The Doors Were Shut
Genesis 8:6-16, 9:8-16ersen
Psalm 118:19:24
I Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-30
Tim
Christoffersen
St. Anselm’s
Maundy Thursday
April 7, 2002
Can
you identify with Thomas when he hears from the other disciples that Jesus
is alive and has been resurrected from the dead? "Unless I see the
mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nail
and my hand in his side, I will not believe." Thomas perhaps unfairly
has been characterized over the centuries as Doubting Thomas.
Thomas had fallen hard after Jesus’ crucifixion. We need to remember
Thomas’ words as Jesus prepared to go to Jerusalem knowing what lay ahead.
Thomas said "Let us also go, that we may die with him." (John
11:16) At some level, Thomas knew Jesus would die, an insight that the other
disciples did not have at that point. Thomas, in fact, demonstrated not doubt
but a strong faith in following Jesus in spite of what he sensed lay ahead.
Yet Jesus’ crucifixion shattered Thomas’ faith.
Jesus’ responds with compassion to Thomas’ lack of faith and his
need for physical proof of his resurrection. Thomas puts his finger in Jesus’
hand and his hand in Jesus’ side and says, "My Lord and my God!"
Then Jesus says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have
come to believe."
Here we are…almost two thousand years later wrestling with what Scripture
says about the resurrection and living in a world dominated by a scientific
understanding of reality. Let’s look at a couple of the challenges with
which we need to wrestle and then take a quick look at how science has its
own challenges with reality.
In the first line of the gospel reading we learn the "doors of the
house where the disciples had met were locked…" yet Jesus came
and stood among them. We have the same picture a week later. "Although
the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them…" The reading
implies pretty clearly that the resurrected Jesus entered somehow through
the door or the wall. The Greek word kleio is used in both verses and it has
the sense of ‘locked’ or ‘shut up.’
The morning of the resurrection Mary Magdalene turned away from the tomb and
saw Jesus but she thought he was the gardener and began talking with him.
When Jesus spoke her name, the verse says she turned toward him and she recognized
him. She had already seen him but did not recognize him. Was recognition a
matter of the hearing or perhaps the heart and not the eyes? At that time
Jesus says to her, "Do not hold on to me as I have not yet returned
to the Father." The Greek word for "hold on," hapto, has
the sense of "clinging" or "adhering to." Perhaps this
exchange between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is meant to be a model or a symbol
to us. Faith in the resurrected Christ is a matter of the heart and the whole
person. We like Mary Magdalene do not have the physical confirmation of Thomas
But do we then understand Jesus’ compassion toward Thomas to be a symbol
of forgiveness and a demonstration of his love?
In Luke, we have the account of Jesus blessing the disciples and, while he
was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.
We know the worldview at the time the gospels were written was based on a
flat earth with the heavens and the stars above and Sheol or the land of the
dead below the earth. The earth was the center of the universe.
Let’s fast forward to Galileo and Newton. About the early years of the
18th century, Newton had established an understanding, widely accepted in
western culture, that the universe was a pretty orderly place with gravitation
keeping the planets moving about the stars with time passing steadily and
space providing the backdrop to this orderly universe.
Large segments of the Christian community bought into this scientific understanding
of reality. Pretty soon we had Deists who believed God was the great watchmaker
who created the universe like a Swiss watch and then sat back and let the
orderly world of Newton carry on from creation. Miracles and God’s intervention
in human affairs became unfashionable beliefs.
What we call the Enlightenment was the dominant scientific understanding of
reality and religious faith either accommodated or was pushed out into a little,
nonscientific corner.
And then in the 20th century along comes Albert Einstein and quantum mechanics
or the puzzling lack of determinism at the smallest scales of matter. Einstein
demonstrated that Newton’s orderly world was not so orderly after all.
Space did not exist apart from time. A clock runs slower at the top of a building
than it does on the ground floor. A twin going off in a space ship will be
younger than his sibling when he returns. Atomic clocks can measure all this.
Now these changes are not particularly noticeable by us because the effects
are tiny unless speeds approaching the speed of light are involved.
It was also tough for Einstein. Quantum mechanics says at the lowest level
of matter that we can measure, an electron or a photon exists as both a wave
or a particle until someone measures them. Einstein could never accept this
fundamental indeterminacy of matter. He said, "God does not play dice
with the universe." Half a century later, the fundamental indeterminacy
of matter continues to reign and Einstein was wrong. This new understanding
led to discovering "black holes" when time comes to an end and light
cannot escape and "worm holes" where one theoretically can be transported
to another universe. Of course a person would be shredded by the forces but
the idea is kind of fun.
The Newtonian scientific understanding of reality that God created it and
the universe would roll on forever in an orderly manner turns out, at this
point, not to be so orderly after all. Those who retreated from their faith
in a God who is active in human affairs and answers prayers to conform to
the Newtonian scientific understanding of reality would over the last 30 years
or so be more than a little embarrassed.
But as a secular culture we are still addicted to the pervasiveness of the
scientific method to set the limits on reality and what we can know. Spiritual
reality for most persons still is either denied or confined to the veneer
of their lives.
So here we are, back again to our identification with Thomas and the details
of the resurrection stories. Like Mary Magdalene and unlike Thomas, we cannot
touch the resurrected Jesus. I believe we have no choice but to wrestle with
tough to understand Scripture about the resurrected Jesus. I believe we need
to use both scientific knowledge as well as our spiritual understanding or
faith, or, to use a metaphor a little too loosely, we need to use both our
heart and our brain. If we believe that God can intervene in human affairs
and that Christ is mysteriously present when two or three are gathered together,
then our prospects for understanding Scripture at a level that affects and
shapes both our heart and our mind are pretty good.
AMEN.
