April 19, 2009

Denise Kelsall

Low Sunday (Easter 2)     John 20:19-31

Today is Low Sunday and is also called the Octave of Easter as it is the eighth day after the paschal feast of Easter. Historically and still extant in the Eastern churches it is called St Thomas’s Sunday because the reading on this day is always the one about ‘doubting Thomas’ where we hear of his very understandable questioning and doubt about the resurrection of Jesus. As we hear, the change to absolute conviction is rapid and complete. The pinnacle of this gospel passage, and to which the whole of the New Testament points, are the foundational words Thomas speaks to Jesus, “my Lord and my God.”

Today is also called Quasimodo Sunday. This comes from the first two words of ancient antiphons or sung responses of the eucharist celebrated this Sunday that speaks to those newly baptised at Easter - it goes:

Quasi modo, geniti infantes, rationabile - which translates “as newborn babes, alleluia.”

And yes, this is the origin of the name of the hunchback, Quasimodo, in Victor Hugo's famous novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Quasimodo was a foundling who was discovered at the door of Notre Dame cathedral on Low Sunday and so was named after this day.

In the early church Easter was the time when catechumens - those who had gone through a lengthy training and instruction in the Christian faith, were baptised. It was an elaborate ritual of preparation, with a succession of ‘scrutinies’ through Lent and then, presumably, if they passed muster, they were baptized and admitted at the Paschal feast. It was a long and careful process. I can remember reading where the catechumens were publicly baptized completely naked……… I found this bizarre at the time and still do, but if the faith is that if we really believe we are being reborn into God in Jesus emerging as like newborn babes it is more understandable. I guess.

All of these foundational aspects of Christianity are light years away from us here in the 21st century. Not just time-wise but more particularly on an intellectual and evolving sense of who we are and who Jesus is, and who or what or how God is or might be and is in our lives. The stories of our faith that we read each week together here in church looked at rationally or without any faith background can look all very speculative and subjective - just like plain old stories really. Maybe that’s how Thomas thought too.

We are physical creatures and for us on a primal level seeing is believing. However, it is an abstract notion like faith that establishes us as more than merely physical sensate creatures. It is also in the telling of stories that we find meaning that can lead to faith. We are sometimes referred to as the storytelling animal - all of our own personal and public lives are wound into stories that we inhabit, think about, dream about, talk about and hopefully learn from. We are our own text - we contain our family stories, our work stories, our faith stories - stories and dreams and hopes that reside and emerge from within each of us.

We are the stories we tell ourselves. Some psychotherapeutic models see positive change being effected by changing or reframing one’s own story – looking at it from a different perspective, perhaps so that glimmers of hope and new visions of life can arise in a gray and unhappy heart.

It can be illuminating to look at the Bible as a collection of stories – originally oral and told around the campfire to entertain, to inform, to keep alive the history of a family or a people, to bind together - always to give meaning and shape to life within the unique heart of each individual listener.

Our Christian story is the Easter story. One day we remember and mourn a gruesome death and we wait in anticipation of the next installment of the story a couple of days later, which is about life and hope – newborn life resurrected from the ashes of the old. It is, as we all know, a truly wonderful story that gives us too, over 2000 years later, hope and courage for the fleet race that is life in all its beauty and agony. The story is about beauty and agony – the terrible beauty of an uncommon common man who will go to death for his convictions and thereby change the whole world, and the searing agony of betrayal and death that leaves ashes in our mouths.

Thomas doesn’t believe that dead people can become alive again. Nor do we. But something unfathomable mysterious and miraculous happens and Thomas does believe because, as we hear, he is convinced of the reality of Jesus himself and proclaims “My Lord and my God.” This uncommon common man is, in five words, transformed into a God. “My Lord and my God” - it is a powerful evocative phrase that thrills and burns within the hearts of Christians worldwide, and speaks so very deeply to the poetic and longing part of the soul that yearns for union with the divine.

“My Lord and my God” is the defining statement of the Christian story. It is The article of faith.

It is also something in which there is a giving over of something indefinable. To say this phrase, to believe it and make it central to your life/your story involves a giving over, a surrender to something mysterious and pervasive. You are changed. They are beautiful words and resonate unusually when spoken. That is why they are part of an ancient and common Christian mantra for those who meditate for prayer.

But how do you really feel about that phrase? Modern day sensibilities, vast acres of post enlightenment knowledge, the validity of other faiths, scientific and cosmic awareness, the problem of evil and much more all impact upon our interpretation of our faith story.

We deconstruct language and reject ‘Lord’ as being patriarchal and class ridden. Do we really intellectually accept the deity God of the Bible story? Is Jesus God? And the questions go ever on and on.

What is really important about today is that we are here as a faith community that comes down through time from those very people in that room, perhaps those very actions and those very words that herald Jesus today. Today is a special Sunday that arrives in the wake of our tumultuous Easter story that we live into year after year. We have had time to digest the special services that reenact the early church and to listen to the stories of our faith. We have heard how Passover turned into Easter with the life and death of Jesus. We have heard today how people in 1st century Palestine experienced Jesus a week after his death. These are our stories - we are living part of them too.

And that somehow, somewhere, sometime, you –we, have felt that indefinable pull, that surrender, that touch that made Thomas open his eyes and his heart in a new way, that makes us more aware, that continues if we have faith and endurance to resurrect us from our ignorance and folly.

We, like those newly baptized of old on the first Sunday after Easter, we quasimodos.