PROBLEM AND POTENTIAL

3rd April 2005 : Easter 2 : Year A
Acts 2:14a, 22-32 : 1 Peter 1:1-12 : John 20:19-31

In one of the typically-insightful, no-nonsense contemporary penitential liturgies of the Iona Community we find the following words:

God of all time, forgive us … our weird talent for spotting the problem before the potential …

This “weird talent” is one part of what lies at the heart of the amorphous beast the intelligentsia in general and literati in particular call the “human condition”. In more common parlance we know this weird talent by the name Negativity.

It’s a negativity which plagues all humankind but certainly finds expression within the confines of the Church, which has an equally-weird talent for elevating dungeons of despair above ground-level and celebrating them as marvels.

Thus for centuries we’ve taken Thomas out of John, slandered him with an epithet which doesn’t even translate the scriptural text accurately, defamed both Tom and scripture by insisting that he performed certain unseemly acts for which no textual exists, and willfully ignored Tom’s explosive proclamation of faith in the risen Jesus – all in the name of assuaging our own failures of faith and faith-based action.

In other words, we’ve made Thomas a scapegoat – the one who carries our burden of guilt and shame, dumped onto his name just so that we can feel better about ourselves.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m all for feeling better about myself!

But the humungous problems with scapegoating are that it provides no more than a short-term solution, and it never successfully challenges us to change because scapegoating never addresses, let alone resolves, the deeper issues which cause those failures to begin with.

But perhaps the greatest problem with scapegoating is that it completely fails to understand the true nature of the Living God, revealed in and through Jesus, and especially in his resurrection.

The scapegoat notion certainly provides one answer to my longheld question why Tom gets dumped-on for demanding the same privilege accorded the quaking apostles holed upon behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews”, though it is better, more accurate and less anti-semitic to say “fear of the JUDAEANS”.

But until recently I’d never wondered what Thomas was doing? Why wasn't he with his knee-knocking chums? One suggestion is that perhaps he was already out in the field, doing the God-work, meeting the risen Jesus among the oppressed and marginalised, the people for whom Jesus worked so many deeds of love and peace and grace. Maybe he didn’t need the empirical evidence the way the others clearly did – for they didn’t believe until Jesus showed them his wounds …

Nor is it entirely improbable that Tom was trying to make good on his rash exhortation to “go to Jerusalem and die with [Jesus]”, spoken not long before the resuscitation of Lazarus.

Either way, Tommy Twinset didn’t die just then, and I admit it’s all speculation. But we DO know that he was NOT locked up with the disciples for fear of the Judaeans.

The point is, maybe Thomas had already understood the message and maybe THAT’s why he didn’t need the proofs. And maybe that lack of need informed his decision NOT to accept Jesus’ grisly invitation to finger the resurrectional wounds.

But it’s our weird talent for spotting the problem which seems to cause our failure to acknowledge and credit Tom’s subsequent explosion of the great proclamation – My Lord and my God! We won’t credit that because it’s not part of our experience: WE don’t say that about Jesus. … Because the scapegoat doesn’t do anything right or good. …Whereas, WE know about failed faith and Thomas looks fit for the part – the outsider (literally!), outspoken where we prefer to be taciturn, willing to express the unpopular opinion, ask the question we are too afraid to ask …

Which brings us back to negativity. We find it at home, at work, in the Church, in our parishes, in OUR Parish …

Scapegoating and negativity are of a kind because both work overtime at spotting problems and neither effectively propose solutions. LEAST OF ALL do they drop sweat looking for the potential. And both work in total ignorance of God’s way of love, peace and grace.

Remember last Sunday? We celebrated the resurrection in a particular way – and rightly we celebrate the resurrection every Sunday, and certainly we’ll celebrate the resurrection in particular for a whole fifty-day period. We call it Easter, which isn’t about one day or a single event. It’s about an entire lifetime.

And that lifetime is lived within the mantle of the Living God who sed, Forget your scapegoats, forget your negativity, and most of all forget your shame and blame. Negativity sed, Jesus was crucified, he’s dead as a Dodo, ain’t no reversing that! And God sed, You forget the potential. I deal with life. I deal with peace, and with grace.

How is that we in the Parish of the Holy Spirit, Westfield, have forgotten that we now live our lives in the love, peace and grace of the Living God, who raised Jesus from the dead on the third day, and sought, not revenge and satisfaction, but people who would accept the revelation of love and peace and grace? How is it that we live and breathe the divine potential made real and shared with us through the Spirit whose name we bear, and yet we still dare to proclaim the gospel of shame and blame?

Is this God’s example? NO IT IS NOT!

As we stumble into one more Parish crisis we need as much as ever to grasp what the Living God does for us and use the potential dormant within us. Some of it happens, certainly. But more can happen. More NEEDS to happen. Unless, of course, we believe that we have no more of God’s work to do here. Unless, of course, we believe that we have successfully completed all of God’s work here. That no more lonely, abused, unemployed, despairing, suicidal, forgotten, unloved, uncared-for people exist within our boundaries and beyond …

If that’s the case let’s all go, like, Alleluia, dude! and rack off to another parish, where we can keep the great work happening.

If not, then it’s Potential Time, B2: welcome the new ideas; nurture the wackiest ones; question the soundest, most plausible ones without negating or destroying them. Search within our own store of potential even as we seek the potential in others’ suggestions.

Above all, live in the New World given us by resurrection. Love, peace, grace. Life, not death. Not problems, but potential waiting to be made real! After all, it’s not we who will act, but the Spirit of the Living God within us. Anyone have a problem with that? Or should I say, Let me know today all the potential you see in the glorious place we inhabit!