and scarred
side were for me And they still transform the
world Brothers and sisters what I'm telling you
this morning is that a believing community is
the way that the gospel goes forward It's interesting
Jesus says one thing here that is always causing
me to scratch my head and it probably actually
Causes you to scratch your head. He says this
have you believed because you've seen me Blessed
are those who have not seen and yet believed.
I would bet every single one of you have thought,
if only I could see Jesus. If only I'd been there
when he turned the bread and the fish and fed
those 5 ,000 men and probably another 5 ,000
women and children. If only I'd been there when
he sat with the woman by the will. If only I'd
been there and seen the empty tomb. He says,
brothers and sisters, blessed are us. Blessed
is Second City Church. Blessed are we who haven't
seen and yet believe. So what do I hope for for
our church? That we would be a believing community.
It is in our believing, in our belief, in our
active faith, despite the fact that we have doubts,
that God will say, blessed are you. Let's pray.
Lord God, we thank you for this text. We thank
you for the gracious gentleness of our Lord here.
So often we need the same gentleness because
we often so regularly live in fear and unbelief
and doubt and yet we see your grace here. And
we also wonder at the fact that it is Thomas
who says, my Lord and God, Thomas the first one
at the end of the gospel that proclaims what
was said at the beginning. The Word in the beginning
was the Word and the Word was made flesh. The
Word was gone. God, I pray that in that journey
towards belief, we think of Thomas's long faithfulness
to you after this going and being a missionary
and giving his life for you. God, I pray that
we would be those people who are transformed
and believe in the reality of Christ's suffering
for us. And then like the disciples long ago,
would we go out in boldness. to share the good
news, like the people of Le Chambon during World
War II, like my dear friend John just the other
day. God, would we be a people that are sent
by you, sent out of our fear and our unbelief,
to invite others to follow the risen Christ in
whose name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening
to Second City Sermons podcast. We hope this
sermon has encouraged you to worship God and
to celebrate the gospel of Jesus. Please consider
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person each Sunday at 10 a .m You can find us
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God bless