seeing and believing

During a plague year, in the midst of a pandemic, funeral bells rang continually across London. The dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral wrote this:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. 

[From Meditation XVII, John Donne, (1572-1631), and from the epigraph of Hemingway’s novel.]

I had not really meant to talk about this but the resurrection is really about death and then about resurrection. How to die, how to see a friend die, and then to understand how to live. That is the story of doubting Thomas really. Not about doubt at all but about how to grasp reality. His friend really had died. That is common fact, historical fact. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate (the Apostles’ Creed). “Jesus’ body decayed (.82 red)” - The Jesus Seminar’s consensus.

He had died. What did it mean? What did it mean, then, that he had lived, and how he had lived? That was the question, those were the questions, that occupied the disciples after Jesus’ resurrection. 

And so they began to understand. Who he really was, who they really were, what there was to do next, after there had been nothing to do because after all he was dead and we were all going to die. But now, how are we to live?

Jesus’ reality comes stronger, now, knowing that he ‘had’ to die, to fulfill his mission he had to stay true, even though that could and did mean accepting death, execution at the hands of another corrupt administration. The chief priests and the scribes, the leaders so-called of the people, the people they were betraying, with their every breath, handed him over oh so gladly to the Roman authorities, the occupying authorities, who were the means, the instrument, the engine of execution.

But he himself was the engine of understanding. He took, as the gospels give him to us, all of human experience, humanity, life itself, into himself, and made it whole and wonderful and sane even as it hurt beyond belief. Yes, others have suffered more, as many were executed his way, as he was executed, by the Roman authorities, in their thousands. And that may be exactly the point. 

He did not have to do it. He did not want to do it. He wanted to live and he wanted to live life in its fullness. And so he did.

And he did not keep it to himself. Miraculously he shared it with us.

And so we live. Knowing what it is at last to die, we begin to know what it is to live.

***

There is a book called "The Five Gospels" and a one-man play called "The 5th Gospel" - unrelated except by name, and perhaps by intention: to get to the human figure behind the stained glass or cultural images.

Craig McNair Wilson in his play imagined Jesus horsing around with the disciples, or doing other human things. 

The book, by historians and Bible scholars of the Jesus Seminar, tried to get at what Jesus really said and thereby get closer to what he was really about. And is about, for us now.

Scandalous, really, to think that we can know much about a man who lived 2000 years ago - and that it matters to us today what he said and did and how he was truly human. 

Seems to me that both play and book were trying to get at something that the first letter of John captures in a phrase: we speak to you of what we have seen and heard and held in our arms.  

That was then. But you know what? That is also now. We experience Jesus as real, in our prayers, in our fellowship, in the eyes of total strangers, in our inner selves.

And we can bear witness to him as first-century John did; we have not touched him with our hands but we can encounter him nevertheless. 

[On the road to Emmaus he appeared to two disciples in the person of a mysterious stranger, as he accompanied them on the way and in the breaking of bread.]  

There are so many ways to say we have seen the Lord.

Many years ago at a youth retreat weekend in the Santa Cruz mountains I heard a new song - new to me and new then: "Have you seen Jesus my Lord?" 

Mary asked such a question at the tomb, on the morning three days after Good Friday. "If you have taken him away, tell me where I can find him."

She is expecting nothing more than the pious duties of grief, to prepare the body for its long rest in the tomb. And perhaps as Michael Curry pointed out on Easter not even that: for who would roll away the stone? And yet - she went.  

She is not seeking and does not expect to find the man she knew. Not as he was. 

And she does not. For God is doing a new thing.

Resurrection, as Marian Budde reminded us on Easter morning, is - for us - a process, not a moment. Even if our life with Jesus begins with a moment of decision it continues as a process. A whole new way of living.

Mary is the first to experience this, to have it dawn on her that the resurrected Lord is more than the man she knew. He is not revived but remade. Born anew, as it were, into the fullness of life in God's house.

How are we to begin to live as if this is real? Some clues follow. Mary goes and bears witness to the men, the skeptical apostles, but they too come to believe, as they experience Jesus as real.

I first experienced Jesus as real not long after that weekend in the mountains. I had listened to the message, received from preachers, in songs, and in the gentle witness of an older friend. And even in the quiet hospitality of a neighbor. But it was when I woke up on Holy Saturday morning that he became real to me. And that is when I began to pray.

How are we to begin living as if Jesus is real?  

Witness, yes, Mary did that first. He is alive! He is risen! He really is the Lord.

Then action. And that is when we collect together to  - commiserate? - no, to celebrate, and to figure out what this means and what to do and to begin to encourage one another to live it out.

In the stories of acts of apostles we find them gathering all together, like a big family, every night, and still going to the Temple every day as they had when he was alive among them as a fellow human being, teacher, and healer. Now however a new era now begins, with these few, these befuddled, scared, and hopeful few, reborn themselves and calling others into new life. 

