“Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals; and greet no one along the way ” (Luke 10: 4). With these words, Jesus gives seventy-two disciples counterintuitive instructions for how to prepare for their mission to help spread the Gospel. After all, we normally want to prepare for a trip by packing anything we’ll need, especially if we’re getting ready for a trip important enough to be called a mission. So what was the thinking behind Jesus’s words? I won’t pretend to know for sure, but I have no doubt that following the instructions would be very helpful to the disciples’ mission in at least these ways:
The disciples would be reminded or would learn for the first time about the experiences of people who are totally dependent on others for their survival. Hopefully, such an experience would make any of us want to do more to help the less fortunate in the future.
The dependency and simplicity with which the disciples presented themselves would convey humility. This presentation might also contrast with the grandeur with which many leaders of the day may have presented themselves. This contrast may have encountered may have aided the disciples’ trustworthiness and relatability in the eyes of some of those they wanted to reach.
The dependency of the disciples would present an opportunity to the people whose houses they entered, the opportunity to be the means of God’s providence. It would open the disciples to trusting God, thanks to the kindness of their fellow human beings. I’d say God’s will is to work through us is to provide for each other because, as I’ve written before, God’s very nature is relationship.
The disciples would receive opportunities to practice brushing off rejection, not letting it distract or dishearten them. Instead of letting rejection “cling” to them, they were to practice continuing with forward progress toward building new relationships (Luke 10: 10-11). This take on Luke 10:10-11, verses that follow the ones I began with, is not original to me. Among other places, I’ve encountered this perspective in a series of reflections I subscribe to. Writing for America Media, Sarah Vincent shared a similar perspective. perspective
Into whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this household.” If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you.
Luke 10: 5-6
Many of us aren’t called to “Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals, and greet no one along the way” (Luke 10:4-5). In fact, especially in the literal sense, many of us may be called to the opposite: to raise money or to support financially those who depend on us, to pack an extra pair shoes, and to give a stranger a simple kindness such as a smile, a “Hello” or a “How are you?” (And actually want to know the answer, whether it’s what we want to hear or not.)
Nonetheless, it’s worth considering what we can do and whatever work we’re called to to make ourselves more open to the gifts others have to offer. It’s worth considering what we can do to demonstrate trustworthiness and humility. I wrote about these considerations in How to Share the Good News: Open a Two-Way Street. It’s also worth considering the ways we’ve been dependent since before we were born and since we were small. It’s worth considering how each of us still needs each other and God whether or not we realize our need for relationship. It’s worth considering how our needs can change due to age, an accident, an illness or another life-changing event. Nothing is guaranteed but Divine Love. Jesus’ instructions to the seventy-two disciples remind us of that.
Works cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
“I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”
To him Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Luke 9: 61-62
I don’t like Jesus’ response. Doesn’t he care whether the family knows where the man disappeared to? Doesn’t he care that the family might be left without support? If God’s nature is to share Godself completely, and if Jesus gives a human nature to that God without diminishing the Divine nature in any way, (and I believe both statements are true) I believe he cares deeply about these concerns. So how do I reconcile this belief with that response?
I took that question to prayer. I told God I’d heard about abusive people and groups that cut individuals off from their families. How long could it really take the man to say farewell to his family and then catch up to the other followers? Was the man’s really so unreasonable?
An answer came to me: maybe there’s more to this scene than the literal meaning of the dialogue indicates. This possibility let me to more questions: How many times have I needed to do something important, especially something that will mean changes are ahead, and I’ve come up with some more ordinary task — like deleting emails—that I need to do before doing the more important thing? Maybe Jesus knows the man’s request isn’t really about saying farewell to the family and then setting out to do the work the man is being called to. Maybe Jesus knows the man is hesitant about following through on the commitment he just made. Maybe Jesus doesn’t want concerns and doubts of family members to cause the man to turn back, though I wouldn’t blame these family members if they were to question this man’s decision to follow an unknown preacher from an unimportant town who criticizes civil and religious authorities. I can’t call questions and doubts bad things when a person is about to make a life-changing choice. But I’m prone to analysis paralysis. Maybe Jesus didn’t want the man to fall prey to the very same paralysis and have time to lose the confidence and conviction that in the moment made him say, “I will follow you, Lord.”
“And if he finds [a lost sheep], amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.”
