Jesus (57 page)

T
HE
R
ESURRECTION APPEARANCES SHOW
that the Risen Christ understood what each of the disciples needed in order to believe. Mary needed to hear her name. A few lines after Mary's story, the Gospel of John recounts the story of the Apostle Thomas, who was not present when Mary announced Jesus's resurrection to the other disciples.
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Thomas does not believe their reports and demands more tangible proof. “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.”

For this statement, he is saddled with the unfortunate moniker Doubting Thomas, which seems unfair. Consider that his fellow disciple Peter not only doubted, but denied Jesus at a crucial juncture. Despite this lapse, he is called Prince of the Apostles and has a great basilica named after him in Rome. And Thomas had good reason to doubt. “Jesus come back from the dead? Are you kidding? Preposterous.” Thomas may have thought his friends labored under some mass delusion.

Sometimes I wonder if Jesus chose Thomas as an apostle specifically for his probing mind or his inability to be deceived, both important attributes for a disciple. Thomas may simply have been more demanding when it came to proof—moreover, he is asking for nothing more than what Jesus offered the others when he appeared to them in the Upper Room in John's Gospel.
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On the other hand, perhaps Thomas should have believed what so many of his close friends, so many reliable witnesses, had told him.

Or conceivably Thomas was sad that he missed his chance to see Jesus. During a meditation on this passage, I once imagined Thomas not only feeling crushed after the Crucifixion, but also devastated that he wasn't there to see the Risen Christ with the others. He missed out. Thomas may have felt hurt, wondering if Jesus considered him to be unworthy to witness an appearance.

We have to wonder if Thomas grew tired of hearing the story of his famous doubt. There is a tradition that Thomas eventually traveled to India, where he preached the Gospel. Maybe it was to get away from all those stories.

But if tradition is hard on Thomas, Jesus was not. When he appears to the group a week after Mary's announcement, Thomas is present. But Jesus doesn't castigate his friend, or say, “Get behind me, Satan,” as he had in the face of Peter's misunderstanding. Jesus begins by saying to the assembled crowd, “Peace be with you.”

What does Jesus do then? Scold Thomas or condemn him? Cast him out of the community? No, he gives Thomas what he needs: physical proof. “Put your finger here and see my hands.”
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Then he reminds others about the value of faith. Without even putting his hands into Jesus's wounds, Thomas exclaims: “My Lord and my God!” He is overcome with the person before him, and perhaps embarrassed.

The Risen Christ is gentle with doubters, with those who need reconciliation, and with those who are so confused that they cannot see him. This is especially important today when many Christians handle doubt and confusion with threats and expulsion. See how the Risen Christ responds to doubt. He calls someone's name. He shows. He explains. He welcomes. He forgives. In such quiet ways are people invited to know the Risen One.

The Risen One shows us that God meets us where we are. God understands the variety of ways in which disciples live out their faith. So the Gospels tell us not simply about God, but also about ourselves. Are you confused, or do you sometimes even deny God, as Peter does? Do you need God to speak to you in a personal way, as Mary does? Are you like Thomas, who needs concrete evidence of God's activity in your life? Or are you like the Beloved Disciple, who is so united with Jesus that, without evidence, he simply believes? However you come to your belief, God understands, just as the Risen One understood the disciples.

T
HE APPEARANCE STORIES ARE
also a reminder that the Risen Christ is identifiable with Jesus of Nazareth; the Christ of faith is identifiable with the Jesus of history. The idea that Jesus of Nazareth died and a new person was created is a misunderstanding of the miracle of the Resurrection. The Jesus who is risen from the tomb knows what the disciples need because he knew them. And they know him now because they knew him during his public ministry. Mary recognizes his voice because she had heard it before. The appearances beautifully link Jesus of Nazareth with the Risen Christ.

Stanley Marrow has a marvelous summation of this idea:

The Risen One carries within himself the experiences of his humanity. Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine.

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HE
R
ESURRECTION IS THE
center of my faith. Other Christians may focus more on, say, the Incarnation—how God became human, how God understands us in the most intimate way possible. Or they may center their discipleship on the Beatitudes—as a template for the Christian life and a guideline for their actions. These are important aspects of the life of Christ. But the Resurrection is my own spiritual center. Every day I return to that theme—or more broadly, the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

What does the Resurrection have to do with us? After all, in all likelihood, we are not going to be crucified, though Christians are still persecuted around the world. And here's another question we haven't yet explored—because we couldn't answer it without considering the Resurrection: What does Jesus mean when he says, in the Synoptics, “Take up your cross daily”? After that seemingly masochistic invitation, he says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
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What does it all mean?

Here are a few thoughts on those questions.

First,
you don't need to look for your crosses.
Life gives them to you. Some young people tell me, sincerely, that they feel that they don't have enough suffering in their lives. It's tempting to say darkly, “Just wait.” Whether it's a catastrophic illness, an accident, a death in the family, a fractured relationship, financial worries, long-term loneliness, trouble in school, or struggles on the job, problems will come. And the real cross is the one that you don't want—because otherwise it's hardly a cross. Remember that Jesus did not court death, nor did he beg for the Cross in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Cross eventually came to him. And, of course, the Cross is not the result of sin. It's true that some suffering is the result of bad or immoral decisions. But most suffering is not. Even the sinless one suffered.

