John 20:19-31

Recently a friend and I visited the nesting site of dozens of herons.  They had pitched their nests in the topmost branches of trees that stood tall and dead in a broad marsh.  Every few minutes a heron would appear in the sky and then glide to its nest.  It struck me, though, that they never approached the nest directly, but always in a wide spiral.  That is how I want to approach today’s Gospel, spiraling in on it, ultimately to hatch the question, what is doubting Thomas really asking for?

We’ll start the glide with a true story.  When the Germans marched into Paris in World War II Jacques Lusseyran was 16 years old.  Hearing about the atrocities of the Gestapo, he made a commitment to himself to help the resistance, and began by recruiting several of his friends.  Together they started a youth movement, calling themselves the Volunteers of Liberty.  Their great challenge was to enlist members whom they could trust.  Over time the Volunteers grew to more than 600 youths, and every one of them had been approved only after after a personal interview with Jacques.  No exceptions.  Why Jacques?  Jacques was totally blind.

Jesus spoke of the blind and the sighted in John’s Gospel, saying that often, paradoxically, it was the blind who could see.  Jacques had that ability to see what the sighted are often blind to.  He could see whether those young women or men he was screening had the ability to. . .  ‘meet’.  I am using the word ‘meet’ in a special sense here, and I want to describe it at some length.

A true meeting is rare, and especially so in our society, where distractions plague us like black flies in summer.  Still, most of us have experienced a meeting.  Call it a moment of grace.  Meetings usually happen between two people, but for a small group of people to meet is not impossible.  We all hunger for meeting; and yet a meeting can take us by surprise, even happening on a bus with a total stranger, when a casual conversation transforms into a meeting.  Sometimes, between intimates, a meeting will take place in silence.  While meetings cannot be made to happen, we can increase the possibility of their happening.

First, the whole self must be present and willing to share – body, mind, soul and spirit.  Further, no agenda can be present, nor any kind of judgment.  This may explain why some of us rarely met our parents.  I can scarcely think of a time when my parents did not have an agenda for me.  Also, for a meeting to take place we must set aside any ‘credentials’, that is, anything that makes for inequality.  In other words, where you were born, your race, what you do for a living, your education and place in society, your age or reputation – these must be set aside as irrelevant if a true meeting is to happen.

A meeting can be brief and not go very deep, or be extended and go deep indeed.  As an example of the first, I remember a woman who used to take care of me when my parents were away on a trip.  Her name was Pearl, and I would not remember her in the least, except that she and I met more than once; and for that I love her to this day.  I remember none of the things we talked about, just that when the meeting was over I felt full of vitality, and totally right with the world.  I would never call any meeting shallow, but these meetings with Pearl did not go too deep.

As an example of the second, a deep meeting, a story is told about a priest in a small French village.  He noticed that an elderly peasant used to sit in the empty church almost every afternoon.  This went on month after month, and the old man seemed to be doing nothing.  Finally the priest could restrain his curiosity no longer.  He approached the man and asked him, “Excuse me, my dear man, what are you doing here in church when nothing is going on?”  The old man turned a radiant face to the priest and, pointing to the cross, he replied, “He looks at me and I look at Him, and we are happy.”  A true meeting can go very deep.

Jacques cannot have gone too deep in most of his meetings.  I dare say they sounded like chit chat.  Underneath the chit chat, however, he could detect if there was anyone ‘there’.  He could discern if this was a person capable of meeting.  There had to be a self at the core to stand against the fear their work entailed, or resist the interrogators if any of them should be caught.  Only once could he not be sure, either way.  He gave that person the benefit of the doubt, and this proved to be the person who betrayed them.  Jacques was caught and sent to a concentration camp.  He lived through it and later wrote his autobiography.  It’s entitled And There Was Light.

I’ve gone on at length about meeting, because it was this that Thomas sought.  During Jesus’ lifetime Jesus had met his disciples again and again and through those meetings they found their lives transformed.  It reminds me of a line in Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son, “The great person makes everyone feel their equal.”  If you could meet Jesus that was how you felt.  What did it matter to Thomas if Jesus’ body returned?  He spoke in terms of putting his hand in Jesus’ side and his finger in the holes from the nails, but he was groping for words here.  What he really wanted was Jesus to be back with them in reality.  In other words, back with them in such a way that they could meet him.  Continue their transformation;  recharge their vitality, as before.  You notice that when Jesus did return and Thomas was there, he had no need to put his finger in the nail holes or his hand in Jesus side.  The power of meeting overwhelmed him.

Doubting Thomas could be a poster child for spiritual seekers of today, even teens, especially teens.  They hunger for meeting, but they seriously doubt that any real meetings take place within the church, or even within organized religion.  How ironic!  This is precisely the purpose that hatched the church.  What went wrong?  How did we get such a bad reputation among the unchurched?  Somehow Christianity came around to offering, not meeting, but concepts interpreting the meeting, such as redemption, atonement, damnation, justification, consecration, sanctification, salvation.  You know the litany.  Concepts do not feed the hunger.  Worse, putting believing in place of meeting, the church scarcely acknowledges that the hunger exists.  Yet hunger for meeting comes woven into our being.

The story of doubting Thomas suggests that, even 2,000 years later, we are at no disadvantage when it comes to meeting.  And the church can help.  True, the church cannot make a meeting happen.  Even Jesus could not do that.  But he knew our need, and what he could do, he did.  He instituted the Eucharist to kindle our expectations and enhance the possibility of a meeting.  You could say he set the stage.

When we come to the Sunday liturgy here at Trinity Church the stage has been set.  For one thing, credentials have been set aside; we gather as equals.  In addition, no one has an agenda for us; nor is any judgment taking place; and the welcome is wholehearted.  Beauty fills our eyes and ears.  We even experience a degree of silence.  The stately pace of the liturgy draws us away from our time-driven lives toward a timeless space.  The result is that many of us do experience a meeting, occasionally a meeting of great depth.  In those meetings Jesus Christ may be as present as he was to Thomas, and like Thomas we can feel transformed.

The liturgy cannot do all the work, of course.  It helps if we arrive, open and expectant, ready and willing to meet and be met by God.  We can prepare for this.  Reading spiritual classics is one way.  For instance, I find it helpful to read that small, but perennial classic, Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.  Yet another way we might call the way of the heron.  It can become a daily practice.  We find a place high above the busy world, so to speak, a place and time of quiet.  We settle ourself down, and like the heron on its nest, we brood.  Also like the heron we are expectant.  We know the hatching cannot be hurried, but we know, too, that forces beyond our grasp are working for us.  In God’s own time the egg of meeting will hatch and the sweetness of it will make any amount of waiting worthwhile.  Then we will say with the Psalmist, “in your presence there is fullness of joy.”  “In your meeting there is fulness of joy.”