Keeping in Touch
© copyright 2013 Robert J. Elder
John 20:19-31
Robert
J. Elder, Pastor
First
Presbyterian Church, Vancouver, Washington
Second
Sunday of Easter: April 7, 2013
In
1899, Congressman William Vandiver coined a phrase when he said, “I come from a
state that raises corn, cotton, cockleburs, and Democrats; and frothy eloquence
neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri. You’ve got to show me.” The bit about frothiness
didn’t stick, but that “I’m from Missouri ... show me” business sure did.
People who require evidence have been saying, “I’m from Missouri” ever since.
Probably Thomas was the one disciple who could be said, in Congressman
Vandiver’s sense of it, to have been “from Missouri.”
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and
put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not
believe.” Sermons are often based on this episode by focusing on the doubts
which Thomas harbored. I have heard Thomas’ doubts compared to everything under
the sun. Frederick Buechner once called doubts “the ants in the pants of
faith,” because, he said, “they keep it alive and moving.” Talking of
ants-in-the-pants leads me to think on the equally stimulating value of fleas.
The chief character of Edward Noyes Westcott’s late 19th century
novel, David Harum, declared, “A
reasonable amount o’ fleas is good fer a dog – keeps him from broodin’ over
being a dog.”[1] Which goes well with the observation of Sir Francis
Galon, the nineteenth century English scientist who said, “Well-washed and
well-combed dogs grow dull; they miss the stimulus of fleas.” All this has
reminded many preachers of a similarity between the stimulating effect of fleas
on a dog and doubts in a person.
Today, though, I have found my eye returning to a
different aspect of the story from John’s gospel. It has to do with Jesus’
wounds and his invitation to Thomas – to all of us – to touch them.
Every so often, it seems almost on a daily basis, we
hear reports about a roadside bomb going off somewhere in the world, sometimes
right here at home, killing and maiming X number of innocent bystanders. A
couple of decades ago, we would have been shocked reading such reports. Now
they seem as common as a morning cup of coffee. We have become awfully
calloused to the suffering that human beings visit on one another. To the weary
world, these must seem to be just more wounds on an already much-wounded
planet.
I don’t know about you, but every time I read the
story of Thomas, I am shocked at his desire to touch Jesus in his wounded
places. Yet I am equally undone by the fact that this does not seem to bother
the risen Jesus all that much. He invites Thomas’ probing fingers into his
wounds, into the places where he was injured, battered, killed for the sake of
the gospel. The week before, when Thomas wasn’t with them, Jesus invited all of
the other disciples to see his hands and side. Jesus invited Thomas, as he
invited all of them, as he invites us, to touch his wounds.
“Unless I touch your wounds, I will not believe.” If
finding wounds to touch is the problem, then the solution is as near at hand as
the latest disaster, the nearby suffering of innocents. Pictures coming across
our TV screens on a daily basis remind us that wounds are near at hand indeed.
I believe that we can touch Jesus’ wounds today. Indeed, I believe we must.
Remember in John’s gospel how the disciples reacted
to the news of Jesus’ resurrection? They heard the report from Mary Magdalene,
that she had met the risen Jesus. Did they suddenly sing out for joy, begin
praising God in the streets, challenge the authority of the Scribes and
Pharisees? No, John reports what they did: “When it was evening on that day,
the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had
met were locked out of fear...” The resurrection of Jesus did not embolden the
disciples, nor did it grant them faith. It sent them scrambling to the safety
of a retreat to the room where they had last eaten with him. Thomas is called
the doubter, but looking around that chilly upper room, I don’t see anything
passing for faith on the faces of those fear-filled disciples that Easter
evening, do you? Thomas, when he found his voice, merely said what everyone
else was thinking when they first heard that Jesus had risen. “How can I know Jesus is risen?” He sought some
tangible assurance. Why is it that he thought of contact with Jesus’ wounds as
the way to receive that assurance?
Thomas, always the practical one, thought he found
the other disciples deep in the denial stage that some folks go through when
they lose a loved-one to death. Practical Thomas, who tried to keep Jesus from
traveling to Judea to be with the family of Lazarus – after all, the last time
he was there they tried to stone him! – Thomas, who finally agreed to go along,
but with his eyes open: “Let’s go, then, so we can all die with him,” he said.
When the end came, Thomas ducked for cover like the
rest, but he was also the last to emerge from hiding. He was, as I said, the
practical one. He found the others in denial. “We have seen the Lord!” they
said. “Unless I ... put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his
side, I will not believe.” The translators may be too tame, out of deference to
our tender sensibilities. It’s a pity. The original word for “putting” his hand
means to thrust or jab. “Unless I thrust (Gk.: Balo) my
finger in the mark of the nails ... unless I jab my hand into his wounded side...” Ouch. Thomas seems to need to
observe Jesus wince in pain to believe that what was human and very much dead
had now become immortal. I am undone by this whole scene, but especially by the
fact that Jesus responded to Thomas’ words by inviting his probing touch. It did not seem to bother the risen
Jesus. He invited Thomas’ to jab at his wounds, the places of deadly injury, if
that’s what he needed. Jesus invited Thomas, invites us, to touch him in his
wounded places, just as for so many in Galilee Jesus had touched wounded places
to make them well.
Somehow this moment, this knowing of Jesus’ wounds,
transformed Thomas – and all of them – so that fear melted into joy. But this
is more than an arrival at the condition we call faith. It is also a story
about a commissioning:
“‘Peace be with you. As the
Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them
and said to them, ‘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.’”
Having invited them to participate in his own wounds,
suffered for their sakes, Jesus commissioned them, the wounded, fear-filled
disciples, to show their wounds to the world, to touch the world in its wounded
places. The world says in reply to all our pontifications on faith and
doctrine, about resurrection and the ministry of Christ, “Unless I thrust my
hand into the church and find real wounds, no way I’ll ever believe.”[2]
I am often asked about the decline of members in the
Presbyterian church nationally. I am afraid I have no really good answers to
the question. The sum of what I know about the church as a denomination is that
if its individual churches fail to be faithful, no amount of conversation about
faithfulness as a denomination will suffice. Ask any group of gathered
Presbyterians to raise their hand if they have grown children who are not
active in any church. Dozens of hands will go up. It is our own people we have
lost, more than people who have left in a rage over some obscure point of
doctrine. We don’t lose members due to strife over big issues of dogma. We lose
our own children when they are bored with what the church isn’t doing. The
world is broken and wants to touch
our wounds to see if there can be healing. But when we dress up our wounds to
hide them from the world, we do a disservice to the gospel.
I read once about a psychiatrist who said, “‘Good
mothers tend to be a little bit messy. At least their grooming isn’t perfect.’
He knew that the touch of the small child, seeking assurance of safety and
love, should not be hampered by warnings not to spoil makeup or displace
carefully arranged hair. Jesus, our good Lord and our good friend, would pass
[the] test for a loving, embracing presence.”[3]
I think Jesus always moved, and still moves, toward
the wounded ones. Like fire fighters weeping over children they cannot save, or
physicians and nurses pausing solemnly in the ER over a patient they can’t
manage to resuscitate, Jesus moves toward the wounded places on the earth,
touches the wounds of those who suffer, and brings healing where there had been
despair. When we touch the wounds of others to bring healing, we are touching
the very body of Christ.