Matthew 18: 13
On one hand, I don’t want to think of God as someone who gives only one opportunity. After all, I’ve read and heard that the Good Shepherd leaves the gathered flock of ninety-nine to find one lost sheep (See Matt. 18: 10-14). On the other hand, I can see that, while life offers many opportunities, no single opportunity arrives in exactly the same circumstances as the previous one. The same test taken or the same job applied for at different times can mean different results, depending on how a person has prepared, how focused the person is when the big day comes, and who else is involved, to name just a few variables. The would-be follower in Luke might be able to return to his family and catch up to the other followers later, but what lessons will he miss while he’s delayed that he’ll have to learn in a different way in the future? What contributions will he be delayed in making? Will the good resulting from the lessons he might learn or the contributions he might make outweigh any good he might do by returning home or any harm that might result from him not returning home?
What if there’s harm to himself or others he needs to avoid by leaving his past in the past? All this is possible. I also know there may be people reading this post and saying the passage I began with is about not hesitating to answer God’s call, about making nothing else more important than following God. For anyone saying this, I hear you, but I’m not good at not hesitating, so I wasn’t about to put that message out there without qualifying it. I don’t want to be like, “Do as I say, and not as I do.”
Besides, I believe a lot of following God is about looking at the relationships and things in our lives in different ways, not always about leaving those relationships or things behind — unless those relationships or things are taking over our lives and/or harming the ability of each of us to become the unique and undistorted reflections of God we’re meant to become.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
For me, last week’s theme was the wonder of a world that reflects a God who is relationship, the wonder of a world in which the grandest features reflect God, and yet God” delight[s] [in] human beings]” (Prov. 8:31).
For me, there is an element of distance involved in wonder. Wonder is amazing, like a view of a mountain range or a canyon When I picture a God of wonder, I picture a God who “delight[s] in human beings” but doesn’t feel accessible. I picture a God who watches from above and smiles but is, nonetheless, watching from above.
But this week’s readings don’t speak to me about a God who is content to watch me from above. He doesn’t even stop at sharing my human nature and walking beside me. He feeds me, and not just by inviting me over to dinner like another friend might. He becomes one with me by feeding me with himself — and not just with his spirit — but with everything that made him a living, touchable human being — his body and blood, in addition to his Divine Life. Everything. He holds nothing back from me. In fact, he wants me not only to share in his Holy Spirit and his humanity, but in other gifts of nature — offered in what the senses perceive as bread and wine. He provides for me in so many ways in the hope that the blessings of these gifts will spread from me outward.
Paul reminds the Christian community of Corinth:
“[O]n the night [Jesus] was handed over [he] took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said. ‘This is my body that is for you… In the same way also [he took] the cup… saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood [Italics mine]
1 Corinthians 11:23-26.
The New Oxford American Dictionary on my Kindle defines a covenant, in the theological sense, as, “an agreement that brings about a relationship of commitment between God and his people.” (Loc. 188613-188614).
“A relationship of commitment” — like a marriage — one in which the groom offers all of himself — even to the point of offering his body and shedding his blood.
This groom is the Trinitarian God, one of our pastors reminded us this weekend. This is the God of relationship that I wrote about last week. And yes, this God is the God of wonder. But this same God is also the God of the utmost intimacy.
Works cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
The New Oxford American Dictionary, Kindle edition, Oxford UP, 2008.
We often hear about the Trinity, but what does the Trinity mean? In “The Mystery of the Trinity,” Father Richard Rohr explains it like this:
“Christians believe that God is formlessness (the Father), God is form (the Son), and God is the very living and loving energy between those two (the Holy Spirit). The three do not cancel one another out. Instead, they do exactly the opposite.”
In “Images of the Trinity,” he adds,
“[T]he three Persons of the Trinity empty themselves and pour themselves out into each other. Each knows they can empty themselves because they will forever be refilled To understand this mystery of love fully, we need to “stand under” the flow and participate in it. It’s infinite outpouring and infinite infilling without end. It can only be experienced as a flow, as a community, as a relationship, as an inherent connection.”
All of creation reveals this relationship—”from atoms, to ecosystems, to galaxies,” The shape of God, Father Richard writes in “The Mystery of the Trinity,” is the shape of everything in the universe! Everything is in relationship and nothing stands alone.”
“Everything is in relationship and nothing stands alone.”