Second,
we are invited by God, as Jesus was, to accept our crosses.
This does not mean that we accept things unthinkingly, like a dumb animal laboring under a burden. Nor do bromides like “Offer it up” solve the problem of suffering. The idea of offering one's pain to God is helpful in some situations, but not in others. For many years, my mother visited my grandmother in her nursing home. Residing in that home was an elderly Catholic sister, confined to a wheelchair because of debilitating pain. One day her religious superior came to visit. When the sister spoke of the pain she was enduring, her superior replied, “Think of Jesus on the Cross.” The elderly sister said, “He was only on the Cross for three hours.” Some advice does more harm than good.

What does it mean, then, to accept our crosses?

To begin with, it means understanding that suffering is part of everyone's life. Accepting our cross means that at some point—after the shock, frustration, sadness, and even rage—we must accept that some things cannot be changed. That's why acceptance is not a masochistic stance, but a realistic one. Here is where Christianity parts ways with Buddhism, which says that suffering is an illusion. No, says Jesus from the Cross, suffering is part of the human reality. The disciples had a difficult time understanding this—they wanted a leader who would deliver them from pain, not one who would endure it himself. We often have a difficult time with this too. But acceptance is what Jesus invites us to on the Cross.

Acceptance also means not passing along any bitterness that you feel about your suffering. That doesn't mean you shouldn't talk about it, complain about it, or even cry about it with friends or family. And of course we are invited to be honest in prayer about our suffering. Even Jesus poured out his heart to
Abba
in the Garden of Gethsemane.

But if you're angry about your boss, or school, or your family, you don't pass along that anger to others and magnify their suffering. Having a lousy boss is no reason to be mean to your family. Struggling through a rotten family situation is no excuse for being insensitive to your coworkers. Problems at school do not mean that you can be cruel to your parents. Christ did not lash out at people when he was suffering, even when he was lashed by the whip.

As I said, this does not mean that you do not share your suffering with others. Pain and suffering resulting, to take one example, from abuse or trauma often need to be shared with others (whether with friends or professional counselors) as part of the healing process. Also, people living with long-term challenges like, say, raising a child with special needs or caring for an elderly parent often find comfort and support by speaking with others in similar circumstances. Like Jesus, you can allow others to help you carry the cross. Jesus was not too proud to let Simon of Cyrene come to his aid. If your friends offer to help, let them.

Thus, there is a difference between having a fight with your teenage son and then being insensitive at work, and sharing the challenges (and joys) of a special-needs child in a support group. It is the difference between passing on suffering and sharing it.

In short, your cross shouldn't become someone else's.

Third,
when Jesus speaks about those who “lose their life,” he is not talking only about physical death.
Christians believe that they are promised eternal life if they believe in Jesus and follow his way. But there are other deaths that come before the final one. We are called to let some parts of our lives die, so that other parts may live. Is a desire for money preventing you from being more compassionate on the job? Perhaps your need for wealth needs to die. Are you so yoked to your own comfort that you don't allow other people's needs to impinge on yours? Maybe your selfishness needs to die so that you can experience a rebirth of generosity. Is pride keeping you from listening to other people's constructive criticism and therefore stunting your spiritual growth? Maybe all these things need to die too.

In Christian spiritual circles this is called “dying to self.” What keeps you from being more loving, more free, more mature, more open to following God's will? Can you let those things die? If you do, you will surely “find” your life, because dying to self means living for God. This is in part what Jesus means about those who desperately try to save their lives. That kind of “saving” holds on to the parts of ourselves that keep us enslaved to the old ways of doing things. Trying to keep those things alive can lead to death. Letting them die allows us to truly live.

Fourth,
wait for the resurrection.
In every cross, there is an invitation to new life in some way, and often in a mysterious way. To me it seems unclear whether Jesus understood
precisely
what would happen after he entrusted himself to
Abba
in the Garden. Clearly he gave himself over entirely to the Father. But did he know where that would lead? There are indications of his foreknowledge, such as Jesus's challenge to the Jewish leaders, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”; John explicitly labels this a foretelling of the Resurrection.
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But Jesus's agony in the Garden and his cry of abandonment on the Cross seems to indicate that even he didn't know what kind of new life the Father had in store. Perhaps even Jesus was surprised on Easter. For me this makes his self-gift even more astonishing.

This is why Christians speak of meeting God in the Cross. By ignoring or failing to embrace the Cross we miss opportunities to know God in a deeper way. The Cross is often where we meet God because our vulnerability can make us more open to God's grace. Many recovering alcoholics point to the acceptance of their disease as the moment when they began to find new life. This is why Thomas Merton could write, “In tribulation, God teaches us. The most unfortunate people in the world are those who know no tribulations.”
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Fifth,
God's gift is often not what we expect.
Mary Magdalene discovered that on Easter Sunday. And—as with Mary—sometimes it takes time to grasp that what we are experiencing is a resurrection. Later on, as we will see, the other disciples will have a hard time recognizing Jesus. As the apostles discovered on Easter, resurrection also does not come
when
you expect it. It may take years for it to come at all. And, it's usually difficult to describe, because it's
your
resurrection. It may not make sense to other people.

When I was a Jesuit novice, as I mentioned, I worked in a hospital for the seriously ill in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Every Friday the hospital chaplaincy team ran a discussion group. One woman, named Doris, who was confined to a wheelchair, told us something that completely surprised me. She used to think of her chair as a cross, which would have been my reaction. But lately, she had started to see it as her resurrection. “My wheelchair helps me get around,” she said. “Without it, I wouldn't be able to do anything. Life would be so dull without it.”