Wounds: Second Sunday of Easter, 4/11/10

Holy Trinity/Santisima Trinidad
Reflections on John 20:19-31

I have been re-reading a beautiful book by Karen Armstrong, called Beyond Belief. It is a powerful and insightful book about the Gospel of Thomas, the Gnostic gospel that was discovered with the rest of the Nag Hamadi find in 1948, and also a wonderful meditation on faith.

The most arresting image for me from the gospel story that we heard to day, is that of Thomas placing his hand in the wound of Jesus, at Jesus’ request. What more powerful image of the incarnation and the resurrection could we possibly have? Well, Elaine Pagels begins her book with an image just as heart-wrending and just as carnal. After jogging in Central Park, she enters a church in New York City, Church of the Heavenly Rest right on Fifth Avenue. She has gone there to pray, because her 1 ½ year old child, recently operated on for a heart condition, has developed a probably fatal lung disease, and the doctors want to operate again. She envisions another invasive procedure on her exhausted son, and she refuses them the opportunity to reach into his wound again. She doubts their ability to heal and she brings her son home.

She then goes into a meditation on belief. People have said to her, despite her lack of belief in her doctors, “Your faith must be such a great help to you.” She wonders what that means, noting that the prayers in the services she hears sometimes sound like dim echoes from the surface barely reaching someone at the bottom of the ocean.

She briefly tells us the history of belief in the Christian Church before the Nicene Creed was formed. How for example, in the early church, money was shared between the members and a common fund always existed for the orphans who had been abandoned in the trash heaps, or the widows with no support at all. They believed that this was their duty. The church father Tertullean wrote in about 200AD:

There is no buying or selling of any kind in what belongs to God. On a certain day, each one, if he likes, puts in a small gift, but only if he wants to do so, and only if he is able, for everything is voluntary, nothing is compulsory.

This kind of generosity attracted many converts, because it was the kind of generosity that was normally only shown to family members. It showed a remarkable kind of faith, and a rare one for those times. But an even more remarkable faith was described by Galen, the most famous doctor of his age, who had survived the enormous plague of 1629-1631 by fleeing it. The Christians stayed and cared for the sick, while their pagan counterparts fled. Galen was amazed at their courage and commented, when he came back to the scene,

For the people called Christians… contempt of death is obvious every day…

And during a second great plague in 260, , the Alexandrian Bishop Dionysus wrote,
Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves, and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ.

This remarkable courage in the face of death brought countless non-Christian people into faith, as they considered these acts to be almost miraculous.

The skeptical followers of pagan gods were transformed by witnessing the love and care the Christians gave to their stricken brothers and sisters. They were not afraid to touch their wounds. The Christians did not doubt that they would receive their reward, even if they died. The pagans converts began to believe that what the Christians were representing was a kind of truth in the face of disaster that they could live by. Even in times of devastation, the illness or even death of a young child, the horror of a plague, this kind of faith, this kind of belief, can hold us up. Elaine Pagel’s son died 4 years after that first visit to Church of the Heavenly rest, and the funeral was in that same church. She was comforted, held up, and eventually she experienced some sort of resurrection from her desolation. Friends and family gathered, as she said to “bridge an abyss that seemed impassable.”

Compared to a plague, or the loss of a child, our problems may seem slight, but lest you doubt me, I am going to tell the truth. Although, Halleluiah, it is Easter time, you and I are still continuing on something of a wilderness trek. In your case, you are still recovering from the loss of a beloved vicar, being asked to get used to the idea of sharing your very new vicar with another congregation, having to get used to a new service time that had been the same for 50 years or so, and continuing a brave and sometimes challenging experiment in multicultural worship. We are seeing signs of resurrection all around, but there are ways in which these changes might feel like an empty tomb.

For my part, I have been questioning God about the inconvenient timing of my particular trek, with no understanding until just lately. On Dec. 1, I was called to be your priest in charge here at Holy Trinity Richmond, which has been a rich and truly wonderful experience. On Dec. 30, as I have shared with you, the woman who has been my best friend since I was thirteen died after a long illness. Two weeks later I was called to Good Shepherd Church. After questioning the timing of these events, what came to me was this: Perhaps I had to begin this ministry with a broken heart. Perhaps in order to pastor two congregations in the midst of painful doubt and change, my heart had to be broken open so that I could walk this wilderness walk with you, so that we could experience resurrection together. Maybe these wilderness experiences are the marks of our resurrection. Maybe they are the wounds in our hands and in our sides.

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, there are numerous assurances that the resurrection is often right in front of us even as we are waiting for it. When the disciples ask Jesus,
“When will the resurrection of the dead come, and when will the new world come?” Jesus says to them,
“What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it.” And when they asked,
“When will the Kingdom come?” Jesus said,
“It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying, ‘Here it is.’ Or ‘There it is.’ Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.”

We have had ample opportunity for doubt, there has been ample wounding. But we may, like Thomas, find that our doubt transforms into resurrection. We may find that the Kingdom is already here. We may find that blessings and miracles can spring from the tomb. We may find our doubting words turning into Alleluias.

Thomas, in the Gospel of John, is also called Didimus, which is Greek for “the twin.” Jesus calls Thomas his twin. If that is true, and we are Thomas’s twin in our doubting, then we know we will have resurrection with our twin, in spite of all our wounds, and all our doubts.

Amen.