Father RICHARD ROHR
I’d say the first reading (Proverbs 8:22-31) and the psalm (Psalm 8:4-9) from this past weekend reflect this understanding, especially Proverbs 8:27-31 and Psalm 8:4-9. The psalm excerpt begins with:
When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you set in place— What is man that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man that you should care for him?
Psalm 8:4-5
The psalmist marvels at all the wonder his senses can take in, and he’s in awe of his experience that despite being reflected in all that grandeur, God also cares about the smallest components of the natural world and every single human being, too.
I love the way Proverbs assures us that God does, indeed, care about aspects of our lives that may seem to us to be insignificant. In that book, wisdom speaks about itself, saying:
I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, Playing over the whole of his earth, having my delight with human beings.
Proverbs 8:30-31
Works cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
This is a post about “The Coming of the Spirit.” That’s the title the Bible I use gives to the first story presented in Acts Chapter 2. It’s a story I’ve heard many times, and most reflections I’ve heard or read about it focus on the effect of this event on the apostles. The affect the Spirit had on the apostles didn’t grab my attention this time, though. What I zeroed in on were the sensory details used to describe the Spirit. Acts says “And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them” (2:2-3). The “driving wind” and the “tongues of fire” got me thinking about the many effects wind and fire have on us here on Earth and how some of those effects can remind us of what God does.
“And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.”
Acts Chapter 2:2
I’ll start with wind. It can generate energy and can send some of our balloons, kites, and ships whichever way it blows. Along with water, it can reshape the natural landscapes in which we live. It can rip apart and topple structures we build, especially if we don’t or can’t use the sturdiest materials and designs. Wind outlasts all temporary construction. But it’s gentlest form is breath.
We start fires to generate warmth and coziness. They melt what we can’t bend without them. They weld things together. We will also use fire (or more commonly the heat it generates) to purify water and instruments, to protect ourselves from disease-causing microbes. It changes how even compounds and elements react. Its heat can change the nature of matter. It turns ice to water, and water to gas. It can both solidify and consume the work of human hands. Sometimes we want it to consume the work of those hands so we can get rid of what we don’t want. This article from Science says that, sometimes, fires clear away “dead litter on the forest floor.” The article continues:
[Wildfires allow] important nutrients to return to the soil, enabling a new healthy beginning for plants and animals. . . .
But fires are only good if they serve their specific purpose. If they burn too long or the ground stays dry too long, ecosystems can’t recover.
The above quotation illustrates that the analogy between the Holy Spirit and wind and fire is far from perfect. I don’t believe in a Holy Fire that burns “too long,” drying out creation so that it can’t recover. I don’t believe the Holy Spirit destroys us. On the contrary, the Spirit I believe in is all about giving life, and helping us “have it more abundantly” — (John 10:10). In its ability to refresh, I would characterize the Holy Spirit as being like water as much as fire. And God created wind, fire, and water with certain characteristics and ways of interacting with each other.
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.
John 10:10
It is we who put ourselves in the path of the elements because they offers many gifts that help us establish and continue our communities. But proximity to these powerful gifts is also also one of the ways we’re vulnerable. And we contribute to the danger of their power because we who sometimes overuse, misuse and abuse what is good, including natural gifts.
In doing so, we can contribute to the destruction of ourselves and each other. Or we can use the gifts of that Spirit to allow ourselves to be reshaped for the better when nature’s power and/or human choices remind us of the frailty earthly life.
Works cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Much of the Gospels concern themselves with the ways God became one with us through Jesus. But the stories about the ascension set the stage for something very much related but different: our ability to become one with God because Jesus returned to the Father and promised his followers they would receive the Holy Spirit. In Acts, He tells them the Spirit will allow them to be his “witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth (1:8).
Think about what being a witness in court means. A witness sees and shares what she sees. In this way, she receives and gives. The Spirit allows her to do this, to experience Christ and to allow others to experience Him through her. This witness is necessary because with only one person, there is no kingdom. I would define a kingdom as a gathering of people under one, anointed leader. God’s kingdom shares this nature with kingdoms bound by time and space. And yet, God’s kingdom is different. It doesn’t belong exclusively to one generation or one place. It doesn’t belong only to the pre-resurrection Jesus or to that first generation of followers, or to Israel. This difference isn’t something the disciples understand yet in Acts 1:6.
They ask Jesus, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replies that “It is not for [them] to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority (Acts 1:7). All the violence and suffering in the world can make this response as frustrating for us as it must have been for the apostles.
