Of First Importance

I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

(1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

Isaiah 25:6-9, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, John 20:1-18

In a post during Holy Week, I reflected on Jesus’ words from the cross, “My God,my God, why have you forsaken me?” in light of the horrific story of Christian Choate who was kept in a dog cage and eventually beaten to death by his father. Such stories are the test of anything we say about God and faith.

The Christian story of Incarnation and cross claims the promise of God’s solidarity with his creatures caught in the web of sin, brokenness, and death. The credal affirmation that the Son of God has descended into hell is hopeful. God has poured the potent, relentless mercy of Jesus’ presence into every hell, on earth or beyond. There is no one, no place, and no situation that is god-forsaken. Hopeful as that is, is it enough? What more can we say about the good news of Jesus Christ in light of the tragic story of Christian Choate and those of so many others?

In his first letter to the young church in Corinth, Paul reminds them of what he considered of first importance, what he in turn had received – that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures

I suspect few of us have done anything as egregious as Christian Choate’s father. But each of us has failed to love as we are meant to love. Each of us has been negligent of God and neighbor. Each of us has contributed in ways large or small to the mess of the world.

And yet, in spite of that, God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). William Temple wrote,

In the most true sense [God] loves me even while I sin; but it cannot be said too strongly that there is a wrath in God against my sinning; God's Will is set one way and mine is set against it. There is a collision of wills; and God's Will is not passive in that collision.

At the cross is the collision of those wills in which God’s love overcomes all our unlove – all of our envy and enmity, all of our indifference. God poured out his love on the hard wood of the cross and thereby entered into the worst humans can do and made a way for us to enter into his forgiveness. There is no one – including Christian Choate's dad – that is beyond the reach of his saving embrace where there is forgiveness.

I suppose, in ways we do not know or comprehend, we have to accept that Christian Choate, as part of the human web of sin, needed that forgiveness as well. But that is where I think an exclusive focus on the cross and our need for forgiveness starts to fall short. Is it really satisfactory if all we can say about Christian Choate is we hope he had an opportunity to say the ‘Jesus Prayer’ and receive God’s forgiveness before his dad beat him to death? Especially given that we have no evidence that he had ever even heard anything about Jesus? And if he didn’t? Were those horrific thirteen years just a brief prelude to an eternity of torture in hell? Is it satisfactory to say, as some might, that, if he didn’t repent, it was due to his being predestined not to do so? That his brief life of suffering was just a small part of the larger story of human sin and he only received in this life a foretaste of the penalty of sin to be exacted by God on all the reprobate? That hardly seems worthy of the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

But, neither is it satisfactory to say, as an any honest atheist must, that what happened to Christian Choate is just one example of the kinds of things that are coded into the world into which we have been born. It is what it is. Any moral outrage about it is just a matter of inherited taste.

The Christian hope is more than that. In Christ, God has addressed more than our guilt. In Christ, God has addressed the deep wound of humanity, and of human history and, indeed, all of creation.

Few of us have suffered anything as terrible as Christian Choate – though my wife, who is a therapist, told me recently that as many as one in three girls and one in six boys are sexually molested. Physical and emotional abuse are also more common than we like to think. So, maybe more of us have such stories of suffering and sorrow than we usually let on. But even if we have avoided abuse of that nature, each of us bears the wounds and brokenness endemic to humanity. We don’t just need forgiveness. We need healing.

It is important to note that healing was as significant a part Jesus’ ministry as was his call to repent and offer of forgiveness. His mercy included both. So did his dying and rising.

He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures

Handing on to the Corinthians that which he considered of first importance, Paul referred to the resurrection using the exact language he used for the death of Christ suggesting that the two go together as two aspects of one salvific intervention. The Cross and Easter the Resurrection are two sides of the one coin of the world’s redemption.

In some theologies and popular pieties Jesus’ resurrection is treated as an addendum to what is considered the really important thing which is Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins. The resurrection is sometimes reduced to little more than proof of Jesus’ divinity or the assurance that there might be life after death. At most it is God’s vindication of Jesus’ life and message. Though I emphatically affirm all of these, the resurrection is also much more.

