It was a few days before Christmas, bitter cold and dirty snow on the streets and sidewalks. It was already dark as I entered the main office of a local bank. My companion was a middle aged man with a complaining voice. I'd met him only once. That was three years before, when he was also in my office seeking help. The routine was always the same. He was traveling through, he said, and ran out of one of his many medications. Could I help him? And one other thing, someone had stolen three of his traveler's checks, and would I go to the bank with him and help him to get them replaced? I called the bank in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the checks had been issued, and they said yes, he had purchased them, and told me the local bank where I could report the theft and receive a refund.

It was almost closing time, but the gray haired lady at the bank was doing her best. She was talking to the traveler's check people in New York. They want to know your permanent address, she said to the man with me, who was still shaking from the cold. The man looked at me, he doesn't have one I said, he's a street person. He's a street person, the woman said firmly into the phone. He doesn't have a permanent address. She looked at me, her eyebrows raised, as if to say, Did I really say that? I knew now that we had an advocate in this gray haired lady, but that it was going to be a long process. I stood up and paced a bit.

At the next desk things were going no better. A young man, perhaps twenty five dressed in working clothes, was asking for a loan. He needed thirty dollars or he would be put out of his room the next morning. The young woman to whom he was assigned was patient, but firm. This bank did not make thirty dollar loans. Now, if he would like to apply for a larger amount and come back on Monday. The young man seemed close to panic as he rose and fumbled with his jacket and cap. He was shuffling toward the door when an older man, well dressed, caught up with him. “How much do you need?” The older man said. “Thirty dollars," said the young man with the cap, "I just have to have thirty dollars by tomorrow.” The older man took out his wallet, gave the young man the money and a card, “send it to me when you can”, he said. And walked away.

The young man and the security guard who was hovering nearby were speechless. I was amazed. What the main office of the big bank couldn't do in half an hour had been accomplished in fifteen seconds. I went back to the gray haired lady. The bank was now closed. The man I had brought had become agitated and strident, and the woman firm with the people in Manhattan. “How can you mail a refund to a man who has no address?” She said with perfect logic, “why don't I give it to him now?” But the answer was clearly negative, as we thanked her for her efforts. It seemed to me that she had learned something in the process, something about the problem of street people and the workings of financial institutions, and that she'd be sharing her feelings with her family that night at the late supper table.

Now I think we have to respect the disciple named Thomas. He was a man of common sense who understood what we call the real world. In the real world, people who don't have a permanent address, street people, well, one has a right to ask hard questions about whether their travelers' checks were actually stolen or whether they themselves cashed the checks and had, let's be charitable, forgotten about it. So the disciple Thomas would have understood the man in New York, the man who was saying that cash should not be given but a refund sent some place after a thorough check. Thomas would have sided with the bank on the thirty dollar loan too. When you consider the paperwork involved, it's just not financially practical to loan people thirty dollars for a few days' time. And it's obviously not common sense that someone should rise from the grave. To be fair, Thomas had a right to be doubtful. The way things really work is that when a person is crucified, dead and buried, they stay dead and buried. If your bank makes thirty dollar loans and gives cash refunds to street people I'd suggest you change banks.

Learning to be a doubting Thomas is part of growing up. It's learning that people at the checkout counters and grocery stores make mistakes and doctors sometimes perform unwarranted operations, that car batteries go dead and that decent people can become a mob. Life in the real world teaches us to lock our doors at night, check the ingredients in the processed foods we buy, and that most of us will never earn enough money to satisfy our wants. Part of growing up is to learn that wars can happen even when no one wants a war, and that all of us eventually die. Thomas was no one's fool. When the disciples told him that they had seen the risen Christ. He doubted it. I do not fault him for that, nor you, if you share his doubt and hardheartedness.

But there is another side to our experience. There is this gray-haired lady who I think had never met a man as unusual and strange as the man I brought to her desk, somehow she believed that he was telling the truth. She was surprised to find herself explaining to a man in Manhattan what it was like to be a street person, though I'd guess that she'd never been this close to a street person in her life. Somehow she became incensed at the notion of sending a refund to a man who had no address. And then there was the well-dressed man with the thirty dollars. What were his motivations? Who knows, or cares really? It may have been the Christmas spirit, he may have been poor once himself, or felt guilty. The plain fact is that something happened in that main office of the bank, and its plush interior, which may have never happened before. One customer handed another customer the money he needed, and it took fifteen seconds.

