Easter Wounds: Does Suffering Ever Save?
A Sermon preached by the Rev. Robert Corin
Morris (1)
on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 29, 2007, at Christ Church, Summit.
April 29, 2007
John 20: 19-23
[ Audio
(mp3 7.3Mb) ]
When it was evening on that
day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples
had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and
said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his
side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord…. But Thomas (who was
called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the
other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “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.”
hen
the Risen Christ appears, he carries his wounds with
him. Why does this victorious Lord, so
full of new life, show his wounds to the disciples? Why does the text make so much of seeing the wounds, of Thomas
touching them?
The reason is this: there's been a triumph, but that triumph is,
in part, about what we do with our wounds. Do we succumb to them, fall into
rage and hatred against those who inflict them, or find a way through our
woundedness to some greater wholeness. The resurrection symbolizes, in part,
this victory, in which wounds don't
become pathological.
Wounds are the source of most of the moral evil in the world. You
hit me. I hit you back. You hit me back
harder. Think Baghdad. Think Rwanda.
You kill our sister. We kill your brother. You kill my parents, I take out your
village. Nor is this limited to actual killing. Think family fights, office
intrigues, church battles, political polarization. Suffering can breed evil, and evil still more suffering, on and on
in an endless spiral.
Nor is this a matter of major catastrophe, betrayal or
mayhem. What constitutes suffering
differs widely, depending in part on attitude. I know people who suffer, yes
suffer, because they have three homes, and feel oppressed by having to care for
them. Conversely, all of us probably know people who have faced major
inconvenience, opposition, disease or injury and somehow have emerged whole in
spirit.
What we do with our wounds matters, matters a lot. Christians often speak loosely about “redemptive suffering,” as if suffering itself had
some curative value. But
suffering, in and of itself, does not heal or save. Not yours. Not mine. Not
even Jesus' suffering saves. Rather it
is the way suffering is faced that
makes the difference between an outcome that blesses or curses both ourselves
and the world around us. We need to
speak of suffering redemptively, not
of redemptive suffering. And this is
more than a matter of word order.
Let me give you an specific example from ordinary suburban life.
We've
all known people who become hardened and embittered by their difficulties or
disabilities. In my first year of ministry I was took home communions to over
thirty elderly shut-ins each month. Some of them were stuck, miserable, victims
of their circumstances. Their chief lament was how unsympathetic people were to
their plight; but sympathy, no matter how constant, seemed to disappear into a
bottomless pit. Much as one might have compassion for them, their continual
complaints had become off-putting to friends and family alike. I came to call them, to myself, “the victims.”
In
my youthful inexperience I wondered, fearfully, if this bitterness was what old
age threatened for all of us. I was saved from this conclusion by another group
of shut-ins, equally challenged, who spoke in simple acceptance of their
limitations and with quiet gratitude about their lives. I came to learn that
they had undergone serious inner struggle to find that acceptance and
gratitude, but it was manifest. I called them the “victors.”
The
life circumstances of the lamenters had not been significantly different from
the quietly thankful folk. Both suffered, but in wholly different worlds. The
thankful ones saw life as a series of challenges to be faced. Adversity was
something to be accepted, dealt with, lived through, learned from and redeemed.
Believe
me, I don't mean to judge the “victims” harshly. One never knows, fully, why others (including oneself) react in
the way they do. Is it genes? Parenting? Some trauma in childhood? The
framework of beliefs and morality? All or none of the above? C.S. Lewis once said, regarding our tendency
to leap to judgment, that some people may be less kind to others because they
have bad digestion.
Nonetheless,
one has to note consequences, and I couldn't help but think the victims were,
to some degree, self-victimizing.
The
victims saw life as a tale of repeated, undeserved woe. Beset and besieged in
world of endless trials foisted upon them by the mysterious malignity of life
itself, they had shrunk into private, inner hells. For most of their lives they
had met every difficulty with resistance, increasing resentment, and
accumulating
outrage.
(2)
Suffering
doesn't save. The way the suffering is
faced either leads toward healing or more hurting. When Jesus appears to the
disciples and shows them his wounds, he is the embodiment of a power of life, a
power of resurrection, that was at work in him long before he went to
Jerusalem, risking death for the sake of implementing God's loving and just
reign on earth.
The
Greek word for resurrection is very simple: anastasis
means “standing up again,” nothing more, nothing less. Jesus had allied his soul and spirit with a
Love so resilient, deep and strong that he was able to stand up again when he
faced life's adversities, wounds, and challenges, even if they temporarily
knocked him down. It was in the passion
of this Love that he created a fellowship based on mutual sharing, the
willingness to work through problems, to give and forgive, and to welcome not
only the well, successful and functional, but those oppressed and excluded by
prejudice and power. In the power of
that “standing up again” he had stood before high priest and procurator,
maintaining his humanity and dignity in the face of judicial malfeasance and a governmental
miscarriage of justice. Filled with the
power of that life, he dealt with opposition without falling into resentment,
hatred and revenge. “When reviled,” the
New Testament says, “he reviled not again.” And, more famously, he forgave
those who crucified him from the cross itself.
Granted,
this is not an easy Way to live. But it's a good deal easier, in the long run,
than the alternative. Life can put us
between a rock and a hard place. In that moment, almost everything depends on
how we respond. We can take the path of resistance and resentment, or find some
way through to acceptance and forgiveness, sometimes forgiveness of life
itself.
It's
important that we get clear about this business of suffering and Jesus, and the
meaning of Jesus' wounds, because the
wounds of Jesus—the cross—have been pathologized in Christian history. There's
a horrifying and very widespread doctrine of atonement which sees the cross as
a blood sacrifice to appease a wrathful God. Invented in the eighth century by St. Anselm at the court of
Charlemagne, this doctrine says God's wrath must punish sin, and that to save
humankind from this wrath, Jesus stepped forward to take the punishment
instead. He suffered terribly, and that suffering satisfied God's wrath. More
than one modern commentator has noticed that this is a perfect description of
an abusive parent and a scapegoated child.
Fortunately,
this is not the ancient Christian idea, nor the New Testament teaching. In the
Bible, Jesus was willing to risk death for the sake of his dream of the Reign
of God. He was more noble martyr than scapegoat, a brave warrior against the
forces of injustice and evil rather than the punching bag of an angry God.
Jesus' assertive but non-violent path involves a heart rooted in a
faith, hope, and love deep enough to pray not only for deliverance from
injustice, but for the redemption of the perpetrators of injustice. He goes to his death praying even for his
enemies, pre-disposed toward the ultimate forgiveness that can only be complete
when his executioners turn and are redeemed. Only when both oppressed and
oppressor have been released from bondage can true justice flourish and right
relationship be established. Jesus
faced suffering by rooting his life in something larger, in his own sense of a
goodness greater than any evil, a love deeper than any hate. He found, in himself, and beyond himself, a
bigger space than the suffering to breathe in.
And so he “showed them his
hands and his side,” wounds imbedded in a life much bigger than the wounds—a
life he invites us to share with him, sustained by a Spirit that can assist and
dwell in those who let his words and his Way have its way with them.
(1) Our guest
preacher, Rev Robert Corin Morris, is the founder and director of Interweave
(www.interweave.org)
in Summit, NJ, and a
member of the ministerial staff at Calvary Episcopal Church in Summit.
(2) This story of the victims and victors, as well
as the lead ideas of this sermon, are taken from Suffering and the Courage of God by Robert Corin Morris (Paraclete,
2005).
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© 2007
Robert Morris.
All rights reserved.
