Do We Need A Physical Resurrection?

John 20:19-31

Today we come to the story of Thomas whose critical mind puts him at odds with the other disciples. He needs more that the words of others to confirm the presence of the Christ in the world. He needs to see it for himself.  To be there and engage with the physicality of Jesus the Christ in such a way it proves the words of others.

He needs a personal experience.

We live in a world where we need evidence, proof, the truth. We are always seeking to know, see or experience something before we will attest to its truth, its beauty, its existence. Often we say that you had to be there, you won't know until you experience it, you have to se it for yourself. We live in a world which channels Thomas into our everyday life and existence. It is the reason we who value rational thought struggle with myth and the primal experience of those who are yet to be seduced by rational thinking. Wisdom eludes us because it cannot be embodied or experienced in the way provable facts and visible evidence can.

And this poses a problem for us all. Was Jesus the product of a miracle, a virgin birth defying all the physical implications of such an event? Did Jesus who was dead on the cross, placed in a tomb and treated with 100 pounds of nard, walk out of the tomb for all intents and purposes as alive as he was before the crucifixion?

Pastor and author Tim Keller, “The Christian Church is pretty much inexplicable if we don’t believe in a physical resurrection.” NT Wright, the Anglican author, argues that without a physical resurrection than can be no viable explanation for the birth of the Christian church.

Both men are examples of our need for evidence, for a physical presence which is, at the same time, beyond the rules and laws of the physical world. Do we need the physical and the miraculous to experience the Cosmic Christ? We may need such if we are only concerned about the man Jesus, if Jesus from Nazareth is the focus of our faith, or if we need an interventionist God to do big things, then perhaps we need the miraculous and the material to maintain our faith. If we only focus on Jesus then I understand where both Keller and Wright are coming from.

But you see it is not about Jesus, it is about the Christ, the Cosmic or universal one who was there at the beginning of all creatures, was present in the life and death of Jesus, and remains with us into the future after this cataclysmic event in the form of the Spirit, the pointe vierge (virgin point) within.

After Jesus, the Christ continues.

This is the crux of our faith, not a belief in the improbable just because, perhaps as some say, God could do the improbable if God wanted to, but a personal experiential faith in the Christ who imbues all with life and gives birth to a life that continues long after the cross. My question is always why does God need to break all the laws to prove God-ness? Why do we always look for these demonstrations of greatness to bolster our faith? Is it more about creating a God that fits into our image instead of finding a God who simply is? If our faith rests only on miracles, virgin births and a physical resurrection is that enough?

David Ewart writes, "John doesn't care what we see with our eyeballs. He wants us to SEE with our inner eye who Jesus really is –(the Christ). That is why he has written these signs for us. That in SEEing, we might believe; and in believing, we might have the life that is in Jesus (the Christ, not Jesus the human figure)." This is the purpose of Thomas’s critical eye. This is the purpose of the encounter. Thomas doesn’t even touch the physical body. In the end he doesn’t need the physical. He simply needs presence, awareness, the awakening of his inner eye to the truth about Jesus the Christ.[1]

"John is not anti-miracle, but he is critical of the focus on the materiality of miracles and Thomas surely approaches that stance. Blessed are those who believe who did not need the proofs (20:29)."[2] The need for miracles to prove God is God is not what John is about. There is no need for an improbable virgin birth or a risen dead man, what is needed is the capacity to see the invisible – the essence of all being – love – at work in the experience of the Christ.

Thomas arrives and in the presence of his friends experiences the presence, the empowerment, the reality of Christ without the need to verify it by putting his hands in the scars.

I, like John, am not anti-miracle, just don't need miracles to affirm my faith and in a world committed to the physical and the material we need a counter-cultural faith, a faith that is empowered solely by presence and awareness, by stillness and silence, by the unspectacular and the ordinary, by the authentic and the foundational thread tying us all together. In a world of the spectacular we need the value of the hardly noticeable, almost invisible unspectacular presence of the Christ in our ordinariness.

Yes, Thomas had an experience but it was more than a physical experience, it was an experience that opened his eyes to the truth about the identity of Jesus. It was an awareness of the Christ as the centre of all being, the Alpha and the Omega of all existence. It was not of resurrected human being but of the continuing existence of the powerful presence of God in all life. The resurrection, however it occurred, brought to the disciples and those who experienced it an incredible sense of the enduring and unceasing creative power of the Source of all life and it was sufficient to take them out into the world to face whatever the future held for them.

