Seeing and Touching

It’s been a while now, but I can remember a time in my life when seeing and touching meant everything.  It was right after our first pregnancy, which ended in an early miscarriage.  Innocently, and with complete optimism, when I learned I was pregnant, I trusted that all would go as we hoped.  After all, I was doing everything the right way:  nutrition, rest, gentle exercise, stability and exploring baby names.  Our friends and family were excited, too.  We even received books and toys early on.  One was a stuffed white rabbit, with floppy ears, big blue eyes and an impish grin.  All of that joy and hope ended though, with the visit to our doctor who couldn’t find the heart-beat anymore.  And then the ultrasound confirmed:  the heart had stopped.  And a wrenching surprise:  the pregnancy, now ended—had been twins.

    The saddest and strangest thing about it all, for me—was that there was nothing coming or nothing left to see or touch.  No body, no photo.  I cried a lot.  Wrote poetry and read scripture.  Dreamed about our two cats in peril.  But really, the most compelling and helpful thing at that time, was simply to see and hold that little white stuffed bunny. 
    Sometimes the demand to touch and see is not doubt.
    Sometimes it is love. 

    Blessed are you, who have not seen. 
    There is much that we love, that we care about, much that causes us concern, that we can’t see.  We can’t see the outcome of surgery or illness.  We can’t see when the economy will turn, where the next job will come from.  We can’t see how we pay back the loan. We can’t see how our kids will grow up; or if we will marry or how that will be. We can’t see how graduate school or college will be.  We can’t see yet, how the next pastor, head of staff-- will work out with us.    
    Blessed are you, who have not seen.  We have often read those words as a rebuke to Thomas, but what if rather than a rebuke, it is simply a blessing?   A blessing to all of us, since the time of the disciples and Thomas, all of us who have not touched Jesus’ hands and side.  All of us who hear the Word, and struggle to recognize Christ in our midst?
     Blessed are you, who have not seen.

    Sometimes Thomas is called “doubting Thomas.”  But really, all Thomas wanted was what the other disciples had already done:  to see Jesus.  Thomas was no more a doubter than the others.  With the cautious hope of someone who has lost a loved one, he wants to touch.  Or like the courageous one, facing terminal cancer, being told of a “miraculous” cure, he wants to see. 

     In this season of Easter, when we are trying to imagine an Easter world:  new life infused by possibilities and hope--we may feel a lot like Thomas:  Cautious, because we care so much.  And that’s pretty understandable, given disappointment, pain and suffering.   But did you notice that Jesus is recognized, not by his heavenly perfection, but by his scars in his hands and side?
    Preacher Craig Kocher said, about today’s passage:
“In Thomas we see the grittiness of Easter. . . Easter is always at risk of being domesticated and sentimentalized, a forever-after ending to a Disney animation. We’re eager to replace the scars of nails and spear with butterflies and rainbows; to ambush gospel hope and the resurrection of the
body with spiritual ideals and heavenly metaphors. But Easter is not the end of the fairy tale.  Easter begins the church’s real work.”
   
    As we read scripture from the beautiful comfort of our sanctuary, we may underestimate just how vulnerable and overwhelmed those disciples were, that evening of the first week.  They had seen Jesus killed.  They were behind locked doors, in grief, fear and some confusion.  The loved one had died; the job was lost; the war continued;  the divorce was final; the illness confirmed;  the uncertainty about the future loomed.   Even after Jesus appeared to the disciples, and breathed peace upon them, they were still a week later, shut again behind the locked doors.  This time, with Thomas among them.  At this point, Jesus blesses all who will come after, all who have not seen, but who will come to believe because of the good news shared by the disciples.  Now the work of the church begins.  Now, without seeing what the outcome will be, with the threat of persecution, now the church’s real work begins.
   
    Thomas makes me think of Kentucky farmer and poet, Wendell Berry, who wrote: 
    "There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.  The impeded stream is the one that sings."
    Every time we come to the table, the Lord’s Supper, we come to the baffling cross. And we come to what we can see and touch and taste:  bread, which reminds us of the brokenness of  Jesus.  And the cup, which reminds us his forgiveness.  We can’t see the future.  But we may see the Risen Christ in the healing that happens when we gather in God’s love.  And we may touch Jesus when we pour out ourselves in love. 
   
    What is your real work?  What is our real work as church?  And where might God’s Spirit be at work, bringing change and new life? 

    One of my favorite theologians is Calvin—you know, Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbes.”  Calvin is a little boy with an overactive imagination and a stuffed tiger, Hobbes, who comes to life as his imaginary friend. In one cartoon,  Calvin turns to  Hobbes and says, "I feel bad I called Susie names and hurt her feelings. I'm sorry I did that." Hobbes replies, "Maybe you should apologize to her." Calvin thinks about it for a moment and then responds,
        "I keep hoping there's a less obvious solution."

    Maybe our real work is obvious, but difficult.    Or maybe it’s still not clear.  But in this Easter-spring, out of the tomb, and beyond the locked door, Jesus is breathing life into our world, our congregation—into us.
    Blessed are you, who have not seen.
What would our lives be like, if we accepted that when we are knocked off the course we had expected—that is when our real journey begins?  What if we were more joyful—even when we’ve considered all the facts?  
        What if we practiced resurrection?  What then?