John 20:26-31 | The Presence of the Crucified 1998

I have a friend who was sexually abused by her father as a teenager. She was understandably distraught when this happened and emotionally conflicted. In her confusion, she decided to seek counsel from her pastor. So when she finally worked up the courage to do that, her pastor told her that this was indeed distressing and to come see him again if it happened a second time. It turns out her pastor was hesitant to act for fear of bringing shame upon her father, who was a prominent deacon in the church. Frustrated, she told her mother of the incident, hoping to receive some validation and protection. Instead, her mother went to her father and said, "We have to get psychiatric help for our daughter. She's becoming a chronic liar."

To this day, my friend has never received the support and validation that a teenager deserves in such a situation. She is now an adult, rightfully embittered with the church, and resentful towards God.

Do you blame her? A young woman is being molested, and the church worries about how it will "look" if one of their members was revealed to be a psychologically ill; a young woman is scarred for life, and it is easier for her mother to blame her than the perpetrator.

None of these responses would be out of place on an episode of "Law and Order," but this is not the world of criminal investigation or law. My friend's world was the church, which is supposed to play by different rules. It is supposed to be a place where the weak are protected, and the powerful brought low. It is supposed to be a place where hurts are healed, not inflicted; where souls may be cured, not poisoned.

What happened? Unfortunately my friends' story is not that unusual. The church is filled with very human people, and as is often the case with humans, our priorities are frequently misplaced. We want to appear professional, like we have it all together, and if there are any members who are mentally ill or in any other way suspect, they can usually be swept under the carpet. Even though we are made up of 100% wounded people, we insist on hiding our wounds. Often, we are more interested in appearing whole than we are in healing.

I don't know about you, but I find this odd. We say we follow a man who dined with outcasts, sinners, and every sort of social unmentionable; yet we somehow think that this same Jesus may somehow decline to dine with us if we show some weakness, some vulnerability, some chink in our armor. The travesty is that we think we need armor in the first place. Even those of us who don't secretly fear that Jesus would decline our company, are afraid of showing our "true selves" to others at church because, like my friends pastor, we are afraid that "people might talk."

Let them talk! In this room we have a deluxe assortment of screw-ups and emotional invalids; we are none of us as "together" as we would like others to perceive us as being. We are none of us as pristine as the persona we show to the world. We are all of us overwhelmed by the changes and chances of this life, full of secret fears and anxieties that we keep well hidden from others at our work, at our church, and even at home.

This might be appropriate behavior at work, friends, but it is not appropriate for home, or even at church. There are places where it pays to be invulnerable and guarded, but we can only keep that guardedness propped up for so long before we need a rest, before we need to be nurtured and ministered to.

Christian songwriter Mark Heard once sang a song that went like this:
"We believe so well, don't we tell ourselves?
Don't we take exclusive pride that we abide so far from hell?
We might laugh together, but don't we cry alone
For the ashes and the dust we've swept beneath the Holy Throne."

"We might laugh together, but don't we cry alone." It's true, isn't it? We put on our happy faces and come to church, leaving our broken hearts and strained emotions at home to deal with in our "real" lives, fearing that if anybody here knew what was really going on for us, we would be too ashamed to stand.

Well, my friends, if this is the case, perhaps we should call ourselves something other than a "church." There is a saying that "Christians are the only species that kill their own wounded." I'd like to let that sink in, because there is much truth in it. "Christians are the only species that kill their own wounded."

When I was a young adult, and utterly disillusioned by the fundamentalism of my childhood, I was determined that I would no longer be a part of the "church of feel-good illusions." I would no longer be complicitous in a kind of organization that cared more about appearances than real nurture, who cared more about propriety than pain. I even went and got my ear pierced as a covenant with God so that I would never be able to look in the mirror again and see someone that I was not. With a piece of silver in my ear, I would never again be the "perfect" little Christian boy I was expected to be. I would have to be real.

I'm not sure I'd recommend body piercings as beneficial to everybody's spiritual path, but it certainly was to mine. I found the determination to call my self a Christian and to also be genuine to the best of my ability. Not surprisingly I found meaning in the lives of other "Christian outcasts," those who lived out their faith on the edge, fully cognizant of the complex web of duplicity both secular and religious cultures expect of us. But artists and writers such as Bruce Cockburn, Michael Been, Mark Heard, and Charles Williams sustained and inspired me. They didn't pull their punches or explain away the incongruities and contradictions. Instead they sang about them, and wrote about them, and spoke of them as part and parcel of the spiritual life. I sensed in their art that their faith was something REAL, not contrived, not a show or a façade in danger of cracking. For them, as for me, it wasn't the façade that was important in the first place, but instead it was the cracks themselves that were all-important.