I don’t need my Jesus to be the result of a rule breaking God, I can not do the intellectual gymnastics to embrace the physical resurrection as a necessary part of my faith experience. And I suspect, in the modern world, many mature believers and thinkers are unable to do so. We do not have to because neither did Thomas in the end.

Christ the source of all life who Thomas saw via his inner eye is sufficient in all Christ’s mystical beauty and cosmic presence for a vibrant faith in this world. We need no thing else. Amen

---

[1] Parentheses mine.

[2] William Loader

None So Blind

John 9:1-41

I was watching a video recently of amazing young people who were doing amazing things with very little. Missing a limb or two they skied the wild slopes, rap danced with a precision many with all their limbs could not, played competition basketball and scored goals or produced tricks on a skateboard at the skateboard park. The last young man was born bind and started skate boarding at 7 and skates everyday. I can’t even stand up on a skateboard yet this young man does stunning tricks and manoeuvres with out the ability to see. When he falls off he spends time feeling the floor of the skate park and familiarising himself with the space. He then goes and attempts the trick again.

 

On a recent episode of the Landscape Painter of the Year a finalist painted stunning landscapes with his feet. Born without hands he has develop a particular practice which allows him to create art many of us who have all our limbs would be jealous of.

 

On another level I am amazed at the number of pets born with legs or sight go on to live amazing lives. We may say they are not aware of their situation but a long look will tell you they are, but they have learnt to run, jump, play and love with out the need for their full complement of limbs and faculties and bring joy and love into the world.

 

Today we meet a man born bind who has been begging all his life. He encounters Jesus and Jesus responds and heals him, giving him something he has never had at any point in his life.  This raises many questions and we could spend time unpacking the impact on the young man now he can see. What does he do? How does he live? All he has ever done is beg. He has no work skills, no ability to earn a living yet he has lost the only capacity he had to earn a living, his blindness.

We could spend time unpacking the impact of forcing people off disability pensions and into the work force with out them ever being given the necessary skills to actually engage. We could explore the impact of forcing a western materialist consumer culture on people who have for many thousands of years lived a completely different life in tune and in touch with the world they occupy, taking only what they need when they needed it. Instead we force our way of being blind on others with the certainty that we see everything.

 

The little ditty, there are None so Blind as they who do not see, is the point of Jesus and the young man’s reaction from his neighbours, his family and the religious elites. These are people who know, who see and are certain that how they see is the only way to see. They have a body of knowledge, of learning that is proven, factual and definable. The have a body of knowledge for which there are proof texts, case studies, evidence and they are not to be deterred by an actual event which defies any of these.

 

They are certain of their truth and try and convince the young man he is deluded, or that he has been faking it all these years, or that he is just making it up. According to the tomes on their shelves and the traditions they have inherited what he says simply couldn’t have happened.

 

Thic Nat Hanh, the Budhist teacher refers to this as the mind of discrimination. We discriminate on what we think and we make others experiences, lives or faith less than ours because that is simply not how we see it. It is this mind of discrimination, of this not that, of this over that, that causes the pain we experience in this world because we are unable to hold ourselves open to the incredible range of possibilities yet unexperienced by us or others.

 

In this story, Jesus reminds us bluntly that those who are certain they see do not. You can not see if you do not hold with in you at the same time the possibility that there is more, that what you see isn’t all there is and that you can and will be surprised by happenings and events you never imagined. Those who are certain have constructed, not a temple of wisdom and knowledge, but a stone tomb in which they are trapped and where they will suffocate for the lack of seeing.

 

An encounter with Jesus only comes to those who are willing to see, to be surprised enough to catch a glimpse of God scurrying between the trees of knowledge, information and certainty; of God slipping in out of chaos, violence and tragedy; of God plugging away in the ordinary tasks of being human. It is the seeing of God striding across the desert, floating on the breeze or plunging into the deeps of the oceans. We limit God if we only look for God in what others or we say we know, no matter how enlightened or wise they or we may be. We miss God at work in the smile of the broken hearted, the cheeky eyes of the children in refugee camps or in the playfulness of adults who are fighting addiction. We miss God when we have already decided how God works. That is the mind of discrimination and it is the mind John’s Jesus confronts in this story.

