Thomas After Easter

Poem/ Reflection for 2^nd Easter     St. Andrew's By The Sea Church, Nags Head, N.C.

April 19, 2020         Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy

Acts 2:14a,22-32       John 20:19-31        Psalm 16

Thomas After Easter

The Gospel Lesson for today is from the Gospel of John. Biblical Scholar, Raymond Brown, posits that the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John come out of a “Community of the Beloved Disciple”, a community which was formed around the unnamed character found in the Gospel as the “One who Jesus loved”. That community for the 60 years after the death of Jesus had to deal with the questions: “Who was this man Jesus?”, “How was God living in him and his followers?” and “How to believe, have faith, that the spirit of the Risen Christ is still alive and working in our lives?”. The Gospel of John and the Epistles are attempts to answer these questions. Indeed those are the questions that you and I still struggle with 2000 years later. It is a struggle filled with doubts; doubts that are part of the journey into faith.

Frederick Buechner in his Wishful Thinking defined Faith: “Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession. It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway. A journey without maps. Paul Tillich said doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.”

Dante's Divine Comedy begins with his being in, what he and other 14^th Century writers called, the “middle of his life”, 35 years old. It was a mess of a mid-life crisis; cut off from his friends, heartsick, disappointed in his political, social and love life, wandering in a forest, a metaphor for being separated from God, filled with doubt. He has to enter Hell, Inferno, the place where God seems so far away, to get eventually to faith. Like all spiritual journeys; we begin by becoming deeply aware that God seems so far away. In this journey, Dante is led part of the way by the shade of the Roman Poet Virgil, the symbol of all we can really know in our head, our reasoning. But our reasoning, like Virgil, can only take us so far and in the Divine Comedy, Virgil (Human Wisdom) is left behind as a guide to be replaced by Beatrice the symbol of Divine Grace.

Author Anne Lamott, in her Plan B: Further Thoughts On Faith, starts off her book with "On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life was hopeless, and I would eat myself to death." She is dealing with getting older, having reached what the 20^th century psychologists call “midlife”, with her son becoming a teenager, her parents getting weaker and older. She continues, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.”

In this Gospel story from the Community of the Beloved Disciple, Thomas is, as well as we are, asked to go deeply within and let our sense we were born with take a walk. Thomas, in the story, takes a week or so to send his sense to take a walk. He shows up at the locked meeting room not at all sure that there will be Jesus there. He is not sure the other disciples were not having a schizophrenic attack, but he shows up anyway. He shows up and has a break with reality as he has known it up to then. Thomas is given a gift of Grace.

Singer/ Songwriter John Prine, who was my age, died last week. In mourning I listened to a couple recordings. One, was his cover of the Bonnie Raitt song, Angel From Montgomery. An “Angel from Montgomery” is a term used by Prisoners on Death Row in Alabama. for a last minute reprieve from a death sentence sent from the Governor's office in Montgomery, Alabama. The chorus goes:

Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go

Raitt, and Prine, were right; “this living is just a hard way to go.” The last several months have been harder than usual. In November of 2019 a US Intelligence report warned “a contagion is sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population". It was a warning that was greeted first with doubt and denial, for nobody wanted their patterns of life to be changed. We continued on our way by gathering for Thanksgiving, shopping for Christmas, celebrating New Year's Eve, going to school, attending church services, Bible studies and Christmas pageants, having lots of meetings, planning for the Bishop's visit which was scheduled for today, or the Acolyte Festival scheduled for this coming weekend, and eating together at Lenten suppers. Then our safe little world changed. However, the reality is that our world has never been fully safe, and the Angel from Montgomery has not yet shown up with a poster of the old rodeo.

What we have done in response is to broaden our human knowledge and make changes in our behavior. Yet, unlike Virgil left behind, we need a guide of grace to go deeper into a spiritual life. Among those changes; we can no longer count on the usual comfortable religious practices. We had to change the way we dealt with each other and with God. We have to move away from the idea that Jesus is our little pet that we pat on Sundays and before meals. We need to take a deeper journey; through the Hell of this time, being patient with ourselves and with others. It is good and helpful to go through the doubts as we find ways to respond and come to an awareness that the Spirit of the Risen Christ is present in the space between us, and in the very core of our being. Like Thomas, we put our hands in the wounds of this world and work for their, and our, healing. Faith, through the doubts, means to continue to connect, safely, but connect indeed ,with other people. We are separated by distance but not by souls.

My wife has had ill health for the last year and half. I retired from my previous church not quite two years ago, and as a retired Rector, I have had to stay away during the Interim time and for at least a year after the new Rector takes over. This is so this old arrogant man doesn't come in and undermine the new Rector, but to allow her to build a pastoral relationship with the people I served and loved. It was a change in the world I had come to know for fifteen years. However, my wife, Pat, is still on the books as a pledging member there, and while she doesn't show up for services there, she still gets phone calls from the pastoral care teams, Angels from Southern Shores, to see how she is doing. I get messages from St. Andrew's Angels in Nags Head, who call me to tell me that prayerful messages through the Risen Lord come my way.

One of my favorite John Prine songs was “Hello In There” written almost a half century ago when we were still in our twenties and it about dealing with distances; the chorus and last verse goes:

You know that old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder every day.
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello."

So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello."

Today we live in a time when “to believe in this livin' is a hard way to go”. All of us are on Death Row and yet, all of us are walking to the locked room to live into the Risen Christ. Today, if you can't be an Angel from Montgomery; be an angel from the Outer Banks and by word and deed connect with your friends, family, neighbors and the Risen Christ and say “Hello In There. Hello.”.

The convener of the Outer Banks Jewish Community's Worship Services passed on a Passover Prayer to me last week: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Sovereign of all, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season.”

Thomas After Easter

Thomas awakens, feels lower than dirt,

thinks it's time to put religion on shelf,

now on it's all about his needs and self,

he's tired wallowing in anger and hurt.

He'd bragged lots along all the way here

crowing he'd stand, and with Jesus die,

but he ran into the dark of a night sky,

cowering in hiding in these times of fear.

His certainty had vanished with his pride,

but picking himself up to join the others,

trudging to meet locked away old brothers,

makes a decision; he'll in his hope confide.

Then in a new light, with no shame of guilt,

new deeper faith, through his doubt, is built.