As a progressive Christian, I believe there are many names for God and many ways to a loving God; this article reflects one of those ways. Take from here what works for you. Celebrate life with joy and peace!
Imagine, it’s Easter morning; the disciples are sitting in a room, huddled behind locked doors, waiting for the authorities to come for them next. They were shaking in their boots! In the midst of all their fear and grief, John tells us that Jesus suddenly appeared among them and said, “Peace, be with you.”
Jesus then showed them the marks on his hands and side so they would know it was really him. Now, unfortunately for Thomas, he wasn’t there. We don’t know why. John doesn’t tell us. Maybe he just couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe he was isolating himself and keeping everything and everyone at a distance. Maybe he was in so much pain, and it was his way of dealing with his grief.
Whatever the reason, Thomas could not share their joy of experiencing Jesus in their midst, and no matter what they said to him about how they had seen Jesus (and how exciting that was), nothing would make him open his heart to the hope that Jesus was alive. Nothing – unless he had the chance to see with his own eyes, and touch with his own hands, the marks on Jesus’ body. And, Thomas had the opportunity to do just that, a week later.
Jesus said to him, just as he had said to the others, “Peace be with you, Thomas. Do not doubt, but believe. Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”
Now remember, that even though it seems as if these words were written right after the resurrection, they really weren’t. These words were written to the Early Christian Church, to a generation that lived in a time when there was no one left who could personally testify to having seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. Thomas is being portrayed in John’s Gospel as “Doubting Thomas” as another example of a first-hand witness to the resurrection.
In the play, “Angels in America” by Tony Kushner, there’s a phrase called “the virus of Time.” Kushner calls the virus of time “sleeping creation’s potential for change.” These words are spoken by an angel to Prior, a gay man living with AIDS in the mid ‘80s. Prior doesn’t want to be a part of creation that moves forward anymore, because the progress of time has only brought him too much loss, too much pain, too much grief.
Like Prior, and like Thomas, you and I, too, are caught in “creation’s endless potential for change.” We have to wrestle with it every day and every night of our lives. If we are experiencing time, that means we are alive, and in our living we are each given the opportunity to experience all the wonder, and all the gifts that life has to offer.
And yet, as time marches on (all I have to do is look in the mirror), we can’t hold back time and we can’t hold back change and all kinds of experiences. Where there is life, there is the possibility of joy and passion and connection, and there is also the reality of suffering and pain and sadness. And where there is love, there is also the potential for loss.
Time, the very gift that gives us life and pleasure, also robs us of those we love, because nothing we can do can stop the cycle of life. A powerful line from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes says, “A heart that’s been broken keeps on beating just the same.”
Our hearts do keep on beating, and life continues its journey, sometimes taking away the bad things and bringing positive changes, giving us the chance to grow and heal and make our lives what we want them to be, and sometimes taking all that is precious to us and turning it into nothing but memories that can both comfort and torment us, sometimes at the very same moment.
This thing we call life, with all of its ups and downs was the very challenge facing Thomas, and now some 2,000 years later, it’s the same challenge you and I face every day. Asking questions like: Is it possible to embrace life and cope with loss? How do we go on when our relationships end, when those we love die? How do we keep our hearts open to love when wounds from our past throb with unresolved pain, and when we may have felt forced to shut down long ago just to survive? How do we choose to keep our hearts open to hope? How do we choose to keep our hearts open to each other when it feels as though we just can’t stand to be betrayed by our own vulnerability one more time?
Well, this is where Thomas comes in. Time had come along and robbed Thomas of the one who was, perhaps, his best friend, who showed him what it meant to live life to the fullest. But time had passed, and for Thomas, Jesus was gone, leaving him only with his memories of this man he loved so much.
That is, until the day when Thomas had the chance to touch Jesus’ wounds and in that moment, the resurrection became real for Thomas. Thomas needed to see and to touch Jesus’ wounds to believe in the miracle of new life.
You and I need to see and to touch one another’s wounds to believe in the miracle of new life – new life that has the potential to be born within us again and again.
All of us carry wounds; places in our lives where we have been hurt, betrayed, oppressed, grief-stricken, and paralyzed by fear.
Even Jesus carried scars from all that he experienced. We know that we cannot live life, and take risks and love others, and be ourselves without being wounded as well. And if we keep our wounds to ourselves, if we lock our hearts away in our safe place, the stone will always remain in front of the tomb, and the power of the resurrection will always be something someone else tells us, but that we never really know for ourselves.
Thomas asked for what he needed, and Jesus freely shared the evidence of his pain with him and because of this, Thomas was given hope, and new life, and the ability to love again and live again.
Think about it. Could it be that there is the potential for healing by us sharing our pain and needs with one another? By daring to be vulnerable?
Isn’t that what spiritual community is all about? Jesus came to teach us that the way we live fully in the midst of time is to believe in the power of love and life, giving us the opportunity to share our wounds, and to heal one another’s wounds, and to give hope, and to say to one another in our times of pain and fear, just as Jesus said to Thomas and all the disciples: “Peace, be with you.” Amen.
