John 20:19-31 thoughts

As I continued to ask people what they think of "know" or "hear" in John 20:19-31 I found myself drawn to a different place from what I glean from the conversations.

Perhaps it is the way I am asking the question but everyone when I ask them about this story I keep hearing about Thomas and his "doubt" (which by the way is a Greek work apistos which is always mistranslated as "doubt" but it is much better to translate it as "unbelief" which I think is a great deal of difference). For some reason, perhaps I am more of a Thomas myself, I am really drawn to what Jesus has to say.

For starters, I think it is weird that Thomas gets a bad wrap even today when the gnostic disputes of day of the Gospel writer are over. It is argued that Thomas represents many gnostic thoughts of the day of John and so Thomas is used in the Gospel to argue against the Gnostic tradition. Thomas is not usually in a positive light in the Gospel of John. Secondly, I think it is weird that Thomas gets a bad wrap when he asks for the exact same things the other disciples got to see - the wounds of Jesus. All of the disciples did not believe what they had heard from Mary Magdalene about the risen Christ and all the male disciples required the 'proof' of the wounds. If there is anyone who is 'doubting' in this story it is everyone but Mary and "the Disciple whom Jesus loved".

Beside all this who is doubting and who believes, the thing that strikes me is the amount of play in books and conversation that goes on about the disciples and not about Jesus in this story. I mean we have the risen Christ here and we focus on the disciples and specifically on Thomas. Why?

Some might claim that we do not know what to do about a Risen Jesus Christ. We do not know how to talk about or relate to Resurrection for whatever reason (and boy howdy have I heard many reasons). It might be that we are such a society that is so ego centric that we put ourselves in the middle of the story and glean from it a moral lesson about how to live our faith or our life. I don't know. All I know is there is a lot of talk about the Disciples in a story that, from what I can see, is about the resurrected Christ.

What I plan to share tonight at church is not original to me at all, in fact few of my thoughts are unique to me. What I plan on doing is juxtaposing this of Jesus with the story of Cain and Abel, specifically Genesis 4:9-10.

So I am curious to know, what do you think about juxtaposing those two stories? What do you 'hear' what do you 'see'? What connections can you make? Perhaps just in juxtaposing those two stories you can see where I was pulled this week.

Thoughts...

Spirals of violence

It has been brought to my attention that people often come into tension with one another. This is not good or bad, it just is a result of different people encountering one another in a situation. Tension happens, but how we respond to that tension is what defines our character.

There is a story as old as the South about the Hatfields and McCoys. Honestly, I have never heard a specific story about these families, but I do know why they are a part of the Southern lore. They hated one another and had knockdown massive feuds with one another - often resulting in violence. As it has been told to me the dispute over who owned a pig was the seed by which members of one family was killed by members of the other family in retaliation.

All of which began over was the rightful owner of a pig.

Folklore or not, we can see these actions happen all around us; especially with children.

Child 'a' will be sitting too close for child 'b's liking. Child 'b' pushes child 'a' away and yells he is too close. Child 'a' hits child 'b' as a reaction for the pushing. Child 'b' cries and both call for the mother. Both explain that the other started the whole episode and they are innocent.

While this is a fictional account, it is not an untrue situation in many families.

These examples of the Southern families and children arguing over who "started it", are both embodiments of what I identify as a 'spiral' of violence. The action begins and then quickly spirals out of control until the parties involved do not even recall what the initial conflict was about.

Spirals are all around us. In fact I bet you could name a couple in your own life experience. Perhaps you were involved in a spiral yourself, even unintentionally.

Spirals are one way in which humanity deals with the tension or conflict we encounter. But it is not the only way...