The crucifixion and resurrection include the promise of healing, transformation, restoration, and new creation. I am persuaded that that is true for the past as well as the present or the future. As Wolfhart Pannenberg has written,

The kingdom of God embraces the earlier generations of mankind as well as the coming ones, and hope for the coming of the rule of God does not only expect salvation for the last generation; it is directed towards the transfiguration of all epochs of human history through the fire of divine judgment, which is one with the light of the glory of God.  

– The Apostles Creed In Light of Today's Questions

Similarly, Michael Ramsey wrote of Jesus’ Transfiguration as a foreshadowing of the Transfiguration of all things in the General Resurrection that is the world’s destiny in Christ,

Confronted with a universe more terrible than ever in the blindness and the destructiveness of its potentialities, men and women must be led to Christian faith, not as a panacea of progress or as an otherworldly solution unrelated to history, but as a gospel of Transfiguration. Such a gospel transcends the world and yet speaks directly to the immediate here-and-now. He who is transfigured is the Son of Man; and as he discloses on the holy mountain another world, he reveals that no part of created things, and no moment of created time lies outside the power of the Spirit, who is Lord, to change it from glory to glory.

– The Gory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ

Our hope of the resurrection of the body is not just a hope for individual escape from death. It is that. But, it is also the expectation that the body of humanity, stretched out and tortured on the rack of history will be restored. In the final resurrection and restoration of all things (Acts 3:21), it is not just the memory of Christian Choate’s agony that will be redeemed. The trauma, torture, and terror of human history twill not just be forgotten, but redeemed. The very reality of it will be caught up and transfigured–scars and all–in a way we can barely fathom.

In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has broken open the cage of sin and death and decay that holds us all. The resurrection of Jesus is a ray of light piercing the cloud of Death that is cast over all people (Isaiah 25:6-9) guaranteeing that the world's story ends in resurrection and transformation. Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died (1 Corinthians 15:20). As Paul insists in Romans 8, that is a promise for all of creation as well. All of creation will be renewed.

In the meantime, creation continues to groan under the reality of death and decay. And not just the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23).

The Gardener come to repair and restore the garden

Mary Magdalene, who the scriptures point out followed Jesus because he healed her (Mark 16:9), not because she had any unusual need of forgiveness (despite later tradition to the contrary), came to honor his tortured dead body at the tomb. There she found the grave empty. She assumed someone had taken the body. What else would she suspect? She asks one she takes to be a gardener where they have taken the body of the one she had hoped would redeem Israel and the world. When the gardener speaks her name, she recognizes that he is in fact Jesus who had been dead, but is now risen and more alive than before.

But, in fact, Mary had rightly identified him the first time. Jesus is the Gardener, come to restore the Garden of creation and history that has been infected with the thorns and thistles of sin and death that have made it a curse for so many to be born (Genesis 3). According to the ancient story, the curse began with a tree in a garden. And the healing and restoration begins with a tree (the cross) and a garden.

The fullness of the restoration of all things remains a hope of the future. We do not pretend that all is already well. In Christ we have received the first fruits. We live in expectation. But, if we allow the Gardener to work in our lives, forgiveness and healing can begin now. New creation can begin now. Transformation can begin now. And as his Spirit moves in and through us we can participate with him in the healing of the land and live now in the shade of another tree in another garden at the heart of the City of the New Creation– the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2).

The tragic life and death of Christian Choate reminds us that we still walk in the valley of the shadow of death. Sin, with all its violence and greed, is still present. But the shadow of death has been transformed into the shadow of the cross, backlit with the hope of resurrection. Christ has died for our sins and was raised on the third day. In that two-fold event, God' mercy has entered into the deepest, darkest human reality of sin and suffering, like that of Christian Choate. And he has broken out of that hell with the promise of forgiveness, healing, and new creation. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

See also:

Resurrection:The Matter of Matter and Why it Matters

No More Sacrifices – the God of Easter and the Death of Death

"If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." (Colossians 3:1-3)

You have died. You have been raised. with Christ. Your life is hidden with Christ. You are thus dead to Death and its power. You are free. Free from fear. 

