John 20:19-31
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A few weeks ago Judy and I went to San Diego for a surprise birthday party for an old friend who happens to be a former pastor of Immanuel – Gary Wilburn. It was the first time we saw him after he had been diagnosed with ALS – Lou Gehrig’s disease – an illness that one by one unplugs all the body’s energy sources for making our muscles work. Gary’s body looked like that is what was happening. His chest was collapsed, his thin stomach was sagging, and it was hard for him to catch his breath. But I was struck by the continued strength of Gary’s passion for ministry. He had just published his first book entitled The God I don’t believe. Gary couldn’t stop talking about the importance of progressive Christians taking action to counteract damage being done by fundamentalists. Clearly he would agree with a statement I recently heard attributed to theologian John Dominick Crossan. “Remembering that Jesus sits on the right hand of God, if you are looking for God, go find Jesus and keep moving to the left!”
Anyway, back at the party, at one point all the guests sat down so that Gary & his wife Bev could share with us how they were responding to the disease. Gary was hoping to remain strong enough to participate in an experimental treatment that involves placing electrodes on the diaphragm that can be controlled by a small box worn at the waist. The electrodes would be activated by electricity stored in the box, which would cause the diaphragm to contract, which in turn compresses and releases the lungs, which is what happens every time we breathe. The experiment basically consists of plugging a key muscle into a new energy source.
When Jesus walked into the room where the disciples were huddled in fear, grief, confusion, guilt and anger, he found them afflicted with a spiritual version of Lou Gehrig’s disease: all their spiritual muscles had been unplugged because of the debilitating emotions they felt as a result of the threat the crucifixion signaled for their own lives. In the dark, confusing days immediately following Jesus' execution at the hands of Roman soldiers & the instigation of the Judean authorities, they were probably asking themselves, "how long do you think we can last?" William Sloan Coffin might have said to them what he said to his own congregation: “The primary religious task these days is to try to think straight… You can’t think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart’s a stone, you can’t have decent thoughts – either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind.” (Quoted on UCC lectionary webpage for this Sunday) The disciples were seeking safety, and the truth came instead. The truth empowered them to love.
The disciples weren’t only seeking safety because of fear. They were also incredibly sad for the loss not only of their teacher and leader but of their hopes for the salvation from God that they had come to expect. “Why would God let this happen?” The feelings of guilt must also have been tremendous. They had all run away, abandoned their teacher at his hour of greatest need. On top of all that, they must have felt overwhelming anger that might have bubbled up into conflicts among themselves. Novelist Walter Wangerin imagines a scene in which James and Peter are about to physically pounce on each other over an argument right at the moment that Jesus appeared. So what did Jesus do when he arrived on that scene? He breathed on them, and spoke the words, “Peace be with you.” He plugged them into a new energy source: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” That is John’s version of Pentecost; & it happened in the evening after the morning of the empty tomb.
Heidi Neumark is a Lutheran pastor who wrote a book entitled Breathing Spaces while she was pastoring a church in the Bronx. I remember meeting Heidi early in her ministry when Judy and I were visiting some friends who are also Lutheran pastors ministering in the Bronx. Heidi describes the connection between spirituality & breathing in a graphic way. “Those who study the science of breath emphasize the importance of breathing from the diaphragm rather than the chest. Shallow, rapid chest breathing is related to our fight or flight response. Slow, deep breathing from the diaphragm channels fresh, energizing oxygen into the far recesses of the lungs, the blossoming tips of each branch of the bronchial tree, called alveoli.”
Then she gets personal: “My alveoli were not flowering as they should. I felt short of breath, my throat clenched, the tracheal trunk clogged and shrunk. It is a feeling that I get in certain dreams: I am stuck in a tight space, with a small hole out of which I must climb, but I can’t get through. Fear plunders the thinning air. I was crying easily, losing patience with the children, having no resistance, walking around without skin, lost to myself.” But then she did something important: she asked herself what was going on. “Was this the beginning of burnout? It might have been, but it wasn’t. It was the beginning of this book. Writing would keep me from going over the edge again. Writing became a door to contemplation and a channel for grief.” (p 97-98)
Jesus helps the disciples make the same connection between the need for healing on the one hand, and the need to express ones vocation on the other. He repeats the words, “Peace be with you. The first time is about healing their wounds by showing them his. The second time is about calling forth their vocation by adding, “as God sent me so I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit.”
