Ramblings

"Thomas the Truther" - April 19, 2020

On this Second Sunday of Easter I had the opportunity to preach and preside with the virtual community of All Saints in Nagoya, Japan.  I am very grateful to have been part of this worshiping community in Christ.  Below is the more or less what I preached based on the Gospel from John, 20: 19-31.  For more information on All Saints please follow this link: Link

There are some who believe that the US moon landings were staged; staged to look real in some undisclosed military hanger.   In a failed homemade rocket, there was the recent death in February of “Mad” Mike Hughes attempting to prove --- that the earth is flat.[1]  And today, as we gather virtually under the umbrella of global pandemic, “conspiracy” theories is not just an American phenomenon.  We have stories being shared of COVID19 starting in some secret military laboratory. 

Unfortunately, the 21^st century has seen a rise in conspiratorial thinking for with the good of the internet we have a downside: an unfiltered clearinghouse that breeds those seeking the “truth;” “truthers” who find “co-truthers” to explain and support each other in this pursuit.

As you can probably tell I do not have a high opinion --- not of the curiosity or healthy skepticism --- but of “truthers” who don’t trust governments, science, academics or anything else except for none other than what they deem to be true.  However, today’s gospel not only speaks to this present moment not only in the most famous death in history, the death of Jesus Christ, and the conspiracy theories around his death that have abounded for centuries, but we also see someone who is really trying to get at the truth.  This figure is no lonely outsider on the internet wearing a tin foil hat, but one of Jesus’ own disciples: Thomas, a “truther” someone we in fact mirror.

First let me back up.  The death and resurrection of Jesus from the beginning has long been the target of conspiracy theorists.  The general tendency of these quests is based on a view that the disciples acted in concert to claim that Jesus was alive when he really wasn’t; that he died and the disciples “helped” him become “alive” again.  Of course, why these disciples would do these seems to be a more elusive question not pursued.  Others have speculated that Jesus didn’t actually die but just fell unconscious or “swooned” on the cross and eventually staggered out of the tomb.  For whatever reason they did not trust the fact that --- namely the Romans ---were pretty good at the industrial application of the death penalty, the cross as an effective form of death, and the author of John furthermore tells us that Jesus was speared in the side (19:31-37).  That would have been quite a “swoon,” and Jesus must have been in really great shape to survive all that besides the flogging under Pontus Pilate!  And others have speculated that the disciples had a mass hallucination out of grief, or that they actually saw a ghost.

Well despite 2,000 years of theories, thankfully the testimony of the death and resurrection of Jesus is resilient.  Indeed, it seems as though the gospel of John itself embeds an answer to the “truthers” in the text, and one of the places we see this most clearly is in this account in the Gospel of John today.

 Let’s review our gospel.  After the death of Jesus, at least ten disciples and perhaps others including women --- yet without Judas who was dead and Thomas who was gone --- are hiding behind locked doors in the evening of the same day of the resurrection.  Although they had heard from the women --- in John from Mary Magdalene --- that she had “seen the Lord” all remained in confusion, doubt and fear.[2]

Suddenly Jesus appeared among them with the greeting, “Peace be with you” (v. 19) along with showing them the evidence of the wounds in his hands and side.  It’s a strange combination: Jesus is risen in a physical body and yet can also appear through locked doors.  It’s clear that this is a different kind of body, neither ghost nor flesh as we know it, but a body nonetheless.  What was the reaction after their shock?  We are told that the disciples “rejoiced” after seeing the evidence.[3]  Mary’s testimony had been vindicated.

Later, when the others recount to Thomas what they had witnessed, “We have seen the Lord” --- by the way you may have noticed that they are the same words used by Mary Magdalene --- he is skeptical.[4]  Thomas is not taking their story for gospel truth just yet.  “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”[5]  After all, they had the benefit of seeing scars.  Why shouldn’t he?

Thomas may have thought his fellow disciples were engaging in their own collective conspiracy theory.   We can summarize that Thomas was a thinker, a questioner.  For example, in John 14:5, Thomas pressed Jesus on his statement about where he was going.  It wasn’t that Thomas was afraid --- after all, in chapter 11 Thomas was the one prepared to go with Jesus to a dangerous place, even if it meant his own death.[6]  Rather it seems Thomas wasn’t going to buy into any kind of story, false information or wild speculation.

The church has often called Thomas the “doubter” following Jesus telling him “do not doubt but believe.”  I don’t like that label, because by labeling Thomas as the “doubter” supreme, it suggests reason and intelligence is somehow contrary to faith or that he was inordinately unusual.  Thomas simply wants the truth, not that much different than the other disciples or shall we admit it all of us who faithfully walk in Christ on this journey of faith.  Thomas doesn’t reject the idea of resurrection outright; he simply wants more --- the same evidence the other disciples had received, that Mary Magdalene had received.  In other words, Thomas wants to experience the risen Christ for himself.

