“Put your
finger here.” Could you do it? Could you put your finger in anyone’s wounds,
much less in the wounds of your miraculously risen spiritual leader?
I imagine
this is an extreme example of “Be careful what you ask for.” Did Thomas regret
saying "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?" -
Less for his lack of faith than for following through?
Thomas was
courageous though; he was the apostle who said, “Let us also go to die with [Jesus].” Now a strict reading of this passage only tells us that Jesus told him to
put his fingers in the wound, it does not explicitly state that Thomas did. The
less squeamish among us may want to imagine that Thomas fell to his knees and
confessed his faith in response to what Jesus said without actually touching
the wounds.
Why would
this reading be preferable? For the same reasons we don’t want to think of
Jesus Christ burping or farting or defecating. We want God to be exempt from
all the things we hide ourselves away to do. The beauty of the incarnation is
that we are saying God is gross, when we are grossed out by the realities of
being an animal.
So I prefer
to read the passage as messy. Not zombie messy, Peter reminds us “nor did his
flesh experience corruption.” Jesus didn’t smell like Lazarus. Neither was
Jesus’ resurrected body as stubbornly solid as our flesh, he entered locked
rooms we are told.
None the
less, for fingers to be put in them, the wounds still had to be open. They
weren’t closed up. They might have still been bleeding even, like some of those
with the stigmata. I’m sure you all have heard of St. Francis, but are you
aware he had the stigmata? Stigmata is the phenomenon found in pious
individuals, mostly women, of manifesting the wounds of Christ on their bodies.
As strange
as it is to say this, I personally find this appealing. And for those who know
me, I should say not in the way I find Horror movies appealing. Not Mel
Gibson’s passion took this to horror movie extremes, which did not work in my
opinion, and that isn’t what I’m talking about.
I need a
broken bloody body on my cross. Much of my personal piety is rooted in the
crucifixion. Because I need a God who knows what suffering is; who is in
solidarity with our suffering. Who isn’t stoically enduring suffering because
I’ve been a bad girl, but is telling me that he will bear my suffering with me.
It’s that
stoic Jesus that I often hear in the Aesop’s Fable style lesson that concludes
this story. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to
believe." Yes this was written for the followers of Jesus who never saw
him in the flesh; perhaps even unintended for those who had seen him in a vision.
It’s almost
saying the visionaries are the obstinate ones. Those addressed in Peter’s
letter manage to love Jesus without ever having seen him. When God sends
visions, is he saying, “Do I have to hit you over the head with this?” Or more
precisely, do I have to put your finger in my wounds?
And yet, Thomas
is the first to confess Jesus as his personal God. What does it even mean when
one’s personal God has open wounds?
The second
person of the Trinity, which pre-existed Jesus, now carries Jesus’ wounds
eternally. God has taken on our pain and suffering, knows it intimately. Christ
died for our pain and suffering. For isn’t sin the result of pain and
suffering? - Or attempts to control or deny pain and suffering?
I’d suggest
that the whole purity system that Jesus turned the tables on is rooted in attempts
to distance ourselves from pain and suffering. Things we want to avoid more
than even the gross animal stuff. A system now known as “othering” and
“exclusion” and devaluing of people, but still results in the idea that only
the pure may approach God. In the wounds of Christ, God is no longer pure by
these standards, yet remains holy. God redeems suffering.
God carries
our wounds for us. Can we connect with that? Do we want to deny that in the
same way we would not want to touch his wounds?
When our pain
and suffering gets too much, we have an alternative to sin. When our pain and
suffering are more than we can handle, we can lift it up to God. Christ will
carry our burdens for us if we let him. I can attest to this and I have seen it
work for so many others. But paradoxically it’s not easy.
I’ve seen
people hang on to their suffering obstinately. Why would this be so? Why would
we not want God to carry our suffering? We want to believe we’re in control. We
want to believe in some plan that has existed and always will exist. We come up
with theories that God wants us to suffer because we deserve it. We would
rather think of God as angry and malicious, than as a God who suffers for us.
If Jesus suffered on the cross because we’re inherently evil, we still have
this illusion of control. We think our willful actions can somehow ease or
prevent suffering.
The old
testament is full of stories of people to whom given courage in battle. “Be
strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God
who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.” Jesus calls us to a
different kind of courage; the courage of getting messy with the wounded; which
is also the courage to hold the frightening truth that we are not in control.
There are
levels of love for the suffering. I see a progression of messiness in them. Sympathy
is “Oh those poor people.” There is still a safe distance there, but messy in
that we feel an unpleasant sadness. Empathy is “Ouch that must hurt.” This is
messier in that we find ourselves feeling the hurt, the pain. Compassion is
“something must be done.” This is the messiest because we feel compelled to get
our hands dirty.
Compassion
is a spiritual discipline. It’s found in many religions. It’s stated most
clearly in Jesus’ description of the last judgment. “For I was hungry and you
gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed
me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you
visited me.”
And if that
doesn’t take enough courage, there’s an even messier task given to us. Love our
enemies. Love for those who are fighting against us or those we hold dear. Love
for those we want to fail. Love for those who are nailing us to our crosses.
Forgiving
them for what they are doing does not mean we want them to win, or that we stop
fighting the good fight. It means finding compassion for their pain and
suffering; finding solidarity in the knowledge that we all suffer. That what
drives them to harm others is what drives us to provide for those they intend
to harm. The difference is we’re willing to get messy as God in Jesus Christ
got messy.
In a short
time we are going to do something really gross. We are going to practice ritual
cannibalism. We are going to eat flesh and drink blood. We are doing this to
remember; to remember that God came into the world to take our wounds into
God’s very essence.
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