Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 118:14-29 or Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31
preached by Jane Barter Moulaison on April 15th, 2007
The Easter appearance to the disciple Thomas is a much loved and a well-known story. Many times we have probably heard sermons preached on “Doubting Thomas.” In many ways, Thomas becomes the great patron saint of modernity. He is interpreted as doubting the authority of the disciples; of having a great scientific mind, wanting empirical proof of the resurrection which his friends proclaimed.
So, like the good rationalist he is, he declares: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his ands, and pit my finer in the mark of the nails and my hands in his side I will not believe.”
And, of course, it is indeed possible that it was this kind of skepticism that made him a “Doubting Thomas”; but I am intrigued by his request.
• Why the nail marks in his hands?
• Why his pierced side?
• Why did he wish to touch those places of his Lord’s woundedness?
• Why did he not just wish to see him and to cling to him, as Mary Magdalene had?
• Why did he not long to see evidence of his glory rather than the marks of his crucifixion?
Let’s keep this question in the back of our mind for a bit while I tell another Easter story.
It is early morning on Easter Sunday just west of Kandahar. A caravan of Canadian troops are traveling; it has been quiet for some time now. Some no doubt are thinking about the holiday; remembering family traditions; thinking of their kids and hiding Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. Wondering if it is Spring-time yet in New Brunswick. Then a thud and a sudden explosion. Then light, now panic, now terror. Then the silence. Six men killed instantly.
Their names flashed across televisions, were heard on radios, interrupting Easter holiday celebrations.
• Sgt. Donald Lucas, 31, of Burton, N.B.
• Cpl. Aaron E. Williams, 23, of Lincoln, N.B.
• Pte. Kevin Vincent Kennedy, 20, of St. Lawrence, N.L.
• Pte. David Robert Greenslade, 20, of Saint John, N.B.
• Cpl. Christopher Paul Stannix, 24, of Dartmouth, N.S.
• Cpl. Brent Poland, 37, of Camlachie, Ont.
Half a world away, in Gagetown, military officials spent most of Easter day tracking down the families of the soldiers killed in the attack. Three days later, more terrible, most un-Easter-like news. This time it comes to Petawawa Ontario. Master Cpl. Allan Stewart, 30, and Trooper Patrick James Pentland, 23. Also dead.
We can hardly fathom the loss of young life; we cannot make sense of the Easter message in the midst of continued violence.
Perhaps it was like this for the disciple Thomas two thousands years ago in that locked meeting place.
Perhaps it was like this for Thomas who had seen enough devastation, had witnessed enough terror that he could not imagine anything being otherwise.
As we hear the story of the empty tomb, we often forget the terror and the violence that gave birth to it.
We shut out the violence of our own world we become desperate for hope for a happier ending, but Thomas does not forget: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hands in his side I will not believe.”
• Unless I know that the one whom you claim has appeared to you is no ghostly spirit, but still bears the marks of his vulnerability--
• Unless this man who has appeared to you still carries his woundedness and our own upon him--
• Unless this one whom you say has come can show me a way out of this endless cycle of violence and suffering, I will not believe.
Thomas’ doubt is not his intellectual curiosity, but his grief; his lament. Why else would he want to see his Lord’s wounds still?
And in the midst of Thomas’ grief, and our own, Jesus enters into the locked up places of our world, into our hearts broken in grief, into our battle zones, and proclaims, “Peace!”
What kind of a peace is it that he proclaims?
Certainly, it is not a peace that would suggest that after his appearance the disciples will live lives free of discord, freed from the threat of violence. Our Acts reading for this morning dispels such illusions. It is not the peace that is the achievement of political machinations; it is not the peace of a final military conquest; it is not the peace that the UN hopes for once the Taliban finally loses its power or resolve to plant one more road-side bomb.
Christ offers, instead, the peace that is himself. The prince of peace. The first fruit of a new creation. He offers Thomas his resurrected body, which Thomas, and we too will one day share. A body that has borne all the iniquities and violence that the world gives; and yet a body that lives. And so he invites Thomas to touch him, to probe his hand into his very wounds, and to know that he is no ghost—that his peace is no illusion. “Thomas, do not doubt but believe.”
