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| "St. Thomas" by Ruebens, (Flemish 17th Cent.) |
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his
hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I
will not believe.” (John 20:25)
Some of the old-time folks at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia may recall my esteemed colleague, the Rev. Stephen Weisser. Pastor Steve is a pretty cool guy who served briefly as interim pastor a few years before I came on the scene. As saints and heroes go, I have to give Steve his props because he soldiered on for years as a servant of the Lord in spite of being a hemophiliac. I can’t wrap my brain around what it must be like to live in Steve’s body. Any sudden bump or scrape could start a potentially mortal bleed. It really has to suck to be so stinking fragile and to find yourself constantly at the doctor’s office or the hospital or forever having an arm or elbow or some other joint in a bandage.
Steve has always been pretty accepting of his condition, and he even found it to be kind of a blessing when he took up the post of chaplain at Paul’s Run, one of the retirement living homes supported by and through the ELCA. If Steve suffered from aching bones, needed to take a boatload of meds every day, and lived with a constant fear of falling, he was no different from the residents of the facility he served. I’ve heard it said that old age is God’s way of making us not sorry to go in the end, and I rather believe it. The senior citizens at Paul’s Run know what it feels like to feel crappy 90% of always. In Steve Weisser they had a chaplain who—although much younger—knew exactly how they felt. When they saw Steve with his arm in a sling or using a walker for support, they knew he got it.
In the very famous gospel passage assigned for Easter 2, Year C (John 20:19-31) we meet that troublesome disciple who just isn’t going to put trust in Jesus until he can see some wounds. Thomas, like everyone else who loved the rabbi from Nazareth, got his emotional guts kicked out when they hung Jesus on the cross. So when his buddies tell him they’ve seen Jesus alive again, he’s not going to risk the disappointment that this is all just wishful thinking. Can you blame the guy?
What does Thomas want? He wants to see the wounds.
Don’t we all?
It’s pretty hard living in this world, and the older we get the harder it gets. We all have wounds both physical and emotional. Some of them have been caused by the Church itself, so it’s natural that folks don’t want to give too much weight to the things church people say.
Years ago I was called on to officiate a funeral of a family friend who had died suddenly. I sat with her husband of almost thirty years as we planned the memorial service. I could see the distracted look in his eyes and sensed that, even though he was sitting right in front of me, he wasn’t really there. I’d had losses in my life, but nothing as dramatic as what this guy was going through. Still, trying to be a good pastor, I gave it my best shot and remarked to him that grief seems to put people in a bubble. You can look out and see what’s going on, but you’re not part of it anymore. The rest of the world seems silly and unimportant, and there’s an invisible wall separating you from everyone else.
He said to me—rather vehemently as I recall—“They say they understand. But they don’t.”
No. They don’t. I didn’t then, and maybe I still don’t. Unless someone else has the same wounds, they don’t understand. We have this need to see someone’s wounds, to hear them talk about their experience however painful it might be. If they can’t or won’t, we don’t want to put our trust in them.
The word Thomas speaks for “believe” in this gospel passage is pisteuso. Grammatically in the Greek it means “I will believe” (future tense) and is negated by being preceded by ou me which means “not at all.[i]” The root word in Greek is pisteuo, which means “believe,” but carries a deeper connotation. It doesn’t mean simply to assent that something is true. It means to believe in something, to put trust in something, to have a confident, active relationship.
When we believe in this way, we have a sense of security. Alcoholics go to AA meetings to listen to the narratives of others who have been down the same road, others whom they can trust, whose wounds they can see and identify with. Combat veterans, especially those with PTSD, find healing in the company of others who bear the same kind of physical and psychic scars they do. The wounds create trust and faith.
It seems a crying shame to me that we are so often hung up on hiding our wounds that we can’t be healers ourselves. We let our embarrassment separate us from others, forgetting that the wounds can make us whole.
There are lots of reasons why I love being a Christian, but one of the chief reasons is that we have a prophet and Savior who has gone hungry, been tempted, felt betrayal and abandonment, known rejection, and suffered physical pain, indignity, and incapacity. His wounds are our wounds, and by these wounds we are healed.
God’s peace, my wounded brothers and sisters.
[i]
The phrase looks like this in the original language: ou mh pisteusw. You don’t need to know that, I just like to
write in Greek.
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