Patience - Easter 2A

Saint John 20:19-31

Some of you are able to remember those warm dismal days while others, like me bore only a small, long since faded scar on our upper arms that gave a witness to a long battle with a deadly disease.

Discover Magazine described it this way:

Like a horror movie, throughout the first half of the 20th century, the polio virus arrived each summer, striking without warning. No one knew how polio was transmitted or what caused it. There were wild theories that the virus spread from imported bananas or stray cats. There was no known cure or vaccine.

For the next four decades, swimming pools and movie theaters closed during polio season for fear of this invisible enemy. Parents stopped sending their children to playgrounds or birthday parties for fear they would “catch polio.”1

In 1952, the number of polio cases in the U.S. peaked at 57,879, resulting in 3,145 deaths. Those who survived this highly infectious disease could end up with some form of paralysis, forcing them to use crutches, wheelchairs or to be put into an iron lung, a large tank respirator that would pull air in and out of the lungs, allowing them to breathe.2

If they have any memory of this outbreak at all people will usually sum up the story in a single sentence:  And then a guy named Jonas Salk developed a vaccine and it all went away.  

If only it were that simple. 

Salk started his work at the University of Pittsburgh in 1947 3 and it wasn't until February 23 of 1954 that "a group of children from Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received the first injections of the new polio vaccine.”4

A little more than a month later, “on April 26, six-year-old Randy Kerr was injected with the Salk vaccine at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. By the end of June, an unprecedented 1.8 million people, including hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, joined him in becoming ‘polio pioneers.’”5

Even though it was one of the largest public health crises of the mid-20th century it took at least a year-and-a-half to develop a vaccine that would allow parents to send their children out to play with confidence.  

The legend of an overnight cure for any dreaded disease gave birth what George F. Will wrote recently to "the misconception that pharmacological silver bullets are the key to large improvements in public health."6  They are not as we are proving so far in our battle against Covid-19 or the Caronavirus. 

We are behaving.  We are careful without being unreasonable about social distancing.  We are staying home more even if it is doing great damage to our economy.   We are even learning what is it like to live without baseball.  

The hardest part of all, for me at least, is being patient.  We would all like to know when this is over so that we can get on with our lives. 

Even the NewsHour on PBS ran a segment on "When to Reopen" in which Judy Woodruff asked Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont where he came up with May 20th as the date when things could start to return to normal in his state. He explained that he hoped that by May 20th they "would be in a better position to determine what we can open, how we can open, and when we can open."6

I was watching this after a pizza supper with a long-standing friend of mine, Scott, who is a physician.  Scott said that the governor’s response to the question of how he determined what date it might be safe to start reopening things should have been: “How did I decide on May 20th?  I dunno.  I just pulled that day out of thin air.  It seemed as good as any.”    

Everybody wants to know the exact date and time we can go shopping without wearing a mask and looking we are going to rob the place.  We all want to know when we can use the public parks without worry and get back to church again without being concerned that  somebody is going to give us anything more that a warm welcome during the passing of the peace. 

For the foreseeable future anyway it looks like we are just going to have to be patient.  Patience, surprisingly enough, is one of the things today's gospel is about.

Yes, it is about another one of Jesus’ great resurrection appearances but today I am intrigued with how the disciples treated Thomas in the time between Jesus first appearance and his reappearance.

Today’s Gospel begins with the first followers of Jesus in the exact same place we have been for the last month – behind closed doors that have been locked because of fear.  It is precisely there and precisely then that Jesus comes to them.

This is the first time that Jesus has appeared to more than one or two women.  This time the whole gang is there, men and women all together in a group when he shows up in their midst.  However, one of their number is missing.  It is Thomas who would be forever cast in the role of being a doubter.

All he was really guilty of is missing an unscheduled meeting.  

You have to believe that after all the talk of Jesus being alive again if Thomas knew where and when Jesus could be seen he would have been there.  It would have been something that took precedent over everything else on his social calendar.  Had Jesus given some notice Thomas would have certainly been seated with the group waiting for the raised Lord’s grand entrance. 

He wasn’t.  And, for years, the honest humanness to his disappointment has caused  him to receive a short shrift.  He only wants to see for himself.  He only wants to have his own experience of the risen Jesus before he is willing to commit himself.  He can’t be sure until he does his own poking around into the matter.  So, he folds his arms over his chest and says, in effect, “let’s see if what you are saying is true.”

It is not what happens but what doesn’t happen at this point that intrigues me.

The others don’t get upset with Thomas.  They don’t raise their voices and wave their arms and shout:  “We’re telling you, man, this happened!  This really happened!  He was here!  Standing right where you are standing now!”  

They don’t force him out of the group and neither does he leave.  We don’t know exactly what they did between resurrection appearance one and resurrection appearance two but there is no evidence that they became angry with Thomas or each other.  Nor are we told they sat around drumming their fingers on the table wondering, “When is Jesus coming back?”

There is a great deal of patience in this text, men and woman.  They are patient with Thomas.  He is patient with them.  They all are patiently waiting on Jesus.

Eventually, like eight days earlier, Jesus shows up and if we play close attention to the text we’ll see that something is missing.

Michelangelo Caravaggio thought it was there and in one of his graphic biblical paintings of the late 16th and early 17th century paintings depicted the meeting of Jesus and Thomas in shocking detail.  

The painting (pictured above) is called “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas” and has the future saint poking around the wound in Jesus side like some really cruel emergency room physician.  A couple of other disciples have come close to watch as an index finger is plunged, knuckle deep, into the gash.  

Caravaggio painted it that way but that is not the way Saint John portrays the scene in his gospel.  

Jesus issues the invitation to poke and prod as much as he would like but Thomas response is only to cry out, “My Lord and my God!”  In scripture Thomas keeps his “social distance” before he makes his confession.  

I think that is because he had the same experience that the followers had when Jesus first showed up eight days earlier and said, “Peace be with you.”

Isn’t that exactly what we need the resurrected Christ to give us now, at this moment? We need his peace.

We can work out our theology of mission later when we can be sent back out into the world.  We can plumb the theological depths of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus later when we don’t have to pull on rubber gloves and don a mask that steams up our glasses before we go into the grocery story.  There will be much to think about and do once we are sprung from the separateness of our isolation.

For now, what we need more than ever is Christ’s peace.  

The promise of the resurrected Christ is that he is coming to us, like he came to those first followers, on that first Easter, and offering us nothing less that his peace, God’s peace.

As we hear those words, “peace be with you,” may they wash over our hearts and take root in our minds and help us to be patient  this day and for how many days there are to come.  

__________

1. Carl Kurlander and University of Pittsburgh. “The Deadly Polio Epidemic and Why It Matters for Coronavirus.” Discover Magazine, April 17, 2020. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-deadly-polio-epidemic-and-why-it-matters-for-coronavirus.

2.  “Salk Legacy.”   Pitt Public Health, University of Pittsburgh. Accessed April 17, 2020. https://publichealth.pitt.edu/home/about/vision-mission-history/salk.

3.  “Children Receive First Polio Vaccine.” History. A&E Television Networks, February 20, 2020. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/children-receive-first-polio-vaccine.

4.  Christopher Klein, “Eight Things You May Not Know About Dr. Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine.” History. A&E Television Networks, March 25, 2020. https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-jonas-salk-and-the-polio-vaccine.

5.  George F. Will. “You Are Not a Teetering Contraption.” The Washington Post, March 20, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/you-are-not-a-teetering-contraption/2020/03/19/806d504a-6a08-11ea-abef-020f086a3fab_story.html.

6. “When to Reopen.” The NewsHour. New York, New York: PBS, April 14, 2020.

____________