Easter One Week Later:
Giant Fraud or Steadfast Promise?
Sermon by James W. Crawford
April 19, 1998
I don't suppose many of you here this morning know the name Anthony Cerminaro. He happens to be 61 years old this year and lives in Jermyn, Pennsylvania. He might be among us this morning. In any case, Mr. Cerminaro ran in the Marathon last year and he finished first in the 60 and over category with a time of two hours, fifty-four minutes and seventeen seconds. But Anthony Cerminaro never got to the victor's stand. He did not meet the mayor or the governor. He did not receive his trophy and his garlands out here on Boylston Street.
There may be others of you who are unacquainted with the name Susan Gustafson. She finished first in the women's over-fifty category last year. She is from Norwell. She finished in three hours, nineteen minutes and forty seven seconds. But she did not make it to the victor's stand either. No congratulatory words from Mayor Menino or then Governor Weld; no garlands, pictures, celebratory words from public officials; no headlines in The Globe or The Herald. I suspect each of them, Mr. Cerminaro and Ms. Gustafson, each felt a surge of pride, knowing they had given their best and had surely done well in light of the conditions and the competition. But in this case, no cigar.
Now the reason Mr. Cerminaro and Ms. Gustafson, for all their magnificent effort, did not make it to the victors' celebration lies in the fact that two other people in their age brackets happened to cross the finish line before they did. And while you may not know the name of Susan Gustafson and Anthony Cerminaro, you may well know the names of Suzanne and John Murphy. Fifty-nine-year-old Suzanne Murphy crossed the line last year and the clock recorded her in three hours twelve minutes and eighteen seconds, the fastest time ever by a fifty-nine-year-old woman here in Boston. And her husband John crossed in two hours, forty minutes and nine seconds, the second best ever by a US runner 60 or over -- and as the reports indicated, "all on a day when the wind was in their faces and the sun was beating on their backs."
Well, as many of you will remember, the Murphys did not make it to the victors' stand either, and after an intense review of video tapes, then conversations with the Murphys at their home in Cypress, California, and finally intense discussion and consideration among Marathon Officials, the Murphys and their exquisite times were disqualified and they have been banned from the race for life.
How did they get to the finish in such splendid time? How could they be disqualified, what with those microchips in their shoe laces registering at the start, at the half-way point and right here outside the church? It seems they cheated. The Boston Athletic Association believed the Murphys failed to complete the course. Failed to complete the course? How could they do that? Well, John McGrath, editor of The New England Runner who has been leading camera crews around the course for the last ten years posits some ideas. "It's easy to do in a car. All you need is to have one parked somewhere, say a mile down the course, and jump out of the race at that point and go to Wellesley Center. Then run over the computer mat there and jump back in the car, and go to Boston." Others suggested the subway, still others a motor cycle or a scooter, and still others suggested they may have transferred their microchips to some more vigorous runners' shoes. (Some psychologists commenting on a cheater's motivation suggested there are some runners who would rather beat the surveillance system than win the race! Nobody here this morning is like that, of course.) In any case, The Boston Athletic Association is not clear on the means, but they are plenty sure the Murphys and their stupendous and unprecedented times were a fraud. Right here in Boston, the Hub of the Universe -- on Patriots Day -- A gigantic fraud!
