This is the Pastor’s Blog for the Service on Sunday April 12th. Included here is the primary Scripture of this message and the Pastor’s notes. Prior to the service it will include an excerpt of the Pastor’s notes and following the service the complete notes will be added.
Scripture: John 20:19-31
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus[a]), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe[b] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Pastor’s Message;
Although a week has passed for us since Easter, the text for today still has us on the first day of the week – resurrection day. In John’s version of the story, Mary Magdalene has seen and spoken to the Risen Christ, and she’s told Peter and the other disciples about her experience.
But the disciples are still confused in spite of Mary’s witness. They’re gathered in the upper room, afraid and hunkered down. John tells us they’ve locked the door “for fear of the Jews.”
We need to recognize this phrase for what it is and what it isn’t: this is not a blanket condemnation of Jews for all time. “The Jews” are not the eternal bad guy – everyone in this story is Jewish. Jesus never converted to Christianity – he was a Jew his whole life. This “us and them” language – “the Jews” and those who follow Jesus – is evidence of a rift – a divorce of sorts – between those who follow Jesus and those who don’t. When John’s gospel was written, this community of Jesus believers was likely isolated and marginalized. They had been thrown out of the synagogue, and found themselves in deep disagreement with other Jews. When John’s gospel was written, it was a very painful time. The book of John reflects this pain.
So here we are with the disciples behind locked doors, huddled in fear, grief and confusion. Jesus appears and offers them peace. He shows them his wounds. The Resurrected Christ bears within his body the pain and trauma of all he has gone through. The Risen One is not an ephemeral, disembodied ghost. His wounds haven’t been wiped clean and waved away with a magic wand.
He’s real, and that’s what Thomas struggles with. He can’t wrap his head around what Mary Magdalene and the disciples are telling him – that they have seen Jesus, that they know him by his wounds, that he’s offered them peace, that he’s given them the Holy Spirit and sent them out into the world.
Thomas is modern humanity wrapped up in an individual, isn’t he? He insists on proof – he’s not going to rely on eyewitness accounts, even if those accounts are from trustworthy sources. Thomas would be right at home in the Enlightenment, during which the scientific method becomes the accepted way to gain empirical knowledge. If something can be seen and observed, it can be quantified and explained. Thomas isn’t going to believe until he can see for himself.
When Thomas gathers with the disciples again a week later, Jesus shows up again. Jesus has caught wind of Thomas’ doubt, and invites him to not only look at the wounds, but to touch them.
It’s astonishing, really, a bit off-putting to think of Thomas sticking his fingers into Jesus’ side. It’s also very intimate.
Our Protestant repertoire of images is fairly limited when compared to the iconography and sculpture of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. We have no sacred hearts or pietas, no crucifixes. We have an empty cross.
An empty cross is starkly beautiful, but it is just that – empty. The image of Jesus’ twisted body has been removed. This makes it easy to skip over the hard stuff.
Many of us have trouble reckoning with woundedness – both our own and those of others. When faced with the suffering of others, we often feel uncomfortable – which is understandable. We don’t want to hurt, and we don’t want others to hurt.
Things get smoothed over, distance is placed between us and wounds — even if those wounds are our own. Think about that internal distance within our own selves, the disassociation that occurs when we don’t allow ourselves to be present with our pain. We become headless bodies in a way, or heads without bodies.
Jesus – both crucified and resurrected – models for us the vulnerability of being present with woundedness. His trauma is visible for all to see, and he invites Thomas to touch those wounds. Yet Jesus still speaks peace. He’s not lashing out in anger at what has happened to him.
Jesus meets Thomas – and us – where he is and where we are, full of doubts, questions, disbelief. Jesus doesn’t belittle Thomas, or chide him, or shame him. Jesus says, “come here, Thomas. Look and touch.” Jesus offers his wounded, transformed and risen self. The Risen Jesus’ vulnerability becomes a source of connection.
One of my all-time favorite network television shows was on less than one season back in 1997. It was called “Nothing Sacred” and was about the life of an inner-city parish. The writers explored all kinds of issues that come up in the life of a Catholic parish and in the life of the priests that serve them. They hit on hot-button issues that offended some, bringing about ad boycotts that ended the show. One of the characters, Father Leo, was a recovering alcoholic with his own wounds and traumas. In a homily, Fr. Leo had this to say about this resurrection appearance:
“I stopped preaching when I lost my faith in the resurrection. It was the wounds that did it, I suppose. You see, when God brought Jesus back from the dead, he left five gaping wounds in his body, and that seemed cruel to me. If [God] was gonna bring Jesus back to life, why didn’t [God] heal the wounds? […] St. Thomas, he had his doubts about the resurrection too. But Jesus came to him; he said, ‘Come here, Thomas, and give me your hand. I want you to put your hand into my wounds and feel that I’m alive.’ That’s what the wounds are for – places for each of us to enter into somebody else’s life. [Wounds] are honorable things, even though most of us spend most of our time trying to hide them.”
Father Leo is wise.
Consider for a moment the things you’d rather people not know about — you know, those things that hurt. Consider the energy we expend trying to hide this pain. Staying busy, filling our days full of diversions, or withdrawing, or amassing stuff or wealth or fill-in-the-blank – anything to keep us from touching those wounds and letting others see them too.
There’s a deep forgetting in all of this – a forgetting of who we are at our core – children of God, cherished in all our diversity and difference, beloved even in the presence of our woundedness. Connecting to Christ’s woundedness and our own is hard, but doing so charts a path before us of transformation, of resurrection.
Our transformation requires that we take a turn inward and take an honest look at what hurts, and this is so hard. But as we take this inward turn, the Risen One comes alongside us and speaks peace into the pain. Paul calls this the “peace that passes all understanding.” It is peace that doesn’t make sense given all the pain, grief and loss. This is the peace of shalom: of health, wholeness, holiness, balance, joy, and right relationships that are just and compassionate. It is peace that turns our wounds into places of connection and healing.
We have been given an amazing gift: the gift of new life, a life marked by shalom in the eye of an often stormy world. We have to walk through the bands of the storm which threaten to unmoor us. The bands of stormy wind will eventually pull us unto the eye, where peace prevails, where we find we aren’t alone, where shame and pain gives way to transformation, connection and resurrection. New life – not just for the Risen One, but for all.
Closing prayer
