Hope
Scripture: John 20:24-29
Last Sunday, our guest speaker Susan Schwartzentruber from Shalom Counselling made a comment that has stuck with me ever since. In talking about what makes for resilience, she suggested that resilient people know that “bad things happen.” In other words, part of developing resilience involves accepting the reality of pain and loss and suffering. This is a normal part of what it means to be human.
Now, the fact of bad things happening maybe doesn’t seem like news. There are no shortage of examples to point to, whether in our own lives or elsewhere. But sometimes we get to thinking that a good life can and should avoid these experiences. That if we play our cards right, make the right choices, we can come through this life unscathed. And further, that the best way to deal with the bad things that do happen is to put on a good face, turn the page and leave it all behind. Live our best lives and surround ourselves with reminders of happiness and positivity.
But Susan’s point was that you can’t develop real resilience without coming to terms with pain and loss in a pretty deep way. Our capacity to bounce back is related to how honestly we reckon with the hard stuff. If we don’t go there, if we skip over it or leave our wounds untended in the past, we may not have the resources to deal with the next blow that comes our way. Resilience does not run from pain and loss, but experiences them fully as part of a journey towards healing and renewal.
Does this sound right to you? Has this been your experience? As always, it’s easier said than done. And it will look different for each of us in the context of our own lives. We don’t all experience the same kinds of loss or adversity. Some of us have been hurt in ways that others can only imagine, and sometimes we’re just not ready to bring our pain to the surface. But I think there’s something important in this link between suffering and resilience.
I also suspect that this link helps to shape our understanding and experience of hope. Christian hope is good news, but it doesn’t forget about the bad news that we’ve all seen in different ways. And it can’t, because the bad news seems to keep on coming. We need a hope that is resilient too, a hope that isn’t toppled by the next wave, a hope that bends but does not break. A hope that we truly can count on no matter what we might experience through life.
And in this post-Easter season, we recognize this hope in the risen Christ. In Jesus, whose body still bears the wounds and the scars of his crucifixion as he appears to his disciples and friends. In Jesus, who knew betrayal and suffering and loss and pain and death. In Jesus, who yet lives and through whom all of creation is revived. This is no brittle hope he offers, but the real deal – tried and tested, swallowed up and bursting forth again.
And then there is Thomas, who wants to see it and feel it for himself. Thomas who missed out on Jesus’ first appearance to his disciples. Thomas who only heard the news second hand. Thomas who famously doubts, and earns himself the stickiest nickname in the history of Christianity.
But what if Thomas actually knew something important about resilience and hope? Maybe not in a conscious way. He probably hadn’t read all the research that Susan referenced for us last week. I don’t imagine Thomas was weighing his responses all that carefully. But he knew something instinctively, maybe something he felt in his body as much as anything else. Thomas knew he couldn’t move forward, couldn’t turn the page, without confronting the wounds that Jesus carried. I need to see the marks of the nails on his hands. I need to touch the hole in his side where he was stabbed by a spear. Thomas couldn’t just jump into some kind of new and shining future, as if all that blood and pain and horror had not been.
There is something important about tending to the broken body, with all that it speaks of the human sojourn through loss and pain. In John’s gospel, it’s Nicodemus who comes after Jesus dies with a hundred pounds of ointments and perfumes and spices. To prepare the body – to wash it and anoint it and dress it. To touch the wounds and bear witness to their truth. In the other gospels it’s the women in Jesus’ circle who come after his burial to do the same thing, and find that Jesus’ body is gone. I suspect that rituals of washing and preparing the body of a loved one who has died are common in some form to just about every culture through history. This is part of the grieving process. And I do wonder what it means that these days we leave this work to professionals behind closed doors.
Thomas needs to see and touch the wounds on Jesus’ body because the violence he experienced was true. And it’s striking, isn’t it, that even alive in glory the risen Christ still bears those wounds. They are still there to be seen and touched as reminders of what has been. This isn’t a new and unblemished body. This isn’t a clean and pristine hope. This is a deep and resilient hope that has passed through the valley of the shadow and knows that even this is not yet the end.
But I suspect that Thomas has some wounds of his own that he needs to deal with too. Maybe not wounds of the body, but certainly wounds of the soul and spirit. Along with the rest of Jesus’ circle, he’d come through his own dark night, watching as his friend was arrested and killed. This kind of trauma has a tight grip too. How does Thomas begin to recognize, name and attend to this inner pain? Somehow he knows that he can’t begin to heal without letting the wounds on Jesus’ body bring his own experiences of that night to the surface as well.
This is all such hard work. It feels heavy to talk about bodies and wounds and loss and pain. But like the marks on Jesus hands and side, they are there. They are part of our experience in one way or the other. We have also known loss, grief, struggle, betrayal, emptiness, pain. And the good news of the gospel doesn’t ask us to ignore these things or leave them behind. But it does invite us to see these wounds now on a body that lives. They may not be gone, but their marks are not final. There is something more. There is life that breaks forth from places of pain. There is a love that picks up the pieces. There is healing, companionship, possibility, delight, beauty, wonder, and resilient hope. A hope that is strong enough and deep enough and flexible enough to stand over centuries and millennia through all the dark valleys that we human creatures have found ourselves walking through.
Jesus lives, and our God is at work. Healing and restoring, calling and inviting. Gently tending to our wounds and leading us into wholeness. Thomas asks to reach out and touch the holes in his hands and on his side. To allow the reality of that terrible night to be named and re-made in resurrection as he can finally confess: “My Lord, and my God.” And I, for one, don’t begrudge him that.
In a few minutes we will join in a celebration of baptism and membership as two people take a next step in their journeys of faith and identification with this community. It is a blessing and encouragement to see the way that God continues to work in people’s lives, often along paths they could not have foreseen years ago. And with Thomas in mind we affirm that process of asking questions, pushing out a little, experiencing things for ourselves. We recognize that our lives are a complicated journey, with twists and turns that leave us marked and scarred. And we want to create the kind of safe spaces with each other where these wounds can surface, be seen and named, and begin to heal. Where we can find hope together even in the midst of pain and loss.
But the truth is that as we make faith commitments, whether for the first time or for the hundredth time, we do walk by that faith and not by sight. Unlike Jesus’ disciples, unlike even Thomas, we don’t have the opportunity to see the risen Christ in the flesh. To touch his hands and feet and side before we make our confession. Jesus’ final blessing is for us – for we have not seen and still have come to believe.
And yet… we do meet Jesus. And the new members we welcome today bear witness to that. We may not be able to reach out and touch the wounds, but Thomas is right to seek them out for himself. Because the risen Christ is here and among us. Surprising us often in the locked rooms of our own pain and promising a hope not beyond it but right in the midst of it. A hope that is strong and resilient, a hope that will last and carry us safely to the other side.
Amen.