And then, suddenly, Thomas has the opportunity.  The pattern repeats: an evening, a locked door, an appearance by Jesus.  Jesus somehow knows that Thomas had expressed some skepticism and offers the evidence that Thomas was looking for. “Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.[7]

We like Thomas immediately notice, Jesus’ resurrected body retained its scars.  Not old scars.  Not faded scars signaling a long-ago accident on a playground, but freshly healed wounds still raw enough to allow an invitation for a truth seeking disciple.  Although the Biblical Greek in the gospel of John is not clear as to whether Thomas actually touched Jesus, if Thomas did, I can just imagine Jesus wincing at that pain.  The openness of wounds not only signaled real death and resurrection, the scars revealed real engagement, real presence.  The presence of the wounds spoke to the very question that troubled Thomas and for which he hungered for the most.  Christ is standing before him, before us unequivocally:  “I am here.  I am here with you.  I don’t float a few sanitized feet above reality; even after death, I dwell in the hot, searing heart of life.”

Let’s look again at the doubt.  Notice that Thomas’ qualms are about the reports of the resurrection.  Thomas has suspicions about the veracity of what he was hearing from the other disciples about the risen Jesus.  That helps us to understand what Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not doubt but believe,” he’s really saying, “Thomas, it’s me, in the flesh.  I am here.  I am present.  Believe in the testimony of the disciples and the women.”

Perhaps another piece of this event that we need to be reminded about is that what Jesus says to Thomas was being applied equally to all of the disciples.[8]  When Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” these words are for all time and place.  In that time and place, all had the same predisposition, the same inclination.   All believed that Jesus was alive only because they saw Jesus in the flesh.  Like Thomas, the other disciples before him, both men and women, did not believe Jesus’ resurrection either; Thomas didn’t believe the report of the disciples, the disciples did not believe the report of the women.  They were all across the spectrum of doubt, “truthers,” and their reservations were only suspended when they saw Jesus alive with their own eyes.

So when I realize how the disciples are no different than Thomas or Mary before them it opens a window for me.  I will gladly admit I would rather have a resurrected Jesus visibly standing right here in this time of fear, confusion and doubt.  It would make this whole thing of belief so much easier.  And in actuality even if this time wasn’t challenging, don’t all of us have a bit of Thomas, willing to push back on what, at times, seems challenging particularly when in faith the going gets tough?

An additional piece for us to ponder I believe is, if we consider the evidence of when the gospel of John was written --- roughly 90-100 CE --- the audience was not that far different than our own contexts, those earliest small communities of faithful who had never met Jesus.  They were like us relying on the testimony of others.  In a sense, the gospel of John more than the other gospels is speaking as testimony to future generations who have not seen Jesus who hunger about the truth of the gospel.  The author of the gospel of John of all the gospels is strengthening us and asking us to believe, but not just on the basis of the evidence itself.  The author wants us to believe in the ongoing, unseen presence of Jesus Christ.  Perhaps that is why of the four gospels the author of John has such a strong focus on the Holy Spirit, the baptismal waters and Holy Communion.

Certainly, the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite compelling from a historical perspective.  It’s not that the Gospel of John is suggesting that the evidence is unimportant rather in these recorded words of Jesus the author is laying the groundwork for futures Kierkegaard’s and our leaps of faith.

It is a good time for me to be reminded that I may sanctimoniously point out how I don’t wear a tinfoil hat and how assured I am that the earth is a sphere, a blue marble in a vast universe, I am in fact a “truther” who seeks the precense of Christ, in how the impossible had become possible and despite all kinds of fear, confusion and doubt, I listen to those who believed and wouldn’t shut up about it.  Thankfully I have the eyewitness testimony of the gospels against all that is arrayed against it.  I have as the author of John puts it later in the text: “these things are written so that you might come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (v. 31).  I have the witness of subsequent generations of believers.  I have this virtual community, along with hundreds of thousands around the world, who all attest to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

And finally, when I recognize that I am a truther, perhaps grudgingly, thankfully, I walk in faith in today’s story where Jesus is at the apex of his resurrection victory displaying his recently healed wounds without shame or apology.  In those scars I am reminded of all that God has done, all that God has made possible and all that God will make possible through the resurrection.

Thankfully, Jesus himself recognizes this journey for as he calls blessed, it is so we are blessed when we live out this scarred testimony, blessed to live as the presence of Christ to other “truthers” with the testimony that Christ is risen.  Christ is risen indeed “truthers.”  Walk in faith.  Amen.