 

The blind man suffers the type of stereotyping any one who suffers from any kind of debilitating illness experiences. If you have a longterm chronic physical or mental illness you are discarded to begging on the side of the road of life. You are overlooked for jobs and promotions, excluded from social activities and events even by friends and family, you are presumed to be malingering or at least playing the victim. We see that in the policies of successive governments toward welfare in this country. It is seen not as a means to improve the life of those who are unable to do so for themselves but as something of begrudging necessity we shouldn’t have to do. This is the mind of discrimination. 

 

Jesus seeks out the young man and asks him clearly what does he now see – what is his world view? Does he see within the restricted worldview of all who seek to discriminate against him or others, or has he seen the darkness piercing light of God in the midst of the world’s blindness. He answers in the affirmative – he has seen God. 

 

It is time for the church and for us to stand with all those who do not fit into the body of knowledge possessed by those who believe they see but are blind. It is time to look to catch a glimpse of God in the midst of the issues we face individually and as an institution. It is time to let go of certainty, the mind of discrimination and face the damage from the past by such as the treatment of indigenous peoples, of child abuse by members of the church, of the treatment of women, the exclusion of the LGBTI community and more, and begin to see the beauty of uncertainty and surprise, of God loitering with intent in our midst.

 

Unless we do we will continue to exclude just as the elite did in this story. 

Seeing Differently

Mathew 3

Grand Canyon by David Hockney

Today we meet the hermit from the bush. The bloke who ignores the social requirements for appropriate dress and, by the smell of him, for the use of water for something other than drinking, a man who is on the outside looking in, John The Baptist, so named after the rite he made his own.  It is interesting he wasn’t called John Camel Hair or John Who Needs A Bath or John the Vegan, but he wasn’t. He is John the Baptist.

 

John is also remembered for his aversion to sin. His baptism was predicated on repentance, the recognition of sin by an individual who then takes steps to repent of that sin through the cleansing and renewing act of baptism. Now sin got a bad name when I was growing up. It seemed to include everything that was enjoyable – eating too many lollies, drinking too much soft drink, getting your sibling into trouble, dipping the pigtails of the girl who sat in front of you in the inkwell and many more mortal acts. The last may very well have been mortal if she could run faster than you at recess!

 

Sin has been trivialised to many normal and ordinary acts of being human and it seems it is still in that place. Yet John the Baptist’s idea of sin was much expanded on that of our parents, nuns and the morality police of our youth. John refers to the systemic sins maintaining the status quo, the sins of entitlement due to right acting, of doing what was expected of you and reaping the rewards. It was the sin of identifying clearly the status of each individual, their rights and their responsibilities. It was ensuring those born into privilege maintained that privilege. It is about exclusion of others from the benefits you have based on class, skin colour, health or otherwise, gender and age.

 

²“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” In other words, the possibility of instituting the promised kingdom does not belong out there, to others or to the future. It belongs here, in you and now. It is calling you and I to make it real – to put love into action and respond to the covenant requirements of kindness – respect, justice and compassion. It is not a task of people like John or even those whom he spoke harshly about; the first is just one man and the latter group won’t change until they have no choice. It is up to you to ensure they have no choice by you own love in action for yourself, others and the world.

 

John wasn’t interested in who stole the cookie from the cookie jar, but who stole the cookie jar and who allowed the cookie jar to remain stolen. He was particularly tough on those in privileged positions and saved his strongest words for them, but he didn’t let the ordinary folk off the hook either. John’s expectation was that is if you recognised your complicity in this corporate sin, then you needed to show evidence of a change of heart, mind and action. He says: “⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

 

Bearing fruit can be as little as sharing the troubles of those who live next door, advocating for a fairer share of society’s wealth for all, ensuring those who on the outside get to come in side. There is no prescription for bearing fruit and there is no particular type of fruit – love, justice, compassion, kindness, advocacy, giving and more – all work if that is what the situation needs.

 

Ben Witherington suggests: "Repentance, or metanoia, to use the Greek word, refers to far more than a simply being or saying one is sorry for past sins, far more than mere regret or remorse for such sins. It refers to a turning away from the past way of life and the inauguration of a new one, in this case initialised by an act of baptism."

