Peace and Forgiveness

Ideas matter, especially ideas that transform vision and give meaning and purpose. In Chapel, during this week which began with the phenomenon of the solar eclipse, there was a kind of inverse of the eclipse in pondering some of the intriguing stories about the resurrection. Simply put, the resurrection does not eclipse the passion of Christ; rather it makes visible what is hidden but present in the passion, namely, light in darkness, life in death. In an insight which belongs to a number of philosophical and religious traditions, the passion and resurrection witnesses to the powerful idea of the principle of life itself which is greater than sin and death, greater than suffering and evil which they in fact presuppose. The resurrection accounts in the Gospels show how that idea comes to be known by the disciples.

This week also marked the end of Ramadan with the Feast of Eid al-fitr for the Islamic world, itself a celebration of what is made known through the giving of the Qur’an to Mohammed. Once again, the focus on what is made known about God through the forms of revelation in the various spiritual traditions of faith.

The stories of the resurrection belong to the process of education itself: how ideas are made real and live in us as students and teachers. The 20th chapter of John’s Gospel is particularly compelling in the image of the disciples huddled in fear behind closed doors “on the same day at evening” and eight days later, again behind closed doors. The image speaks to our culture of fear and anxiety. We are in fear and confusion behind the closed doors of our minds, literally and metaphorically closed in ourselves, even buried in ourselves. Our minds are like tombs where we are dead in ourselves and to one another. Yet this is the setting where Jesus comes into the midst and proclaims peace and forgiveness. He makes visible what was hidden but present in his crucifixion and death: the peace which God brings and the forgiveness which God alone gives.

A striking feature of John’s account is the emphasis upon the reality of the passion. “He showed unto them his hands and his side.” The marks of the crucifixion are central to the teaching; they become the marks of love, the love which transforms us and sets us in motion. “Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.” The first moment is on “the same day at evening,” meaning Easter day in the evening and in the same Upper Room as the Passover meal on the night of Christ’s betrayal. The second moment is a week later but again behind closed doors. With the first moment, it is as if time has slowed and we are in the moment, the eternal now of divine life itself. “Peace be unto you,” Jesus says, twice on this occasion and then a third time a week later. The first moment ends with the theme of forgiveness bestowed and entrusted to the disciples upon whom Jesus breathed his spirit, the Holy Spirit. They are sent to proclaim forgiveness, to make his forgiveness known to all who seek it. They are made apostles, those who are sent.

The second moment further emphasises what is seen in the first. One of the disciples, Thomas, was not there on that “same day at evening.” He heard from the others about the risen Christ and famously says that unless he sees and touches the print of the nails in his hand and thrusts his own hand into Jesus’ wounded side, he will not believe. Jesus appears to him and tells him to thrust out his hand and to see and touch and “be not faithless but believing.” Out of that moment comes Thomas’ equally famous words: “My Lord and My God,” an affirmation of the reality of Incarnation through the passion. The resurrection does not eclipse but makes known what was hidden but present in the passion.

 

This second moment is also where Jesus says for the third time “Peace be unto you.” Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark, is a marvellous parody of our ideological presumptions and pretensions about what we claim to know simply on the basis of assertion. “What I tell you three times is true.” Is something true just because it is asserted over and over again? It is a feature of our times that the repetition of fake news and false ‘truths’ seem to become ‘truths’ because of the barrage of repetition. The Hunting of the Snark is an amusing but telling critique of such folly. “For the Snark was a Boojum,” you see. Delightful nonsense, a spoof on our assertions and claims.

 

These two scenes in John’s Gospel offer a serious reflection on how ideas come to birth and live in us through things said and seen that bring into clarity what was already there but not fully known. I find it intriguing that the disciples after the first encounter are still behind closed doors eight days later. There is a kind of honesty and a recognition about the struggle to learn. Simply put, we don’t always get it right away. It takes time and requires reflection and, yes, a certain kind of repetition. One meaning of the word ‘religion’ (from re-legere) is the idea of ‘re-reading,’ reading things over and over again in order to get into their deeper meaning. It is only through that process that we might begin to take a hold of what is shown and made visible to us. It doesn’t all happen at once. Such are the honest limitations to our knowing.

 

The Gospels themselves show us this process of learning about how ideas come to birth in us and how they come to transform us and set us in motion in the overcoming of our fears and worries. That can only happen if we are open to what we are given to hear and see through these times of quiet contemplation and reflection. That is itself the antidote to our frantic busyness and self-preoccupations that bury us in ourselves and leave us huddled behind the closed doors of our minds. It makes known in us what is already hidden but present for us. Such is the spiritual nature of education in opening out to us ideas that become real in us through our attention to them. Peace and forgiveness are two of those ideas.