The Heavy Lifting God
Second Sunday of Easter, Year C
Art: “Christ Appearing to His Disciples with Thomas touching his side” Magdeburg Cathedral 963
“Peace. See me. Receive the Holy Spirit. Forgive.” The Risen Jesus laid out an ambitious array of gifts and requests when he entered the locked room to join his shaky disciples. Thomas, who missed the meeting, expressed a deeper misgiving—unbelief. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
By the time the resurrected Jesus appeared to Thomas, God had already done the heavy lifting of Easter. The gates of death were shattered, loving forgiveness triumphed in the world, the sting was torn from the tail of the scorpion, new life entered the world, standing on two legs. God had raised Jesus from the grave, and he would never die again. Jesus wanted Thomas to complete the circuit, to expand his vision to see a larger reality than he previously imagined possible. It took that Reality standing before him, wounded but very much alive in Jesus, for Thomas to gasp, “My Lord and my God.”
God has already done the heavy lifting in our lives too. The Easter miracle is our miracle, our story too. How much grace, love, forgiveness, victory over sin, reconciliation, mighty deeds of truth and valor are ours for the asking? They are real gifts of God, part of the reality that Christ’s resurrection makes available to us all. And what is asked of us? Believe it. See that reality… take hold of it…lean into it. Cooperate with God’s resurrection miracle.
My friend Stephen Lawson was part of a Christian community called Lotus House, located a few miles from downtown Ferguson, MO. He was there during the Black Lives Matters demonstrations. Christians in his community tried to live into a better reality characterized by harmony, not hatred, known for reconciled relationships, not hateful, violent clashes. They attempted to envision peace, shalom, wholeness… not prejudice and racism. But every time they looked out their windows, every time they turned on the television, every time they made some small effort, those good things seem swallowed up by hatred and darkness and death. Stephen wrote:
“When I think about the task of reconciliation in light of the reality of our segregation, I am overwhelmed….I don’t know where to start. It seems impossible to create reconciliation in a region so locked into a history of separation and oppression….This is where the Gospel must interrupt us. For the Christian Gospel shows us that it is impossible for us to bring about real reconciliation, for real reconciliation has already been brought about by God’s action in Jesus Christ….It is first of all something which has triumphantly happened in a sphere more real than ours, which is tilting our universe on a new axis, whether or not we understand it. This means that what we think of as real, as stable and as ordered is not so, and what is real and true and ordered and stable is not what is behind us, but what we can become as we (are) set free from our imprisonment. Reconciliation is not something we do, but something that God has already accomplished. “
What needs resurrecting in your life? To what stubborn narratives of death and defeat do you stubbornly cling? Does your small “r” reality tell you that God can’t wring goodness out of the trauma you’ve experienced? Does it say to you that new life can’t break through your cold, stony ground? Does your narrow view of “the way things are” tell you that you simply can’t overcome the addictions that rule your life, the depression that settles over your spirit, the broken relationships that keep you shut up? Do the shifting political winds threaten to blow away your hope for the future? Is your God too small, too powerless, too dead and cold in the grave to bring about a new reality?
God has already done the heavy lifting, brought new things to life, provided resurrection power enough to fill us with all the life we can ever contain. And what he’s asking of us is to believe it…to fall on our knees and say, “My Lord and My God.” He asks us to lean into a future that he has already won for us. Let us step forward full of belief into the sunshine of Christ’s new day.
This is the day of Resurrection.
Let us keep the Festival with splendor,
And let us embrace one another.
Let us say “Brethren!” even to those who hate us,
To those who have done or suffered anything out of love for us.
Let us forgive all offenses for the Resurrection’s sake;
Let us give one another pardon….
Yesterday I was crucified with him;
Today I am glorified with him.
Yesterday I died with him;
Today I am enlivened with him,
Yesterday I was buried with him;
Today I rise with him.
(adapted from Gregory of Nazianzus)