Today's Gospel, written by the Evangelist John, is a story we all know well; a post-resurrection account of the Risen Lord appearing to his disciples. The theme of the story is the spiritual awakening and transformation from doubt to renewed belief and apostleship of Thomas, our parish namesake and patron.
Furthermore, through John's record of the event, we see, also, how the Resurrection of the Crucified One, now Risen from the dead, re-creates the kingdom of men through the possibility of a new order; what I shall term deathlessness or what Scripture calls eternal life; which is to say, something not to be confused with living forever but instead associated with the spiritual fullness and power intended for humanity that can only be received through surrender of one's will and life to the love of God.
To better understand what is occurring in today's Gospel, let's back up a bit, to the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel (1.1-18). Here, and also in familiar words we all know well, Jesus is set forth by the Evangelist not only as the divine Word (1.1), which through the Incarnation has taken flesh (1.14), but also as sacred light (1.4); which is to say, transcendent illumination understood as Spirit and power; which, we are told, is also the life of men (1.4). Jesus, in fact, later in John's Gospel, declares himself to be “…the light of the world: he that followeth me…” [he says] “shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (8.12). One more thing from the Prologue, “…the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (1.5).
Thomas, in today's Gospel, is therefore an image of man walking in the dark, the uncomprehending darkness of all that is not God; in the case of the Apostle this morning, unbelief.
But, this light, synonymous with Christ, which is also the heart and essence of divine activity and participation in creation, is, therefore meant to be understood as transfiguring; for example, Jesus on the Holy Mount, enveloped in the cloud of God's presence, wherein the Evangelist Luke reports our Lord's face “…was altered and his raiment…white and glistening” (9.29). In other words, this divine light which transforms both darkness and matter is intended to be understood as being the power and mystery of Resurrected life; begotten and intended by the Father from the very beginning, and giving to the eternal Word creative privilege so remarkable and unique as to even be capable of bringing something from nothing; for example, today, belief from unbelief.
This eternal light, which is also redemptive, is divine life intended for us as well. Meant to transfigure darkness in all its many manifestations, Resurrection light is intended also to be our awakening to hope and salvation, because it has already transformed the kingdom of this world to become the kingdom of God in the victory of the Word made Flesh, now fully revealed in the passion, death, and resurrection of the Christ. People, places, things, and events, I am saying, are therefore not as they heretofore once were!
In today's Gospel, we see the drama of this theology play out. Thomas is representative of each and all of us; which is to say, men and women captive to the darkness of the kingdom of this world; a world of fear, violence, and death; a shadowy existence, in other words, of unbelief; a garment of darkness, I think, we as mortals wear which possesses, as it were, a certain “…dangerous looseness of doom…” (re. to ee cummings, Introduction, New Poems), that we, as acted out in Thomas' bold example this morning, find sincerely yet falsely becoming!
To this delusion and helpless captivity to darkness, deliverance, or, better put, intervention, now comes. And, it comes, because of the Resurrection of the Crucified One, now risen from the dead, who brings with him the dawn and light of God's new creation; a deathless one; a heavenly kingdom now come amongst men, received simply as gift; what is often refereed to as Grace; which is to say, the power of God to do in us what we can do for ourselves.
This light, this grace, this kingdom, power, and glory come amongst us, call it what you will, I believe, is synonymous with the love of God; what I often describe as divine mercy, forgiveness, and peace. In other words, it is the Truth revealed not only in the teaching and ministry of Christ but also in the sacrifice of his passion and death upon the Cross as well. This Truth is like a garment also; one that is put upon us at our baptism. A heavenly gift, it possesses a certain looseness of glory, clothing us in the humility and light of divine mercy, forgiveness, and peace; armor, as it were, for our battle with the powers and principalities of darkness while making us heirs of Christ's victory, once and for all.
Also, I want to note that in today's Gospel are two understandings of time; 1) chronos or finite/earthly time, what our wristwatch tells us; and 2) kairos or Resurrection time, what Scripture terms eternal life, what, for example, both the Incarnation and the empty tomb reveal.
Permit me to explain how the difference works. With the Risen One of God now amongst us in his deathlessness, comes a tsunami, as it were, of new and renewing time (kairos) that overtakes and subverts earthly time (chronos). That is why Jesus in his resurrected body can do the bizarre things Scripture records him doing; for example, suddenly appearing, as he does today, passing through locked doors in order to stand in the midst of his disciples and disappearing just as quickly as he arrived. Translated, what the text is telling us is that with the dawn of this new time, this new creation, that Christ and his resurrection bring, comes, as I said earlier, the revelation of the power of God to do amongst us what we cannot do for ourselves; more especially, again, as in the example of Thomas, to make of us who we are not; to change our mortal garment of gloom for a heavenly vesture of glory; to raise us from captivity to death to deathlessness; to make of us as popular author and preacher Frederick Buechner terms, “believing unbelievers.”