The connection is deep. It was no coincidence that Heidi wrote a book out of her own need for healing. It was tied intimately into who she was. Likewise, the followers of Jesus received a calling that emerged directly from their own need for the healing power of forgiveness that had been accomplished in the resurrection. So their commission was, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, stated this clearly: "There is no hope of understanding the Resurrection outside the process of renewing humanity in forgiveness. We are all agreed that the empty tomb proves nothing. We need to add that no amount of apparitions, however well authenticated, would mean anything either, apart from the testimony of forgiven lives communicating forgiveness." At least for the disciples, the resurrection was an experience of forgiveness. They had abandoned Jesus, becoming complicit with his murderers. The fact that the resurrection was happening to them was an experience of forgiveness for them that became a vocation of forgiveness.
Jesus’ followers are given wisdom, energy, creativity and authority to enact resurrection in acts of healing, wholeness and transformation. Sometimes this can take the form or convicting our nation and its values and leadership for our violence & our disregard of poverty, starvation, global warming, and economic uncertainty. At other times it will mean standing for life as “God-breathers” in our world, exhaling hope, spiritual vitality, and relational healing. (Bruce Epperly, Process and Faith Lectionary Studies) Wendell Berry says we are called to practice resurrection by breathing God’s presence – embracing and sharing it with the life-giving power of the Easter Christ.
The actual word of peace Jesus probably spoke to them was “shalom.” That beautiful Hebrew word incorporates peace, healing, justice and forgiveness – precisely what Jesus had shown them both in his life and in his death. But it was so far outside what they knew that they couldn’t see what was right in front of them. The resurrection was about to open their eyes. Resurrection is God’s assurance that shalom is God’s way in the world. The cross as a repulsive execution brings us face to face with the fact that our cure for violence is sacred violence – a violence we say is O.K. for the sake of keeping order. Jesus had to be executed because he was disturbing the peace. A very common view of the Gospel is precisely this: Jesus’ death confirms that sometimes sacred violence or holy war needs to be carried out in order to overcome violence. But that is exactly the wrong message, and it is critical that Christians who understand that communicate the liberating truth of shalom.
The true impact of the resurrection of the one executed is to put us face to face with the realization that the only way to ultimately cure violence is to completely refrain from doing it, even if it means submitting to it. Submitting to it demonstrates its meaninglessness while the resurrection reveals the Creator’s power of life. (Paul Neuchterlein) But resurrection also plugs us into the power to actually live that way. The same message comes out of an interfaith conversation I have participated in between Muslims, Jews and Christians called the Abrahamic Faiths Peace Initiative. The document makes the connection between peace and the crucifixion: “The crucifixion of Jesus is a story of love overcoming hate, of compassion transforming vengeance. It is not a story about passivity. Jesus’ death bears witness to the fact that God’s response to violence is active nonviolence. Jesus refused to retaliate, but spoke words of compassion and forgiveness to the very persons who crucified him: ‘Abba, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.’” (Lk 23:24). (AFPI)
This leads us to the final part of today’s passage: where was Thomas? Usually the focus of the sermon after Easter is on the one known as “doubting Thomas.” But many have recently pointed out that Thomas’ doubts may reveal a contrasting spirituality more than a spiritual deficit. Wherever Thomas may have been the first time Jesus appeared to the disciples, he was at least not “locked for fear of the Jews” like the others. Could he have been out doing what Jesus commissioned the fearful disciples to do: go out into the world and forgive as he does? What about Jesus’ question: “Have you believed because you have seen me?” Maybe Thomas’ biggest mistake is in thinking that the body he wants and needs to touch, the body of the risen Christ, is the body that had been nailed to the cross. But it's not like that. If Thomas was out in the world, he was in precisely the place Jesus wanted him to be.
Like the apostles, we are being sent out into the world, and specifically to the world’s brokenness, because we are the Body of Christ, Jesus’ presence at work in the world. If we want to experience that, we’ll have to leave the rooms we lock ourselves in because of fear. When we try to sequester ourselves and our children away from the world's pain, we are hiding both from ourselves and from Christ's presence. Fortunately, Jesus keeps after us, breathing peace and power to drop the masks, unlock the doors, and go out and touch the places where the Body of Christ is still suffering. More than 38 million people infected with HIV. One in five people in the world try to live on less than a dollar a day. One person in seven tries to stay alive without access to clean water. Everyone tries to stay alive in South Los Angeles. (Sarah Dylan).
Each of us has a part. None of us can solve the whole mess. But the more of us who can allow our vocation to be the exhale after Jesus breathes healing forgiveness into us, the more healing will be released into the world.
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