Fortunately, Jesus teaches us through the Lord’s Prayer that we should ask for the kingdom to come and for help in bringing it about by being effective witnesses and imitators of his life.
I read an article a while back that suggested putting The Lord’s Prayer in your own words can enrich your prayer life. Since I read that article, some ideas of how I might do this with the Lord’s Prayer have come to me now and then. When the Acts reading made me think of the prayer, I thought I’d share some of those ideas here. Please know that as I do so, it isn’t my intention to change the meaning of the prayer. But it is my intention to share what those traditional words mean to me.
Our nurturing Creator, Protector, Provider, and Sanctuary of total and endless sharing, help us make your presence felt and acknowledged in the world by making our actions match our just and loving words. Let us see through Your eyes, and transform our desires to make them align consistent with Yours so that Your creation will reflect you more and more. Give us what we need physically and spiritually today to do your work, and help us trust that tomorrow you’ll do the same. Forgive us for the ways our choices distort how each of us is uniquely gifted to reflect You so the we can forgive others when their limitations and choices hurt us. Help us to share with others what You give to us, and help us to trust you and to love like You when we don’t feel like it. Help us see through any lies about You, ourselves, and others, and when we don’t see through them, help us not to lose hope. Help us heal from the experiences these lies create. Help us to believe and live as if everything is possible with You.
We open ourselves to Your bringing these words to fruition in our lives.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid (John 14:28). I heard this verse again last weekend. That was before latest mass shooting. At an elementary school. Again. I can’t believe there has been more than one mass shooting at an elementary school. I can’t believe there have been so many mass shootings, period. Well, I can believe all of it, unfortunately. But I don’t want to.
Often, I struggle with what I’m going to post here, what verse I’m going to focus on, but this time, I knew immediately that I was going to focus on John 14:28. I was going to write about how it’s one of those verses that leaves me feeling like I can never measure up, one of those verses that feels inapplicable to life as I know it on many days. The verse makes me feel this way because I live with anxiety and OCD.
If I still thought I had to be untroubled to be a faithful Christian or to grow spiritually in any way, I’d give up trying, I think.
Yet I haven’t given up, thanks to the Gospels telling me about times when Jesus was troubled. There was the time he wept when it seemed he arrived too late to save his friend Lazarus from death. He wept even though he knew Abba loved him and his friends and could still be found in the midst of the suffering and loss. Obviously, I can’t know exactly what he was feeling when he wept, but I’ve often wondered if his grief rose out of the suffering that had occurred before the massive sign that God was about to offer through him. He accepted that sometimes pain couldn’t be avoided, but his acceptance didn’t mean that he didn’t dread pain at the same time.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
John 14: 27
The blood we’re told he sweated in the garden of Gethsemane is evidence of another troubled time, as is the moment on the cross when, feeling abandoned, even though on some level he must know he isn’t, (otherwise he’d have no one to implore) he cries out to God. I’d say “troubled” is a drastically inadequate word to describe how he’s feeling, yet I can also imagine him experiencing a kind of peace in this moment and the others because he knows what God is asking him to do, and that’s to respond as each situation calls him to respond. This peace doesn’t come from comfort but from discerning his purpose and acting upon it in unselfish love.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say my own acceptance of anxiety and my willingness to share it with God manage it well, but anxiety feels less inescapable than it used to. Because I accept that certain situations are going to make me anxious. And I don’t have to make the physical experience of anxiety — the muscle tension, or the churning stomach, or the faster heartbeat — go away. It’s okay just to do what I can, to go through the motions that each moment calls for. It’s okay to go about life this way because all my experiences of anxiety and discomfort are temporary.
But I get the grief doesn’t feel temporary. It feels crushing, insurmountable. I’ve heard it said that grief doesn’t go away. It just changes.
So weep. Focus on one mundane task and in the next. Turn over tables if you need to. (We’re told that Jesus did at least once.) Then help clean up the mess afterwards, and don’t resort to violence. Let’s channel our tears and our anger into positive change.
Yes, Jesus prayed. He also stood up to the suffering of others by doing what he could to relieve it. Think what good we can do if we participate in that work of Love.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
“As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13:34). This is the clarification Jesus offers after he gives his followers “a new commandment.” He says people will recognize his disciples if they “love one another” as he has loved them (35). In Matthew 5:44, he tells them they shouldn’t stop at loving the members of their own group. They should go so far as to “love [their] enemies” [italics mine].
