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Monologue
I’m
surprised so many came out tonight. Sometimes we get so caught
up in the excitement of Easter—and it is exciting—that it
seems like all of creation bursts into the “Halleluiah
Chorus” on Easter morning. But Easter evening is important,
too. It has its own story to tell, and it’s an important
one.
You
see, for disciples like me and the others, this is when we
began to make sense out of everything we had seen, not only in
that last week, but in that whole year we had journeyed with
him. It wasn’t until we came back together on Easter night
and stood in this place, this Upper Room, that we began to put
the pieces together about what had happened and what was going
to happen.
Oh,
I’m sorry. I got ahead of myself. I should introduce myself.
I’m Thomas. It’s all right, go ahead and laugh. Everybody
does when they hear my name. I know what you’re thinking,
and it’s true. I’m the doubter. And I have heard all the
jokes. “Hey, is Thomas here?” “I doubt it.” “Does
Thomas know what’s going on?” “I doubt it.” Very
funny.
But
it’s true. I have always been a little on the skeptical
side. My mom would always say about my growing-up years,
“That Thomas never fully believed something until he saw
it.” They always told me great stories about what vacations
were going to be like, when we were going on these pilgrimages
or trips. “Oh, it’s just going to be great, Thomas.” I
wouldn’t believe it until I got there. My mom was always
saying, “Thomas, Thomas, stay away from the cooking fire.”
I didn’t believe it until I touched it.
So
they call me The Doubter. But you know, is that such a bad
thing, really? I don’t even like to think of it as
doubting—more like a reasonable person or a critical
thinker, maybe a bit of a skeptic. Is that so bad? I mean,
I’m not one to run and jump off any cliff just because
everybody else is doing it. I like to put a firm foot on a
bridge before I decide to cross it; eat around the crust a
little bit before I bite into the full loaf. I mean, it’s
just the way I’ve always been. A doubter.
But
I have to be honest with you. Things have really changed a lot
in my life this last year. In fact, my whole outlook on the
world really changed. It has happened ever since I met him.
You know, he just had this whole other way of looking at the
world. He had this whole other way of being in the
world. In fact, when we were with him, it seemed like the
whole world was different. And over time, this doubter started
to become a believer—a believer that a new world was
possible and new way of being could actually happen. I mean,
the things that he could see in people that they couldn’t
even see in themselves!
You
see, I have always been a guy who thought the world was just
the way it was. There’s no sense in getting all worked up
about it, no sense in getting worked into a frenzy. Things are
just the way they are. I always thought the poor would just
get poorer, the sick, sicker, and the suffering more
insufferable. Then I met him. And he could see beyond what was
on the outside of people. He saw beyond their infirmities. He
saw beyond their brokenness, beyond their diseases. He saw in
them things they never saw in themselves. He saw in me things
I didn’t see in myself. And pretty soon this doubter was
starting to become a believer, a believer that maybe the last would
be first or maybe that you could really love your
neighbor as yourself. Maybe you could really love your
enemies. And then he’d say this thing all the time. He’d
say that the Kingdom of God was near. He said it was at hand.
He’d hold out his hand and say, “It’s this close.” And
when you were with him, it really felt like it was there, like
it was about to happen.
I
am sure you all know who I’m talking about. His name was
Jesus. I’m sure you’re here today because you know his
name. But I hope you know his story, too. I hope you get a
chance to enter the story. I came to it with all kinds of
doubts. Yet slowly, but surely, this doubter became a
believer. But it wasn’t easy. Because you see, just when I
was really starting to buy into this, just when I was about to
sign my name on the dotted line, it all crashed down. It was
all over. It was all over like that. All of the hopes, all of
the dreams, everything that we had pinned our hopes on was
gone. He was crucified, dead and buried. And with it, every
dream we had for the future seemed to be gone with him.
At
that moment, I felt like a chump. I was thinking that I should
have just stuck to my old doubting ways. All this talk about
love, all this talk about hope, all this talk about
wholeness—it’s good stuff. But it just sets you up,
really. That’s what I was thinking at that moment. I said,
“I’m not going to do this again.” Call me Doubting
Thomas. It’s a lot safer road to walk, I was thinking.
