THE TOMB COULDN’T HOLD JESUS, NEITHER CAN OUR BOXES

John 20: 19-29

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Unless you’re someone who majored in Nineteenth Century British Literature in college, probably the most exposure you’ve had to the works of Rudyard Kipling is either you’ve read the Jungle Book series or you’ve seen the Disney movies. One poem Kipling penned has been gaining popularity—especially among those who discuss culture and perspective. The poem describes the encounter with an elephant by six blind men.

Each man encounters a different part of the elephant and builds his explanation of what it is he’s found on the basis of his touching that part. So, the one who grabs a leg imagines he’s holding on to a tree. The one who’s handling the trunk argues that he’s wrestling with a python. The one holding the tail fancies a rope; the man feeling the elephant’s side thinks he’s run up against a wall. So the poem goes on, each man arguing that what he supposes to be reality indeed is. The humor in the poem is all in the reader’s position—the reader knows they’ve encountered an elephant and that despite the strength of each supposition, it is false.

Each of the men in Kipling’s poem relies on his frame of reference. Our frames of reference are the sum of our experiences and our knowledge and they help us understand what we’ve encountered. We base what we think we know on such summaries. We interpret reality on the basis of such frames of reference. Are you and I always right?

Thomas found himself in the company of those blind men with the elephant that evening of the first day of the week as John tells the story. John tells us the story of Thomas as the last in his Easter sequence. What began with Mary outside the tomb, trying to see through her tears, ends with Thomas and his declaration of who Jesus is. Thomas finds out as he encounters the risen Jesus that the tomb couldn’t hold Jesus, and neither can our boxes. Our frames of reference can keep us from seeing, keep us from knowing, and keep us from believing. Jesus meets us and calls us to see, to know, to believe and, to act.

Thomas’ story is familiar. Perhaps, it is too familiar. We all know about doubting Thomas. The phrase has entered our culture and language. We’d like to just talk about Thomas today. That would keep John’s telling the story from having a message for us. But, there is a message. Let’s look at Thomas more closely.

Thomas is famous for doubt. However, John also shows him as a man of faith. He’s willing to die for his Lord and his faith. When Lazarus is sick, Jesus and His disciples are beyond the Jordan. They are not in Judea—where the Jewish authorities are beginning to plot against Jesus. They are safe from those plots. When Jesus announces that they’re going to Bethany—and to certain arrest and doom—Thomas is the one who speaks up and commits himself to whatever happens to Jesus. Of course, the irony of his words is the heart of our hope—that as Jesus is raised, so also shall we rise.

Thomas is a man of faith; he is also a man with questions. He sounds a bit like you and me. After Jesus washed His disciples’ feet in the Upper Room, He spoke what we call the “Farewell Discourses.” John 14 contains comforting words from Jesus that we often share at funerals. Jesus tells them He’s going away from them, going to prepare a place for them—one of the many rooms in His Father’s house. He assures them He will come back for them, to take them to be with Him. He tells them they know the way to where He is going.

This is where Thomas’ question gets voiced. He protests that he doesn’t know really what Jesus is talking about—it doesn’t fit his frame of reference. He says that he doesn’t know the way to where Jesus is going. What Jesus is telling them now just doesn’t fit into Thomas’ box. Jesus invites Thomas then out of his box and into the wonder of the Gospel as He comforts, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

So Thomas is a man busy trying to fit everything into his frame of reference. He believes, but wants what he thinks he knows to fit with what he believes. He can’t see outside of his box—past the walls of that room. He knows Jesus is dead and he knows that dead people don’t show up alive. He tries to hold Jesus into his frame of reference.

As we catch up with Thomas and Jesus, Thomas suddenly finds himself face to face with the impossible. Jesus stands in front of him, alive. Suddenly, Thomas’ frame of reference, his box, is too small to hold Jesus. He finds himself astonished and afraid as Jesus stands before him, proving Himself to be God and showing Himself to be alive. Thomas realizes he’s got nothing left except Jesus alive and divine before him, so he confesses that faith and his Lord.

That’s Thomas’ story, what’s your story?

