My Lord And My God!

“My Lord and My God!”

John 20:19-31 1 Peter 1:3-9

Intro: Hello Easter people.

How many times have you tried to give another person advice and they didn’t listen?

They went ahead and did the exact opposite of what you suggested they do.

Even though you warned them.

Even though you told them.

You shared with them from your own experiences and mistakes.

You have learned the right way to do something and the wrong way.

You give them all this advice along with all the information about how you had to learn “the hard way.”

Yet they go out and make the exact same mistakes.

You warned them not to make because that you had made them yourself!

We learn from experience but not always from someone else’s experience.

We learn most often from our own experiences.

For forty days after the resurrection Jesus remained alive here on earth.

This was so that people could experience for their self first hand that Jesus was alive.

The Lord first appeared to Mary Magdalene.

Soon she was an “eyewitness” as she “went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the risen Lord!’”

But Mary’s “eyewitness news” was not enough to convince the disciples.

That evening we are told that the disciples were together, with the doors locked because they were afraid that the same fate which had befallen Jesus—the crucifixion—would befall them.

Despite Mary’s testimony of having seen the risen Christ,

They were still hiding behind locked doors.

They were shaking in their boots “for fear of the Jews.”

It wasn’t until “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you,’”

and then showed them His hands and side that the disciples believed the resurrection had taken place.

Have you ever felt as if your faith hasn’t changed you all that much?

Are you still hiding in fear behind locked doors?

Thomas gets a bad “rap”

He is most often referred to as “doubting Thomas.”

Fact is all the disciples were doubting disciples.

Whether it was doubting Thomas or doubting Mary who thought they had stole the body of Jesus.

Or doubting Peter, or doubting John

The Risen Christ through His amazing and completely unmerited grace enters into our lives

and speaks our name: “Mary, Peter, Phillip, Ken, Betty, Vickie

Peace be with you! As the Father sent me, Now I am sending you.

Has the Risen Christ appeared to you yet?

Have you began the mission that Christ sends his disciples out into the world?

What if Easter was not just a single Sunday but more a mission and a way of life?

The answer is that discipleship means to be faithful, committed, consistent, dedicated, dependable, loyal, reliable, tried and true.

The Christian life is a journey.

It’s not a destination.

At 36 years old and living as an Anglican priest, on the morning of May 24th, 1738

John Wesley found himself crying out: “Lord, help my unbelief!”

And he wrote in his journal that morning that

“he felt dull within and little motivated to pray for his own salvation.”

But that evening a friend persuaded Mr. Wesley to attend a meeting on Aldersgate Street.

It was a Bible study of some sort.

And at about 8:45 p.m. while someone in the meeting was reading Martin Luther’s preface to the Romans…

…while this person was reading Luther’s words

“describing the change which God works in the heart through faith,”

John Wesley records in his journal, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.

I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for salvation;

and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins,

even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

In other words, the Risen Christ appeared to Wesley

and Wesley’s faith had finally become a living, breathing reality…

…not just something written on a piece of paper…

…not just what he had learned about in some classroom.

And then Wesley spent the rest of his life cultivating that faith.

through study,

and through standing up for the poor, the uneducated, the marginalized, the widow, the orphans, the lost

He became a “witness” to the Resurrection of the Lord!

We come to true believer in the Resurrected Lord…

…only when we ourselves begin to be resurrected in our own life!!!

In our Gospel Lesson for this morning, the other disciples had told their friend Thomas

that they had seen the resurrected Lord.

But still Thomas replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

A week passed and the disciples were in the house again but this time Thomas was with them.

And though the doors were locked…

…notice the doors were still locked…