JESUS SIGHTINGS
While
I do go to the gym on a regular basis, the majority of my cardiovascular
exercise these days comes from my daughters need to have me physically present
to communicate anything beyond the words, “Mom, come here.” Granted, we live in
an eleven-hundred square foot apartment, so it isn’t the distance that keeps me
in shape, as much as the frequency of the short trips. When I am particularly
tired or tied up with another task, I will try responding to her “Mom, come
here” with “It’s okay, I can hear you” only to have her shout back “What?”
followed by “Mom, come here.” She doesn’t doubt that I exist. She isn’t afraid
that I have abandoned her. It seems that she just hasn’t quite yet learned that
even if I am out of sight, quietly standing just around the corner folding
laundry, that she is not alone, that I am listening to her.
I
wonder if Thomas had a mother that faithfully came into the room each time his
voice called with excitement or fear or frustration. I wonder if her exhausted
presence set the stage for his bold invite to Jesus, the Light of the
Resurrected Christ, as he stood locked within the darkness of this Upper Room.
“Jesus, come here.”
“Jesus, come here.”
And
Jesus comes into this sacred space with dirty feet and blood stained clothes and
stands among us.
We
had something to say, something to tell him or ask him, but here he is, Jesus,
here he is. We never thought he would show and we stand stunned and still and
silent.
We
have been heard. Without words or explanations or questions. And gently Jesus
takes our hand into his, pulling us closer, softly he holds our hand against
the warm wetness of his side.
“Do not doubt but believe.”
And
for a moment we know, God is here. God is listening. We have been heard.
While
we may not doubt God’s reality as a concept, like Thomas, we certainly question
God’s active presence and purpose among us. We wonder if God is listening. And if God is listening, what is he thinking,
what is he doing. We wonder and we wander and we wait. We, like Elie Wiesel, a
Jewish humanist and survivor of the death camps, find ourselves identifying with
a world crying out, “For God’s sake, where is God?”
Throughout
the month of April, Hope Church is exploring ways in which we, as Easter
People, experience the arrival of the Resurrected Christ in our midst,
answering this hollowed quest initiated in the desperate curiosity of an empty
tomb, “God, where are you now?”
Of
course, this isn’t a radically new theme for Hope Church or any Church in general.
It’s not some creative, original idea we came up with in worship planning. It’s
sort of our “thing.”
In
this world, in our sanctuary, we regularly call out hoping Jesus will show up.
Over
and over we call out. Independently and corporately. And sometimes we see Jesus
standing in the room and sometimes we stare at the slow moving hands of a clock
frozen in time, surrounded by strangers unrecognizable. It’s in this waiting
and receiving and rejecting that we begin to understand Jesus shows up all around
us in different forms for various reasons hinting that this theme we entertain is
pointing to a call we must engage.
This
year Hope Church has 14 youth preparing to be Confirmed on May 1st. Confirmation
engages youth in this preemptive task of being held up in their own theological
tombs; facilitating a sanctuary to set free their own Jesus’ sightings while
embracing as relevant the ways in which Jesus has not been seen, or felt, or
experienced. Because sometimes, that too, is our truth.
I would
guess that taking Confirmation with me is a bit like being pushed down a
spiritual staircase only to find that the bottom is nothing but grace, a
trampoline that folds into the falls and lifts you back up to a place higher
than you could have arrived on your own.
I
would guess this is also how the disciples felt; particularly Thomas. He asks
to see the Risen Christ and he gets a bloody Jesus telling him to stick his
fingers in an open wound. I doubt this was what Thomas had in mind. I’m sure he
was ready to be blinded by light, to be told exactly where to go and what to
do, to have pretty much anything happen but exactly what happened. “Gross,
Jesus, just ...gross.”
Still,
wanting to be like Jesus, I make the Confirmands get their hands dirty. And,
wanting to be like Jesus but not particularly fond of physical pain, I say this
metaphorically.
Confirmation
attempts to teach youth that although they have seen Jesus in their lives, they
remain called to seek God’s presence in all places. “You may have seen Jesus, but others, like Thomas, need to see him
for themselves.” Confirmation is about making room for what is different and
new and foreign. Confirmation softens faith from God’s plan for an individual
to God’s plan for the world and your responsibility in that. Confirmation introduces
a new level of theological flexibility. It offers them sound method to discern
where this Jesus might be, not strictly in the confines of their own lives, but
in the larger landscape of a global community. Confirmation provides a platform
to call out, encounter, and respond to the Presence of God in the world with
their lives.
This
is no easy task. This is not just what it means to be a Confirmand; this is
what it means to be Christian.
