Sunday of Divine Mercy
April 11, 2021
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 118 which ties together our other readings in a celebration of confirmed faith:
- Christ IS risen
- He has been SEEN even by one with severest doubts
- the community IS RESPONDING wholeheartedly to the Easter mission
The stone which the builders rejected
Psalm 118
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.
This is the day the LORD has made;
let us be glad and rejoice in it.
For the early Church, which comes alive in today’s readings, faith and experience have been “married”. These are early “honeymoon days” for a young faith community where Jesus might still pop up any minute by a charcoal fire or in a locked Upper Room.
These are days of heady enthusiasm where everything seems possible in the healing tenderness of five transfigured wounds.
Last week, I offered a staff presentation during which we discussed the blocks to effective communication – poor planning, noise, cultural differences, assumptions, etc. But I think of one block in particular this morning.
Time and Distance
The farther we are from the original message the more likely we might lose its full power and truth.
Think of that childhood game, “Whisper Down the Lane”. As the original message traveled along the long line of squirming children, it repeatedly morphed into its multiple distortions.
Our readings today enjoin us to take care that such distortion never weakens our Easter Truth: Jesus Christ is risen and lives in us, the faith community.
… whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.
And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.
Who indeed is the victor over the world
but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
As Jesus describes us in today’s Gospel, we are the ones “who have not SEEN”. Still, we long for the blessing that comes from our unseeing fidelity:
You believe in me, Thomas, because you have seen me.
Blessed are those who have not seen me, but still believe!
Let us pray for one another, the whole faith community. As the Easter Word passes down through the ages and out over the earth, may it stay fully alive in our faithful love and active mercy:
The community of believers was of one heart and mind,
and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own,
but they had everything in common.
With great power the apostles bore witness
to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,
and great favor was accorded them all.
Poem:
St. Thomas Didymus by Denise Levertov
In the hot street at noon I saw him a small man gray but vivid, standing forth beyond the crowd’s buzzing holding in desperate grip his shaking teethgnashing son, and thought him my brother. I heard him cry out, weeping and speak those words, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief, and knew him my twin: a man whose entire being had knotted itself into the one tightdrawn question, Why, why has this child lost his childhood in suffering, why is this child who will soon be a man tormented, torn, twisted? Why is he cruelly punished who has done nothing except be born? The twin of my birth was not so close as that man I heard say what my heart sighed with each beat, my breath silently cried in and out, in and out. After the healing, he, with his wondering newly peaceful boy, receded; no one dwells on the gratitude, the astonished joy, the swift acceptance and forgetting. I did not follow to see their changed lives. What I retained was the flash of kinship. Despite all that I witnessed, his question remained my question, throbbed like a stealthy cancer, known only to doctor and patient. To others I seemed well enough. So it was that after Golgotha my spirit in secret lurched in the same convulsed writhings that tore that child before he was healed. And after the empty tomb when they told me that He lived, had spoken to Magdalen, told me that though He had passed through the door like a ghost He had breathed on them the breath of a living man — even then when hope tried with a flutter of wings to lift me — still, alone with myself, my heavy cry was the same: Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief. I needed blood to tell me the truth, the touch of blood. Even my sight of the dark crust of it round the nailholes didn’t thrust its meaning all the way through to that manifold knot in me that willed to possess all knowledge, refusing to loosen unless that insistence won the battle I fought with life But when my hand led by His hand’s firm clasp entered the unhealed wound, my fingers encountering rib-bone and pulsing heat, what I felt was not scalding pain, shame for my obstinate need, but light, light streaming into me, over me, filling the room as I had lived till then in a cold cave, and now coming forth for the first time, the knot that bound me unravelling, I witnessed all things quicken to color, to form, my question not answered but given its part in a vast unfolding design lit by a risen sun.
Music: Thomas Song
Thomas’ Song – Hallal Music
Jesu you were all to me,
Why did you die on Calvary?
O Lamb of God, I fail to see
How this could be part of the plan.
They say that you’re alive again
But I saw death and every sin
Reach out to claim their darkest whim
How could this part if the plan?
If I could only
Hold your hand
And touch the scars
Where nail were driven,
I would need
To feel your side
Where holy flesh
A spear was riven,
Then I’d believe,
Only then I’d believe
Your cruel death
Was part of a heavenly plan.
Holy presence, holy face
A vision filling time and space
Your newness makes my spirit race
Could this be part of the plan?
I see the wounds that caused the cry
From heaven, ocean, earth, and sky
When people watched their savior die
Could this be part of the plan?
Reaching out
To hold your hand
And touch the scars
Where nails were driven
Coming near
I feel your side
Where holy flesh
A spear was riven
Now I believe
Jesus now I believe
Your cruel death
Was part of a heavenly plan
I proudly say
With blazen cry
You are my Lord and my God
Lavish Mercy 