Show me!

2 Easter B 2009
(Acts 4: 32-35; Ps 133; 1 John 1: 1-2: 2; John 20:19-31)


Not long ago a Catholic monk began to study the meditation practices of Zen Buddhism. He meditated on his own, he spoke to other people who practiced Zen, he read Christian authors like Thomas Merton who had explored the wisdom of the East. Finally he approached the abbot of a Zen monastery in Japan and asked to stay for a month-long silent retreat.

The Zen abbot did not think this was a good idea, and he kept the Catholic monk at arm’s length for some time. But the monk kept asking, and finally the Zen abbot said, “I will allow you to make a retreat with us on one condition—when you are finished, I will ask you to show me your resurrection.”

“Show me your resurrection!” Have we ever been asked that?
I think that when we think about resurrection we usually talk about Jesus’ resurrection—what was that empty tomb experience at Easter? What was the early Church trying to say in those stories about meeting the risen Jesus? But I think there is a danger that we stand apart from the Easter news when we stay there, in some sort of place where resurrection is an intellectual issue.

I think the real question is not so much “What was Jesus’ resurrection like?”, how it was or even, for some, if it was. The question rather is, “What does it mean?” “Show me your resurrection?” What would we say? What do we say? By the lips of a non-Christian we are being asked something very basic and very orthodox. Jesus is raised, says the early Church, and we are raised with him. So, how’s that working for us? How are we different? What does it mean?

In the Gospel Thomas says, “Unless I see…unless I put my finger in his wounds…I will not believe.”

Thomas in the Gospel will not accept anything second-hand—he wants the real deal. And Thomas gets what he longs for and asks for! We hear his resurrection in his cry, “My Lord and my God.” The searching, passionate heart will find, doubts and all. And the real Christ that we will find still has his wounds. In the wounds of the world, in the wounds of all of us his beloved people, we touch and see God.

“That which we have heard…seen with our eyes…looked at and touched with our hands…the word of life” says John’s letter. I always read this assuming that the writer referred to having actually seen and touched the physical risen Lord. I wonder now—this letter was written decades after the Gospel events. I wonder if “that which we have heard”, seen, and touched were rather the other members of John’s community, the beloved of God who were in Christ as Christ was in God. These burning words are not about a past event so much as they are about a present reality, the risen Christ among them and their love for one another. That was their resurrection. And is this letter also about this church, about us?

“The community of believers were of one heart and mind…everything they owned was held in common.” Their resurrection was visible when that first church was of one heart and soul, when they cared for one another equally, when they spoke of the risen Lord in words but more deeply in their transformed lives together. They were different, and it showed. In a brutal world of power and domination, haves and have-nots, they were hope.

“Show me your resurrection!” I’ll live with that question, and I invite us all to live with it today and in the days to come. So far, I see my resurrection in leaving behind anxiety about our future as a parish and seeing the new life and new choices and new energy in our midst. Salvador’s Baptism at the Great Vigil and the bi-lingual Mass of Easter Sunday are signs of that new life. I’m still working on the rest, but thus far that’s my resurrection this Eastertide. Show me your resurrection!