Leonard Cohen wrote "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

The disciples in our reading from the gospel today certainly know about "cracks", in fact, their whole structure had shattered. Everything they had hoped for and believed in had come tumbling down around their sandals. There was no façade to maintain here. They were utterly humiliated and beaten.

No feel-good theology would have helped them at this point. No disembodied spirit-visitation from Jesus would have sufficed, either. They might have been comforted that Jesus was no longer in pain, but how would that help them in their despair? It is not so hard to understand why Thomas wanted some hard evidence. They had suffered enough disillusionment, enough disappointment. "Don't get my hopes up just to dash them again!" Thomas says, and I think we understand him.

Thomas was not going to settle for anything less than what was REAL. He was not willing to indulge the wishful thinking of his companions just because it would make them all feel better, or because they somehow needed to save face with the religious authorities. "You say the Christ is here?" He asks, "Then show me THE WOUNDS." Only then would he know it was the real Jesus.

Thomas is not "one of little faith," instead Thomas is one of great courage, with the guts to rock the boat and say, "Oh yeah? Prove it. Show me the wounds." Make it real.

Things have not changed that much. We are still a group of terrified disciples huddled in an upper room for fear of what others will think of us or do to us. We are scared of letting our real feelings show, or to reveal that we have problems and moral dilemmas which are beyond our capacity to bear alone. We want to present an unbroken façade to the world, so that we can proclaim without fear of embarrassment or controversy "Christ is here!"

So this morning I say to you, like Thomas, "Oh, yeah? Prove it to me. Show me your wounds. For unless I put my hands into your side, or feel the scars on your hands, I will not believe."

This is not a social club for those who "have it all together." This is not a showplace for finely-ordered lives. It is to be instead a hospital for the emotionally wounded, a hospice for the cure of souls. We do ourselves no favors by pretending to have all our ducks in a row. We do the church no favors by scrambling to maintain our facades. We do Christ no favors by trying to pretend that we don't even need him.

Of course we need him. This means, of course, that we need each other, because it is our duty to be Jesus enfleshed on this earth. It is what it means to be a Christian. We need each other to hold us when we cry, to comfort one another in our sorrow, to encourage one another when we are paralyzed by our fear. What? We don't cry? We have no sorrow? We know no fear? Bull. If this church is not a safe place for me to be myself, with all of my warts, confusion and conflict, then we have to right calling it a church. You want to call yourself a Christian? Show me your wounds.

We need to learn how to be vulnerable with one another. To learn that if we let on what we are really feeling, we won't be kicked out on our cans. It is the secret fear of all of us that if anyone REALLY knew us they would reject us. It is the mystery of the Gospel that there is no offense wild enough to separate us from the love of God, and from the support and nurture of our community. We need to learn to trust each other! We need to take our hearts out of cold storage and Velcro them to our sleeves!

Thomas could not be sure he was in the presence of the resurrected one until he knew for sure that he was in the presence of the crucified. We cannot present ourselves to the world as the resurrected body of Christ if they cannot also sense in us the presence of the crucified. If we are ashamed of our wounds and hide them, we will not appear credible in the eyes of the world. If we do not appear credible in regard to our own wounds, how can we possibly hope to attend to the healing of others?

Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas, "If you bring forth what is in you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is in you, what you fail to bring forth will condemn you."

We cannot be Jesus in the world if we hide our wounds, from ourselves, from each other, or from the world. We must bring forth that which we have hidden; we must let shine our woundedness. For it is only in the presence of the crucified that resurrection can happen.

Let us pray.

Jesus, you did not despise those who came to you
With their hearts on their sleeves, in their hands, their wounds
Open and bleeding for all to see.
Nor do you despise us today
for being the same sorts of wounded human beings
that you ministered to so lovingly as you walked in Galilee.
But we do you no favors when we lie to ourselves, and to each other
And to those outside of the church,
Setting up an appearance of health and wholeness
When health and wholeness are still in the process of being born.
Hold our hands, Jesus, and give us the courage to be honest
With ourselves, with each other, and with you
That we may truly be the presence of the crucified to the people
Around us, and thereby, agents of resurrection.
For we ask this in the name of the wounded one
Who calls us all to healing. Amen.