In the death and resurrection of Jesus, Death itself was mortally wounded. Jesus’ death is the death of Death. The great Puritan theologian, John Owen, wrote a book called The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. I would not agree with everything Owen wrote in his book, but I love the title. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the power of Death has been emptied. Death has been emptied of its power over us. St Athansius, in On the Incarnation wrote, "by Christ death was destroyed". The great Anglican priest and poet, John Donne, wrote in his meditation Death Be Not Proud a summary of how Christians now live (or should) in the light of death because death no longer has power over us. He wrote,

Death be not proud. Though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow die not, poor death. Nor yet canst thou kill me.

Donne ends with,

One short sleep past, we awake eternally, and death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die.

Because we are united with Christ’s death, we too are dead to the power of Death and we are free. Because we know that our life is hidden in the one whose Life is more powerful than Death, we are free. Because we know that Christ has hold of us – and Christ will not let go – we are free. We are free from the power of Death. It has no ultimate claim on us.

And so, we need not live and act in fear of Death. And we need not try to appease the powers of Death, as humans have all too often done, sacrificing others for our own sense of security.

The idea of sacrificing to appease Death has a powerful hold on the human imagination. We see it in mythology in the idea that if you sacrifice someone else the gods will be appeased and let you live. But it’s not just mythology. It has been acted out in history. In the Old Testament, time and again God tells Israel, “Do not sacrifice your children the way your neighbors do." The ancient Carthaginians tossed their children into the sacred fire, hoping that in doing so they might appease the gods and buy some time against the Romans. The ancient Aztecs carved out the hearts of their sacrificial victims to feed the gods and to buy themselves some security.

But we need to beware lest we pat ourselves on the back and say, “We don’t sacrifice people. We don’t carve out their hearts on some sacrificial altar or toss people into the fire.” If we are honest with ourselves, we need to acknowledge that  we have indeed offered up sacrificial victims for our own security and way of life, hoping to stave off the power of Death.

We sacrifice young people when we send them off as soldiers to offer life and limb in battle on our behalf.

We sacrifice innocent people who are killed in our wars. It is estimated that in our current war(s) some 50 to 100 thousand innocent Iraqis, Afghans, and others who just happened to get in the way of our sense of insecurity have been killed by our bombs. We call it collateral damage. But, it is human sacrifice for our security.

We sacrifice criminals, hoping that if we kill the killers we might feel a bit more safe. If that worked, Texas would be the safest state in the Union. Even if it worked, we would have to ask ourselves if that is the kind of sacrifice we want to offer – especially given the evidence that many truly innocent people have ended up on death row.

We sacrifice refugees and other unwelcome "intruders" preferring that they suffer rather than risking the possibility that we might suffer on their behalf.

We sacrifice the unwelcome intruder of the womb, collateral damage of another kind.

The cult of the gun that insists that anyone and everyone who wants to should have access to guns designed to kill humans is another way we bow to Death. Never mind if it means accepting gun violence in our society unparalleled anywhere except actual war zones. And while many are sacrificed, the proliferation of guns has not made us feel more safe.

More subtly, we sacrifice others in an economic system in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and whole parts of the world suffer so our way of life can be maintained.

The list could go on. There are many ways we sacrifice the lives and well-being of others so we can feel safer, so we can be more comfortable, so our wealth is not threatened. All because we fear Death more than we trust the God of Easter.

The sacrifice of Jesus was in one sense just another example of the sinful, selfish, sacrificial bargain humans have made with Death. On Good Friday, humanity sacrificed Jesus as we have always been willing to sacrifice some other(s) for the people rather than risk the possibility that we might perish (cf. John 11:50). But its deeper meaning was different. The sacrifice of Jesus was not a sacrifice to appease God, let alone Death. Rather, God in Christ, offered himself freely as a self-sacrifice to undo the hold Sin and Death have on us and our imaginations and to absorb and transform our death-dealing sinfulness. The resurrection of Jesus has demonstrated that the old way of the world in which violence and the sacrificing of others are seen as necessary is a dead end. The resurrection opens a new way and inaugurates the New Creation in which there is restoration, reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, and peace.

