Second Sunday of Easter
Acts 5:27-32; Ps 118:14-29 Rev 1:4-8; John 20:19-31
When I was a little girl, the corner of my classroom was occupied by a diaphanous white net, formed into a large cylinder which descended from the ceiling to the floor. Within it were caterpillars, green and black striped, crawling along a large branch. Each day, we would gather milkweed and plop it into the enclosure by armfuls. Then, one day, the caterpillars vanished. They became chrysalises which slowly changed color, blackening until the day they tore open, and the orange and black butterflies would emerge and sleepily dry their newborn wings. Scientists used to think that, closed in those tiny cases, caterpillars would make an orderly evolution from bug to butterfly, but now they know better. Within its chrysalis, a caterpillar loses all form and turns to mush. Only then, does it take a new shape and enter a new life. But how does it know what to become?
Life feels a bit like that, right now, with both an episcopal election and a national one taking place this week, within the context of a world in which old certainties seem to have dissolved with unnerving speed. It’s hard to know how to plan, what, even, to aim for. In Rome, world leaders and the poor converged to lay to rest a pope who has inspired many of us with his focus on the needs of the poor and of the environment, and with his personal example of humility, kindness, and joy. I read this week that, at the Conclave which elected him, Cardinal Bergoglio (later, Francis) was gave a reflection on the familiar image of Jesus knocking at the door. He noted that the pious people usually think it’s about Jesus asking to enter our heart, but he suggested that perhaps Jesus is knocking on the door to call us to join him out there the world, beyond our locked doors, beyond our fears.
Certainly, that was true of our reading today. We begin on the evening of Easter Day, ten or twelve hours after the women found the empty tomb. For the disciples, nothing made sense. The man they had seen die was walking the roads; the person who appeared to be a gardener was Christ; and yet, beyond their community, the world continued in its course. Nothing seemed to have changed. The disciples must have been struggling to believe the evidence of their own eyes and hearts, when suddenly, Jesus was among them, saying, “Peace be with you.” Then, he does something astonishing: he shows them his hands and his feet. He identifies himself by his scars. Somehow, his divine wholeness now involves having been marked by sacrificial love, with scars which are also the marks of our failure.
Thomas, who was not there, somehow intuits that truth. When the other disciples tell him they have seen Jesus, he demands to see the scars, to touch the scars, himself. And Jesus obliges him. It’s important to see that call and response between disciple and savior. If Thomas had asked for something unholy or sinful, Jesus would not have given it to him. But when Thomas cries out to see the evidence — the same evidence the others have seen — Jesus does not condemn him as a doubter. Rather, he honours him as someone looking for a way to believe.
Somedays, it seems our world is crying out with reasons not to believe: war, climate change, poverty, racism, cancer, the sickening way that the cruel and the corrupt always seem to end up on top — these challenge our belief that God cares for the poor, tends the sick, promises the earth to the meek rather than to the proud. Every day of our lives, we need to find a way to believe in spite of a myriad reasons not to. The great act of faith is not certainty; it’s moving in a godward direction when we can only see one step ahead on the path. That’s at the heart of what it is to be human: to crave a clarity we can rarely obtain, and to try to live God’s love, anyway.
Even the church lets us down, its holy vocation tangled in the all-too-flawed humanity of its members. Some in our diocese are feeling that right now, and it’s true: the discernment process for our next bishop is not the one any of us might have hoped for. It has revealed scars and flaws where we craved wholeness and clarity; and we, like Thomas, need to learn from what we have seen. And yet, that imperfection itself bears a hidden a gift (perhaps, too well-hidden). If we had perfect leaders, flawless processes, complete information, we could move forward on our own, never realizing our need for God. But praying in the dark, making choices in circumstances which are far from ideal, we learn to rely on God, rather than ourselves. We walk in faith because we must.
In the recent movie Conclave, Ralph Fiennes plays the Dean of the College of Cardinals, a man tasked with overseeing the election of the next Pope. He begins with a homily, saying to the assembled cardinals, “Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.”
My friends, we need to have faith. I don’t mean that we need to have it because, if we don’t, we will incur the wrath of an angry God. I don’t believe in an angry God, but in a tender one. I mean that we need to have faith because this world is wonderful and complex beyond our imagining. The ground which supports us is mostly air. The starlight which shines down may have traveled seven thousand years before it lights our path. Even closer to home, we walk in mystery. We cannot explain love or faithfulness or kindness or forgiveness, but we offer our hearts to one another, anyway, because without that exchange, we die inside. Every day, we depend on one another, and can we offer less trust than that to God?
Back in that elementary school classroom, we’d release the butterflies, once they’d hatched, and learn about migration: how those butterflies somehow knew to fly to Mexico, thousands of miles away, and then return. I assumed that it was those particular butterflies who were going to make that long journey, but learned later that it took four generations, each one heading unerringly toward a destination it had never seen — neither they, nor their parents, nor their grandparents. And yet, somehow, they know where to go and how to get there.
And God knows where we need to go, and how, in spite of everything, to guide us there. When the disciples were locked in the upper room, when the Hebrews were wandering forty years in the wilderness, it must have been hard to believe that all was not as lost as they. And yet, here we are: their heirs, living in a world they could not begin to imagine. We who follow Christ cannot expect a straight path. Our path is the Way of Resurrection, which is to say, a continual dying and rising, falling into darkness and struggling toward the light. One day, one breath, one hope at a time, living into and becoming the scarred yet beautiful Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ. For which, let us pray. Amen.