The Second Sunday of Easter, April 7, 2024
Sunday of Divine Mercy
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
My Lord and my God
The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
In the ancient days, Psalm 118 was sung during entry to the Temple at Passover. Jesus called himself that stone, rebuilding history and tradition from the present backward. Peter and many others remembered and experienced Jesus as … the cornerstone.
But when, O Lord? How long, O Lord? I don’t want to redefine “cornerstone,” yet the temple walls of our lives have been crumbling and crumbling forever, or so it seems to us, caught in our very short perspective. Can we look up, and see Jesus? Surely this everyday new view precedes any change our vision might have when we look around us, when we look back down.
I was hard pressed and was falling, but the Lord helped me. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love is everlasting.
Easy for you to say. It was harder for Thomas, the one called Didymus.
Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the wounds, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.
But this might not be doubt, but loneliness. My favorite poet puts it this way, allowing us the luxury of identifying with Thomas:
Sometimes you are Thomas,
shattered, needing evidence
of the goodness of God, the power of grace,
and theories will not do. Stories are not enough.
Wounded, you need something you can see,
something you can touch and feel.
This is not doubt; this reaching out,
this wanting to connect: it’s faith. Bless it.
Jesus (being as Dallas Willard said the smartest man who ever lived) knew Thomas better than he knew himself. And he knows me. He knows Margaret. He knows us all … better than we know ourselves.
So much better, actually, that he knows the words we speak and think, and what we will most likely say and think next, once we’ve had a chance to consider our words. Jesus is the one who edits for us, even when we forget or fail. He loves us despite our words, in spite of our thoughts. He just loves us plain.
Here’s the poet again, but this time about Jesus and the rest of us:
Sometimes you are Jesus
and around you are others, broken,
who need evidence of the goodness of God.
Stories will not do.
You will need to embody resurrection,
give flesh to forgiveness and the power of love over fear,
make real the grace that brings life out of death
and re-makes us when we have been ruined.
They will see it in your wounds.
They will touch it in your presence.
They will feel it in your life.
Their reaching out
is God coming near you. – Steve Garnaas-Holmes
When we are ruined and need to be re-made, stories will not do. We need Jesus. I need you to embody Jesus, and you need me to embody Jesus. The tomb is empty, and Jesus is here. Thomas did what he said he must do, and Jesus chastised him for his lack of belief, but Thomas did not die.
My Lord and my God!
In a moment the ruins of Thomas were rebuilt on Jesus the cornerstone. Traveling to India he never forgot that moment. Anytime, he could look up and see the eyes of Jesus.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.
Stories do matter. They point the way toward personal experience, and in this way stories are invaluable. And then, when the stories have done their work, there is Jesus, and in the twinkling of an eye, we are free indeed.
These are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.
(Acts 4, Psalm 118, 1 John 5, John 20)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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