Recourse to violence against others or ourselves is a false sacrifice and it participates in the way of this world which is death and not the Spirit of Jesus Christ which is life and peace (Romans 8:6). But, if Christ has made the one sufficient sacrifice, then we can take shelter at the foot of his cross and lay down our hammer and nails and live in the light of his resurrection. And we can learn what this means, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" (Matthew 9:13). Christians who know that the death of Christ was indeed the death of Death are freed from the fear of Death and the myriad ways we are tempted to appease its power at the expense of others.

Perhaps this does not mean we must embrace complete non-violence (though that is the direction the New Testament points). But, at the very least, Christians should be much more wary than we often are of allowing others to suffer so we can remain comfortable and of justifying violence for our own security. And we should never celebrate the deaths of others, even our enemies.

We worship the crucified and risen Lord in whose Life our life is hid. Because we know that Christ, crucified and risen, has defeated the power of Death, we need not fear death. We need not sacrifice the lives of others to protect our own. The death of Christ was the death of Death. Now, the only sacrifice we need to offer is our own broken, contrite hearts and the living sacrifice of love for one another in thanksgiving to God for what he has done for us. Our lives are now hidden with Christ in God. And we are free to live without fear in his Life and Peace.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Ten Quotes About the Resurrection

1. "The simple truth is that resurrection cannot be accommodated to any way of understanding the world except one in which it is the starting point."

– Lesslie Newbigin (Proper Confidence)

2. The assertion that Jesus is risen from the dead remains a matter of dispute in a special degree because it cuts so deeply into fundamental questions of the understanding of reality.

– Wolfhart Pannenberg (The Apostles' Creed in Light of Today’s Questions)

3. We may say without exaggeration: at the tomb in Jerusalem the ultimate choice will be made between two totally different world-views.

– Walter Kunneth (Theology of the Resurrection)

4. When we celebrate Easter, we are really standing in the middle of a second ‘Big Bang', a tumultuous surge of divine energy as fiery and intense as the very beginning of the universe. What a recent writer wonderfully calls ‘the fire in the equations’, the energy in the mathematical and physical structures of things, is here at Easter; and when in the ancient ceremonies of the night before Easter we light a bonfire and bless it and light candles from it, we may think of the first words of God in Genesis, ‘Let there be light!’.

– Rowan Williams (Tokens of Trust)

5. Is the body a shell that one sheds, or is it an intrinsic part of the personality that will forever identify a person? If Jesus, body corrupted in the tomb so that his victory over death did not include bodily resurrection, then the model of destruction and new creation is indicated. If Jesus rose bodily from the dead, then the Christian model should be one of transformation. The problem of the bodily resurrection is not just an example of Christian curiosity; it is related to a major theme in theology: God’s ultimate purpose in creating.

– Raymond Brown (The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus)

6. Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.

– N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope)

7. Christ did not come into the world that we might understand him, but that we might cling to him, that we might simply let ourselves be swept away by him into the immense event of the resurrection.

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Mystery of Easter)

8. The risen life is not easy; it is also a dying life. The presence of the Resurrection in our lives means the presence of the Cross, for we do not rise with Christ unless we also first die with him. It is by the cross that we enter the dynamism of creative transformation, the dynamism of resurrection and renewal, the dynamism of love.

– Thomas Merton (He is Risen)

9. Whatever we can know historically about Christ’s resurrection must not be abstracted from the questions: what can we hope from it? And what must we do in its name? The resurrection of Christ is historically understood in the full sense in the unity of knowing, hoping, and doing.

– Jurgen Motmann (The Way of Jesus Christ)

10. Our death is already behind us, and our resurrection before us.

– Ephrem of Edessa (On Paradise)

Resurrection: The Matter of Matter and Why it Matters

The resurrection of Jesus, (resurrected—fully and physically alive, empty tomb and all) is essential to Christian faith. One of the reasons this matters is that it affects how we understand matter to matter and what hope we have for the material reality of this world and our material bodies and histories.

Classically, there are two options for addressing matter. Christianity promises a third.

