The Second Sunday of Easter (Year B)
Acts 4:32-35 
John 20:19-31
Episcopal Student Center, Austin, Tex.

Every week near the top of the service, right before the first reading, we say a prayer that gathers the theme of the day. Today we ask God “that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith.” Throughout Eastertide this will be something we come back to a lot. I like to think of the New Testament as really just an extended reflection on the first Christians trying to make sense of what has happened through the death and resurrection of Jesus, how it has changed their lives, and how they offer it to the people around them. Today we hear how the disciples in Jerusalem shared everything in common, how Jesus appeared to his closest friends and breathed a bit of courage into them all (but especially Thomas), and John begins to reflect on how being close to Jesus cleanses us of what separates us from God and unites us to one another. Time and time again, down through the ages, Christians have been returning to the discovery that nothing divides us from God. Nothing can divide us from the very source of life, connection, and joy. No matter what we’ve done, no matter where we are, no matter what is happening around us: through the power of the resurrection, Jesus is here. What we need—really need, deep down in our bones need—is here.

Last week when we gathered with our sibling campus ministries, some of us learned this as a song: What we need is here, what we need is here. [excursus to teach the song to those who were not with us]

“What we need is here.” This is less about finding the things we think we need, and more about discovering that what we have—in our hearts, in our relationships with one another, in our turning to God for strength—is enough for the days ahead. 

When Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room, it is not in a moment of great strength for him or for the disciples. It is the evening of the resurrection, when it is not at all clear what is going on except that a grave is empty when it should not be. The disciples are hiding, in a secret room with the doors locked, afraid for their lives. Even though he now has a body that can move through the walls and locked doors, Jesus is severely wounded, willingly retaining the marks of his suffering even after the resurrection.

When we are scared, it is completely natural to run away, to retreat, to find a place where we feel safe and where we can take stock of the situation and ourselves. How are we doing? What do we need? What do we have? Many on campus find themselves in just such a moment, after the university closed the Department of Community and Campus Engagement earlier this week. A lot of people are scared, taking this as another sign that we live in a time and a place that does not value all our lives. On a more mundane level, there will be plenty of moments over the next few weeks when we are faced with everything that needs to happen before finals or graduation or all the things the summer holds and feel we are not up to the task. Moments like these heighten our awareness of what we lack. It is easy to believe that we do not have enough: enough courage, enough power, enough energy, enough faith, enough sleep, and on and on. And it is exactly into moments like these marked by fear and doubt and scarcity that Jesus shows up and says, “Peace be with you.” Jesus is with us, here in this room, wounded and vulnerable. The Body of Christ is here in this room, wounded and vulnerable… but never, ever defeated. Jesus continues to show us the example of his great humility, showing us his wounded hands and feet as if to say, “Death and all its friends did their worst, and here I am with you still.” Death will never have the final word. 

If we really want to know something about the power of the resurrection, at the very least we are going to have to get down in the dirt with one another to be honest and vulnerable with each other. Jesus could have been resurrected without those scars, into a beautiful, perfect, unblemished body. He could have browbeaten Thomas into getting into line and forcing himself to believe. Jesus does neither of these things, and instead of hiding behind a show of strength, he continues what he began on the cross and uses his own weakness and woundedness to bring peace and new life. This is where Christian strength comes from: not from an insistence that everything is fine or that we are managing, but in being truthful about who we are and what we have. As we come to understand what we need and share those needs with each other, the promise of Christ is that within the community there is always enough to go around: enough strength, enough courage, enough love, enough nourishment, enough faith. When we are gathered, when we show up as ourselves and truly share with one another as those first disciples did—both the needs we have and the gifts we have—that is when the Body of Christ takes on flesh and blood. This is the way we become the Body of Christ: wounded, courageous, and open to one another. We will find ourselves united in heart and mind, holding everything in common, because our humanity is the one thing we all have in common. Jesus models this way of new life in the midst of woundedness, because living in the midst of limitation and vulnerability is the only way we know how to be. We may not find what we want or what we thought we needed, but we will find what we truly and deeply need: connection, courage, strength for the journey. We will find that what we need is, in fact, here.

“Peace be with you,” comes the voice of Jesus. “As God has sent me, so I am sending you.” What we need is here. What this university needs, now more than ever, is here. Jesus knits us into his Body, to be the wounded hands and feet of peace wherever we go. What we need is here, what we need is here….