Christopher Thomas
Sermon for Second Sunday of Easter, Year A – 4/19/20
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
Be Careful of What You Ask For – You Might Get It!
I saw it. With my own eyes. I wasn’t there, in person, but through the wonders of technology, and computers, I saw it, and yet, I simply could not believe it. I sat there, stone cold stunned, too shocked and frightened to move.
The day started as most any other. I arrived at the Cathedral early on that September day, because arriving early, before dawn, was, is the way that a business administrator gets some serious work cranked out before phones start ringing, requests start coming in, life starts happening, in the heartbeat of the Church. I was buried in my office, in front of my computer, when I started getting pinged with notices from CNN that something odd, strange had happened. A plane had flown into a building in New York City.
I clicked over to their live stream footage and I could “see” for myself, and yet somehow not believe, the horror that was beginning to unfold on what would eventually, fate-fully become known as 9/11. We watched, in disbelief, as people jumped out of 110 story buildings before they collapsed. We saw people running for their lives as people ran in to save lives. This was beyond anything that could be made up in a theatrical drama. And yet, I, we, did not want to believe that this could happen, to me, to we, to us. If it could happen in New York, or Washington, D.C., or even rural Pennsylvania, then heaven help us, Houston, or any small town America will do!
Later that day, I remember that our staff gathered together in the Cathedral’s church parlor to try to process what we had “seen,” what we continued to see. There was a pall over the room; no one wanted to speak. Until finally, someone begged the question, the doubt, “Where is God?” (It actually was more emphatically implored…) And you could feel the exhale of relief rise up in the room with the release of that question. Doubt had been pent up, and thank God someone had the nerve to ask the question. I’ve never felt anything quite like it, before or since.
I was already scheduled to attend EBAC (the Episcopal Business Administrator’s Conference) in New York just about a week after 9/11 occurred, and the conference went on as scheduled because travel restrictions were lifted. I remember that when I arrived in New York, I had to go down to “Ground Zero,” as it was called, to see and to touch, for myself, that horror, to believe that it all really had happened. Oh, and yes, it had happened, and my life, and the lives of many others, would and could never be the same again. Seeing, and touching (and tasting and smelling), and believing, were all, are all, inextricably intertwined!
(If you will remember, for many years after 9/11, it was a common conversation topic when you would meet someone, “Where were you on 9/11?” No one asks that any more. The seeing/believing quotient has pretty much been exhausted from that event.)
And then it was August 29, 2005, and suddenly, we were gathered asking that same question again. “Where is God?”, when a seemingly insignificant category 1 hurricane comes ashore in New Orleans, Louisiana, and suddenly 1833 people have lost their lives! What do we “see” on the news, but human corpses, bodies floating down Canal Street. People, brothers and sisters, left for dead in front of a convention center, where I had attended conventions! Can you believe it? This is not a third world country, we say. “That could never happen here.” “I cannot believe what I am seeing!” “Where is God?”
Once again, I must go and see, and touch (and smell and taste) for myself, to believe that this could be true. (For anyone that knew me then, they know that I went, and did those things, for I AM a Thomas, after all!) And I did, and I do, now.
Oh, what Thomas, dear sweet Thomas, did for us in opening that door, that door to doubt, that glorious ability to give voice to what we all are thinking, but we are too afraid to ask, because we are too afraid of being struck down! Oh, he wasn’t the first doubter, by far. That honor goes to Mary. She was first in line at the tomb, the first to see it empty, the first to run for Peter and that other unnamed soul. They all stood in, well, disbelief. Jesus hadn’t made any secret of what was going to happen, how the story would end, but they were human, we are human, we get strangled and tangled in our seeing/touching/believing process. It is an innate part of who we are. We question, doubters, the lot of us!
Thomas, through his interaction with the Risen Jesus Christ, just gives voice, that huge sigh of relief when we can acknowledge the question. Exhale. Aspirate. And breathe in again.
Jesus totally gets it. He completely understands. He’s lived this fully human, while fully divine life. So he understands the question. Thomas and all the others should have been able to believe based solely on their experience with Jesus. But Jesus loves them through that anyway! That’s why he’s appeared to them! Jesus doesn’t leave any of them out, including Thomas. The very same peace Jesus offers the rest of the disciples, he gives to our doubter Thomas. “Peace be with you. Come see, and touch (and taste and smell) for yourself, Thomas. It’s ok. I want you to believe. It’s important to me that you believe. Because I have world-changing work for you all to do!”
