Extraordinary Time

Peace be with you.

Jesus speaks these words no fewer than three times in today's gospel story. Peace is his most precious gift to his grieving disciples, and surely his most precious gift to us. For let's face it, to be "marked as Christ's own for ever," baptized into Jesus' death and resurrection, obviously does not mean immunity from pain and tragedy in this world. The peace that Jesus gives must transcend personal circumstances, which does mean that when we ourselves are faced with pain and tragedy, betrayal or loss, we have resources to draw on far deeper than our own with which to confront and face them down. Accepting the risen Jesus' gift of peace is to trust that, in Christ, the hideous refuse of death and despair can be transformed into rich soil from which new life can spring, and to make this discovery for ourselves is to touch a sacred mystery at the very heart of our faith.

I recently attended an exhibit of watercolor paintings by a local artist. I went with the expectation of seeing a set of rather blurry, impressionistic images with colors merging into each other and no sharp definitions anywhere. To my surprise, what I found were images with hot, clear edges, blocks of bright color startlingly set off from each other: a brilliantly white Greek chapel against a vibrant blue Mediterranean sky; the sharp profile of a purple mesa, its flat top slicing across a drab landscape. I had not known that the medium of watercolor could be harnessed to such dramatic effect.

Holy Week and Easter present the Christian story in sharp profile, high definition, laying bare its drama of state injustice, bone-crushing pain, heartbreaking sorrow, and their astonishing transformation through Jesus' resurrection into incredulous joy - and new purpose for the future. All that constitutes the core of our faith is presented with pointed clarity in this season, as we experienced in the great narrative cycle from Palm Sunday through the Great Vigil of Easter. It is strong stuff: I remember a parishioner of mine who would say, "I don't want to be there on Palm Sunday. I just can't stand it." But we need to be there, to reconnect with the root of our faith - where there is no blurring, no vague outline as we trace the defining events of Jesus' life, death and resurrection, through the liturgical season of "Extraordinary Time."

For much of the church year, and for most of our own lives, we live in that long green season that the Church calls Ordinary Time. We perform on schedule, meeting deadlines and observing the conventions, eating and sleeping more or less without undue stress or challenge. Until one day, a spouse is diagnosed with cancer and the doctor estimates that she has only a few months to live. Or I wake up with a sudden realization of "things undone" and a conviction that I must take up some new and demanding challenge, perhaps join Teach America, or volunteer overseas, fixing kids' cleft palates or doing research on river blindness in Africa. For even while we are sleeping, the world's broken heart can touch and penetrate the soul to the point that we can no longer deny our gifts - an ability, a talent or a training that could truly make a difference. Blurred outlines yield to sharp clarity: Resurrection faith lays claim to us when we honestly take stock of the world and its woes, and our faith compels us to respond by endeavoring to be an agent of new life to others. And when the woes are ours, resurrection faith is clinging to Jesus and claiming our own resurrection through the power of his. Millions of Christians, myself included, have found new life after personal devastation through such a claim.

We have all had the experience of "seeing" what we expect, of stepping forward to greet a total stranger whom we have mistaken for the very person we are waiting for, at an airport or a train station. Anticipation itself makes us credulous. Thomas, who is so dramatically featured in today's gospel reading from John (the only Gospel in which this story occurs), is the mirror image to that experience: he is determined not to be credulous, but skeptical to the last. "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."

Thomas has become the very poster-boy of skepticism itself, as the gospel writer intended that he should, and many of us feel for him in the role to which John has relegated him. After all, he is actually one of us, a post-Enlightenment thinker who demands reliable evidence on which to base his conclusions. Hearsay and third party reporting are not enough.

But Jesus' gift of peace does not depend on evidence, and does not come easily to the skeptic. It is a gift precisely to the credulous, to those who expect to meet the Christ in all circumstances and all persons, even the most unpromising, the least appealing or attractive. I heard a priest speak recently about her work in hospice. She spoke passionately and with deep feeling about the privilege of intimacy with a dying person, and she was adamant that far from this being a depressing experience she finds it uplifting and enormously rewarding. The peace she shares with persons so near to the end of their earthly life is the peace of Christ, both for them and for herself.

It is at such extra-ordinary moments that Resurrection faith may even be most vibrantly real and present. Paradoxically, though, Christ's peace - born out of extraordinary suffering and drama - brings calm and confidence to all seasons of our living by faith.

We shall return soon enough to "ordinary time," the lines will again become a little blurred, our faith perhaps less urgent. Yet without the demands and drama of Holy Week and Easter our faith would be without an anchor … vague, flaccid, lacking definition. Praise God that the risen Jesus' gift of peace to his astonished disciples, utterly unprepared for his forgiveness, overjoyed at the sight of him, is his gift to us as well.

Now unto Him who loved us and gave himself for us, be glory, might, majesty, dominion and power both now and to all eternity.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!