4/19/20
(Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Ps. 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31)
One day some years ago I got a call from New Milford Hospital. There was a man in the Intensive Care Unit there who was dying, and his son and daughter, who were there with him, had requested that an Episcopal priest come and offer prayers. So I went to the hospital, up to the ICU, met the man’s children – they were both in their forties – and spoke briefly with them about their father; then we all gowned and gloved up and went into his room. He was on a respirator, not conscious, and obviously in great distress. So I prayed over him – we were in there for about five minutes – and the three of us went back out in the hall. And as we were taking off the safety clothing and talking, a doctor, walking past, looked at the two of them and said, Boy, you guys are really covering your bets, aren’t you? On my way out I learned from a nurse that I was the fourth clergyperson, all of different denominations, that they had called in that day to pray for their father (and I don’t know that I was the last.) Apparently the operating principle was the same as in hockey or soccer: the more shots you take on goal, the better your chance of scoring.
And I remember feeling, at the time, not irritation that my time had been wasted (I didn’t, and don’t, think it was), but rather sorry for those two people: that their misunderstanding of prayer, and of what Christian faith has to say about death and dying, denied them true comfort about their father, and about God’s presence in their own lives.
Death is the starkest reality we face in life, and there’s no sugarcoating it, and no doing away with the pain that surrounds it. But as Christians, we face death – our own and everybody else’s – in the light of the resurrection. In Christian faith we know that death is not the last word. We know that true life is eternal. And that knowledge means, among other things, that we can live this life differently. We can live in hope: a state of being which has practical effect on our real lives.
I’m thinking about all this for two reasons. One is obviously the coronavirus pandemic: the death it’s causing all around the world, and the huge changes it’s caused in all our lives.
But the other is that this is the second Sunday of Easter, and that we are now in the season of Easter, a time when our church directs our attention to the resurrection, and to the awareness that as Christians we are to live as resurrected people.
We see something of what that means – the difference it makes – in the life of St. Thomas, in the well-known story we heard today from the gospel of John. Thomas has not himself seen the risen Jesus, as the other disciples tell him they have. But he refuses to believe them, which is not hard to understand. Thomas remains determinedly, insistently bound to the reality of this world: Unless I see his wounds with my own eyes, until I can put my hands on them, I will not believe.
And then Jesus presents himself before Thomas and invites him to do just what he said. And in his response – he makes no move to touch Jesus, but says simply,“My Lord and my God!” – we see the change in him: the glorious realization of the real presence of God in his life, flooding in at that moment. And we have some idea of how this changed his life and the lives of people around him: one Christian tradition has it that Thomas went on to evangelize, and be martyred, in India, which would have made him probably the farthest-traveled of all the apostles.
So what does all this have to do with us, now?
Listen again to what Jesus says to Thomas right after his Eureka-moment: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Jesus is talking about us: all of us, who weren’t there, then, to see the risen Christ: all of us, down through the centuries; and he calls us, “blessed”.
Now. “Blessed” is the translation we use of the Greek word makarios, which mostly means “happy”, but with a strong overtone of “lucky”. Calling someone blessed is to declare that that person has received a great gift of God, which that person did nothing to earn. And as it’s used in the Bible, that declaration looks to the future; a future that takes place in the kingdom of God: that is, in this life and beyond, where what God intends, wants us to have, is what happens. Blessed are the meek – the gentle – for they will inherit the earth. At the Annunciation, Mary says, All generations will call me blessed: because she will bear a child of the Holy Spirit, and she will mother that child into a life that will change the world forever.
And the one who has not seen the risen Christ, yet has come to believe is blessed – we are blessed – because in the raising of Jesus Christ God has shown us something about God’s true nature: that the almighty and eternal God, the Creator of the universe, loves each one of us as God’s own child, and will never let go of us, for all eternity.
All this has to do with much more than how we think about death. We know that, as we live as resurrected people – as we try day to day to live in the love of God in Christ – what we do ripples out in ways we don’t see – cannot see – far beyond our particular time and place. In the power of the resurrection, we meet every day – whatever it might bring – in hope, which spreads God’s love over the whole world. Thanks be to God.