John 20:19–31
Presented March 23, 2008, by J.D. Kline
Easter Sunday
I’ve always enjoyed working with words, and one of the side benefits of being a pastor is that I get to put together a weekly sermon. Of course, there are times when the discipline of weekly preparation begins to feel burdensome. But far more frequently, I find myself energized by the process, my faith prodded and strengthened.
As I began to think about today’s sermon, the word synchronicity came to mind, the coming together of seemingly chance events. A few years before my wife Janice’s death, at a time when she was struggling to find her own direction, she read a book by Quaker author Parker Palmer entitled Let Your Life Speak in which Palmer writes of learning to pay attention to the messages our own lives carry. Writes Palmer, “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”
In early December I was planning to go on a five-day prayer and silence retreat, something I do annually, and for whatever reason, Parker Palmer’s book came to mind as a resource that might be helpful. Several times in recent years I had considered reading the book, but this time, it was nowhere to be found—not in my office here at church, and not with my books at home. But about that time the book was donated to our church library, and so I took it along, finding to it be a helpful resource while on retreat.
Palmer writes out of his own struggles, out of his experience with a dark time of depression, and he reminds us that the spiritual journey takes us inward and downward, toward the hard realities of our lives, rather than outward and upward toward the more abstract and intellectual. That is to say, it is as only we walk through our deepest struggles in life, only as we pay attention to the hurts and pains and griefs of our lives, that we are able to break through to something precious, to that which Trappist monk Thomas Merton describes as our “hidden wholeness.”
As I approached my December retreat time, it was with the conviction that I had reached a point in my process of dealing with grief where it was time to explore next steps. The synchronicity came in using a book that Janice had found helpful in coming to terms with unexpected transitions in her life, and for me, too, the book proved a helpful resource as I pondered next steps. I share all this today because of my sense that this matter of coming in touch with our hidden wholeness may well be for us a resurrection moment. Resurrection, you see, is not just an event from the past; it is not simply a question of what happened to the corpse of Jesus. Much more, resurrection is the discovery of new life, of new possibilities, here and now. Resurrection is new hope emerging out of our sometimes agonizing journey through times of uncertainty, times of fear, times of loss, times of grief, times of hurt. Resurrection involves an embracing of a new perspective towards life, a new way of connecting with the world around us, a markedly new way of living and relating in life.
Surely this was the case for the disciple Thomas, the early follower of Jesus who was not present with the other disciples when Jesus appeared that first Easter day, proclaiming, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19, 21). Thomas has sometimes disparagingly been labeled “Doubting Thomas,” as if questioning, searching, and thirsting for deeper understanding are somehow qualities to be avoided. But faith is not a matter of reaching a point of certainty in life. Indeed, faith is quite different; faith is taking the risk of placing our trust in that which cannot be rationally proven, that which frequently cannot even be seen. When Thomas says to his fellow disciples who have seen the risen Christ, “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” (John 20:25), is he not giving expression to something he may not yet be fully aware of—a deep inner yearning for his own experience of relationship with the spirit of Jesus? Faith is not the opposite of doubt; truth be told, faith often emerges out of the honest expression of doubt, out of a dissatisfaction with easy answers, out of a genuine seeking for something more.
Parker Palmer reminds us that “each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up.” So it was for Thomas, one week after giving voice to skepticism about the experience of the other disciples, when the risen Jesus appears to him—this Jesus for whom closed doors apparently create no obstacle. When Thomas has his own encounter with the risen Christ, all of life is transformed. One door is closed, but the rest of the world opens before Thomas. And as it does, Thomas senses that a great deal will now be demanded of him. When Thomas makes his declaration of faith in Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” (v. 28), he is doing much more than invoking proper words of faith. With that declaration Thomas recognizes that Easter faith goes well beyond a matter of right belief about who Jesus is; even more, Easter compels us to question what it means for us to be raised with Jesus, what it means for us to experience our own time of awakening to life, what it means for us to embrace our own renewal of faith, what it means to journey upon our own transformation into the very persons God originally created us to be. United Methodist writer Robert Raines reminds us,
Easter is not magic, but miracle; not chemistry, but mystery. Easter happens to you and me whenever Jesus takes us by surprise, in some moment of awakening, causing doors that were locked to swing open. There is a moment of realization, of looking in the eyes and knowing, “I am loved, I love you, it is possible, a new future is being born.”
A new future is being born. But sometimes that new future does not come without pain, and it seldom comes to us in the flash of a moment. Truth is, Thomas’ skepticism and doubt likely had less to do with his need for rational proof than with this gnawing and growing sense that were he to embrace the truth of the resurrection, much would indeed be demanded of him. A moving out in new directions. A letting go of those things that keep him from taking the risk of faithful living. An entering into the very work of Christ—of proclaiming a new way of living in the midst of a world satisfied with business as usual. Doing justice, loving tenderly, walking humbly with God, as the prophet Micah put it centuries ago. Loving God with all one’s heart and soul and mind and strength, and loving neighbor as oneself. Living, as the early Brethren asserted, for the glory of God and the good of our neighbors. Much expected of us, indeed.
Parker Palmer suggests that the seasons of the year serve as a wise metaphor for the movements of one’s life. Winter, asserts Palmer, reminds us that times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living things—that even when it appears as if nothing is happening, God may well be at work, quietly, unobtrusively, beneath the surface. “Winter clears the landscape, however brutally,” writes Palmer, “giving us a chance to see ourselves and each other more clearly, to see the very ground of our being.” And then, just when you think you can take no more, spring stands on the horizon. But as Palmer reminds us, “before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck.”
My spiritual director has a lovely retreat center, but the last time I was there, not long ago, melting snow had created a significant amount of mud. Still, as I was leaving my session, she noted an early spring flower pushing its way through the leaves and the remaining snow—one tiny blossom emerging out of apparent chaos. Is that not an image of Easter resurrection—new life pushing its way through the mud and the muck, reminding us of doors opening us to new possibilities?
Vaclav Havel, playwright and dissident who later became president of the Czech Republic after the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe, addressed a session of our United States Congress in 1990, soon after that remarkable time of transition. While lamenting the legacy of human suffering under communist rule, Havel went on to assert,
It has [also] given us something positive: a special capacity to look, from time to time, somewhat further than those who have not undergone this bitter experience. Someone who cannot move and live a normal life because he is pinned under a boulder has more time to think about his hopes than someone who is not trapped in this way.