Sunday, April 24 – “Peace Be with You”

View this recorded version of Sunday Worship from April 24, 2022.

Bible Verses

John 20:19-30. The story of doubting Thomas.

Reflection: “Peace Be with You”

Snippets from the sermon by Rev. Melanie Oommen.

“Thomas is clear that living through the experiences of others does not make him a believer. We understand, don’t we that just being told that something is profoundly true and alive doesn’t make us believers.

He and we half to have a a lived true experience, our own journey into pain into death, so that it may be transformed–to understand death and resurrection as the only reliable and true pattern of transformation.

We all respond differently to the big changes in life, don’t we? Thomas has to touch pain, to get inside it, to speak of it and tell that story, to get to anything that looks like resurrection.

I personally don’t believe that Thomas was being a skeptic or a cynic, or an unbeliever. Quite the contrary. he was seeking earnestly and honestly to grapple with truth.

Mary stayed, the disciples hid, and Thomas wanted to touch suffering… to get to a more profound truth. Evidence evident that the only trustworthy pattern of transformation of creation itself is death and rebirth.

Maybe Thomas already knew that hiding from suffering, from brokenness, does not transform it or lessen it. That somehow bound in the truth of suffering is the truth of resurrection.”