Touching the Doubt The Dover
Church
April
15, 2012 –
Second Sunday of Easter Scripture: John
20:19-31
Have any of you ever
had what the NPR fundraisers call “the NPR experience”? You’re driving along,
listening to a program that is so captivating that when you get home you end up
sitting in the driveway to hear the rest of the program rather than going
inside to dinner. A few years ago, I had just that experience listening to Tom
Ashbrook's morning program, “On
Point.” About
ten minutes into the hour-long program, I pulled over, turned off the engine
and just sat in my car for the rest of that hour and listened to a Palestinian
doctor named Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish. Dr. Abuelaish lives in Gaza, practices
medicine in Israel, is an obstetrician who treats both Palestinians and
Israeli. He is fluent in Hebrew, a Muslim of unwavering faith, someone who was
welcomed by Israeli medical colleagues, one of whom called him a “magical, secret bridge
between Israelis and Palestinians.”[1]
So far, just another
remarkable man. On January 16, 2009, during the Israeli invasion of Gaza, an
Israeli tank shell hit his home and killed three of his daughters and a niece.
Three of his daughters and one of his nieces dead in January and he was calling
for peace in April of that same year in Boston on Tom Ashbrook's show. He saw their mutilated bodies, picked up the
pieces with his own hands and took them to the hospital. "Wow! I thought
to myself. This guy is amazing, working through his grief that
quickly." Talk about understatement.
As I listened more, I found out how far off I
was in my initial understanding. By the strangest coincidence, Dr. Abuelaish
was doing a live interview on Israeli TV when the tragedy occurred, so all of
Israel heard what had happened in real time, unfiltered and unedited. The
relatives and countryfolk of the men who had pulled the trigger were right
there on the other side of the microphone. He could have vented his rage and
loss on them in real time. When he was at the hospital where his daughters were
pronounced dead, he was calling for peace live on Israeli radio. Even then,
with tears streaming down his face, his daughters' blood on his hands, he was
calling for peace.
That hour, listening to this highly
educated man who had lost the light of his life, listening to him cry over his
enormous loss (he still mourned as anyone would), listening to him expound his
hope for the future, listening to him talk about the real work he is doing
right now for peace, I knew I was hearing a man who lived the Resurrection.
As Dr. Abuelaish's story began to sink
into my heart and mind, I knew I was hearing the voice of someone who was
living our Gospel lesson for this morning. He had put his hands into his doubt,
into the bloodiest, most painful place of doubt in his life. He lived with his
hands in his doubt. I try to imagine the doubt if I were in his shoes. How can
I believe in life after these deaths? How can I forgive this? How can I forgive
when the aggressor isn't penitent? Will there be something better after
forgiveness? Forgiveness be damned, is anything possible after this? Will God
bless me if I forgive this? Can you even begin to imagine the doubt, the
reluctance, the resistance, the rage?
When Jesus comes to the disciples this morning, he offers
them peace through forgiveness, giving away the past. The word Jesus used was “shalom,” which means “peace” but also,
and more importantly, means “wholeness.” How could Dr. Abuelaish ever be whole and therefore at
peace again after having so much of his life broken and taken from him before
his very eyes? He must have doubted.
I cannot quote exactly what he said when Tom
Ashbrook asked him this very question, but his answer went something like this,
“I
am a doctor who is committed to life. I am a believer who believes that God
must have a purpose for me in this tragedy. My life is for the living. Once
someone is dead, there is nothing more you can do for them. You can only help
the living.”
My friends, God has a purpose for each
of us and all of us: to help us live into life in the face of death. You can
only help the living. God can only help the living and those who want to live.
You can only help yourself if you are alive. If you are living unforgiven or
unforgiving you are dead or dying. I know. Maybe you don’t. Living
unforgiven and unforgiving is not pleasant. When I lived that way, I was
fearful of the past coming storming back into the present. Possibilities were
impossible. Limited, constricted, guarded, threatened.
Contrary to what a
lot of people think, Jesus and the Resurrection are not fantasy, something that
goes on in some imaginary world, but about real life, as real as it gets. Real
life really lived involves hurting and being hurt. Most of us don’t mean it
that way, but nonetheless. Real human beings really living real lives do and
say thoughtless or hurtful things to others. Most of us range from being heavy,
blunt yet sharp objects, to being mildly abrasive. Real human beings really
living real lives need forgiveness and need to forgive if they want to live
abundantly.
The offense, the slap, the insult, the betrayal, the theft,
the killing, always seems like the end of the line, the tomb. But one of the
main things Jesus preached and lived is that you don’t have to
live chained to a past which cannot be changed. In fact, you can't really live
chained to the past. I have found in my own life that big parts of the present
and future, perhaps the best parts of the present and future, just aren't
possible when the past is in the way. Until one of us puts our fingers in the
holes in the other person's hands, puts our hands in the wounds in that other
person's heart which were inflicted by the other, until one of us acknowledges
what we have done and accepts that the wounds belong to both of us, there can
be no shalom. The moment I take the bold step of Thomas and actually touch the
wounds, the burden of the past begins to fall away. I am reborn. The present
and future are possible again.
You may say that not everyone plays by
the rules, so why should we? Some people don’t accept apologies, so why should we make ourselves
vulnerable to scorn? Some people don’t offer real forgiveness, so why should we make ourselves
vulnerable to repeat offenses? It’s true, a lot of us say we do, while secretly keep a card
up our sleeves, saving that memory in the back of our minds to pull out when we
need the upper hand. But do you know what, the card up the sleeve is never a
winner. That memory never gives the upper hand. It has the upper hand, keeping
you chained to a past which the other person may well have forgiven, forgotten,
or otherwise moved on from. The only one there is you. Unpack the burden from
your shoulders and live lightly again.
That’s not say this is plastic surgery. Jesus carries the wounds
of the crucifixion with him. They did not go away. They are part of who he was
and is. The same is certainly true for Dr. Abuelaish and for all the people who
have suffered tragedies big or small. Every person I have ever known carries
their wounds and scars around with them, some visible, some hidden, some
acknowledged, some ignored. Our wounded and wounding hands and hearts can
become our wisdom if we allow them to. Most of us, however, push that stuff
into the back of the closet and try not to see it, hoping it will just go away,
but it doesn't. It's there. It lives on in our souls and causes us to be
fearful, angry, hurtful, overly cautious, resentful, and so on. I am convinced
that most of our hurtful behavior in the present is triggered by things we have
not forgiven or have not been forgiven for from the past. The very thing we
hate about the past becomes the thing that makes our present hateful.
This is the reality of living the
Resurrection. It isn't pleasant at first, looking at and touching all those
nail holes and wounded sides. Sometimes our fears get the better of us and we
close ourselves off in locked rooms of our hearts and minds. But believe me,
once you really give it a try and feel the blessing, once you feel the new and
abundant life flowing through you and out into the world around you, you know
what Thomas knew in our lesson this morning. The really good news is that if
that is what you want (and who would not want that?), if that is what you need
(and this is what all of us need whether we want to admit it or not), Jesus
will come to you wherever you have locked yourself away, through whatever doors
you have bolted to keep the past out, and bring you new life. Can you imagine
how beautiful life would be if we could just forgive others and seek forgiveness
of others as the fallible yet precious creatures we are. God our Creator has
already forgiven us. Wouldn't it be great if we could accept that and live as
if that were true for us? It would be like, well, heaven, wouldn't it? Not in
the future, but right now, on earth as it already is in heaven. That's what we
pray for, isn't it? Thomas knew it, which is why he fell on his knees and
exclaimed, “my
Lord and my God.”
You can too and you'll discover exactly what Thomas discovered.
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