This morning as I begin
I must admit that earlier this week I had a sermon all ready to go. I was going
to preach the typical sermon about our scripture lesson for today. I was going
to talk about Thomas and to talk about doubt, I was going to talk about our
need to see something for ourselves for us to believe, and the importance of
faith when we can’t see any tangible signs of God in our lives. It would have
been a fine sermon, worthy of preaching this morning. This week however I was
reading a book by Nancy Eisland called
“The Disabled God” and the imagery of the book, the way it tied into our
scripture for this morning, the way it spoke to the depths of my soul, well it
was certainly a movement of the spirit, and so having a sermon already finished
I started anew, with a rough, unclean and yet hopefully powerful message for
you today.
Because our scripture for today has almost always been
interpreted from the standpoint of faith and doubt; and as I said this was even
the way that I had intended to preach it. We focus in on Thomas, we focus on
his doubt, we focus on his need to stick his fingers into the side of Jesus to
know that it was truly the Lord. So often we focus so much on Thomas in this
story because we relate to him, we have fears and doubts just like he did. This
however leads that message of this story is centered around Thomas and feeling
of Jesus’ wounds, and we forget that it
is not about Thomas, it is not about us, the message of the story is that
Christ is risen, that Christ has returned to his disciples. What through me for
loop, what blew my mind as I read the book is that for the first I stopped
thinking about Thomas putting his hand in Jesus’ wounds, and focused on the
fact that Jesus had these wounds in the first place.
When it comes to Holy week and Good Friday and all of the
celebrations that go along with the crucifixion of Jesus we do not forget to
focus on the wounds. We think about the nails in his hands and feet, we think
about the crown of thorns around his head we think about his pierced side, we
focus on the excruciating pain on the cross and how much Jesus suffered for us
out of love. When the Easter season rolls around however we think about the
resurrected Jesus, we think about new life, and we tend to discard the wounds
and the pain of the cross as if they were something of the past that has now
simply been replaced. This is particularly true for us Protestants, in fact it has sparked
theological discussions between depictions of the cross and that of the
crucifix. As some of you may have
noticed most protestant crosses do not depict Jesus on the cross, whereas the
crucifix, or in other words a depiction of the cross with Jesus on it, is more
common in Catholic churches. Protestants have claimed that the crucifix does
not tell the good news that Jesus has risen from the dead and reigns forever;
this is a true and valid argument. In
our attempts to get Jesus off of the cross however it seems as though we try to
quickly brush aside the pain, the brokenness, the agony of the cross. The true
gospel message can only be embraced when we learn that the crucifix and the
empty cross are integral for our understanding of the significance of Jesus’
life, death, and resurrection.
We as Christians and especially as Protestants have
embraced the good news of a resurrected God,
however I fear that far too often we embrace it because we are afraid to
believe in a savior who died on a cross. That should not be possible, we are
only able to believe in the death because we know of the good news of the
resurrection; otherwise we know that we too would be like Thomas, not believing
until we saw it for ourselves. But we do believe in the resurrection, we
believe that Christ came back from the dead conquering sin and death. We want
to believe that when Jesus came back he came back even more perfect if that is
even possible, and if it isn’t then we want to believe that he came back like
new, once more restored in full glory. We want to think this way because it
gives us the hope of overcoming our brokenness, of getting rid of our pain and
our wounds and being made perfect like Christ in his resurrection. This is why
our story for today is so shocking, because for as much as we want to picture a
God who overcame the pain and agony of the cross, as much as we want a savior
who put all of that behind him, we see a restored and resurrected savior, with
holes in his hands and in his side.
This is not what we want to think of when we think about
restoration, this is not what we want to think about when we think about
becoming perfect. We want to think about leaving our past in the past where it
belongs, we want to think about getting rid of our brokenness and our pain, the
holes in Jesus’ hands and side is a sign that our brokenness is not covered up,
it is not forgotten, but instead we have a savior who can restore us through
our brokenness and pain. We have a savior who can take “broken aside and make
it beautiful; a savior who did not cover up his wounds but helped Thomas to
believe because of them. I want to be clear that it is not that God puts these
things in our lives, God does not want us to suffer, however as a fallen people
suffering has become part of our human condition. The good news is that God is
there to help us through it, and that God can even use our brokenness and turn
it into a way to serve and glorify him.
Today know that whatever pains our brokenness of your past that has
shaped you to be the person you are today, is not something to be locked away
or forgotten, but that God can you our brokenness to make something beautiful
in the world.
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