To
be honest with you, I don’t know what the rest of the guys
did. We all just took off. We all just ran away. I found out
later that they all went back to the Upper Room and locked
themselves in. They locked the door. Locked it, I’m sure,
for their own safety. But locked it also to protect themselves
from the embarrassment, shame and hurt. They’d be silly to
allow that to be seen by anybody other than those who had been
through it.
But
not me. I didn’t want to be with them. You see, I ran off
and was by myself. I just needed to be alone. I went somewhere
where I could cry. I went somewhere where I could scream. I
may have been alone, but in my own way, I locked the doors of
my heart and my life in that moment, too. I vowed never to let
somebody or something into my life in that way again. No, it
was the road of doubt from here on out. I was going to check
things twice before I signed on the dotted line again.
“Measure twice, cut once,” my dad always said. There’s
something in that. I was going to make sure I was never going
to get caught like that again.
I
don’t know, but after a week of hanging out by myself and
trying to put this all together, I decided to come back to the
Upper Room. I’m not exactly sure why. I guess sometimes,
even when you’re the most stubborn, you just need to be
around people who have been through the same thing you have.
You don’t even have to talk about what has just happened
because you all understand that the silence is going to be
okay. At least that’s what I hoped for. That’s what I
expected when I got there.
But
they told me this incredible story. They said that he was
back, that he had risen, that he had come and was among
them—that the story wasn’t over. Now I know what you’re
thinking, because I know how you’ve probably always heard
the story. You say, “That’s when Thomas began to doubt.
This resurrection business, he didn’t believe in that.”
Well, I’ll tell you, I followed this guy. I knew that it was
possible. I mean, I had seen what he had done for Lazarus, so
it wasn’t out of the question.
But
I’ll tell you what gave me the doubt. They said he was back
and he was showing his wounds. He was showing his scars. He
was baring his shame, his woundedness, his brokenness, his
incompleteness. I said, “I doubt it. I doubt it.” I mean,
I saw what they did to him. I saw how they laughed at him. I
saw how they made fun of him. Why on earth would he come back
with those marks for everyone to see? I said, “I won’t
believe that until I see it. I won’t believe that until I
touch it.” The resurrection was possible, but to come back
imperfect? Not my Savior. Not my Lord. Not with wounds. I
didn’t need a wounded savior.
And
then suddenly, there he was, right in front of me. And there
he stood, hands open, wounds visible, with the wound in his
side. And he said, “Thomas, touch it. Feel it.” And I did.
And there was a healing presence in his wounded touch that
told me he had been to the places I had been in my life, that
he indeed knew what it meant to hurt, he indeed knew what it
meant to be in pain. And on that day, I touched the Wounded
Healer and I learned that through his own wounds, he would
bring healing to my life, and that maybe, just maybe, my own
wounds, my own brokenness, my own shame might be able to bring
healing to somebody else.
There’s
only one piece of advice I’d give to anybody who has been to
the Upper Room. When you get a chance to touch the Wounded
Healer, don’t just touch him, hold onto Jesus. During his
loving and wounded embrace, there is wholeness and healing for
you and for our world. This Easter, hold onto Jesus. Amen.
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Reflection
Well,
we’ve made it. Easter. If you’ve been with us at Sunday
Night Alive the last few weeks of Lent, you know it’s been a
journey. We’ve been talking a lot about the journey from
brokenness to wholeness, trusting that in the same way, if we
were to walk this journey together, if we were to remember the
stories and to find ourselves in the stories, then maybe we
would be able to find healing and wholeness for those places
in our lives and in our world that often hurt or are often
wounded. So here we are. Easter night. I’ll share a few
reflections from the Upper Room, to send us from this journey
to the next.
The
first thing to remember from our story tonight is that when
the disciples went to the Upper Room, they locked the door.
They locked it tight. Yes, it was because it was a dangerous
time. But it was also a time when they were ashamed. They had
really put all their hopes in this thing and it had fallen
apart. Embarrassment, shame, hurt, brokenness—it’s pretty
natural to want to lock that out. Or lock yourself in so you
don’t have to share it with other people.
