Beyond lament
Preacher: Revd Dr Peter Donald, Minister: Cairnlea Parish Church, Airdrie
Readings: John 20. 19-31; Acts 4. 32-35
I’d like to tell it as it was, but I’m also keen we should tell it as it is – that every one of us might be encouraged to tell it as it is. To tell it as it was, well, I mean how did it work as this Gospel reading tells it, Thomas being taken from seemingly giving up on Jesus to becoming the one who made the strongest confession of faith, calling Jesus, “My Lord and my God”? How did the disciples who had collectively retreated and were fearful, how did they come to live in such a new sort of way (which was not the way everyone took by any means), and there was on the back of that a huge expansion in those now long ago centuries of the Jesus movement? There is much to consider in how it was, but then also in how it is. You and I, like Thomas, like the disciples, we have our questions and emotions; we take ourselves places and then there are places we will not go. How is our faith? What kind of life personally, and communally, are we up for?
Much goes on in the head. For Jesus’ disciples after the discovery of the empty tomb, there was no great show of confidence. For all that the accounts tell of hastening to and from the tomb, what otherwise we hear about is the locking of doors. For fear of the Jews, John’s Gospel explains: these disciples were of course themselves Jews, as was Jesus, but they had it in their heads that there were hostile forces out there, even amongst their own sort of people. Locked doors keep dangers out. But you are also thereby locking yourself in. And for all that this account is sparse on many details, I wonder, is there a hint that the thing they were locking themselves away from was the risen Jesus coming to them? Such personal inadequacy as they would have felt, and failure as a group around Jesus’ arrest and execution – if he had risen from the dead, what would happen to them now? Let’s say at least, their heads were spinning.
How is it for us? There are times when almost nothing makes sense. The pictures from today’s war zones, or the memories this month of thirty years since the Rwandan genocide, or perhaps more immediately people struggling to be confident in their own identity, in hopes for the future; people around a tragedy agonising as to whether more could have been done or other words might have been said. Or I think of when I was in prison ministry, some of these young men, their heads were in a really bad place. They might have offended but they struggled to see what other options they had. To be locked up, in some cases, it was a relief. Except it wasn’t really. There’s a truth that anyone in a bad place will recognise, that too much time to think is not always helpful.
And then as well as the head there’s the heart. Those first disciples, we should consider their emotions – what it was for them to move from such a level of anxiety to such an intensity of joy. Even if it’s not all in one day (sometimes it can be – and having had our daughter’s wedding this last week I’ve been very aware of the eddying movement of emotions!), our human experience is to have feelings, moods. The head may say this, the logic of the situation says this; but still I might feel like that.
I offer this all as an introduction to Thomas’ story which so powerfully presents itself in today’s reading. From earlier in John’s Gospel, we know that Thomas was not afraid of questions. He was more than ready to ask them. But as we hear of him after Jesus’ resurrection, we are also made aware that Thomas was disheartened. The way it is recounted, there is a suggestion not that he happened to have been casually absent when Jesus first appeared to the disciples but that more likely he was moving towards giving up on where Jesus had led them to. He was literally walking away, needing to. Jesus had died, and was that the end of it? Thomas was, as Jesus himself appears to say, at risk of becoming unbelieving. But thankfully the disciples wouldn’t give up on him, on Thomas that is, and they pressed him to rejoin them. There was a great theologian, Karl Rahner, who once wrote that when we are up against the void – against these massive unknowns we all can face, or some horrible darkness – there are only two choices. Either we take the path of emptiness or we take the path of love – those friends we still have; those we can be loved by, those whom we can love. It will not be everything, but it will not be utter emptiness. When Thomas rejoined the rest, I daresay if I have been talking about head and about heart, we now also need to talk about feet. Maybe his steps were heavy but Thomas did take himself back towards the others. As I read it, I don’t know that he believed for a moment that he would see the wounds and literally be able to touch them (is there not something grotesque in his labouring of the detail? – he’s mocking the possibility!). And yet, to reach for a phrase from George Herbert, love bade him welcome. Jesus did meet with him, and allowed every bit of the ultimatum to be honoured.
Let it not just be a story about Thomas, not just about Thomas being personally persuaded. This is not the only character in John’s Gospel who goes through the process of being drawn in by others to come and see (think of Nathanael, or the neighbours of the Samaritan woman if you’re familiar with early chapters in John’s Gospel). Nor is it the first discussion of how faith is related to signs or not. Perhaps the thing about Thomas especially is that we are brought to a critical summing-up point. Jesus bore these wounds, Jesus was crucified, and the love and mercy of God has not ceased to flow. The Gospel is that Jesus came – and comes again and again – to affirm his commitment to us, despite our readiness to block it. Jesus does not command Thomas to believe, but he does so strongly encourage Thomas not to give in to unbelieving; not to foreclose on the whole world of possibility that there is with God.
This is a very rich passage, with all sorts of interesting detail in the language of the text, but I’m leaning today on what we can draw from it – considerations on how it was for them and this time to work on how it is for us. I think back to these prisoners I once ministered amongst. So often I found myself wanting to say to them, there is a door that can open to you. It isn’t all walls, dark corners, dead ends; there is a door to go through. A picture of someone being ready to hold your hand wasn’t going to cut the ice with some of these guys, but here in John chapter 20 it was Jesus saying to would-be disciples, what about going out there? What about going out there with holy Spirit? How about being released from fears defining your movements, being released from having to fight your way through life on your own, being released from forever carrying with you the burden that there are mistakes you have made, even huge mistakes? Thomas pondered giving up on Jesus, but the good news is that Jesus clearly did not give up on him – nor, thankfully, some of his friends.
And so Thomas was given a space to release him for something new. I have been struck by that, not least since your Chaplain Donald asked me to give thought to what all I had been part of since I was last here in St Andrews University Chapel. I entitled today’s sermon “Beyond lament” no doubt partly because last time I was here I was assigned a preaching task around the Book of Lamentations, but more because for any of us the temptation to become lost in lament is a very real one (not just for Jesus’ disciple whose name was Thomas). What did we think, what did we feel when the Covid pandemic struck? Indeed, how far are we beyond the knock-on effects of that? Or how borne down are we (I am certainly) by the course of politics in this country, and in many other parts of the world? Or I think as a Church of Scotland Minister how in our denomination, spirits are far from buoyant and there is a lot of doubt about whether we can get ourselves into a better space. And I think of life in the university, your lives – because here, though of course not just here, there are challenges around mental health and well-being, around emotional resilience, around people’s confidence and hope on a personal level. The word “lament”, it signposts the human experience of struggling. And it’s all around. Every one of us here can surely open up on a rant or a moan about something – and with good reason.
But therefore we are to linger on Jesus coming again and again to his disciples with the words, Peace be with you. He was saying, I am sure, much more than might be translated by, say, the phrase “calm down” or “chill”; he offered and offers more than soothing therapy. The world will wound us, the world could all too easily kill us off; but with faith / trust, that opens up something very different – beyond lament. Potentially something not a million miles away even from what we were reading today in the book of Acts. Communally as well as personally, there is a beautiful life to be lived in and for Jesus Christ – for all that we do not yet see him.