Locked
John 20:19-31
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The who’s rock opera, Tommy, is about a boy who as a child watches his father shoot another man. The experience is so traumatic for him that he retreats into a near catatonic state, unable to see, hear, or speak with the world around him. While it’s doubtful that The Who’s lead guitarist Pete Townsend had today’s gospel lesson in mind when he wrote it, here in the twentieth chapter of John’s gospel we encounter another Tommy; better known as Thomas- one of the twelve. Like the boy who would go on to become a pinball wizard, Thomas is suffering the effects of his own trauma; one that limits his ability to hear, and see, and engage the world around him. Thomas isn’t catatonic in the same way that Tommy is, but he is cut off, in a sense, from what is happening around him.
I had a friend who said he refused to pick on Thomas from the pulpit. In the biblical shorthand that too often passes for real study that is what happens to poor Thomas. He’s never just Thomas, he’s “doubting” Thomas. Call something into question, raise a doubt about something someone has said, a plan that’s been made, and what do people call you- a doubting Thomas. It’s not a compliment. It’s even worse in a religious context where the simple act of questioning some detail of the faith, some confessional claim is met with the admonishment not to be a doubting Thomas. All of which is patently unfair, because Thomas isn’t the first and he won’t be the last to find that while the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection sounds wonderful, it strains credulity to the breaking point.
According to John, when Mary Magdalene finds the tomb empty, she wrings her hands at the thought that someone has moved Jesus’ lifeless corpse. Peter looks into the tomb, sees the grave clothes neatly folded and walks away unable to understand just what it means. In Luke’s gospel, the word from the women who announce to the other disciples that Jesus has been raised is greeted as an idle tale. Fake news. Thomas isn’t the only one who has a hard time getting past the trauma of what he’s seen- the dead and mutilated body of his teacher laid in the tomb- in order to believe something that he hasn’t. And Thomas, as we’ll see, at least has an excuse, whereas in Matthew’s gospel we’re told that the eleven go to a mountain in Galilee and when they saw him they worshipped him; but some doubted. They’re standing right in front of him. They can turn to the person next to them and ask, “are you seeing what I’m seeing.” And still, some doubted. So it isn’t just Thomas.
What John tells us at the outset of this reading is that on that first Easter evening, after all the running and the tears and the word from Mary that she had, in fact, seen the Lord; even after all that, the doors are still locked out of fear. Those simple words from Mary, “I have seen the Lord,” that announced a whole new creation weren’t enough to wipe from the disciples’ minds the threats, the violence, the pain and the loss that they had already experienced. That’s the funny thing about the various security systems and protocols that we employ out of fear, they don’t just lock out whatever it is that we’re afraid of, they also lock us in. So that all we are left with is ourselves and our fear. Our Tommy, Thomas, isn’t the only one of the remaining eleven who is cut off from what is happening- the disciples are too, and by their own choice. But then, there isn’t a security system out there that is any kind of match for the power and peace of Christ when he comes. If, as Peter preaches at the outset of the book of Acts, not even death itself could hold on to Jesus, there is no way that the deadbolts we throw across our doors, or our hearts for that matter, are going to keep him out.
It reminds me of the writer Anne Lamotte’s unlikely conversion story.
She wen to college on a tennis scholarship, but drank too much and developed bulimia and ended up dropping out after two years. Se moved back to the Bay Area where she was from and began writing for magazines and even published a couple of novels. But the drinking only got worse and she picked up a serious drug habit along the way as well. One night alone in her room, as it was all taking its terrible toll on her body, she writes,
“I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner… the feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there- of course there wasn’t. But after awhile in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this. And I was appalled- I thought about my life and my brilliant progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”
This is where Jesus finds us, locked inside the kind of woundedness and fear that would rather die than be changed. In the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia- The Last Battle- everyone is living in an Eden-like paradise, but the dwarves don’t believe it. The powers of darkness and evil have been overcome and a new day is dawning. In the middle of a world in full bloom stands a circle of dwarves who do not see any of it. The dwarves were for the dwarves, they said, and refused to be taken in, refused to believe the humbug that didn’t make any sense to them. Instead of blue sky, the trees and the flowers, the saw nothing, convinced that they were stuck in the pitch-black of a smelly little stable. When the great lion, Aslan himself, produces a feast of food and wine, they think they’re eating raw turnips and drinking dirty water out of a donkey’s trough.
Into that woundedness walks Jesus, who breathes his peace and offers his wounds for their inspection. Who knows why Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus showed up the first time? Maybe he wasn’t as afraid as the rest of them. Or maybe he was keeping his distance, playing it safer than all of them; not just cut off from what was happening, but cut off from the risk of being caught in the same room with known associates of that crucified Messiah. Cut off as he is, then, it is no wonder that he cannot believe the fantastic story told by those in the room, how Jesus showed them his wounds and then breathed into them the Spirit of peace and forgiveness. Thomas doesn’t want to take their word for it. He wants the chance to examine the wounds for himself. That’s his prerequisite for belief. That’s what he thinks it will take to convince him that something revolutionary has indeed taken place. Then Jesus steps through one more locked door and offers Thomas exactly what he has asked for. “See me,” says Jesus, “feel me.” This is what Easter means. It means that Jesus won’t be contained by death, and he won’t be stopped by all of the security systems we put into place to protects us from what we fear. He won’t be stopped by our doubt and conditions for belief. He just keeps coming to find us, coming to offer us peace and the Holy Spirit; keeps opening our eyes to the signs of his presence in our woundedness by sharing his own wounds.
A pastor I know was in the grocery story on the Holy Saturday, the dark day before Easter dawns. He was trying to remember the kind of foods his grown kids liked to eat because they had come home to visit for the Easter Holiday. He ran into a parishioner who said he was there to buy ice cream. The man’s wife was in the midst of an extended struggle with cancer. She hadn’t had much of an appetite lately, but that night she was hungry. So her husband ran out to the store to buy her favorite ice cream. They talked briefly, and then went on with their shopping. The next day at church the husband found his pastor to tell him that his wife’s favorite ice cream had been on sale; buy one, get one free. They guy was an accountant, and very rational and level-headed by nature. But buy-one-get-one-free, he told his pastor, was a sign.
Easter isn’t something we can make ourselves believe if only we can see it for ourselves. Easter is the belief that won’t be stopped by fear and doors locked tight. Easter is the belief that won’t stop coming to seek us out when we are wounded and find it impossible to see for ourselves. Easter is Christ risen indeed, not just in spite of our doubts but in the midst of them too; Christ who sees us, touches us, and heals us, that we too might see him and proclaim, “My Lord and my God.”