Easter 2 C
April 11, 2010
Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 150
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31
When I was growing up in Little Rock one of my favorite places to go was the McArthur Park museum. In those days, we learned about the history of near and far places of the world from books, reel to reel movies, and what our teachers told us. A visit to a museum allowed us to see very old things or replicas of very old things with our own eyes. That gave us three dimensional images to support what we learned in other ways. For me, seeing the displays in the museum confirmed what I read in books and made it easier to believe. The only thing I didn’t like about museums, and still don’t, is that you can’t touch anything. Everything is either roped off or in a glass case. Like most children, I could see better with my hands. I’m still like that.
Kevin and I went to England a few years ago. We made a pact before we left. If he’d go with me to all the churches I wanted to see, I’d go with him to all the pubs he wanted to go to. We spent the whole trip visiting churches and pubs. That turned out to be an excellent plan. Everywhere there’s a church, there’s a cemetery next to it and a pub right around the corner.
All the churches were centuries old. There was a welcome sign outside one of them. The sign noted that Christians had been worshipping there for 1100 years. The whole church was beautiful to me but I was particularly drawn to the baptismal font. The font wasn’t as old as the church. It was only 900 years old. It was huge. I stepped up on the base of it to get a better look, and so I could touch the inside.
It was made of lead with images of Jesus and the eleven apostles left after the resurrection carved or sculpted on the sides of it. It felt cold and smooth to touch. As I touched the font I imagined countless people being baptized there. I recalled the prayer over the water, “…In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit. Therefore in joyful obedience to your Son, we bring into his fellowship those who come to him in faith, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” As I remembered those words, I could almost feel the cold water in the font and hear it pouring over the heads of an untold number of people who now sit around the throne of God because they received the gift of eternal life from that very font. That font had given birth to angels. It felt holy just to touch it.
The experience of touching the place where Christians were born for the last nine centuries made the history of the church I was baptized into and ordained into real to me in a way it wasn’t before. It’s not that I didn’t believe all that I’d learned and passed on, but touching the font really did deepen my belief.
I suppose that’s what it was like for Thomas. Thomas was rational, a thinker. We know that because when Jesus said to the disciples, “You know the way to the place I am going,” Thomas said, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, How can we know the way?”
Jesus might have known even before his death that Thomas would not believe his eyes when he saw him after the resurrection. The other disciples did. They looked at Jesus with the wounds in his hands and feet. They recognized him as their Lord and were overjoyed. Not Thomas. He was going to need more proof than his eyes could deliver. He wanted to touch his risen Lord and put his hands on the pierce marks before he would believe he was in the presence of his Lord and God. From my experiences with touch, I understand that.
A week earlier when Jesus appeared to the disciples without Thomas, he breathed on them, invited them to receive his Holy Spirit, and told them if they forgive the sins of any, they will be forgiven, and if they retain the sins of any, they are retained. By his death and resurrection Jesus had taken care of the sins of the people with God. He stands now between us and God so that God cannot look on our sins without seeing our sinless Lord. But, what is left to be set right is the people’s relationship with each other. After twenty centuries Christians still struggle with that.
One of the most important changes in the history of our prayer book is the exchange of the peace in the rites for Holy Eucharist. Not until the 1979 book that we use now was there an opportunity for brothers and sisters in Christ to touch each other as we do when we pass the peace. A handshake or a hug at that point in the liturgy is a physical sign that we are at peace with each other before we take our places at the Lord’s Table.
At Vacation Bible School one year I wanted to teach the children about reconciliation and the passing of the peace. They were used to exchanging the peace in church so I brought in a smooth stone. First we exchanged the peace as usual with a handshake. Then I invited them to do it with the stone in their hand. The first two immediately looked at me and said, “We can’t do it. The stone is in the way.” That is the point, I told them. If something is between you and your friend you cannot exchange the peace because you’re not reconciled to each other. The children understood that.
What if something as simple as passing the peace with each other was a way to make peace real? What if shaking hands with each other made it easier to believe that we are all one in Christ; that through baptism Christ lives in every single one of us; that when we touch each other’s hands, each of us with our hidden wounds and brokenness, we are touching our hand to the wounded hand of Christ? Would it then be easier to know that Christ lives? Would that make the resurrection easier to believe and the good news easier to proclaim?
The church is not a museum. We are the ones who point to the history of God’s presence on the earth and we are the ones in whom Christ lives now.
I suppose there is no shortage of people in the world who like our patron saint, Thomas, need a little proof that this Jesus we call Lord was raised from death to life and that our hope in him is not in vain. Maybe they will find what they’re looking for in us when we offer our hands in peace.
Copyright. 2010. The Reverend Pamela S. Morgan