He models the version of the commandment that we get in Matthew when, from the cross, he asks his heavenly father to forgive those who have tortured, tormented, and abandoned him.
In what other ways does Jesus show love in the Gospels?
He loves the total person.
He tends not only to physical and spiritual needs, but also to intellectual, mental and emotional ones as well. He knows that even though I’m categorizing these needs separately, they’re never really separate. He teaches crowds using stories they can relate to. He doesn’t forget to feed the people will come to him before he sends them home. He meets emotional needs, not only by teaching people to hope for and to work for a just society (Google the Beatitudes), but also in another way.
He erases perceived dividing lines.
Jesus calls God his father and teaches us to do the same. (Actually, I’ve read that the word he uses translates to a more familiar name, one closer to Dad than to Father.) He excludes no one, and instead makes a point of including outcasts who approach him. Scripture tells us that he shared the experiences of both the just and the unjust. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death. He associated with tax collectors and people with traditions and practices different from the ones in which he had been brought up. I’d say there wasn’t anyone he wouldn’t connect with, though not everybody wanted to befriend him.
“As I have loved you, so you also should love one another”
John 13: 34
Marginalized people are not invisible to Jesus. The Bible tells us that in his time on earth, in a very patriarchal culture, he spoke to and touched women, even women with tainted reputations, and at least one woman who had been hemorrhaging for years. It’s my understanding that a woman with such a condition was considered unclean and would have been expected to keep distant from Jesus.
The Scriptures tell us about many more times when Jesus healed people whose health conditions isolated them and obscured their dignity in the eyes of the society in which they lived. As a person with a disability and mental health conditions, I think of these healings as helping to integrate people into their communities, as helping people contribute to their communities. Though it’s absolutely okay to want healing, no one should be sent the message that they have to be healed of what makes them different before they can be whole and be equal to everyone else. Helping someone heal is by far not the only way to help a person contribute to and integrate into a community.
He asks and answers questions.
When I think of Jesus interacting with a person, I think of him asking questions to lead that person to insight. I think of his conversations with Peter and his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. I also think of the times he used people’s questions as teaching opportunities. Some of the people with questions were Jewish and Roman authorities, but not all of questioners are identified in the Bible as holding official leadership positions. I think of the unnamed man who asked Jesus what else he needed to do to inherit eternal life.
He took breaks.
Jesus knew he needed to let God love him so that he could love others. He knew he needed times of withdrawing from crowds and of leaning on Abba. He prayed in deserts and gardens. He slept on a fishing boat in the middle of a storm, and he prayed when his closest friends were sleeping.
Jesus’ ways of loving looked different at different times in his earthly life. The question for us is, what do the ways he loves look like at different moments in our lives? Each of us will have different answers at different times. If two of us were to compare our answers, we would likely find similarities without having exactly the same answers.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
When I heard the above statement this weekend, it stood out to me what the sentence doesn’t say. It doesn’t say, “My sheep hear my words.” It doesn’t say “My sheep hear my teachings,” and it doesn’t say, “My sheep hear my instructions.” It says, “My sheep hear my voice. [Italics mine]”
A voice isn’t an idea. It isn’t a string of ideas forming a message. Like the many human inventions that it surpasses, it’s a carrier for the message. It can be small and brittle like a glass bottle. It can be warm and gentle as a May breeze, as harsh and loud as the ship’s whistle or as gravelly as the air in a worn parking lot on a gusty March day.
Words can say one thing while the voice that delivers them says the opposite. One voice can be similar to another, but no voice is exactly the same. (At least I think this last statement is true. I’m far from a voice scientist. I’m only writing from my experience.) To communicate with another living creature using one’s voice can be a powerful and intimate experience — intimate, I think, because the process that voices use to communicate is only partly a conscious one. A familiar quality of a certain voice can touch us in ways we can’t quite put into words.
. . . I know them, and they follow me.
John 10:27
That’s why I find it so fitting that John 10:27 says “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” God reaches us in ways that go beyond any means — words being one — that we use to create order around us. God speaks with the voice of the Spirit and gives us the ears of the Spirit to hear that voice. That’s what I thought when I found the picture I’m including with this post. To me, the picture looks like a flame in the shape of an ear. This image reminds me that the ears of the spirit are sensitive to the vibrations of Divine Love and that the heart of the Spirit responds to this Love by sharing it.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
What follows is a new continuation of the story I posted last week. Like last week’s story, it uses fiction writing techniques to engage with Scripture.It is based mostly on John 20:17-28 with a few verses from elsewhere in the Gospels mixed in as indicated.