It is as if they had to begin again. As if everything they knew now had a new significance, new meaning.

When at last Thomas showed up, he expressed doubts - the pragmatical dog! How can you know what he really said and did unless you were there? And he was not: so he says, I need to see him and hear him and touch him with my hands again. The Jesus I knew. But he does not meet the same man, not as he was, and for all we know, all his prerequisites for believing were thrown aside, as he met not the resuscitated man but the living Lord.

My Lord and my God.

Now he is here among us. What shall we do?

***

Christ with Us

The Love of Christ

Surround us

The Light of Christ 

Lead us

The Peace of Christ

Fill us

The Power of Christ

Aid us

The Joy of Christ

Thrill us

The Presence of Christ

Be with us evermore.

David Adam, Tides and Seasons, SPCK, 1989, 76.

Resources: Commentaries by Herbert O'Driscoll, Fred Craddock, Stevan L. Davies, Arthur Dewey, and Raymond E. Brown, S.S. Prayers by David Adam. Self-guided retreat by Suzanne Guthrie, At the Edge of the Enclosure (http://edgeofenclosure.org/).  

(All this came to me in part as I was listening to the comments halfway through the second episode of “Hemingway” the PBS series. One of the writers got it right, one got it wrong, about what “for whom the bell tolls” means: I think the latter had not understood where it came from. Albert Camus did, or would have. The plague. That is where it came from. John Donne, Meditation XVII, the epigraph to “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, as I memorized it in eighth grade (but had yet to understand). John Donne was writing about people dying in an epidemic, a pandemic, the plague, as it hit London in the 1660s, - as Pepys memorialized it in his diary - and so “the bell was tolling for all of us, in Europe and the United States” is wrong: it is about death, it is the mark, the memorial, the moment, the announcement, of some one particular dying. And Hemingway got it right, and his character Robert Jordan got it right, and John McCain reading it got it right, it is about that particular death and therefore, therefore, about our own, our own humanity, and therefore our own life.) 

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Hemingway. NPR, aired April 2021. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/hemingway/

Psalm 133,Acts 4:32-35,1 John 1:1-2:2,St Paul's Tombstone,BEaster2,John 20:19-31,Doubting Thomas.

St Paul's Church, Tombstone. [https://www.facebook.com/stpaulstombstone] April 11th 2021. JRL+

Grieving Thomas

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

John 20:19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.


Have you ever waited for something – never quite believing it could really happen? Have you ever been sure something would never happen – much as you hoped that it would?

Then you will understand the joy and the astonishment, the awe and the excitement, of the disciples when Jesus came and stood among them on that first day of the week. He stood among them, and he said, “Peace be with you.”

Shalom aleichem. Peace be with you. This means much more than just, “Howdy!”

It means that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and you and I are in covenant relationship with God and with each other, in the joy and peace and harmony that only the peace of God can bring.

It means that the day has come – that this first day of the week is the first day of a new order of the ages. The power of death and sin is broken. Now God and humankind are reconciled in Christ. Now can begin a new way for all people to relate to one another.

This is not the first time Jesus has announced that the kingdom of God – the kingdom of shalom, the peace of God – is at hand. At the beginning of his ministry, …

Luke 4:16-21

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’


At the start of his earthly ministry, Jesus identified himself with the servant of God foretold in Isaiah, the one who brings God’s deliverance. He began the process of restoring shalom, Godly peace.

The advent of the Messiah was the dawning of the age of shalom, the harmonious reign of God, a kingdom that will never be undone or superseded.

That present and future kingdom, the age of shalom, is one in which God’s rule is fulfilled everywhere in every aspect of life, bringing liberation for the oppressed, harmony in relationships, healing, justice, peace, righteousness, reconciliation with God and right relationship with all of creation.

The vision of shalom is of a world in which individual people and whole communities live in prosperity and wellbeing, enjoying safety and protection, inner harmony, rest, and completeness. They are becoming the people of God, and they experience God’s compassion and love.

When God’s people truly worship and obey him – when they are faithful to his calling and covenant, is this not the offering that God prefers?

Isaiah 58:6-12

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.


Jesus’ followers are to be the pioneers of this kingdom.

2 Corinthians 5:14-21

For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them…

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

"You and I are called to be ambassadors for Christ, pioneers of shalom. We have the privilege of bringing the good news of God’s Kingdom to those who will receive it.

"What in the world is God doing? God is, right now, bringing his Kingdom. He is doing this through the work of Jesus, made known and extended by God’s faithful people. He is reconciling all things to himself. And we get to be part of what he is doing!"

We get to be a part of what he is doing – as his disciples, the disciples to whom he showed himself in the upper room that first day, were part of what God is doing.

* * * * *

Have you ever waited for something – never quite believing it could really happen? Have you ever been sure something would never happen – much as you hoped that it would?