1. Matter is all that matters – the materialist, atheist option. The material world is all there is and there is no meaning beyond what can be weighed or measured. The universe and all it contains, including human beings, is merely the product of impersonal, purposeless processes. In that case, the best we can do is try to avoid as much suffering as possible and "enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can," as The Misfit says in Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find. You can also try to avoid inflicting any more pain than necessary. You can even seek to alleviate and prevent it if that's how you want to spend your minutes. Or, like The Misfit, you can enjoy "No pleasure but meanness." But, which you choose is just a matter of taste. The most we can hope for is that sooner or later, one way or another, each of us will be put out of her or his misery by the oblivion of death.

If matter is all that matters, in the end it doesn’t matter all that much. And it does not matter if it is cared for or destroyed, cherished or exploited. And that is true of all material beings, including human beings. Even those who have aimed at improving the material well-being of humanity while committed to an ideology based on materialism have justified horrific things being done to the actual physical, material bodies of human beings.

Most atheists and materialists try to avoid these conclusions. But none successfully.

2. Matter doesn’t really matter – the option of one or another version of Idealism, Spiritualism, or Gnosticism. The material world and its tragic history is at most an insignificant backdrop to a more real spiritual drama. Or it is a bad and yucky thing. Or it is an illusion. This is true of the world at large and it is true of our material bodies. And suffering, then is not really real. The hope is that we can escape the material world with all its challenges and suffering through one or another system of spiritual liberation. Or we can hope that whatever is eternal, e.g., our soul or spirit, will finally shuffle off the mortal coil of material, bodily existence and move on to some realm of spiritual bliss.

As with option 1, if this is true, it doesn’t matter much how matter is treated. It is a matter of indifference.

Christians have sometimes tended to adopt some version of this. To disastrous effect. There has been a tendency to treat material reality as merely "stuff" to be used and exploited rather than a gift to be received with reverence and gratitude. And horrific things have been done to the material, physical bodies of human beings for the sake of their immaterial souls or some larger, spiritual ideal. 

But, orthodox Christianity has not taught that matter does not matter.

3. Christianity affirms something different – matter matters, but it is not all that matters and it matters in a direction. The material world is created by God and God declares it good – very good. It has been further blessed by being assumed by divinity in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. In the resurrection of Jesus we are assured that, in spite of its tragic history, the material creation is destined for transfiguration and New Creation. Matter matters.

If one assumes either 1 or 2, any talk of "resurrection" must be understood as metaphorical with, at best, only tangential connection with physical and material reality. If it has any meaning at all it is only a spiritual meaning. And there are some who talk of resurrection as if that is all it means – while the stories of resurrection have metaphorical meaning, Jesus did not actually, physically rise from the dead.

But, the hope of Christianity is based on a real, physical, material resurrection. First of all, the resurrection of Jesus in the 1st century. But, we also affirm in the Creeds that we believe in (and base our hope on) "the resurrection of the body". And what we hope for matters.

While the evil we humans commit, collaborate with, and suffer under always has a spiritual dimension, fundamentally, it is real, physical, and historical. The trauma, tragedy, torture, and terror are in real space, in real time. The contradictions we live under are historical, not metaphorical or merely spiritual. The Christian hope is not that we will somehow merely escape from the trauma, tragedy, and terror of evil, sin, and death – either that of our personal stories or of the story of human history. Our hope is that it has been addressed and redressed in the Incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that it will all be transfigured in resurrection.

I wonder if, when we say we believe in the resurrection of the body, what we are saying is about more than only the resurrection of individual bodies. It certainly is that. But, it it is also about the whole Human body stretched out on the rack of history. It is that body that was incorporated in the Incarnation. When Jesus Christ rose again on the third day, so did the promise of the resurrection/transfiguration of all the very material, historical sin and suffering of humanity and all creation – not metaphorically, but really and physically.

A real, physical resurrection matters. With that there is hope that the very real, physical torture and suffering of history (and the persons caught in it as victims, perpetrators, and collaborators) does not get the last word. Death and its servants do not win. Because we believe material reality matters and matters in a particular direction, we believe it matters how we care for the material creation. And it matters how we treat and care for the actual physical bodies of other human beings and their real material needs. While our meaning and purpose is found in more than our physical, material needs; the affirmation of the resurrection of the body insists that bodies cannot be separated from that meaning and purpose.