In a way I couldn’t explain, Jesus wasn’t just alive again. He looked and felt more alive than ever before. More alive than I was. And yet I felt as if seeing him like this, touching him like this had transferred some of that life, that energy, to me. It filled me and overflowed, compelling me to run back to where the eleven disciples still living hid behind locked doors.
I came up against the locked doors sooner than I expected to. I could neither recall all the turns I’d taken, nor did I remember climbing the stairs that led to them. It was as if the doors had come to me.
I glanced around, peering into every shadow and raised my hand to knock the signal that only the followers knew. I hesitated, surprising myself. Though I was thrilled to have received a new purpose directly from the Teacher and eager to fulfill it, it was precisely because of this mission that I didn’t want the doors to swallow me again. The encounter had dissolved my fear. The Lord’s power was stronger even than death. What else could I fear? Why should only the followers huddling behind the locked doors get the message? Nevertheless, I trusted there was a reason the Teacher had instructed me to him tell only the brothers.
So I told them “I have seen the Lord. I’ve embraced his feet, and he told me to tell you this: ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ (John 20:17-18).
I received looks of confusion and suspicion in reply with, perhaps, astonishment mixed in.
“Why would he appear and speak to you?” John asked.
“He spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, to the woman with a hemorrhage, and to the woman about to be stoned for adultery. And don’t forget Mary and Martha in Bethany.”
“Yes, but that was before he was crucified,” Peter said.
How could he speak as if I didn’t know this?
I was soothed a little when he continued. “No doubt things we don’t understand are happening. Grave robbers would never take the time to separate the burial cloths and fold them neatly, but even if what you say is true, what does it mean for us? What are we to do?”
I opened my mouth, No words came out for far too long before I was able to admit, “He didn’t tell me that.” Had I run away too quickly? Surely he would have called after me if I had. “But he’s told us this, so he’ll tell us more when the time is right.”
“You’re suggesting we should wait here,” Thomas said. We’ve already been doing that for two days. Your news changes nothing. We’ll be discovered eventually and suffer the same fate as the teacher. Surely we cannot return the way he has. Why delay the end that’s God’s will? In the meantime, I can pray out there just as well, and I will.” He strode toward the doors before turning to face us. “May the Lord be with you, brothers and sisters. He didn’t slam the doors behind him, but part of me wished he would and hoped, somehow, the sound would result in a visit from the Teacher and instructions about what to do next. If he did, perhaps he would tell us that Thomas acted rightly despite his unbelief. Jesus hadn’t told me to tell the brothers to stay behind the locked doors.
The Teacher did visit us, but not until hours later, when I was helping to prepare the evening meal. I didn’t hear the secret knock and, apparently, neither did anyone else because what I did hear was a collective gasp.
When I looked up to see what happened, I saw the Lord. The ten remaining brothers saw him too. They lay facedown on the floor.
“Peace be with you,” Jesus said.
Gazes lifted one by one.
Touching his wounds told them he was as substantial as he had been before Passover, that he wasn’t a spirit or only a vision.
The men began to talk over each other as they praised God and asked what to do next and what was to become of them.
Jesus replied by repeating, “Peace be with you,” and he added, “As the father sent me, so I send you . . “. (21). Then he breathed like he was blowing out a dozen candles at once and said that in doing this, he was giving them the power to share the Abba’s forgiveness with whomever confessed their sins and seemed sincere in their desire to let go of what was not of God.
For a moment after Jesus spoke these words and gave the disciples this gift, we were all silent. In the midst of our silence Jesus vanished, even though the doors were still locked.
The men began to murmur amongst themselves. Who would believe that after everything that happened the previous week, they had the authority to speak for God, to call people to repentance and to tell those who repented that God had forgiven them?
“Supper is ready.” I called to them over the cacophony of their spoken unanswered questions.
Peter said that hearing me made him aware, once again, of the weakness of his faith.
“Please forgive me for doubting what you told us. I confess it’s so easy to forget so much of what the rabbi has taught us, but now I remember that he said that in the kingdom of God, the last would be first and the first would be last” (Matt. 20:16).
For a moment, my pride resented the implication that I was one of “the last.” I never felt that way when Jesus’ eyes met mine or when he spoke to me. But I Jesus had chosen me as a disciple by name the way the original twelve had. I had begun following Jesus after he freed me from invisible torments that had plagued me since I began to turn from a girl to a woman.
