May 1, 2011

Clay Nelson

Easter 2     John 20:19-31

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Brazilian Rubem Alves tells a story of a boy who found the body of a dead man washed up on the edge of a seaside village.

There is only one thing to do with the dead: they must be buried.

In that village it was the custom for the women to prepare the dead for burial, so the women began to clean the body in preparation for the funeral.

As they did, the women began to talk and ponder about the dead stranger. He was tall... and would have had to duck his head to enter their houses. His voice... was it like a whisper or like thunder. His hands... they were big. Did they play with children or sail the seas or know how to caress and embrace a woman's body.

The women laughed "and were surprised as they realised that the funeral had become resurrection: a moment in their flesh, dreams, long believed to be dead, returning... their bodies alive again"

The husbands, waiting outside, and watching what was happening, became jealous of the drowned man as they realised he had power which they did not have.

And they thought about the dreams they had never had...

Alves ends this part of the story by telling that they finally buried the dead man.

But the village was never the same again. [i]

This story captures for me what resurrection is all about. It is not about bringing the dead back to life. Rather it is about bringing the living back to life. It is about the reviving of past dreams. It is about dreaming of new possibilities. Ultimately it is about transformation – not just of our selves but of the whole community.

I began with this unfamiliar resurrection story because we have stopped listening to the one we read every year on this first Sunday following Easter Day. As soon as we hear the first line that the disciples are in a locked room when Jesus came to them and said “Peace be with you,” we think, “Oh yes, Doubting Thomas.” We then jump to the end of the story cutting short the opportunity to be transformed.

It’s a shame because John is a marvelous storyteller. We will hear four of his stories during the Easter season. And into each he packs a lot. John’s Gospel focuses on mystery and stories are an especially good means of conveying the inexplicable. However, as soon as we turn them into historical accounts they lose their sparkle. They are as interesting as yesterday’s newspaper. They become about the characters and not about us. And we stop listening. But a good story we will listen to over and over.

When this story was written it was about 70 years after the crucifixion. Few, who witnessed it, if any, were still around. That didn’t matter because John was addressing the church in his day about its issues. What makes a good story good is when it addresses aspects of our present life. John is not telling a story about Thomas. He is telling a story about us. Well, not just about us. It is also about our relationship to one another and the source of all life. It is not a story about a dead Jesus coming back to life. It is a story about us, the living, coming back to life. It’s not about how a dead Jesus got into a locked room; it’s about how God gets us out of whatever room we are locked up in. It’s a mystery story about how to revive our dead dreams and dream new ones we never had.

Sometimes it helps to hear a familiar story from a different perspective. I wonder how Thomas might tell it?

The disciples and I have had a very bad week – about as bad as a week can get. Just as Jesus had warned us after raising Lazarus, the powers of domination and their handmaidens in the Temple were none too happy about our visit to Jerusalem. Boy, Jesus stirred them up. He took the mickey out of both the emperor and priests. He was fearless. It was quite heady to watch. The people were really getting behind him. I think he just had to say the word and Rome would’ve had a serious insurrection on their hands. At least I hoped so. It was just what I and the rest of the guys had dreamed would happen. Then he holds what he said would be his last meal with us. It wasn’t the most lighthearted meal we’ve ever shared. During it he tells us that one of us will betray him to the authorities. That shook us. And before we could fully absorb that he tells us we will deny and then desert him. Afterwards, he doesn’t say rise up against Rome, he says kneel down to serve and then showed us how. 

After his arrest sure enough we can’t wait to deny him fast enough to save our own precious skins. We watched his trial from the distance and when he was condemned to death we took off for home in a flash. We were terrified they would come after us. We were in hiding. We were frightened. We were ashamed. We were confused. We were sure Yahweh had anointed Jesus. And for his part, he spoke of Yahweh as a loving son might to his doting parent. Yet scripture tells us God cursed him. The Law says, “When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” (Deut 21:22-23)

We tried to make sense of these events as we jumped at every noise we heard outside the door. I couldn’t take it anymore and went out for a walk with the hood of my cloak covering my face. I just wanted to weep in private. My desolation was complete. Did I just waste the last three years of my life? What do we have to show for it? What changed? When I got back everyone was in a very different place than when I left. They told me that they had spent the time talking about what they had loved about Jesus. They retold his riddles he called parables that we are still pondering what he was going on about. They laughed at how he tweaked the noses of the pious and self-righteous. They marveled at how cool he was when the soldiers came to arrest him. They remembered how he told us to drop our swords and then chided the Chief Priest’s henchmen for how “brave” they were arresting him in the dark when they could’ve done so at anytime during the day. They remembered with awe his dignity when he was mocked. And then they told me the impossible. They swore that suddenly it was like he was in the room. “We felt his peace,” they swore, “and then we were at peace.”

While it was clear something had changed, I scoffed. I think my exact word was, “Codswallop!” I don’t care what they felt, there was no denying violence had won the day again. He was dead. The dream was dead. There was no doubt.

They were eager to go out on the street and continue Jesus’ ministry, and I told them to go ahead, get crucified with him. Nothing will change. They decided they couldn’t leave me alone. Later they told me I was too crushed by the death of the dream to be left alone. They feared what my guilt might make me do. So they stayed and we remembered our friend. We wept and laughed together.

A few nights later I was awaken in the middle of the night by a dream. Jesus visited and showed me his wounds. He told me everything was different now. The violence that had left these marks, had not won. Forgiveness was much more powerful than the cross. Go out and live the dream. If you do, you and all the living will be brought back to life.

My story doesn’t end, “…and they lived happily ever after.” Life kept happening with all its ups and downs, but things are different now. My friends and I are different now. We are fully alive and finally free of the locked room. I know it so.

[i] Alves, R. 1990. The poet, the warrior, the prophet. GtB: London. SCM Press/Trinity Press.