The Christian themes of creation and resurrection affirm that matter matters and it matters in a direction with a purpose and meaning. Rejoicing in the power of the resurrection, we live in the hope that material reality – including us God-breathed, material, embodied creatures – will be transfigured in resurrection glory. In the meantime we are obliged to cherish and care for it all and for the physical bodies and material needs of every human being.  

Why do you believe in God?

Sermon for 2nd Sunday of Easter

John20:19-31

Why do you believe in God?

Why do you believe in God?

Maybe you’ve had some mystical,

burning-bush experience like Moses.

Maybe you’ve had a dramatic conversion experience

and you can point to the difference God has made in your life.

Maybe you are struck by the beauty and grandeur of creation.

Or maybe, you were just raised that way and it makes sense to you.

Do you ever doubt your belief?

Or maybe you are one of those who find belief in God difficult,

plagued by questions and doubts.

Do you ever doubt your doubts?

In this morning’s gospel we hear about Thomas

who has been tagged with the nickname, “Doubting Thomas”.

Thomas is a lot more complex than this nickname would suggest

and some have tried to rehabilitate him and drop the nickname.

But, since our Lord himself says to Thomas,

“Do not doubt, but believe,”

I think the nickname is going to stick.

And I am glad.

I am glad there is one among the original disciples

who has a reputation for doubting.

I am glad because I am someone for whom belief in God

does not come easily.

I often feel like I have more questions than answers.

Belief is sometimes difficult for me,

but unbelief has proven impossible.

I’ll tell you why I believe in God.

I believe in God because of the suffering and injustice in the world.

I know that the suffering and injustice in the world

is supposed to be the great stumbling block to faith in God.

But, I’m just peculiar enough to find that to be the reason to believe.

Let me explain.

When I tried to be an atheist

I ran up against the reality that

to be an atheist forced a contradiction –

a contradiction between my mind and my heart.

Either I went with my mind

and followed logic to its utmost conclusion or I followed my heart.

But the two could not be followed together.

When I tried to be an atheist

and followed the logic of my mind

I was forced to admit that the beginning of all that is,

and the beginning of all that I am,

is an accident.

The end of all that is and all that I am is also

more or less an accident.

Everything in between is a meaningless series of events

suspended between two accidents.

Nothing, ultimately, has any meaning.

Nothing, ultimately, has any purpose.

All we are left with is our personal preferences

and prejudices as to what is good

and what is not.

I know that most atheists try to get around it,

but they are kidding themselves.

Albert Camus was more honest. In his book, The Rebel, he wrote that

if we believe in nothing,

then it does not matter ultimately

if we stoke the fires of the crematorium, as did the Nazis,

or if we serve the lepers in Africa, as did Albert Schweitzer.

It all comes to the same thing.

He goes on, “Evil and virtue are mere chance and caprice.”

Camus expended a lot of energy trying to face into this

and find a way to live humanly in spite of it.

But, he did so without sentimentalism

and resolutely rejecting what he considered false hope.

In the end, there is evidence that

he began to question his atheism.

The flipside of the question

“How can there be a good God

when there is so much suffering in the world?”

is the equally disturbing question,

“If there is no God – and no meaning –

why do I care about the suffering in the world?”

Why should I?

If there is no God at the heart of it all,

one can only conclude that

we have evolved ourselves into an existential cul-de-sac.

At some point in our evolution longings for meaning and purpose,

for believing there is good and evil,

were useful in our survival as a species.

But now we know that those longings

are but a trick of evolution

and baseless.

Our inclination otherwise is

only conditioned sentimentalism.

But, that is a dry and weary land where no water is

and humans cannot live there.

However much my mind might say that there is no meaning,

my heart cried out in contradiction, “No!”

My heart insisted that there is meaning.

It’s not a matter of indifference.

I began to doubt my doubts.

I suspected that my response to news about people abused,

tortured and killed

is not just a matter of my own personal preference.

Rather, the response of my heart is in tune

with the response at the heart of the universe.

That offense, the offense we take in the face suffering and injustice,

does not prove that there is a God,

but points us towards God.