 

And this isn’t easy. Those who describe the Christian life as easy and a cop out haven’t tried to live it! It is incredibly difficult to live in such away that each day is a further step toward wholeness and another from stuff we have held onto and has held onto us. It is being prepared to shed our previous static identity and accept the uncertainty of unfinished business.

 

Crabs and other crustaceans do not grow in a linear fashion because of their hard outer shell. Up to 20 times in its lifetime a crab moults, in effect moves out of the old shell and grows a new one. This happens 6 times in the first year. It is a difficult and excruciating time, not to say a vulnerable onee. If your shell is your protection, wandering naked around the sea floor is not a comfortable place to be. Yet it must happen if it is to grow into maturity.

 

Repentance requires we shed our tough and hard formed identities both as a society and as individuals. What served us well in another time and place no longer does. What we have come to accept as the way things are, no longer is appropriate and we have to change structures, ideas, ideologies and religions.

 

John the Baptist calls that the coming near of the kingdom of God – the ever evolving recognition of a new way of seeing. David Hockney, the wonderful English artist, paints what he sees but what he sees in isn’t always what is physically there. He suggests we see two ways – physically and psychologically; physically by recognising objects, like a camera. Seeing psychologically is different. If we look at a scene we will focus on one particular element that takes our eye in that scene. Because we do, that tree, face, animal, colour becomes clearer and larger in our view and seems to be larger and more significant than the rest of the scene. There are a whole lot of reasons why this happens but we rarely if ever see what is there. We see what we see.

 

In art this works well, in community and individual life here is a glitch to be aware of. What we think is the case may not be so because we are seeing, hearing, engaging with it as we see the world – focusing on what is important to or has a specific meaning or interest to us. We may miss what is really happening. We are not called to see physically or one dimensionally as a camera but we are to be aware of the psychological pre-determinants affecting our response to the world.

 

John the Baptist calls us to confront society and ourselves to engage in the very difficult process of moulting, like the crab, and to recalibrate our seeing. In this way we begin to recalibrate the world by helping to break it out of its restrictive shell and welcome in relational wholeness empowered by love - the kingdom of God.

 

Oh and this won’t get easier when Jesus enters the picture. It gets harder, because he increases the requirements and calls more from us. “¹¹He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Seeing through the eyes of Jesus changes everything.

 

John’s repentance is the ongoing reassessment of self and society required of all who profess faith. It requires action and outcomes and can’t be avoided. It is our vocation. How will you see differently when you leave here this morning?

Thomas Encounters Jesus!

(John 20:19-31)

Susan R. Andrews writes when I was a student: "When I was in seminary, Doubting Thomas was my soul mate. Jesus kept "appearing " to my fellow students within the rich stories of the Christian tradition. But like Thomas, I never seemed to be there when Jesus arrived."

Oh, I know what she means. Jesus seemed to be appearing in prayer, bible readings, silence for every other person in the training college, they all had great tales to tell of being touched by Jesus.

Not me. He seemed to take a detour when he came my way. For me faith was more like looking through a dust and bug spattered windscreen of an eighteen wheel road train in the Gibber Desert, I knew Jesus was out there some where, but like the road he was hard to see, let alone feel.

An encounter with Jesus is not something you can import from another person, book or song. You have to encounter Jesus yourself. People can tell you all about their experiences, but if it’s not happening for you, its not happening.

Thomas missed the first time Jesus appeared. It was 8 days after Jesus death and Thomas joins them in the room. No doubt he was quizzed and pestered to believe. But Thomas maintained his integrity. He had given this whole scenario some deep and critical thought. Yes, he wanted it to be true but logic mediated against it being true.

Modern people need proof. It has to be true, true meaning provable, testable, concrete, not the unchangeable meaning of being sitting underneath our treasured rationality. True here means something like to be certain. It is what our young people want and we want it because it gives a sense of being in control of our lives. Nothing uncertain can be countenanced because it can’t be true.

Thomas, though, simply wants to own his faith for himself and puts himself in the place to test his logic, in the room where Jesus had appeared before. He was not closed to the idea, and in the best critical thinking practice, was prepared to dialogue with the possibility that Jesus was alive.