 

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a31077307/mad-mike-hughes-death-flat-earth-rocket-crash/

[2] vs. 18

[3] v. 20

[4] v. 25

[5] v. 25

[6] John 11:16

[7] v. 27

[8] v. 29

"A Trinity of Images" - April 12, 2020

Christ is Risen!  Alleluia!

For Easter, I was invited to preach at a congregation that I served when we lived in Nagoya, Japan back in 2006-2010.  Because of COVID-19 and in consideration of the health and well-being of all, our worship was in virtual community using Zoom.  Below is the sermon I presented, again different than when spoken but similar nonetheless.  Blessings to all and have a blessed Easter.

p.s.- Thank you to All Saints International Church serving the greater Nagoya community for the invitation.  For more information please check out their website: All Saints International Church

Psychologists call them flashbulb memories.  A “flashbulb memory” is akin to our minds being in a dark room, illuminated for only an instant when a camera flashbulb goes off before we live in the dark again.  The question is what did we see and what do we remember from that moment of illumination?   That flashbulb image may tell quite a story.  It may include a point in time, it may include some context, and it may include images and feelings.

The prototype case used by psychologists to illustrate is the news that US President John Kennedy had been shot.  For those of that age, like my mother, she can remember where she was when she heard, what she was doing, who told her, how she felt about it.  And like many flashbulb memories, when she recounts that event it includes the prominent images from that moment, which for her was pushing a shopping cart and me being in the cart.

Flashbulb memories are all part of our lives.  I am too young to remember the shooting of President Kennedy, but I do remember September 11^th, 2001 where I was and when I heard about the plane flying into the first of the twin towers in New York City.  I have specific feelings and images etched into my mind.  In my case I had just finished a funeral service.  I had just settled into my car getting ready to leave, when I turned on the radio and heard the news.  In my case, the prominent images are the cemetery and car radio.^[1]

These flashbulb memories and the corresponding narrative with images included, causes me wonder what will it be for us living through the Covid 19 pandemic of 2020.  I suspect for some the event will include what many of us who live in Japan consider part of our natural wardrobes the “face mask.”  For others, it may be stacked urns or coffins with the cremains or remains of those who died; it may be the tired faces of medical staff.  It may be virtual worship, a church as a screen with boxes.

Now, just think of flashbulb memories in the context of those first witnesses on that first Easter; the scenes captured and retold in our gospels and the images that correspond with the narrative.  Have you ever noticed all include the same three images: the cross, the tomb and the stone, that is, the stone that was rolled away to reveal an empty tomb.

Easter cannot be Easter without the cross, the tomb and the stone.  So although each gospel has its own nuance of how Jesus died, his subsequent burial, and resurrection, they all share that same set of three images.  Remove one, and the value and significance of the others disappears like smoke in the wind.  Not only are these images important for the memory and the narrative story of Easter; the cross, the tomb and the stone are integral gifts to strengthen us today.

Tradition has it that the True Cross was discovered by Saint Helena a few years following her son’s remarkable victory over Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in A.D. 312.[2]   Since then, pieces of the purported True Cross have multiplied like Jesus’ five loaves and two fishes, and fragments of the True Cross now reside in reliquaries around the world, including a church in Texas.  Whether those slivers are part of the true cross on which Jesus was crucified is beside the point.  Rather the cross image has been re-created in a cornucopia of icons, oil paintings and tattoo’s and are so universal that the cross appears from earrings to wall hangings.  But this is cultural stuff.  

Instead what we are remember is that it is safe to say that if had Jesus not died on a cross, there would not be cross tattoos or cross jewelry, for prior to Jesus’ death, the cross was just a means of execution --- nothing more.  What transformed the cross from an execution’s tool to a stunning declaration as an image of unconditional love, ultimate sacrifice, and victory over human brokenness, death and the evil ---is the flashbulb image from the first witnesses on that first Friday.

Meaning that the reason that the cross is such a powerful image is that in the words from his pastoral exhortation, Pastores Gregis, Pope John Paul II --- the cross is the tree of life!  The cross is the seed that falls to the ground and dies, later to come to life.[3]  For without the Easter tomb, the cross itself fades to nothing more than a story in which a dissident, prophet, teacher, or rabbi was killed.  Why can we not retell the event without the cross and subsequent tomb?

Because the tomb is where we place those who have died and Jesus was dead.  Jesus didn’t faint or swoon or lay comatose.  Jesus did not have an out-of-body experience and come back to write a book about heaven being real that stayed on the Bestseller List for 113 consecutive weeks, the profits of which guaranteed a sunny financial future for him and his mom and extended family for generations to come.

Rather, the tomb is imprinted into the narrative for those first witnesses because Jesus truly died on the cross.  And dead people in Jesus’ times were put in tombs.  And that is where they stayed until they faded into dust.  If Jesus wasn’t dead and in a tomb, then the cross alone was just pieces of wood, no more than a gurney is a bed in a hospital in Milan or New York.

