Mainers are interesting people. Culturally, Maine straddles the line between skeptical, reserved, intellectual, highly educated Yankeedom, and Appalachia. The result is people who think long and hard about things before deciding that aliens are real and have abducted their neighbor's cow. I think it's in part to do with where we live, because Maine is full of woods. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but those woods are full of mystery. Consequently, many of the people who live here report seeing strange and inexplicable things among the trees, including Bigfoot. Or as he is locally known by his French name, the Loup Garou. One of those who believes in the Maine bigfoot, is my brother-in-law. He is a very smart man, who loves hiking with his dogs, going on hunts, and has spent more time in the wilderness than I’ve spent in my backyard. He knows these woods, and the animals who make their home here. He knows enough and is smart enough to know that there is a lot that cannot be explained in the Maine wilderness.
If he says something like bigfoot could be in the woods, I believe him. Even though I have seen things, earlier this week I took a walk down the back of the church and encountered a group of deer. Once while walking round a back field, I was startled by a full grown mother moose and her calf who jumped out of the tree line less than ten feet away from me and ran across the field. I’ve unexpectedly seen all sorts of animals come out of the woods; eagles, a snowy owl and a Lynx and even tourists from New Jersey, so why shouldn’t there be Bigfoot? Yet still I find myself skeptical. I just don’t know these woods well enough to totally believe that a giant stinky ape man thing is out there, but I also don’t know them well enough to disbelieve. Until I get to know Maine better, I have to stick with my brother-in-law who knows enough to have faith.
In today’s Gospel we encounter someone who has become the arch skeptic of history. We know him as “doubting Thomas”. The title, doubting, seems distinctly unfair. Thomas was a faithful disciple of Jesus, and even after Jesus death sticks with the other ten remaining apostles. Thomas, who it seems, is the only one brave enough to go out to get everyone lunch misses Jesus' first visit. The other disciples start telling him that Jesus had risen, and unsurprisingly he doesn’t believe them. But he also didn’t run away, in the face of what he could quite easily have interpreted as their madness. Thomas stays with them for an entire week before Jesus comes back to the apostles again.
Jesus, what a jerk to leave Thomas in the lurch for a whole week. Maybe, just maybe Jesus knows Thomas can handle it. We know from elsewhere in the gospels that Jesus has other things to be doing, business to be about. We will hear next Sunday how Jesus traveled to Emmaus and beyond. And we know from the end of today's gospel reading that, “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written” down. What we have in our Bible is written so that we, who have not seen like Thomas eventually did, may come to believe. From faithful Thomas we know that Jesus is willing to return to those who are endowed with skepticism. Is willing to be with those who have denied, who have run away, and have messed up. Whose belief has failed, and who cannot accept what is told to them. Jesus is willing to come to them, so that they might believe. Not just a faith in an intellectually perfect Jesus, but rather a belief in a holy present and resurrected Jesus. It’s ok to have doubts and skepticism, so long as we are faithful in trying to know Jesus. So long as we remain with those who are also disciples. Until Jesus is able to come to us, we will be the blessed who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
The resurrection is not a story of the healing of all wounds. It is not the story of covering over all doubts or uncertainty. Rather, it's a story of victory over all that fear, pain, doubt and uncertainty that separate us from God’s love, while those wounds continue to heal in our lives. Thomas does not come to believe in Jesus till he is able to touch those wounds that Jesus still bears. Till he is able to see the scars of unjust human suffering that God is willing to bear into eternity. The wounded and yet risen Lord Jesus has become so much more that the disciples don’t always recognize him. But still Jesus does not lose the signs of what it took, for him to get to resurrection, does not lose the signs of the cross. This is a great comfort to us humans. We, too, may bear scars. We have wounds that will not heal for a long time, maybe even into eternity. The healing of our suffering in resurrection does not mean we are left unmarked, rather that the open wounds of our suffering can be transfigured and transformed into greater joy.
Back in the day, before Martin Luther and the reformation, late medieval popular piety, was very focused on the wounds of Jesus. Pictures of Jesus' pierced hands and feet were hung in homes and carved into church doors. Episcopalians perceive something of that with our red front doors. Churches also featured rood screens, large wooden screens with a gate in the middle and a gigantic crucifixion scene on top known as the rood, which is where they got their name. To get up to the front of the church, you would have to pass underneath the grizzly image of Jesus on the cross. You would have to pass under the blood of Jesus. These screens were oddly very comforting for many people. In a world where life was hard, injuries common and modern medicine was nonexistent, people felt close to the wounded Jesus when they too were in pain. Which was all too often. So they felt like they could enter into the hope of healing, when they passed under the blood of Jesus. Passed under the blood in order to encounter the resurrected Jesus in communion.
Modern pentecostal churches have preserved something of the identification between the suffering of Jesus and the healing of those who come to our resurrected Lord. I recently came across a drum and bass remix of a Jamaican pastor preaching, with the repeated refrain “under the blood”, which I shared with my children. Once they had worked out what he was saying they were very confused and disgusted. “That's really weird. Why is he talking about blood?” The apparently macabre use of language about being washed in blood comes from our realization that Jesus is with us in pain. I tend to agree with my children, using this language at public worship is odd, but knowing that when Jesus comes to us in our pain, in doubts and uncertainty, he comes as the wounded healer, with whom we can identify, is a great comfort.
The blood that Jesus is willing to carry in his veins and shed in our service, is the same blood we all carry. In Church we are one community, but more we are one flesh, one body, through Jesus. The doubts we face are the same doubts all Christians since Thomas have faced. We too need the resurrected yet still wounded Jesus to overcome them. As Jesus identifies with us, we are invited to identify with Jesus. As Jesus becomes one of us who suffers and bears the wounds and scars of life as a human, we are invited to become one with Jesus in his resurrection so that, though we still bear the wounds of this life, we are able to enter into God's eternal glory. Amen.