I
Now I use that story, as you may suspect, to broach the introduction of one of the New Testament's unique and special characters, Thomas. Thomas believed the Easter appearance of Jesus to be, just like the Murphys' claims for fantastic times, a living lie, a fake, a hoax, a fraud. You see, after what Thomas witnesses on Good Friday, the messy, brutal death of the one he treasured most in this world, Thomas cannot believe in a loving God anymore. No one can convince him of a living God who would let such a horror happen as happened to Jesus of Nazareth. No argument can persuade him. No hearsay can convince him. He receives the testimony of his friends and instead of rejoicing with them, he replies to them, I suspect, something like this: "As much as we want life to be different, as much as we covet a world where goodness counts, where truth claims the edge, where love makes a difference, as much as we want that kind of world, we know it is simply wishful thinking. The world," says Thomas, "is finally like Calvary -- that Cross, that mob, the cynical governor, our own cowardice during those crucial hours: life is finally like that. Nothing I see can reverse for me the dark and cruel message shrieked by the death of Jesus. No, my friends, the dream is dead, the cause is lost, the forces willing to mutilate life, the powers crippling us, the near misses, the failed promises breaking our hearts: these bear the last word in our lives. Unless I see the prints of the nails and touch the wound in his side, a conquering Christ seems preposterous in a world where terrible things like crucifixions still hold sway. No Sunday hope can nullify that Friday catastrophe in my life. You tell me of nothing but a giant fraud. I survive, but I survive without hope."
II
Does Thomas speak for you or for me? Does he speak for the pain in our world risking again the Easter promise? I do not know what pricked your heart or tested your souls this week, but a quick review of headlines might put the Easter hope up for grabs:
A letter carrier fatally shot a post office clerk yesterday after they argued in the break room. . .
In Benoni, South Africa, a white man put a bullet through the head of 6 month old black infant, while shooting at her 11 year old auntie, wounding her seriously. . .
At least 70 women, many of them manufacturing workers, have been raped and murdered, and dumped in the Chihuahua desert in the last five years. . .
A man was shot dead today in a Roman Catholic part of Belfast, the police said, the first killing since last weekend's peace agreement. . .
An all day onslaught of tornadoes swept Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky today, killing 10 people in rural areas and injuring scores in downtown Nashville.
15 Red Cross workers were kidnapped in lawless and shattered Mogadishu. . .
The legacy of Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields consists of the continuing violence, political feuds, corruption and political fragility in that country. .
The Easter promise: is it believable? A splendid poet by the name of Ann Weems has a hard time believing it herself. I reviewed again a wonderful and poignant collection of Psalms she composed when her son was killed, freakishly, in the crossfire of an inner city gunfight. It well nigh killed her. And she cries,
God, explain to me
the cruelty of your world!
Make sense of those
who make no sense!
Tell me why the innocent die
and evil people live
to kill again!
Tell me why the faithful
are shunned
and the self-righteous
point their fingers!
Tell me why the wounded
are wounded
and sorrow falls
on the shoulder of sorrow!
Tell me why the abused
are abused,
and the victims
victimized!
Tell me why the rains
come to the drowning
and aftershocks
follow earthquakes.
O God, is this any way
to run a world?
O Merciful One, let us rest
between tragedies!
Speak to us
for we are your people.
Speak to us of hope
for the hopeless
and love for the unloved
and homes for the homeless
and dignity for the dying
and respect for the disdained.
Speak to us, O God
of the Resurrected One!
Speak to us of hope
for in spite of the wave of tears
we remember your story of new life!
Tell the world again,
O God, of creation!
Tell us that the winter will fade
and spring will wash us new,
and the world will be green again,
and we will be new creations
in the garden of our God.
Free us from these tentacles
of sorrow,
and we will fall on our faces
and worship you,
O God of goodness,
O God of a new green world!
One week after Easter when we trumpet the triumph of God, we look around and see so much denying the Easter Promise we might just as well be doubting Thomas ourselves, refusing to believe unless we put or fingers on the marks of the nails and our hand in the wound of his side. Do not tell us about Easter -- our world is still risky and dangerous, our wounds still deep, our losses overwhelming. Easter promises? The evidence points to a giant fraud.
III
Really? Is that where the story ends for some of us? Perhaps. But not for John. As John tells us, eight days later the disciples are again in the room. The doors are locked. Jesus comes among them announcing peace. He says to Thomas, "Reach your finger here; see my hands. Reach your hand here and put it into my side; be believing no longer, but believe. As the Father sent me so I send you."