Thus, in the days after the Resurrection, we ourselves, like the Apostles in today's Gospel, find all in this world we inhabit, now live in the time of transformation; a holiness of time, sanctification as the Church terms it, where divine Love is bringing people, places, things, and events into a new order and relationship, perfecting what is imperfect, healing what is broken, raising up what is cast down. With the Incarnation and through Christ's self-offering death and sacrifice upon the Cross, we need to see as never before, that an old order has at last ended; and, God's judgment has now come upon all that is. Therefore, we can better understand what Jesus meant when he said, “`Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me'” (Jn 14.1). To our troublesome world, a world of fear, violence, and death, a world cultivated and dependent upon unbelief, a new Word of hope has been spoken in divine death and resurrection, an eternal Word of light, power, and truth to transfigure all darkness. And, this new way, truth, and life, which Jesus brings and is, has everything to do with mercy, forgiveness, and peace, because to live in the spirit of mercy, forgiveness, and peace, is, therefore, to live eternally, deathlessly, here and now. It is, I am saying, to live in the fullness of Apostleship with the Lord whose love is light and life. It is to live sacrificially; which is to say, the way of the Cross. And, it is to live with the power of the Resurrection, what Bishop Spong, the retired bishop of Newark and author, calls the Christ power.
Living in a troublesome world with Resurrection life is not easy, because it does something to us. It turns us inside-out in a world that is living outside-in! It is, I am saying, costly living, because it asks something of us; faithfulness in thought, word, and deed; what I call surrendered life. But, Love is like that! And, we are made by God to love; in particular, God, self, and one another!
My oft quoted example of this hope and glory of the call to love is the twentieth century martyr and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Writing in his book Ethics (cf., pp. 158-159, as quoted in A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 97), Bonhoeffer says that “Christian life means being human in the power of Christ's becoming human, being judged and pardoned in the power of the cross, living a new life in the power of the resurrection. No one of these is without the other.”
What Bonhoeffer is telling us is the outline of today's Gospel; how Thomas in his captivity to the kingdom, power, and glory of this world is judged and pardoned by the Crucified One and how Thomas is thereby turned to live inside-out, now more fully, as an apostle of mercy, forgiveness and peace in and to a world deeply and fatally troubled with fear, violence, and death.
What Bonhoeffer records, and what Scripture records as happening to Thomas in the locked room in the days immediately after the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is also the blueprint for our lives as well; for in this morning's biography of one man's awakening to apostleship of life in Christ, also in the words of Bonhoeffer, is “…the human in the new image of God” (cf., A Testament to Freedom, pp. 320-321, ibid., p. 106). In other words, to live in mercy, forgiveness, and peace is to come to live as never before in the fullness intended for humanity; the Christ power alive in us; God's heart, as it were, carrying and transforming our heart; love's function, in other words, for that is what this is, a creation story, being, in the words of e e cummings, “…to fabricate unknowness” (#61, ln 1, No Thanks); which in today's Gospel is to say, the resurrected One revealing the light of a new way, a new truth, and new life, a new day:
I thank You God…[says cummings] for most this amazing day
now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened
(#65, ln 1, lns 13-14, XAIRE)
These are the words of awakening; of unexpected light piercing and transforming darkness, the Word of new creation. It is what happened to Thomas this morning in that locked room; the ears of his ears now awake, the eyes of his eyes now opened. He is not the man he once was. Surprised and humbled by the power of God, Christ has turned on the light to shine on the darkness of unbelief as never before!
Cummings describes his own encounter with the Risen Lord; an unexpected experience, he records it happening during an evening walk in the West Village:
walking in the dark
I met Christ
Jesus)my heart
flopped over
and lay still
(XAIRE, #50)
What the Gospel, what the Apostle Thomas, what the theologian Bonhoeffer, and what the poet cummings remind us, believing unbelievers, is that we live now in a new time, the eternal day of Resurrected life; a glorious day in which we should expect some surprises, some un-doing of things both great and small; some awakening from our ancient enemy and captor, whose darkness is fear, violence, and death. But, most importantly, we are reminded that “miracles are to come” (cummings, Intro, New Poems), because Creation is not yet fully finished.
“All shall be well,” says that 14th century mystic, Lady Julian. Indeed, our Light has come; for God, that mystery at the heart and center of all that is, who tells us, “I am alpha and omega,” beginning and end, has saved the best for last!
Thanks be to God!