I would suggest that our stories aren’t that different from Thomas’. I would hope they aren’t. You and I live by our frames of reference. Frames of reference aren’t bad things—they help us learn new things and cope with what’s happening around us. We organize and interpret reality according to them. As part of that organizing and interpreting, we try—like Thomas—to fit Jesus into our boxes. Like Thomas, we come face to face with the reality that our boxes can’t hold Jesus, but we may become victims, because our boxes can trap us.

Like Thomas we think we know things. Like the blind men in Kipling’s poem, we think we’re right about what we’ve concluded about the universe on the basis of what we think we know. That first day of the week, the disciples’ frames of reference were all about fear. Fear kept them in a box that kept them from receiving Mary’s news that the body was gone from the tomb.

Fear or doubt or our questions—or whatever it is upon which we build our frames of reference—can keep us in the dark. Our eyes don’t see what really is. We miss the elephant. We can miss Jesus, raised from the dead.

If we miss Him, we can find our boxes to be tombs. If we miss Jesus raised from the dead, we’ve missed Him on the cross to pay the price for sin and die the death we deserve in our place. Miss Jesus on the cross and raised from the dead, and we can miss the forgiveness of our sin.

Then our frame of reference is built on guilt and despair. What we think we know about God is judgment not forgiveness, wrath rather than fear, and what we think about God leaves us afraid.

Our questions might also lead us to despair. Thomas couldn’t fit what he was told about Jesus into what he expected about Jesus. Intellectually or spiritually, we build our boxes too tight, too small. What are your questions? How could infinite God fit into finite flesh? How could Jesus give Himself to us in, with and under bread and wine? How could someone who died live again? Thomas let his questions build a box—he couldn’t hold Jesus in that box, but his box held him.

As Jesus came through the walls of that room to meet the disciples’ fear and Thomas’ doubt, He also comes through the walls we’ve built. He meets us face to face today. Our walls can’t keep Him out—or, by His grace, us inside. He comes through and meets us—alive and divine.

He meets us with the truth about who we are. His words reminded Thomas who he was—human and caught up in his boxes. Jesus reminds us who we are—human beings who need a Savior crucified and raised for us. As He meets you and me today, He stands as God, fully able to deal with whatever it is in our life that has led to box-building. He stands fully alive, able to comfort, help and guide you and me.

He invites Thomas to touch and handle Him. He invites you and me to be involved with Him as well. He invites us out of our boxes of what we think we know into the reality of Easter and the life of faith in Him. He takes us out of our boxes and lets faith define us. That’s what happened with Thomas.

Do you know where Easter took Thomas? His box opened and his frame of reference redefined, Thomas was led by the Gospel—far outside of his box. Tradition says he went to India. The Christian church in Kerala, India traces its origin to Thomas. The boy from Palestine really let the Gospel stretch his box as he traveled to India.

Where will Easter take you?

Like Thomas, we confess Jesus risen and God. There’s a bit of fear for us, too, as our expectations and what we thought we knew about God falls away as He lifts us up out of our boxes to stand face to face with the living God in Christ. That fear melts away in the peace Jesus speaks. He spoke “peace” to Thomas and He speaks that same peace to you and me. We are forgiven now. You and I are forgiven and our faith restored now. Like Thomas we are ready to let the Gospel lead.

Where will Easter take you? Maybe not to India, but to that “India” the Lord has in mind for you. There’s a place far outside your box where faith can take you. Maybe there’s relationship that’s broken that needs Jesus’ peace spoken into it. Maybe there’s someone at your job or your school or in your family who is still trapped in their box—whose frame of reference is organizing a false reality—whose story needs to be connected to Jesus’ Easter story. That person is your “India.”

Jesus invites you to see the possibilities of living in the Gospel—of the life that Easter brings. Thomas stepped away from the company of Kipling’s blind men, letting go of his frame of reference and letting Easter’s reality redefine everything. Jesus invites you and me to likewise let Him open our eyes and see Him alive and God for us. He invites us out of our boxes into the adventure of a life changed by Easter. He invites us to the “Indias” He has in mind for us.