Sermon for Easter 2,
Year C
St. Philip’s In The
Hills Parish, Tucson, AZ
The Rev. Vicki Hesse, April 7, 2013
For Readings, click
here
– John 20:19-31
I speak to you in the
name of One God+, Creator Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen
In John
Irving’s novel “A Prayer for Owen
Meany”[1],
the
narrator John talks to his friend, Owen Meany.
They discuss
the meaning of belief and of God.
In one
scene, at the schoolyard,
Owen
points to a gray granite statue
of Mary
Magdalene as twilight falls.
When it
has become so dark that the statue
is no
longer visible,
Owen
asks John if he knows that the statue is still there.
John
says that of course, he knows, but Owen keeps pushing.
“You
have no doubt she’s there?” Owen nagged at me.
“Of
course I have no doubt!” I said.
“But
you can’t see her - you could be wrong,” he said.
“No,
I’m not wrong - she’s there, I know she’s there!” I yelled at him.
“You
absolutely know she’s there - even though you can’t see her?” he asked me.
“Yes,”
I screamed.
“Well,
now you know how I feel about God,” said Owen Meany.
“I
can’t see him - but I absolutely know he is there!”
This character, Owen Meany, models the kind of
faith
that spills out of the gospel text we read
today.
Owen’s full and complete faith in God is shown
in how he “does not need to see,
does not need signs and wonders; yet
he believes and orients his whole life around this
belief.”[2]
Today we
encounter Thomas and his infamous “Doubts.”
In the
Easter gospel stories we heard of many folks
who saw
and then believed.
Mary
Magdalene, Peter and The Beloved Disciple, and the disciples on the road to Emmaus
saw and
believed in Jesus through their own experiences,
such as
when they shared in prayers and the breaking of bread.
And in
today’s reading,
Jesus appeared
among the disciples and
proclaimed
“Peace be with you.”
In that
visit, he showed them his hands and his side
(the
disciples saw his body) and the disciples rejoiced.
Unfortunately,
Thomas was not there during this visit.
And, because
Thomas did not see Jesus himself,
he did
not believe.
"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,”.[3]
Jesus
returned the following week and
(again
arrived through shut doors)
invited
Thomas to examine his wounds up close.
As soon
as Thomas saw Jesus,
Thomas
exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!”
It is
unfair that Thomas takes the rap as a “doubter.”
No one
else in John's Easter account has
believed
without seeing.
Well, the
Beloved Disciple comes close,
as he
believed simply upon seeing
the
empty tomb and Jesus' grave-clothes.
So why
should we be so hard on Thomas
for
seeking the same chance
that
everyone else had, to see and then believe?
Here’s
the thing.
The trouble
is not that Thomas “doubted” Jesus,
the real
rub is that he rejected his friends’ testimony –
the very
friends with whom Thomas shared his life.
The trouble
is Thomas shattered the love and trust
within
the faithful community – that love and trust
is a
bedrock of expression
for the
work of Christ in their midst.
The trouble
is that Thomas emphatically expressed
that he
had to see it for himself –
and that
was a powerful sting for his faith community.
He
basically dis’d his friends and annulled
their
community values,
saying
that his friends’ eyes and his friends’ fingers
were not
enough.
In
recognizing the trouble,
I began
to wonder how I, and we,
do not
trust our faithful companions.
Have we
heard ourselves say recently, as I have,
“I’ll
believe it when I see it!”.
What
does that say about my beliefs?
If love
and trust are
a
bedrock of expression for the work of Christ in our midst,
how am
I, how are we, holding back too?
Without
love and trust in my faith community,
how can
I, or we, with our whole heart,
seek and
serve Christ in every person or
strive
for justice and peace among all people or
respect
the dignity of every human being?
Perhaps,
our mistrust of others is not because of
any
active choice we make,
but
stems from societal pressures.
We are
not enough.
We are
concerned what others might say.
When we feel
fragile, uncertain, and isolated (vulnerable)
we tend
to want to “see it for ourselves.”
Brené Brown, professor of social work at Univ. of Houston,
studies
how our response to vulnerability
gets in
the way of relationships and mutuality.
She
says, quote,
“Vulnerability
is …the first thing I look for in you,
and the
last thing I'm going to show you."
If we believe
that to love and trust each other
in community
is as a bedrock of expression of Christ,
we need
to engage this paradox of vulnerability.