We
live in a society that really wants to suffer privately. And
while confidentiality and privacy do have their place, we
would be reminded that the first thing that happens, one of
the first barriers that the resurrected Jesus transcends, is
locked doors. It’s into the midst of that locked-out
situation that the healing presence of Jesus appears,
reminding all of us that it’s okay to be honest, it’s okay
to allow ourselves and others to know the places that we have
been, the struggles we have had, and the hurts we have
endured. May we find that same healing presence entering into
the locked places of our lives in the next journey to come.
If
you were with us a few weeks ago, you know that we talked
about our own individual brokenness. And on that night,
everybody was given a piece of glass. We talked about how each
of those broken pieces represented our lives—different
shapes, different colors, broken in different ways. And yet
the one thing that made every piece of that glass the same was
that it was broken. And we talked about what might happen if
we were to bring our brokenness to the cross, to Jesus’ wide
open arms. And tonight we can see what can happen when a
broken people come together in the loving embrace of the
Spirit of God—that God can take each of our lives in all of
our brokenness, and begin to put them together into something
beautiful. The church is lots of things, but one thing it can
be is a beautiful mosaic of broken people who are committed to
walking the journey of healing and wholeness together.
We
shouldn’t forget that it is on the arms of the one who was
broken on the cross that we are allowed to come together into
a place of healing. Jesus showed us that through our
brokenness, our wholeness is actually a possibility. Just
think of the places of hurt and brokenness in your life.
Because of what you have been through and the ways that God
has used you or brought you through it, what a gift you could
be to somebody else who’s traveling down a similar road.
Just think of the pain that you may have had as you struggled
with the issues of unemployment and job loss.
Just
think about the healing presence you can be to somebody else
who’s walking that journey. Maybe you’ve journeyed
yourself or with a loved one through painful situations of
addiction or depression or sickness or cancer. Think about how
God can use the hurt that you felt or the experience that
you’ve had with accompanying someone close to you through
those difficult times. How you can use those wounded areas of
your life to bring transformation to somebody else’s? It’s
on the cross that our brokenness comes together into something
far more beautiful than we could ever imagine.
And
if you’ve been journeying with us these last weeks, you have
seen each week, piece by piece, we have put this pot back
together. This pot symbolized our lives on this journey:
broken. At each step of the way, we looked at how God could
put the broken pieces of our lives back together. And here
tonight, on Easter, in the full celebration of the
resurrection promise, we can see that our lives and our
communities can be made whole. And yet, like the resurrected
Jesus, our wholeness still has its cracks, still has the marks
of its woundedness. We don’t have to be afraid to be a bunch
of cracked pots. Maybe that’s the story of Easter, because
Jesus allowed the cracks and wounds of his life to be the
place of transformation for those doubters who could once
again become believers.
One
last story. There once was a man whose job was to bring water
from a faraway well back to the house each day. He had one of
those long poles, and on it he had two pots—one that he
carried on each side of that stick. One pot was a whole pot,
with no cracks in it. The other was a lot like our pot. It had
cracks. And sure enough, just as you can imagine, the pot that
was whole and seemed to have no blemish was able to do all it
could do. It was able to bring a full pot of water back to the
home each and every day. But the other pot, because of its
cracks, couldn’t do the same thing that the whole pot could
do. And each day when it got back to the house, half of the
water would be gone.
One day,
the pot spoke to the man who was carrying it. It said:
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry that through my cracks, I cannot
do the whole job.” It was then that the water-bearer said to
the cracked pot, “Come, let us walk the journey to the river
once again today.” And as they walked, along the left hand
side of the path, the side where the cracked pot had always
been, the pot noticed something he had never noticed before.
On that side of the path, and on that side of the path alone,
there were grass and flowers. Each and every day for those two
years where that man walked back and forth, that cracked pot
watered the path. And unbeknownst to the cracked pot, his
cracks became a symbol of beauty in the rest of the world.
May that be
a reminder to all of us on this, our Easter journey, that the
cracks in our lives can actually bring healing and beauty to
the world when it is the love of God and the grace of Christ
that is poured into our lives and then poured out to others.
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