So our lives are shaped by the interplay of good things and bad things, of events which give life and joy, and of events which have the power of sorrow and death. So complex is the interplay of light and shadow, that it's hard to tell where one ends and another begins. An adulterous man or woman certainly has some pleasure in that relationship, but knows also that it is destructive. Young people may take pleasure in playing softball, but know that their undone school work will plague them tomorrow. Our lives are shadow and light intertwined. Christians have a way of saying all of this, not necessarily a way of understanding it, or even of being able to control it, but Christians describe their experience as human beings in terms of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Crucifixion is our way of saying that young men in trouble can't borrow thirty dollars from a bank, and street people without addresses have trouble getting refunds on travelers checks. It is our way of describing the destruction of our adulteries, the wars we fight when we prefer not to, the operations we didn't have to have. Crucifixion is the Christian's way of describing all the deaths, broken hearts, and crying, which are caught up in the final dying, which bears us away. It is our way of saying that our sorrow is God's sorrow as well.

Resurrection is the Christian's way of saying that crucifixion is not the way it all ends. It's our way of saying that the world doesn't end, our life doesn't end with a bang or a whimper, in neither fire nor ice. Resurrection is our way of saying that all our dying occurs within the embrace of God, and that it is within His power and intention that life shall prevail rather than death. That grey-haired ladies in banks and customers who loan money in banks, that the compassion they showed will prevail over everything, which makes us small and afraid in the world. I understand the disciple Thomas well enough. So do you. He was wise in the ways of the world, and knew in the words of the psalm that the flower fades and the grass withers, that the crucified are dead and buried. The disciples told Thomas of their experience of the risen Christ, but he didn't believe it. The next time he was present, the risen Christ said, "Peace be with you”, and Thomas said, "My Lord and my God.” That may not have happened to you. You may never have run across a gray-haired lady in the main office of a bank at closing time, or a customer who loans money, but I want you to know what it is that Christians say about their lives. That we are woven of shadow and light, and of trust that the light will prevail, woven of death and life, and of trust that life will prevail, woven of crucifixion and resurrection, and trust that the final word is resurrection.

These are hard times. There are many preachers of bad news. Sometimes the bad news is that everything is really sweetness and light, and people are basically good, and our social system is just a little out of joint, and there are simple ways of restoring our economy and our educational systems, and simple ways of restoring family life and a sense of hope and simple ways of bringing peace to the world. It's bad news preaching because it isn't true. It makes a mockery of the pain which we experience and the poverty which surrounds us and the melees and despair which saps the strength of the American people. People are so eager to hear good news that they will even endure pap and good wishes offered in the name of truth, but it's always bad news when a people cannot face the truth and deny the crucifixion occurring daily within and around us.

But it's also bad news preaching when we are told that we are only sinners condemned and dying. When we are told to be suspicious of every experience of love, every generous act, when we are cynical and despairing about ever reaching a time of peace, told to accept captivity and hunger and sickness as the normal lot of human beings upon this earth, and that every effort to make radical change is doomed to failure. I tell you, I met a grey-haired lady in a bank last Christmas, and a customer who loaned money. Thomas doubted it, the resurrection, and I don't blame him at all. But there came a time when he was with those who believed, and the risen Christ appeared again and said to Thomas, "Peace be with you.” And Thomas said, "My Lord and my God.” And the risen Christ said, "Receive the Holy Spirit as the Father sent me, so I send you.” And Thomas and all the others went forth and are still with us, saying to all preachers of bad news, "Lock your car, grieve for your adulteries and your wars, but the final word is resurrection.” You may not be ready yet to say that. Doubt is strong and good reason for our doubting, but the resurrection is surely something we would like to believe. I think Thomas started there too, wanting to believe what he had to doubt. His time of faith came in an upper room. Who knows when yours will come, maybe in a bank one cold winter's eve, when the Lord will say, “Peace be with you.”