• Believe that the kingdom is here in your midst, Thomas.
• Believe that the Spirit that I have sent is the pouring out of a new creation; a creation of peace that is waiting to be born.
• And receive, Thomas, this gift so that you and your friends might be emissaries of this peace. A peace that comes through the very wounds that you have touched. “Do not doubt, but believe.”
I cannot imagine how this very simple message, “Do not doubt, but believe,” is conveyed by the priests and pastors in Gagetown and Petawawa. I do not know how the good news of Easter is proclaimed meaningfully to those who have suffered such a loss, but I suspect that Jesus’ words to Thomas have much to teach us about suffering. There was a news story recently on the so-called collateral damage inflicted upon civilian families back home as children suffer the fear and anxiety of having parents in combat. And, as many of you have probably seen, the government has committed some money to bolster the scant resources for military families, particularly in Petawawa, so that they might learn to cope with their fear and loss. I was raised in a military family, and so I have a great deal of sympathy for the efforts of these counselors and family centres.
But what I would suggest is that what the church has to offer is something quite different from the capacity to manage or cope in a world of violence and in a world of grieving. What the church has to offer is the patient kind of ministry that Jesus has displayed in his care for Thomas.
Jesus does not deny Thomas or rebuke him in his doubt, but like his appearance to Mary, Jesus reveals himself uniquely to him; calling Mary by name, and allowing Thomas the time to touch and probe. In our doubt, in our suffering, in our anguish and loss of faith, Jesus calls us by name, and he says, “Do not doubt, but believe.” This is no rebuke but an invitation. And it is an invitation that is accompanied by various gifts so that the pain and doubt may not be unbearable.
First, the risen Christ offers his presence to the end of time through the power of the Holy Spirit. In a moment reminiscent of the book of Genesis, Christ breathes upon the disciples, just as God breathes life into Adam. In this new creation, the disciples are filled with the Spirit, and with the Spirit’s power to act in God’s name. This is the gift that we have been given as the church--to be agents of reconciliation in a broken world. Not so that we can merely manage our loss, but so that we might become whole, so that all might enjoy Christ’s peace.
***
The second gift is related to this. The Church is given the gift of Christ’s wounded body, just as Thomas was, to see, to touch to partake in. It is this body that we take into our hands as we participate in our eucharistic meal. And it is through this body that we are transformed, as our world awaits transformation. To partake in the eucharist in a world of violence and terror, is to partake in a free gift of life, in which brokenness is made whole, in which the many become one. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from his prison cell in the last days of his life, indeed the last days of the war, wrote these words to his friend:
Not only action, but also suffering is a way to freedom. In suffering, the deliverance consists in our being allowed to put the matter out of our own hands into God’s hands. In this sense death is the crowning of human freedom. Whether the human deed is a matter of faith or not depends on whether we understand our suffering as an extension of our action and a completion of freedom. (LPP)There is something quite right that the church does when it remembers its war dead, because it acknowledges the courage of those who recognize that suffering for others is a way to freedom. Yet, that freedom is now only partially available to us; there remains in our lives, countless ways in which Christ still bears the marks of humanity on his hands, in his side. What we do when we proclaim the resurrection in the midst of war and strife is that we remember the wounds, of those who have died far too young, and we remember that those wounds are borne for us by God, and that God has given the Church the power to likewise transform that suffering into promise. Just as there is nothing in the lives of the young men that will not be taken up by Christ, their deaths, like ours too will be, represent a release from the terror and fear that is still part of the life in the times in between.
It is difficult to celebrate Easter when sometimes our world looks much the same. Yet we have before us a table, a sanctuary, in which Christ offers his peace, offers himself. Touch and see and taste how the world has changed, and become that peace that Christ grants. Do not doubt, but believe.
From Easter, 1916, by W.B. Yeats
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
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