2 EASTER, YEAR B
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY
19 APRIL 2009
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Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31
Christ is risen. Easter morning has come. And here we are today, a week later. What was Easter like for us? What does “Christ is risen” mean?
It occurs to me that if I were to ask each of you, and me, those questions, there might be as many different answers as there are people here today. What does it mean to you and to me that Christ is risen?
It takes Thomas to get us to focus on this. Always, the second Sunday of Easter, it’s Thomas in John’s Gospel who rivets us on the matter of faith and belief and resurrection. “How can I believe?” Thomas asks. How can we believe in the resurrection? How do we practice living our lives as if we believe it? How do we PRACTICE resurrection in our lives? There’s a wonderful book by Nora Gallagher called, Practicing Resurrection, about her life after her beloved brother dies. Our presiding bishop has a chapter in her book called “Practicing Resurrection.” How do we make the resurrection of Jesus a part of our lives by practicing it?
Here’s Thomas, a person who’d actually walked and talked with Jesus, who knew as much as anybody about Jesus. Who’d listened to his stories and his teachings, who’d watched him as he worked, who’d been with him through thick and thin. And here he is, like us, a week after that first Easter Day, in a room with his friends. Like us, today! The other disciples had actually seen the risen Lord in that very same room a week earlier, on Easter night itself, but Thomas wasn’t there, so he missed it. And word had gotten out that one of the women had seen him, too. But Thomas didn’t completely buy it. He had to hear Jesus and see him and touch his wounds for himself. Thomas is called the “twin.” Whose twin? Maybe, as one writer puts it, maybe he’s the twin of each one of us, asking questions we ourselves want to ask.
Faith, that is, believing, that is, trusting, comes in many forms, doesn’t it? There are many, many degrees of faith. Thomas opens the door, giving us permission to acknowledge that. Some of us here today may have faith as solid as a rock, and it has comforted us for ages ever since some good soul taught it to us. Others of us may want like the dickens to believe, like Thomas. But we can’t just yet. We’re too full of questions. Thomas shows us today what Frederick Buechner calls “ants in the pants” faith. Jesus is his main man, and Thomas wants like anything to believe in his resurrection, but he’s not satisfied unless he has an answer; he needs to see and hear and touch for himself. Thomas wants to experience Jesus’ wounds for himself. So for that he has been forever labeled as “doubting.” As if wanting to experience Jesus’ torn flesh is somehow a sign of weakness. In fact, I believe it’s the opposite.
I believe that the “ants in the pants” way is a strong and absolutely necessary part of faith. Seeking Jesus’ wounds IS a faithful response to the Easter news. Practicing resurrection means seeking direct experience of Jesus’ wounds. Being so close to Jesus that we reach out to feel his grueling suffering.
Let me tell you why I think this is true.
Jesus’ resurrection came as a result of his cross. He had to die in order to be resurrected. We can’t see the risen Christ unless we’ve seen the crucified Jesus. That’s why we Anglicans display crosses with Jesus’ body on them, crucifixes, as well as empty crosses, which signify the joyous news of his having risen. We need both. Like Thomas, we must see and know the wounds in order to grasp the reality of resurrection.
We are all in that room with Thomas and the other disciples. We are all in this together, folks, no matter how we might describe the various ways we believe. We are all part of the Body of Christ, we’re a community, through our baptism into him. Diverse as we are, we’re all in it together.
How can we touch Jesus’ wounds, all these millennia later? All we need to do is to look around us into the face of another human being. And really listen to that person, try to experience what that person experiences. Because the wounds of the people around us ARE the wounds of Jesus himself. The wounds and pain of the people we live with, people we live next to, people we find out about on television or in the newspapers. Even people we don’t think we have much in common with—as Katharine Jefferts Schori describes it, “the prickly proximity of near enemies.” We promise in our baptism to seek Christ in all persons. The wounds of others ARE the wounds of Jesus. That’s where we discover our suffering and risen Lord.
“As you ignore the least of these members of my family, you are ignoring me,’ said Jesus. But if you take care of them, you are taking care of me.”
And there’s another thing. God’s Body, Jesus’ family, includes, I believe, not simply the human family but the whole earth and all who dwell therein, and thereon. On Earth Day, Wednesday of this week, the 29th anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970, we will remember the gift we have been given of the environment that sustains us. Can we expand our imaginations into believing that the wounds endured by the earth and air and water and all the creatures that sustain us are wounds inflicted on God’s own self, wounds shared by Jesus? And that, by reaching out to them we will be reaching out to Jesus himself?
Seeing can be believing! Seeing, as in reaching out to feel what others are feeling, especially their misery. Seeking out the real struggles and pain around us that will lead us deep into the wounds of Jesus. “Show me, so I can believe,” said Thomas our Twin.
The disciples were in the room, holed up there out of fear for the authorities. Entombed there, someone before me has said, immobilized. Jesus broke out of HIS tomb and so he could enter into theirs. And he breathed on them. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he said. Then he sent them out, releasing them from that room, their tomb, their fear.
May we, too, share in the resurrection freedom by reaching out to the world around us, God’s very Body itself, insisting on seeing and knowing those broken parts, especially the broken parts, letting the power of the resurrection work its way through us. Let Jesus’ broken Body feed us in the Eucharist, helping us live his risen life, making us and the world around us whole. Lord Jesus, help us practice resurrection!