Counter-intuitively,
the more vulnerable
you are
with someone,
the more
likely you are to find a connection. [4]
In the
Gospel,
it
seemed that Thomas did not want
to appear
vulnerable among his friends.
He felt
uncertain and
isolated
as the only one who had not seen.
That mistrust
broke down their community.
And, DESPITE
his actions,
despite Thomas’s
dis’ing his friends,
despite
his questions,
Jesus saw him.
And
Jesus believed in him.
In that
moment,
Jesus engaged
his own vulnerability –
his
hands and his side – his wounds.
In that
moment, Jesus made the first move
toward
reconciliation with Thomas
without
any effort on Thomas’s part,
and
Jesus saw and believed him.
Diana
Butler Bass[5],
explores how
the word
“believe” has undergone
a
striking change in usage over time.
“To believe”
translated in Latin as opinor or
something like 'opinion.'
Yet, in religious usage, “to
believe” translated in Latin as credo,
Something
like "I set my heart upon' or 'I give my loyalty to.'
She
writes,
“In
medieval English, the concept of credo
was
translated as 'believe.'
That
means roughly the same thing as,
in
German, belieben,
'to
prize, treasure, or hold dear.
That comes
from the root word Liebe, 'love'.
Thus, in
early English,
to
'believe' was to 'belove' something or someone
as an
act or trust or loyalty.
Belief
was not an intellectual opinion..."
Thus, Jesus
saw Thomas. And “beloved” him,
which
emphatically and strikingly fueled Thomas’s response,
“My Lord
and my God!”
Sufi
mystic Rumi once said,
“The
wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
In this
interaction, Jesus saw Thomas’s wounds of pride
and
entered them with light and love.
Today’s good news is that Jesus sees us and “beloves”
us.
Jesus sees our wounds and enters them with light.
Jesus sees us and believes in us in deep, profound ways.
Meister Eckhart[6]
once said,
“There is a place in the soul
that neither time, nor space, nor any created thing can
touch."
That means that God, in Jesus,
knows that your identity despite your wounds.
God, in Jesus, lets light into that place in you
where you have never been wounded,
where there's still a sureness in you, and
where there is a confidence and tranquility in you.[7]
That’s love.
Fr. Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest in Los Angeles
who heads Homeboy Industries,
employing former gang members in a variety of businesses.
Jose is one of those former gang members
and is now a man in recovery.
Jose explained at a recent training that as a child,
he had been beaten. Every. Single. Day.
He said that he had to wear three T-shirts to school–
well into his adult years
because he was ashamed of his wounds.
But now, Jose says, his wounds are his friends.
“I welcome my wounds, I run my fingers over my
wounds.”
Jose says,
“How can I help the wounded
if I don't welcome my own wounds?"
In Jose’s life, in his broken journey
of fleeing gangs and now seeking to better the world,
Jesus came and saw his wounds,
saw that place in his soul
that neither time nor space had touched,
and “beloved” him.
We all have wounds.
Jesus, welcomes them and touches them and heals
them.
God, through Jesus, has already made the first move
by inviting you here today, behind these shut doors,
to know him and be his beloved.
In the novel A
Prayer for Owen Meany,
Owen believes in God and God’s work in his life,
without clear-cut evidence or proof.
His lifelong friend John does not have the same belief
or strong opinions.
What John does have is a confidence in his friend –
and that carries him
through his own skepticism and into a new life.
In this
way, today,
we know
how blessed we are
who have
not seen Jesus and
yet have
come to believe – and belove,
as Jesus
has believed in us, first.
Amen
[1] Inspired by Feasting
on the Word, Second Sunday of Easter, Nancy Claire Pittman’s Homiletical
Perspective p. 397.
[2] Ibid., p. 399
[3] Portions inspired by Greg Carey’s “Why Our Bodies
Matter” in April 3, 2012 Huffington Post,
at http://huff.to/YYKAMC
[4] Cited at “The Takeaway,” on September 17, 2012
at http://bit.ly/Y3OnFb
on April 5, 2013
[5] Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion (New
York, Harper-Collins, 2012) p. 117
[6] the 14th-century German mystic
[7] Krista Tippett interview of John O’Donohue, cited
at http://bit.ly/10qMdT5 on April 6, 2013
