Week 6 (Year 4, NL)

I often feel that my whole time in ministry has been one when the word of the Lord is rare and visions not widespread.

This week is the Second Sunday of Easter, aka "low Sunday." There is in the life of a church a movement and momentum toward Easter Sunday, and then inevitably a scattering, a rest after the intensity. And yet the gospel lesson does wrestle with the implications of belief, unbelief and doubt.

The disciples are afraid, so they lock their doors. I do the same.

"We are witnesses to these things," said Peter. Yet as the gospel for the second Sunday of Easter opens, "these things" do not include Jesus' resurrection. That morning Peter had seen an empty tomb with some scattered linens. He had witnessed absence, not resurrection. At that point, he had not even witnessed Jesus' death—he had missed his chance. Yet soon Peter becomes one of the boldest and most powerful of witnesses to Jesus' message, death and resurrection. Clearly something happened.

From where does Nathanael's confession, his insight, come?

Here’s how I came to know the real Cousin Thomas.

When I was in grad school, my family moved into an apartment in South Chicago. When we saw that the door of the apartment had four locks, we wondered why we needed so many. I soon discovered that the benefit was mostly emotional. When we got inside at night, after being worried about whatever, we could shut the door on the world and turn lots of little levers. “Click, click, click.” I think of that door when I’m listening to people describe how they cope with their fears.

The disciples locked in the room need help in practicing resurrection.

If you’re Eli, you’re not sleeping that well when the boy comes trotting in to disturb you with his nonsense.

Mary can’t experience the resurrected Jesus for the disciples, and the disciples can’t experience Jesus for Thomas.

As a seminarian, I never seemed to be there when Jesus arrived.

Reading the call of Samuel, one wonders why the lectionary confronts us with such a dread epiphany.