Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Yeah, but really? I mean, really, are you sure?
We are still in the season of Easter, it’s a 50 day party after our 40 days of Lent, but it doesn't always make sense. Like grief, rejoicing can be a surprising interruption, but it can’t be mandated or scripted. Even though our liturgy is full of Alleluias at the moment, the faith we hold does not require us to fake good and happy feeling. I mean, for crying out loud, it’s April and we just got a ridiculous amount of snow overnight! How does that make anybody feel good about the state of our ecosystem? Even though we have been telling this story for two thousand years, as though the resurrection is a given, it doesn’t always feel like a true story, does it? Or maybe we’ve gotten so used to it we don’t look for it to challenge us any more, as it first did.
The first disciples, who walked and talked with Jesus each and every day, hid away in a locked room after the resurrection, afraid of their own church, traumatized by another brutal public murder, this one of someone they knew and had pinned so many of their hopes on. As followers of Jesus, then, their lives could also be hung up on public display. In the years that followed, almost all of them met death as martyrs, bearing witness to the story of new life that they had lived. But this first week was not so glamorous as all that. This first week was fearful, doubtful. No small wonder the first thing Jesus said to them, and said to them twice that first night, was ‘peace be with you.’ Their teacher was reported missing from the tomb, had shown up alive as he said he would, and they were terrified.
It didn’t add up. It didn’t compute. It didn’t make any sense, but they knew they had to stay together for safety’s sake, so they locked themselves away to try and make heads or tails of it all. Who knows where Thomas was that first night. Maybe off daring the officials to kill him, too. Maybe weeping alone. Maybe he was in the garden standing vigil at the empty tomb trying to figure it out. But then the disciples told him they had seen the Lord, and we give him a hard time for wanting proof. The others got Jesus with skin on in their presence, why shouldn’t Thomas want the same as they?
Do you ever feel like that? Like everyone else has it all together, has their faith figured out, has their life figured out, and you’re just hitting a wall? “Try this new thing, it’s great!” they say, but you’ve tried so many things and can’t imagine it getting any better. “Oh, you’ve just got to look on the bright side,” they say, or “believe in the power of positive thinking!” and you can only think that positive thinking didn’t stop that drunk driver from getting behind the wheel, that the bright side doesn’t account for getting laid off and being overqualified for any of the open jobs.
When we look at Thomas, we see our own twin in a lot of ways. Where’s the proof? Where’s the place where the rubber hits the road? Where’s the connection between these dreams of heaven and the large negative number on my tax return, or my child’s behavior at school, or the current election news? We’re not asking for any more than the other disciples got. “Blessed are those who have not seen, yet have come to believe,” says Jesus, because so many of us have not seen, and yet so many, for some reason, refuse to give up on believing. Even when institutions have pressed hard against us from every side. So many have been abused by the institutional church, have been abused by other Christians, have been bullied and beaten down and thrown away by their own faith family, why in the world would anyone who belongs to a minority group want to be part of this culture which has held the majority authority for so long? We are in a far different world now than Thomas and those first apostles were. And yet in many ways we are in the same world, because human nature is pretty consistent across history, and Christian faith has never been a guarantee for an easy life. If anything, it makes life more complicated, more difficult, because passion and compassion open us to all kind of injury and heartache. We might just end up equally scarred as our Lord.
Thomas demands proof. Where in my life today does this whole ‘Christ is risen’ thing actually make a difference? Why does it matter to me and my family that some guy was killed two thousand years ago and reportedly rose from the grave three days later, and is also called the Son of God? Why did Thomas leave this locked room to become a missionary to India, traveling so far from home to tell this story? What was it about this man with the scarred hands and side that led so many hundreds of thousands of millions to make the decision they would rather die than either kill or deny Christ? What is it about Jesus the crucified and risen one that compelled my friends Emily and Joe to sit in vigil for 24 hours at the State Capital building from Monday until Tuesday, to encourage those passing a state budget to include a living minimum wage for all? Why does this mystery of the Word made flesh inspire so many to fight for justice, to feed the hungry, to care for the sick and dying? Christians were, for our first generations, known as the people who would care for widows and orphans without expectation of payment, who would bury those dead otherwise left by the side of the road, who would joyfully sell everything they had and live together in community to take care of one another.
Our proof of the resurrection in the here and now comes in those moments where grace takes on flesh and does not leave the suffering alone in their pain. We are, after all, worshiping a God who bears our wounds and does not shy away from our struggle. The risen Christ lives again and will never die, but he lives as one who has already died, who has carried in his body the shame and fear of humanity at war with its own created goodness. This is our ‘proof,’ if and when we must have it, that life continues, that, as Desmond Tutu has said, ‘goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, light is stronger than darkness, life is stronger than death.’
And each and every time we give of ourselves, we are living proof for others that the resurrection is true. And each and every time we are broken and someone else holds us while we fall apart, we are living proof that the resurrection is true. And each and every time we are able to forgive, and each and every time that community is restored, and each and every time that love wins out over fear, coming to us even when we have locked the doors and hidden ourselves away, those ongoing waves of Christ’s resurrection reach out into history with promise and new life, with new hope and with peace.
It doesn't have to make sense, it doesn't have to add up. Love isn’t a reasonable thing, it just happens to be the main thing, the central thing, the everlasting thing, the reality to outlast all of our ups and downs, summers and winters, living and dying. Love enters our locked rooms to speak peace, bring forgiveness, and send us forth to bear witness to love. There is nowhere love will not come to find us, because, believe it or not, Christ is risen.
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