And Jesus Turns Up. The truth is that Jesus just keeps turning up for those who genuinely desire to know him. Elisabeth Johnson writes: " As he came back a week later for Thomas, Jesus keeps coming back week after week among his gathered disciples -- in the word, the water, the bread, and the wine -- not wanting any to miss out on the life and peace he gives." And we know, from experience, how real that is. It is what draws us back here every week. It is not about the liturgy, although the liturgy is important. It is not about others in the congregation, though they are important, it is not about the choir though the choir is important and it is not about the priest, though he or she is important. It is about the fact that Jesus keeps turning up and I, you, discover something new about the resurrected Jesus, just by being here.

Jesus doesn’t chastise Thomas. He doesn’t tell Peter to excommunicate him for his lack of faith. He doesn’t leave Thomas hanging out to dry, another failure to put beside Judas. No, Jesus turns up and offers his presence and his body for Thomas to inspect. He doesn’t. He doesn’t have to touch Jesus. He knows without needing the evidence he said he needed.

When truth comes, we know. We don’t have to test it, try it out or prove it. It just is. Thomas gets it and abandons his need for scientific proof saying, “My Lord and my God!” 

This Encounter Reminds Us That Bodies Matter.

Christianity has a poor record with bodies. In the philosophical duality we bring to our world, western people have seen the material as an opposite to the spiritual and body as inferior to soul or spirit. Many early forms of Christianity treated the senses of the body as evil and something to beaten down. There was no room for the body in a religion that was focussed almost entirely on the hereafter. Even the great St Francis of Assisi, the father of ecological spirituality commented that he had wished he had treated the donkey better. The donkey was what he called his body.

Yet the body plays a major role in spirituality. Greg Carey suggests: "The resurrection story implies that bodies matter. Jesus’ resurrection is not merely a spiritual thing – the apparition of his ghost, or his ongoing spiritual influence. The Gospels all insist that the resurrection includes Jesus’ body.”

The medieval mystics, particularly the women mystics such as Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Mechtild along side John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart recognised the role bodies played in encountering God. Julian of Norwich’s classic work, Shewings, is simply the record of her encounter with Jesus as a result of illness and its impact on her body. Bodies are not be worshipped, sculpted to the point of the ridiculous as is the modern trend. They are to be respected as the receptacle of the spiritual.

Bodies, our bodies, the bodies of those we live with, of those in agony or in exile carry scars, just like the body of Jesus. And they are important. Wesley White writes: "Wherever there is a wound, Christ calls us to find belief by putting our finger there and to energise that belief with a life lived to reveal what is behind the wound." That is the reason for our scars and was the reason for the scars Jesus carried with him. They are not trophies of survival but testimonies to the truth that we are human, alive and infused with life to share so others to can live.

Thomas was far from a doubter who needed to touch the body. He saw. Not physically. His was a Spiritual Seeing which sees beyond the body. I am consequently amazed at the prevalence of such a seeing in our world, despite the fear many Christians have that it has disappeared.

We were sitting discussing the eucharist. These were my secular monks, year 9 & 10 students. They were having great difficulty with the idea of ‘eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood.’ Understandable really. Suddenly Corey, eyes wide with insight said, ‘I get it. It’s about respect, awesome respect for who he is!’ Spiritual seeing isn’t limited to those who believe. It is the providence of all, including Thomas, Corey and each one of us. It is beyond our vision and we see within reality what is hidden from those that only look for what can be seen physically.

David Ewart suggests: "John doesn't care what we see with our eyeballs. He wants us to SEE with our inner eye who Jesus really is. That in SEEing, we might believe; and in believing, we might have the life that is in Jesus."

Thomas sees with his spiritual self. There is no need to touch the wounds. Yes the body is important. But it is what we see that counts. We can look at another and see only a behaviour, a stereotype, a prejudice (all defined by us) and fail to see what is within, the true person. We fail to see the scars and ponder where they came from. We fail to see the possibility for both us in the connection of bodies. 

Jesus does. He keeps coming back, as he did for Thomas, to encourage us, to show us how to look beyond the surface and to encounter the real. It is a challenge, one we will fail over and over again, but when we get it right we will discover, as Thomas did, ‘My Lord and my God”.

Solitude

Solitude - flying alone, seeing everything for the first time!
(Click on picture to see full size)