I think this exhaling into the question is why I love, live, and breathe Anglican theology. Because as we circulate through the “scripture, tradition, reason” paradigm that is the basis of our theological God-talk, we can, we must, ask, and sit with the question, the hard questions, that life puts before us. “Why does God allow people to jump from 110 story buildings or float down Canal Street?”
As Episcopalians, we are a people who live in the tension of the question, and we look to that aspirated Holy Spirit that Jesus breathes out upon us to guide us as we move forward. It is why we are here and not at the First Baptist Church, or Watermark, or anywhere else that the answer is celebrated.
We celebrate, and even rejoice, in living in the question, in THE LIVING QUESTION, because of what that opens up, in terms of life-giving ministry. We can sit with all kinds of things when we can sit with the question, and not have to have the answer, or have to have the same answer. It is powerful stuff! Folks, I don’t know about you, but it is why I am Episcopalian.
Now, here’s the problem. No, wait, let me restate that, because there are no problems, only issues and challenges. Here’s the rub, the challenge:
What happens when the answer you get back isn’t the one you expected, or hoped for, or wanted, or know how to deal with, or want to deal with? What then, oh Doubters, Thomas?
I found this out for myself the other evening, at our Doubters’ Happy Hour, when I posed the very profound, and I thought, stumping, question, to our theologians in and of residence here at St. Thomas. “Where is God, in the midst of Corona?” “What say ye,” in my sanctimonious head voice! Academics should know where God is, after all. From their lofty ivory towers, they should be able to see God more clearly than lowly I, me, we. I want to touch God for myself, so tell me where to go, dear theologian…
The answer I expected was not the answer I got. The answer I got was not the answer I wanted. The answer I got set me back on my heels, drove me to my knees, and will take me a lifetime to process, many lifetimes to process, and evokes many, many more questions to sit with, in my own solitude, and in our collective time together over the next 18 years, I promise. Because we are going to sit with this one!
The answer I expected to the “Where is God?” question was, “Oh, God is right there with us in our suffering.” I could easily get that answer anywhere, at First Baptist, or Watermark, or on a Hallmark greeting card. And it is true. God is with us, Immanuel, from cradle to grave in our suffering and in our joy.
However, the answer that stunned me every bit as much as seeing that person jump from the World Trade Center and shocked me every bit as much as the dead body in the wheelchair in front of the New Orleans Convention Center was this. Jesus is not with those people. Jesus IS those people.
Jesus IS those people!
He’s not with those people, he IS those people!
We need to put the brakes on and sit there for a moment with that.
That has massive implications about how we as Doubters are going to do ministry in the post-COVID-19 world. Because it says something about who and where the risen Christ actually is, within and beyond each and every one of us.
What you do to and for the least of these, you are doing it to and for me!
9/11, or Katrina, or COVID-19, or any of the other myriad of disasters that befall humanity are points that serve to shock us out of the banality of our everyday humdrum life. They force us to ask questions, to doubt, the ridiculousness of the crap that we have prioritized as necessary in life. Jesus is saying something completely different, to the disciples, to all of the disciples, no less to doubting Thomas, that it’s ok to question. I’ve got work for you to do, and here it is:
“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
As many of you know, I chose, willingly, to live in the urban context of downtown Dallas for a distinct reason. I wanted to be thoroughly immersed in the landscape of social justice work in the urban setting. Along comes COVID-19, and I am doing my self-isolation in the concrete jungle, where when I take my walks out each day, I see not the beauty of grass and trees and sky and seas, or even the loveliness of office workers scurrying to and from lunch appointments. There is a new, and yet not new harsh reality that I see that is alive and well in downtown Dallas that has been here all along, which was so easy to not see in the midst of everyday humdrum life.
The homeless population, that which is Jesus, has swelled to unbelievable rank during this crisis, as people who were on the edge have now been thrust over the edge, and now live underneath building overhangs, awnings, freeways, and street corners. The downtown library is a veritable tent city. I cannot help but see, what I now know IS in fact, the risen Jesus Christ, all around me!
And what are we to do, but receive the gift of God’s Holy Spirit breathed upon us by Jesus Christ himself, and go forth, touching, and healing, and forgiving the sins of many!
Doubters, we have much work to do!
Be careful of what you ask for, because you might in fact get it!
“Where is God?”
Why, child, God is all around you. Open your eyes and see!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Christ is Risen.
The Lord is Risen, Indeed!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Amen!
