Christ Church

ACTS 4:32-35; PSALM 133; 1 JOHN 1:1-2:2; JOHN 20:19-31

This week – and especially today no doubt – we have been able to watch any number of TV programs or read magazine articles bringing us back to the events of the sinking of the Titanic 100 years ago.  I was impressed watching one Titanic expert visiting the exposition of relics that have been recovered from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.  He stood beside a portion of the hull – several tons of it.  As he talked about it, he touched and caressed the iron fragment, now painted black for preservation.  For someone fascinated by the Titanic story from childhood, it was obvious that this moment of touching the reality of the great ship was a powerfully intimate, perhaps erotic, experience.  At last, fascination, imagination, fantasy and hours of study are all made worthwhile face to face with the real thing.

The stories of relic hunters in the Christian tradition is quite literally legendary. One of the most legendary of these is Helena, the sainted mother of the Emperor Constantine who, we are told in the legends, recovered untold pieces of the Cross of Jesus, as well as his tunic and pieces of rope that held his hands, not to mention the identification of several of the holy sites still identified with the last days of Jesus.  All of these remain points of pilgrimage for the faithful even today, attracting millions.  Ironically perhaps, there is a piece of a human skull identified as St. Helena’s head now enshrined for the faithful at the cathedral church in Trier, Germany.  Whether it be a piece of bone, a bronzed foot, or a shred of cloth, it seems that any sort of physical contact with the past has a powerful pull to the human spirit.  Does it make it more real?  Does it make it more personal?  Does it give us proof of something we can only imagine?  Is it the only way we have to connect with past human lives that have been inspiring examples and to keep their influence going?   We think of the decades that Lenin’s embalmed body lay encased in glass in the Soviet Union as a touchstone of state and ideology, and how quickly it was removed once the Soviet system was replaced.

Thomas’ desire to touch the flesh and wounds of the risen Jesus is certainly a picture of this natural drive that humans seem to share.  In order to connect with the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, it is imperative – even a passionate drive rising from our deepest desires – to see it in the flesh.  If it is real then I must touch real.  But as the Gospel writer leads us through this story of the disciples’ experience of Resurrection, like any good parable, the end bears a twist that catches us unexpectedly.  Even with the invitation that comes from the risen Christ to touch, Thomas never does.  It isn’t necessary.  Thomas, as he is engaged by the Risen Christ, simply abandons his needs with a declaration of faith: “My Lord and My God.”  The Gospel writer is addressing an audience some hundred years beyond the experiences he is writing about.  Jesus as a figure of the past is beyond experience.  The generation of those who could claim to have seen and touched him was gone.  Perhaps the story of Thomas is a reminder to succeeding generations of the followers of Jesus that Jesus is not simply a figure of the past for whom we must seek concrete and tangible relics in order to have a connection – to touch, to “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.”  Jesus, as Marcus Borg states it, is “one who continues to be experienced as an abiding reality in the present,” and not just an abiding presence “but as a divine reality, as “Lord”, as one with God.”  The Resurrection is not reliant on historical witness or literal proof.  Such would limit access to God’s Spirit bursting with life in the world to those who were witness or could at least claim a piece of Jesus to their possession.

The other writers giving testimony from the early days of the Christian movement, the author of Luke/Acts and the author of the Epistle of John, are clear that the witness of the Resurrection for them was in communities transformed in ways that seemed directly and powerfully connected to forgiveness.  There was a radical repositioning of believers before God and before one another that was changing the way individuals lived, what they valued, and - most of all – the responsibilities and relationships forged as a family of those to whom the transformative Spirit of Jesus was present and active. “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”  This was the testimony of the Resurrection.  Not that darkness and sin are absent from our lives, but that with the Risen Jesus as Lord of Life, they are being transformed from being the things that imprison us and even kill us.   With the Risen Christ we are being accompanied into a life of Grace.  Like Thomas, it is not the history that we touch, but a relationship that opens up to us.  We can surrender the control and be shaped instead by the life-giving Grace of God. But of course, such Grace may bring us to places we would not go – invite us into patterns of behavior and forgiveness that will cost us much.  That is the risk and the possibility of surrendering control to the Lord of Life.  When Thomas hears about the Risen Christ, he wants to dive into the wounds on his own terms.  He wants to be in control of all of this Resurrection news, shape it to his own expectations.  This is a messy and gruesome image of course.  But messy and gruesome is usually a pretty good description of the outcome of our control issues and their impact for our selves and others.

Post Easter, life continue.  Struggles and difficult circumstances will still come to us.  We will continue to mess up with one another and make those sad mistakes that bring hurt and pain.  Things will not turn out according to our imaginations.  The Gospel invitation is to come with Thomas and to let go of our need to control all of the outcomes and bend ourselves before the reality of the Risen Christ as Lord of our life – as the surest reality of the living Spirit of God in our lives .  With the Risen Christ, we are invited to be transformed – as both individuals and as community - beyond the gruesome and messy effects of our own control and to which we have grown so accustomed to a joyful and generous and unexpected way of Grace.