Furthermore, women were not disciples. And now Jesus had asked his disciples to take on a new kind of priesthood, to assure repentant people that God forgave them. Priests were not women.
Yet Peter was asking me for forgiveness. The Holy Spirit was indeed mighty. I dared not presume too much, but I didn’t think it would be doing so to remind the others of something else Jesus had said. “I remember too his words about what the kingdom would be like. And I remember that when he taught us how to pray, he said the Father would forgive us if we forgave those who wronged us (Luke 11:4). I don’t blame you now for your suspicion, given that I saw him die myself and given my troubled past. However, I confess that at first my pride enjoyed that Jesus said come to me at the tomb, and my pride was hurt by your questions. I was wrong. I see that now, and I will do my best to serve my brothers and sisters as Jesus did.”
“In the name of Jesus, my sister, I forgive you of all your sins, and I ask my brothers to forgive me of mine.”
John spoke for the brothers and for the Father in offering Peter forgiveness, and then he confessed his own sins, among which was doubting the truth of my proclamation, and Peter and I forgave him. All of us followed John’s example in seeking forgiveness and offering it.
Then we all sat down to discuss what else we remembered from Jesus’s teachings. We also wondered if Thomas and Judas needed to be replaced. It seemed there needed to be twelve leaders, one representing each tribe. We knew Judas had taken his own life, but what would become of Thomas? And how would the remaining disciples know who should be appointed to replace the ones who were no longer with the group?
It was in the midst of these questions that the familiar knock sounded on the other side of the doors. It might be Thomas, it might be someone else who had discovered our location and method of entering it, or it might be Thomas having betrayed us for his own gain. After all, Judas had done no different just a few days before.
“I’m going to open them,” Peter announced without hesitation. “We’ve seen that no betrayal, no darkness has the last word unless we believe it does and give ourselves totally to that belief. God is distant only if we push Him away.”
The moan of the doors seemed unusually loud as Peter unlocked them and pulled them apart.
“May I come in? Thomas asked. He didn’t look up, and his shoulders slumped.
“What can I do except sit here among friends and wait? I can’t teach the people after everything that’s happened. What he taught us seems like empty promises now. And I can’t go back to the life I had before he called my name. I’m a different man now. I’m not sure I’m a better one, but I know I’m a different one.”
Peter put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “Straighten your back, and look up, Brother.” And Peter told Thomas about everything that had happened while he was away.
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” (25).
A chorus of protests went up in response to Thomas’s declaration. When these left Thomas unmoved, the protests turned to prayers. Prayers continued over the breaking of the bread for several days. Whenever we broke bread we also sang Psalms, and each of us did our best to recall a different lesson learned from Jesus.
Seven days passed. Then suddenly, though, as before, no one had unlocked the doors, Jesus stood before us, saying, “Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe'” (26-28).
Thomas did what Jesus had invited him to do, and he said, “my Lord and my God.”
I was grateful for these words. They reminded us who Jesus was and that he would still show us the way to Abba. Our challenge was to follow him there by living as he had shown us by example. And what a challenge it was.
When Thomas had expressed his refusal to believe without proof that he could touch, I’d had two reactions. First was anger. That was before I realized that we all might have said the same. We’d had the same disbelief. We had simply expressed it in different ways. Second, I’d feared the wrath of God for him and for all of us — more, I realized, than I had feared any Roman soldier or high priest.
But destruction had not rained down upon us. Instead, Jesus had given Thomas what he had needed.
Still, since the teacher had begun returning to us, he had never seemed to be able to stay for very long. I wondered if our sphere couldn’t contain him now the death couldn’t defeat him. I wondered if there would come a time soon when we couldn’t touch him or see him the way we’d been doing for the past week. If so, would we have to rely on what he’d already given us to keep the doors of our hearts open to the faith that he was still alive and still with us?
Suffering and the fear of it had made it so easy to forget all that Jesus had given us. But Jesus understood this. After all, he had called out to God from the cross asking why he had been abandoned (Matt. 27:46). Yet he had still had the faith to ask why.
Maybe that kind of faith — one that keeps asking while the senses and the mind don’t believe or understand — the faith that keeps asking even when it seems pointless — maybe that’s the one that keeps the doors of the heart from locking Abba and His children out.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Sitting with the Sacred 