Then you will understand the grief and the disbelief, the doubt and painful faith, of Thomas. You will understand the doubt and the alienation, the estrangement and fear, which Thomas felt when the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.”

One thing was clear to Thomas, some thing that others may have doubted: Jesus really died. On Good Friday, Jesus of Nazareth died. With him died many hopes for the Messiah. The Anointed One of Israel was not going to save them, not the way they’d expected him to.

Jesus was dead. There could be no doubt about that.

So when he appeared to the disciples – sans Thomas – and showed them his hands and his side, they knew it was real. “Peace be with you,” he said, and they rejoiced. “Peace be with you,” he said again, and breathed on them – ‘Receive holy Breath, holy Spirit’ – and sent them on the mission he had been given by God.

Now they were sure of two things, two things that were really real:

1.) Jesus died.
2.) Jesus lives!

He rose from the dead – he had been crucified, and showed the wounds to prove it. It was really him! – And he was alive.

Thomas was not there to see this, or to receive Holy Spirit, and he doubted. He was still in mourning – deep in the grief where the wrenching truth of the inevitable and irrecoverable fact of death is sharp and painful, and almost unbearable to acknowledge.

Into this grief step the other disciples with their incredible announcement, a la Mary Magdalene: “We have seen the Lord.” It’s incredible, impossible: truly beyond belief. He had nothing to go on, no proof, but their word.

I want to see it for myself. I want to know that it is real, that the good news of Jesus Christ is tangible fact.


1.) Christ has died.
2.) Christ is risen.

This is the good news just as Paul had heard it and passed it on – and then, there in the midst of them, with Thomas, Christ comes again: “Peace be with you.”

Go ahead now Thomas, he says, as if his mere arrival were not overwhelming enough.

He says to Thomas things Thomas had said when Thomas was sure Jesus was not there.

This is not the first time Jesus has said something to someone, that indicated he was aware of them when they could not see him. Remember how Jesus greeted Nathanael by the lakeshore – Behold! An Israelite in whom there is no guile – I saw you under the fig tree – and rest assured, I will show you greater things than these. Now here is Thomas:

Christ greets him, offering to him what he had demanded as proof of the resurrection.

Even as Thomas was expressing his doubt – unless I see, unless I touch – Christ Jesus was present with him. Even as we are feeling our sharpest doubts, the most painful absences of the sense of God’s presence, God is with us, Christ is present right there.

As he was in the midst of them, even when they were grieving his demise, Christ is now here among us – and remains with us even when we can hardly go on, or bear our selves.

Shalom – peace be with you – the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The reconciliation with God and peace among his people promised of old is here now – and you and I are part of it. This is what Christ offers; this is what he announces, as he shows the disciples the truth of his death and resurrection. The forgiveness he offers – to those who, let’s face it, we last saw in the garden of Gethsemane, going over the back fence – is real. The reconciliation he offers, being made right with him and through him with God, is real.

And he offers Thomas more than proof – he offers him a restored place in the community. Resurrection works both individually and communally. The community is restored and the individuals within it are reconciled, in the peace of God’s provision.

And so Jesus says to Thomas, go ahead: see, touch, and believe. And he says to Thomas, as he had said long ago by the lakeshore to Nathanael, things Thomas had said when Jesus wasn’t even there. Go ahead now: touch these wounds and trust me.

But Thomas needs no further proof. Behold! Here is another Israelite in whom there is no guile. He has found the Messiah: “My Lord and my God.”

We know him in the breaking of the bread. We know him in the witness of his people. We know him because the disciples received Holy Spirit from him – and spread the good news of the forgiveness of sins across the world.

And so I pass on to you, and exhort you to pass on to others, what I have received: that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures said, that he was buried; that he rose again on the third day, as the Scriptures said, and that he appeared to many – not least of all to Thomas. Thomas, whose grief had overwhelmed his belief in the future, now sure in the knowledge of the presence forever of his risen savior, who is Christ the Lord.

Now what? May we as we celebrate, in the Eucharist, Christ’s death until he comes, be sure in the knowledge that love conquers death. Death no longer has the last word. The word at the end of life is the same word that was at its beginning. The Omega and the Alpha are one: the Messiah, the Word, the Son of the living God. Let us spread that news, that hope and that knowledge, through our own words and deeds.

Peace be with you: Shalom: the harmony and peace of God. Bear witness to the risen Lord. Breathe the Spirit and bring the news to others that faith in Christ Jesus is saving faith. Make God’s spirit to shine forth in the world. Be bearers of light and life – and laughter, in the joy of knowing that Christ is risen. Alleluia! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia! Amen.

* * *

Sources and inspirations:

Sarah C. Leech, "You and I are called..." from "What in the world is God doing?" curriculum resource for World Concern.

Ryan Marsh, insight into Thomas' grief and doubt, in pastors' text study.

+