Whether
you find yourself waiting for Jesus in a comfortable place called home or
wandering a terrain of unbearable climate, the encounter with Thomas becomes
our compass; an infograph; a YouTube video on “How to Find Jesus Today?” Jesus
shows up, like a hostage negotiator with the fear we call friend holding us
captive, and offers liberation.
Jesus
stands in the midst of our Upper Rooms, meets us on our Via Dolorosa and shares
with us the fresh wounds of an unhealed brokenness.
Jesus
invites us to rise with him, not for his sake, nor for our own, but to fulfill
God’s purpose that a broken world would be made whole.
This
is what Confirmation prepares us for. To join as a member of the Body of Christ
and witness again, over and over, Resurrection to all the world.
During
our third session, the Confirmands formed small groups and were challenged
to use a new medium to communicate the original message of
their ancient text to a contemporary audience. As usual, it was
remarkable to see them take this on knowing that it requires a solid
understanding of the scriptural message and their cultural context. One group
created a mural that hangs in the staff office hallway.
Based
on the Raising of Lazarus it depicts a man falling into the arms of an angel
under the crushing pressure of multiple news headlines; 10 dead in Figi
Cyclone, Uber Driver Kills Six, North Korea Gets Nuclear, Bill Cosby Accused of
Rape, 14 Shot in San Bernardino. And Jesus shows up to a modern day Lazarus;
numb to the tragedies surrounding him; falling into the arms of Jesus that he
might be raised to wholeness.
The
youth who drew this image encountered Christ in reality and created space for
others to see God’s presence in our world.
More
than ensuring their recognition of Christ, the task becomes preparing for the repercussions
of the encounter. That the package of Christ’s presence will evict us from the
residence of our contemporary tombs; the things we know for sure and those
truths too difficult to ever claim as such.
Jesus
confronts us within the comforts of our confines not to prove that He has Risen
but to invite us to Rise.
After
writing to his friend that he made a mistake in coming to America, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer returned to his war-torn country of Germany. Bonhoeffer, a Christian
Minister and theologian, believed he must be present with his people in spite
of grave danger to his own life, writing, “I will have no right to participate
in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not
share the trials of this time with my people…” Later, he was imprisoned and,
after a lengthy imprisonment, was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration
camp for his participation in the Abwehr’s plot to assassinate
Hitler.
At
each place where he was imprisoned, he ministered to others in his
position. On his final day, at dawn, he was stripped of his
clothing, led naked into the execution yard, and was hanged with thin
wire. The execution came just four weeks before the Nazis
surrendered.
The
camp doctor wrote the following about him after witnessing the
execution.
I saw [him]…kneeling on the floor praying fervently
to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout
and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again
said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and
composed.
Late
in the war and before his transfer to Buchenwald and finally to Flossenbürg, a
small scrap of paper was smuggled out of the prisoner’s cell.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer had scratched out these words on it, “Only the suffering
God can help.”
All
persons take comfort from a God who stands and suffers alongside them. This
is an easy sell in a desperate market. A welcome respite in the cool solitude
of a tomb abandoned for life.
We
want to see Jesus without taking a risk. We want to be right and responsible
while we avoid upsetting anyone or being seen as vulnerable. Risk is approached
with insurmountable deficit; we are too old or too young, or not healthy
enough, or have a lot going on, or are saving up, or aren’t strong enough or
just plain not good enough and the echo in the Upper Room of our homes becomes
a tomb protecting us from the risk of living in the world.
Upon
seeing the empty tomb, the disciples didn’t preach, they didn’t comfort the
afflicted, offer peace to their enemies, or feed the hungry. They went
home. What initiates the mission of the
Church is not the empty tomb, but the co-opting of Jesus’s suffering in the
moment of encounter.
Jesus
encounters Thomas not to brag of his victory over the Romans nor to mock the
pain of his path with a display of hardened scars. It is not his Divinity that
he chooses to highlight but his humanness; showing fresh wounds on his hands
and side; inviting Thomas to enter into the deep reality of the world’s wounds
from within the safe confines of a darkened room and securely locked doors.
It is the Christian that makes the wounds of this world their
own. It is the Christian who, by grace alone, embraces the longevity of a Resurrection
Process unfolding all around us. It is the Christian, who Rising in this world,
finds their voice in the lament of the cross, the silence of tomb, and birthing
cries of a resurrection in our midst.
In this rising, the once desperate call, “Jesus, Come
Here” transforms into the confident claim “Here I am, Jesus” for in this
Resurrection, it is in Christ we abide.