More specifically,

it points us toward the God we meet in Jesus Christ

in this morning’s gospel

The disciples had responded to the call of Jesus.

They had heard his teaching and witnessed his deeds.

They had come to believe and hope

that he was the one who would redeem Israel

and through Israel redeem humanity

setting everything right.

He was the Messiah.

But, then he was arrested, tortured and crucified.

Now he was dead. Dead.

And with him their hope had died.

They were huddled in hiding with the door locked.

The air was thick with despair.

And it was thick with fear.

If they had tortured and killed Jesus,

wouldn’t they likely do the same to his closest associates?

The air was also thick with guilt.

One way or another each of the disciples had denied

or abandoned Jesus in his hour of need.

Jesus whom they had loved.

Then, beyond all imagining,

into this stifling atmosphere Jesus himself appears.

We can expect they were more than a little spooked.

Remember, they had denied and abandoned Jesus.

If this is his ghost come back to haunt them,

they might well expect him to be angry

and intent on retribution.

But, rather than condemning them, Jesus says,

“Peace be with you.”

This word of Jesus to the disciples

after all that has transpired

is an undeniable word of grace and forgiveness.

With his peace he offers reconciliation and addresses their guilt.

He gives them his Spirit

that they might be people of forgiveness and reconciliation.

That’s a God I can start to believe in.

But, there’s more.

Jesus shows them his hands and his side.

He later invites Thomas to touch the wounds.

How remarkable that Jesus returns from the grave

with the wounds remaining.

Don’t you think – if you were going to make this up –

that you’d have Jesus come back whole and without a mark?

But, he doesn’t. He comes back with the wounds.

I believe that it is more than just a means of demonstrating

that the one appearing before them

is truly Jesus who was crucified.

The wounds identify Jesus,

but they also reveal something about Jesus

and, thus, about God.

We believe that, in some sense

beyond our complete understanding,

Jesus is God enfleshed.

In taking on human flesh,

God in Christ has entered into the mess of human reality,

the reality of sin, suffering and death.

The wounds indicate that

having entered that reality he entered it to the uttermost –

abandoned, tortured, and brutally executed.

This is not “god” as an abstract idea.

The God we know in and through Jesus

has placed himself in solidarity with the reality of human history

with all its terror and tragedy.

This God is not aloof.

This God has taken on sin, suffering, and death in the incarnation

and taken them all the way to the cross.

This God bears the wounds.

This God bears the wounds of all of history.

This God bears the wounds you and I have suffered

as well as those we have inflicted.

William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during WWII, wrote,

"The wounds of Christ are his credentials

to the suffering race of men [sic] . . .

Only a God in whose perfect Being pain has its place

can win and hold our worship."

This is a God I can begin to believe in.

But, Jesus doesn’t simply bear the wounds.

In resurrection, he returns with the wounds transformed.

This is not a case of “Let’s pretend that didn’t happen.”

His torture and death were all too real,

as is the torture and death that have marked

so much of the human story.

A belief in immortality alone does not address this tragic story.

But, the Christian hope is not that we might simply escape

from the unhappy reality of sin and suffering.

It is not that it will all just be forgotten.

Our hope is that sin and suffering will be transformed

into the resurrection glory we see is the Risen Jesus.

The wounds are testimony that transformation.

Such a God, a God of transformation

is a God I can hope in.

In this morning’s gospel,

Jesus enters into the stifling atmosphere of the room

where the disciples are locked in fear, guilt, and despair.

He breathes the fresh air into the room

and into their hearts dispelling their fear with his peace,

their guilt with his forgiveness,

and their despair with the new hope of transformation

and new creation by way of resurrection.

He brings them new life.

And he sends them into a sinful, suffering world

to be resurrection people, new creation people –

people who bear witness to peace, forgiveness, and hope.

He breathes that same fresh air of his peace, forgiveness, and hope

into our fear, guilt, and despair.

He fills our suffering with his presence

and the promise of transformation.

He calls us to be resurrection people.

The God we know in Jesus –

a God who bears the wounds –

might not resolve all our questions or doubts.

But, if this is who we’re talking about,

I can join Thomas and say,

“My Lord and my God!”