Neil Alexander, President and Publisher emeritus of the UM Publishing House, recently sent out a piece written by my friend, Don Underwood, a retired UM pastor in Texas. He captures the mood and doubts of the disciples following the death of Jesus. I find that the way he describes the despair and doubts of the disciples long ago speaks profoundly to the state of the church today and the feelings of many modern-day disciples. The applications are on many levels depending on where you are with God and the situation of our world and your life, so I’ll let it speak to you as it will. In a few weeks we will begin our Lenten journey to the cross and thought this would be a good way to start preparing us.
Right Where God Wants Us
We see them there, huddled in the same small room where they had last dined with Jesus. The doors were locked, the windows shuttered, ears tuned to the potential sound of footsteps on the stairs, the knock on the door, the warrants in hand. A shared sense of doom smothered them in an emotional chaos that was blacker than the night that engulfed them.
We can only guess at the emotions and thoughts that tortured them. Some were surely berating themselves for their naiveté, the innocence or false optimism that had led them to believe in Jesus, to believe that their “movement” would be joyfully transforming. Why had they decided to believe in someone who had now been proved to be a fraud? Had their “call” been a hoax, a delusion?
Others were less prone to self-incrimination but more cynical. How could this have happened? What was wrong with a world or a culture that could not even recognize a good man for what he was? We have underestimated the forces of evil that surround us. How does one navigate a world that is this treacherous, this unpredictable? We have not been fully equipped for this kind of service.
We know what Peter was thinking and feeling. Peter felt like a failure. In the midst of all the bad news, the bad news that Peter obsessed about was his own failure. Not only had he failed Jesus with his three-fold denial. Worse, he had failed himself, failed to live up to the person he had believed himself to be. In the ugly aftermath of the crucifixion, self-recrimination dominated his thoughts and feelings.
Then there was Thomas who, even in the midst of post-resurrection hopefulness, could not overcome his doubt. “Yes,” he said. “I know you say he is alive, but he is not alive to me.” After all those years of believing, Thomas could not now tear himself away from the gnawing sense that it was all a sham. That it would always be so. A life wasted on a self-imposed illusion. He would not fall for the big lie again.
They were all in different places, haunted by different nightmares, but collectively this was true of them all: There was no way they could understand the past…and no way they could envision the future. Do you suppose that the disciples gathered in this room might be not that much different from the disciples gathered in that room two thousand years ago?
Our reading of the story might indicate that God had them right where God wanted them to be. That without those days in the darkness of the tomb, they would never really understand the mission Jesus had given them. They would have continued to envision the Kingdom of God as triumphant rather than subversive, the Love of God as selective rather than universal, painless rather than incarnational.
The western writer Louis L’Amour could occasionally drop a memorable line: “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning."
The first question any of us must begin with is this: Is it possible that God has us right where God wants us to be.”
--Don Underwood
God bless,
Rob