Christians are nearing the time of Lent, 40 days of repentance and fasting, before the celebration of Easter. I love Easter. I love the worships. I love that women are highlighted as the first ones on the scene at the empty tomb; women are the first preachers who get dismissed by men for telling an idle tale. In your face, I’m just saying, the male disciples missed some of the first moments because they blew off the witness of women.
Is it challenging to preach about someone rising from the dead? Yes, especially because everything is so confusing and funky, but it is not challenging to preach that death does not have the last word, that love and peace are eternal, that the empire will crumble, but the good news of the love we see embodied in Jesus will last for thousands of years.
Anyway, one of my favorite stories of Easter is about “out for pizza so missed Jesus appearing in the locked room and questioned whether the others were fibbing” Thomas. I refuse to call him “doubting Thomas” as he has been dubbed for a couple thousand years. Here’s the story in John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene just announced to the disciples that she saw the risen lord, and mistook him for the gardener, but maybe she left that part out. She announces this news and the disciples lock themselves in a room out of fear, except for Thomas. Who knows what Thomas was doing; I like to imagine a pizza run. While they are locked in fear, Jesus appears and says, “Peace be with you.” He shares the holy spirit, tells them to forgive sins and then Thomas returns after Jesus is gone. When the others say they saw Jesus, Thomas says, “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.”
Give it a week, they are still in the room and Jesus shows up again, offers peace, and then says, “put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” This moment is a famous subject for many paintings and kind of gross. Caravaggio paints Thomas with his finger digging around in Jesus’ side. Thomas proclaims him Lord and then Jesus says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
It’s a great story of peace, grace and courage that finally sends the disciples out to share the good news with the world. I really just tell you all this to get to the subject of epistemology, the study of knowing. I’ve been concerned about many things, but one is that Facebook community collective doesn’t devolve into calling people Nazis as much anymore. The arguments devolve into something like, “don’t believe anything you see or hear.”
In 2022, a handbook was published for journalists to know how to cover the rising of authoritarian regimes around the world. One quote stood out to me as a pastor:
“These lies have two purposes: first, they are political weapons aimed at crippling opponents and shoring up key constituencies through invented false grievances. And second, they are smokescreens for power grabs and abuses, insulating authoritarians against accountability. Often this cover is indirect, through mass doubt and confusion. The goal is not always to sell a lie, but instead to undermine the notion that anything in particular is true.” (Protect Democracy, The Authoritarian Playbook, June 2022)
Part of the foundation for building the beloved community is trust and truth. The witness to what truth looks like takes a lot of different perspectives to get a sense of what is going on behind the smokescreen. That requires listening and trusting the stories people tell knowing they are not the whole story. It takes time of exploring, asking questions, digging deeper. Things are not made true because we say them louder and more often. Things may be pronounced true after gathering information from a variety of sources, considering the validity of each, examining our own desires about what we want to be true, and then living as if it is true while being open to the possibility that new evidence may challenge that truth.
So the call is to get out of your locked room. If you are only getting news and information from sources that feed the same line, then make some new friends. If you are jaded and cynical enough to think nothing can be believed, then spend time with a puppy or child. If you have dismissed those who disagree and feel confident you are totally right, then maybe let a little humility sneak in to imagine you might not have the universe figured out.
I love this season because it is a time of opening our eyes and our hearts to witness the truth of eternal love.
• Tari Stage-Harvey is the pastor of Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church. “Living and Growing” is a weekly column written by different authors and submitted by local clergy and spiritual leaders. It appears every Saturday on the Juneau Empire’s Faith page.