Furthermore, similar to the transfiguration mountaintop event earlier in Jesus ministry, the tomb is also the place where the dead Jesus underwent a transformation.  For when we encounter the resurrected Christ, we discover a Jesus not just alive, not just with a body, but with a glorified, otherworldly form.  Barbara Lundblad, Professor of Preaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, puts it this way: “Jesus is not resuscitated from clinical death.  In John’s gospel, Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from death.  Lazarus did come walking out of the tomb, and Jesus asked his friends to unbind him.  Lazarus was resuscitated; he came back to life as he had known it before.  He wasn’t more alive than he had been before, and he would someday die.  But the earliest witnesses bear testimony to Jesus who was transformed --- who was alive in a new way beyond the limits of time and space.”  The tomb is the place where something amazing happened that prefigures our own transformation at the great day of resurrection at the end of time, or as the Apostle Paul puts it: “For this perishable body must put on imperishability and this mortal body must put on immortality.”[4]

This leads to the third of this trinity of images --- the stone that sealed everything, this chunk of stone hewn and shaped to fit snug against the opening of the tomb.

The stone becomes part of this trinity because the stone is witness to the fact that nothing can contain the Son of God or resist the unfathomable power of God.  After Jesus had been placed in the tomb and the stone as customary was placed there, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate and requested support to make sure the body was not stolen: “Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.’ So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.”[5]  Now the guards posted at the tomb had one job to do.  No one, but no one, moves the stone.  The tomb is sealed.  Keep it that way.  And yet, come Easter morning, in some powerful way, the stone was rolled away. 

On that first Easter the tombstone becomes a touchstone.  What is a touchstone?  From ancient times, assayers --- those who tested the value of precious metals like silver or gold --- would use touchstones to determine the purity and value of the nuggets miners brought to them for inspection.

Since precious metals are comparatively soft when a piece with silver or gold is scraped across a much harder touchstone, it leaves a mark behind.  Expert assayers could tell from that mark the nature of the mineral, but also make an informed guess as to what degree of purity it was.[6]

The stone rolled away from the entrance of Jesus’ tomb functioned for those first witnesses as a sort of touchstone.  Like the cross and the tomb, in and of itself, the stone is unremarkable.  A cast aside stone whose only value was for what it was supposed to keep out, now reveals the greatest of all treasures, signifies the power of God and reveals Easter in all its glory.

This trinity of images caught in a flashbulb memory continues to reverberate 21 centuries later.  The editors of Christian Century this week described it this way in a piece on why it is so challenging to move to virtual worship: “Christianity is, at its heart, an incarnational faith.”  For example, they write: “worship embodies the belief that God’s grace comes through physical contact: water trickling down a forehead, bread dissolving on a tongue, wine tickling the back of a throat, one person’s hand squeezing another’s.”^[7] Virtual worship is a challenge but if there is anything that the last couple of months in this pandemic have taught us is it’s easy to be united in fear of what tomorrow will bring.  So, when we are gripped by fear when we hear someone say “not to be afraid,” we are likely to feel more inadequate and fearful than we all already are.

But that’s why today’s images of the cross, tomb and stone are important to reconsider because when we are told not to be afraid in scripture, those words also come with the assurance that we are cared for.  The words come with the promise that even through suffering, we will emerge as conquers.   The Cross, Tomb and Stone are incarnational images of that promise.  We who follow in the steps of those first witnesses have the cross, tomb and stone as stepping stones through these very dark moments as profound images of God’s love and power.

If we were selfish we wouldn’t care about the world around us and we for example, would gather physically in worship.  Instead we have these incarnational tools of cross, tomb and stone to help us navigate in faith.  A global pandemic is laying bare what the church has long confessed: that all people are deeply and inextricably connected to one another, like branches on a vine. 

Thankfully, these flashbulb images from those first disciples are ours and are ours not only for those moments of joy but as well when our vision may become nearsighted, or only accustomed to the dark.  The angel in Matthew’s Gospel account foreshadows this incarnational dynamism when the angel said: “Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’” [8]  The cross, tomb and stone are those steps from “he has been raised from the dead” to “he is ahead of us.”  The cross, tomb and stone is what carried those first witnesses on that journey.  It is what carries us.  Death and brokenness has been conquered and a cross, a tomb and a stone are witnesses to Christ risen.  Amen.

 

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001002777790018X

[2] “Shrine of the True Cross.” Truecrosschurch.org.

[3] http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_20031016_pastores-gregis.html

[4] 1 Corinthians 15:53

[5] Matthew 27:61-66

[6] “Touchstone (assaying tool).” Wikipedia.org.

[7] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/editors/staying-connected-during-covid-19-pandemic

[8] Matthew 28:7