The story of Easter is not the story of suffering, betrayal and opposition. The Easter story is a story of forgiveness and grace, unexpected new life, hope born in hopelessness, community birth-marked by love and acceptance. The story of Easter, Peter says is that "Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy".

The biblical lessons during these next 50 days focus on the founding of the church as the community where Jesus makes real his resurrection - and makes his relationship real to all who will see, hear and trust that in Jesus they have encountered God.  These stories confront and reassure us-and remind us, once again, that Jesus is alive through the stories we tell.  Scripture is alive, full of the life-giving Spirit of God - or as we once were more comfortable saying, before the fundamentalists co-opted the language: scripture in inspired.

The Greek word translated "inspired" literally means, "God breathed." Inspiration comes not from the words themselves, but from God's breathing into words the lives that these stories bear. To say that these biblical stories of the founding of the Church are inspired is to claim that God breathed life into the early church just as God breathes life into the words today, as we read them and discover, and re-discover, the power and nurture they provide for us who are the church.

Inspiration is a dynamic process-it's relational.  For not only does God's Holy breath animate even the most familiar of texts which we read again and again-we also read and hear them differently, for we're different people each time the text encounters us.  Our new experiences, insights and relationships of life together change us, if ever so slightly, so we approach the text as we've never approached it before...and I cautiously add, the text approaches us! The living text is transformative! 

Today's Gospel is a remarkable story of inspiration-and of transformative text-- a story in which we are encountered by Jesus' appearance to his followers, living and risen from the dead - and of Thomas' inspiring refusal to swallow any such story hook-line-and-sinker, but to demand the credentials of the one who makes such an audacious claim as did Jesus, appearing uninvited in the midst of disillusioned disciples.

We often speak figuratively of ‘touching stories' or accounts that ‘touch us', meaning we feel emotionally or spiritually moved by the words we hear.  In John's Gospel today we hear of a demand to touch - Thomas's demand to put his own fingers on the wounds of the Risen Christ - if he is going to believe the story that Jesus is telling them, that he is their teacher, who has conquered death and the grave.   This is a story of the power of touch when words alone are insufficient.