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The Second Sunday Of Easter
Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery hast established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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The Second Sunday Of Easter
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A Sermon by
Fr. Bodie
✛
We Need Incarnation: The Demand of Thomas
Some years ago a dear friend of mine was having difficulty with Christianity. His complaint was that God seemed so very absent when he tried to pray or compose himself in religious thoughts. With my usual pastoral sensitivity, I suggested that he might be the absent party, or that having pre-determined how God was to present himself, he might be too full of words, ideas, or preconceptions of what an encounter with God might be to actually enjoy one. Despite this, we remained friends, and weeks, maybe months, later, he told me that he had begun to attend Zen retreats in hopes of learning stillness. I congratulated him on his intention and on his fortitude, knowing something myself about the nature of a Zen retreat. We rarely talked about the Zen aspect of his devotional life, but it did seem to help him become more recollected.
Months passed, and when the next summer arrived, he announced that he had booked a place in a three week-long Zen meditation session in Massachusetts. My mind boggled. The thought of sitting before a bare wall for hours on end for three weeks trying to become empty was, and remains, unappealing to me. Allen, however, was convinced that he would benefit from the experience, and I had no doubt that he would benefit. I just couldn’t imagine just how that benefit would present itself. About a week into his absence, we invited his wife to come to dinner, and to our surprise and pleasure, he arrived with her. “I needed incarnation,” he announced as he came through the door.
Over dinner Allen related how during the days of meditation there was no communication with anyone. The exception to this isolation was that appointments could be made to have a conference with the monk from Thailand who was the leader of the retreat. The monk spoke no English, and as Allen said, the language barrier was rather insignificant since when the translator related the issue brought by the retreatant his unvarying response was, “Tell me about your breathing.” Now this is a very potent technique in assisting people to learn self-forgetfulness, and that is an admirable goal in a society that indulges and rewards self-absorption as much as ours does. Allen, however, pointed out that he could have gone to the monk and said, “I’m experiencing a good bit of suicidal ideation,” and the monk’s response would have remained, “Tell me about your breathing.” I think we all can appreciate what Allen meant when he said, “I needed incarnation.”
I would like to suggest that in Our Lord’s resurrection appearances to his disciples and friends that he recognizes we all need incarnation and everything it brings. I would also like to suggest that St. Thomas’ ‘doubting’ is not so much unbelief as it is a plea for incarnation – for the real thing in the Risen One, not as some suggest an experience of the transforming power of Christ that persists beyond the grave, but his true and living presence in the flesh. I think that St. Thomas speaks for all of us who have any awareness at all of our need for personal contact when he insists upon incarnation, on tangibility. It is this sort of self-awareness that brings about the true self-forgetfulness that can recognize the risen Christ bringing forgiveness and friendship. Then we can begin to discern the new creation in which self-absorption is revealed as the passive side of our aggression toward others, our brothers and sisters who bear the image of the invisible God, to whom God has united himself in Jesus the Christ, and for whom he died and rose.
The eternal purpose of God is to be in relationship with us. When we open ourselves to that reality we find we can be in authentic relationship with one another. This eternal purpose of God has its culmination and crown in the crucified, risen and ascended Jesus, and we like Thomas, like my friend Allen, need tangible relationship with this present Christ. It is the tonic for all our longing, for all our fears, and for that sense of futility and emptiness that afflicts so many people. Furthermore it is the remedy for the inauthentic relationships we develop with one another through the objectification of one another, that aggression toward one another passive or active, which is the presence of evil in our lives – our sin.
Naturally we who are worn out with the cares this behavior creates in our lives crave the touch of one to whom we have done our worst and who has returned from the grave, not as a ghost, not out for revenge, but overflowing with forgiveness and the desire to be with us again knowing full well who we are and what we do. This healing is what Thomas and the disciples in the room with him experienced. Jesus tells them not to be afraid, knowing that we would expect and would ourselves seek revenge. He does not come to visit revenge on anyone ever. As Bishop Grein said on Good Friday, the Christian fundamentalists have completely missed the point in this regard – not because they are bad – they aren’t any more than anyone else -, but from a lack of imagination, a reliance on subscription to a set of beliefs of their making, and a failure to recognize their need for incarnation.
The faith of those who follow and worship Jesus who was killed and who has risen from the dead is at its core about touching and being touched by him, not about believing the right things about him. St. Thomas was right when he insisted on contact with the risen Christ. That is why Jesus instituted the sacramental way of life. Not so we could have church services, what an appalling thought (!), but so we who witness the resurrection in our own time might have that tangible contact with him who shows us the Father’s love.
During Lent I read Karen Armstrong’s history of Fundamentalism, The Battle for God. In it she makes two very important points: that Fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon, an attempt to ‘freeze’, if you will, traditional faith in the midst of a greatly changing world , and that frequently in order to cope with the changed world they find themselves in, fundamentalists invert the tradition in a sort of magical attempt to perpetuate it. An example of this is that the Islamic fundamentalists who took over the planes on 9/11 got drunk the day before. Islam does not countenance drinking at all, yet these self-appointed guardians of traditional Islam violated one of its most basic tenets. Closer to home, Christian fundamentalists have largely rejected the sacramental, incarnational way of life that is the great Christian tradition in favor of what we might call litmus tests concerning certain beliefs about how other people should be. The outcome of this is their assertion is that some behavior is beyond forgiveness, or that some people are beyond forgiveness. This is certainly an abandonment of the experience of Thomas and the other disciples in the upper room, and of any reading of the gospels.
Jesus is constantly coming to his followers in love and forgiveness. He doesn’t appear in our midst today to quiz us on what we believe, but in order to be touched by us and to touch us, to feed us, to renew that relationship with the Father which is the Father’s will. As I read and watch the news each day, I find myself joining with my friend Allen’s recognition and his statement that echoes St. Thomas’ so called ‘doubting.’ “I (we) need incarnation.”