Here, friends, we encounter the heart of the Christian faith. Here we confront the glory of Easter's steadfast promise. I beg you hear it, for here we discover Gospel. We discover the love of God amid the woundedness of human life. We glimpse the Christian hope when everything seems against it. Here we learn the love of God can be found at those places it seems to be in evidence the least. Our hope can be discovered in those moments and events we label hopeless. Thomas's encounter with the wounds of Christ compels him – no, it compels us -- to understand that what makes God God is the revelation of love and hope at those very places love and hope seem most blasted and beaten down. The wounds of Christ bear the love of God. Our hope rests in the costly love that moves to where it is needed most.
I was struck again by the truth of all this as I came across a revealing article in Time Magazine last week about William Wylie Tomes, Jr., 63 years old, currently of Chicago Illinois -- now known in that city's toughest neighborhood as "Brother Bill." I have been intrigued by this Brother Bill ever since I read a reflection about him by another of his chroniclers, Tim Unsworth. Unsworth tells us Brother Bill is one of those exotic people, described by his own pastor as "one of those figures impassioned to meet God in other people." Tomes does so in such lavish proportions that he drives his own pastor nuts and "In a world where there is no such thing as a free lunch, Bill Tomes believes in unconditional love." He finds his home in Chicago's Cabrini-Greene Houses and the Horner Homes, a complex where according to Alex Kotlowicz, "There are no children here." A Catholic, graduating from Loyola Academy and Notre Dame, Tomes majored in English and minored in art. He left the church, became an atheist, dabbled in art, traveled the world, sidled up to bars, went to Bulls games, struggled through a couple of disastrous marriage engagements, flirted with a doctoral dissertation comparing psychotherapeutic practices in 18 countries and never finished. And then marching through a series of failed jobs, coming to hate his own art work, and finally booking some more job interviews, he stopped at a Ukrainian Orthodox church to do some thinking and praying. Here is how he describes his experience to Tim Unsworth.
"As soon as I knelt down," he said, "everything in the church that was of color turned black and everything that was white remained white. The whole vision was fuzzy, except for the face of Christ near the altar. Christ was speaking from the picture. He said, 'Love. You are forbidden to do anything other than that.'"
Tomes continues, "It was such a surprise I started to write it down. I asked Christ if I should take a job I had been offered in a hospital, and the answer came, 'I'll lead, you follow.'"
The dialogue goes on for some forty minutes and, as it continues, incredibly, Tomes tells the Christ-vision he has to make a dash for a dinner engagement with his sister. But he continues to encounter this vision in odd places. It admonishes him "to take nothing with you on this journey." The vision haunts him for months, he returns to the church where it first engulfed him and the same Jesus says to him, "Get out of here and never come back."
And Bill Tomes, never comes back -- not to that church. He returns to the Horner Homes and the Carbrini Green Projects where the first thing he hears is two girls promising to come to one another's funerals. They are ten years old. Over the years he has been in the middle of gunfire fifty-three times, he has baptized gang members dying in the Chicago streets, with snow; he has been shot-by, an event he considers analogous to baseball's brushback pitch, "meant to move you," he says. His Trappist-like habit is made of nearly a dozen pairs of old jeans. Unsworth says Bother Bill is poor at remembering names and terrible at paper work. . . but no matter; he is saving kids, standing by them, has the run of prisons, the playgrounds at night, he packs his young people off to Notre Dame to teach those undergraduates a thing or two; he finds himself consistently at the center of threatening or violent or bloody clashes among drug-dealers, turf-guardians, knife-brandishers, gun-wielders, hearing the threats:
"Brother Bill, we're gonna kill you if you don't get out of the way." His answer: "Well, I'm not going to, because I love you." "Brother Bill' we're going to wound you if you don't get out of the way." "I'm not going, because I love you." "Well, Brother Bill we're going to beat you up if you don't get out of the way." A long pause. And then a member of the Vice Lords gang that is warring with the Disciples over drug territory comes forward and says, "Stay up, Brother Bill. Stay up." The shooting and violence stops for the moment, an armistice is declared, and one young man says, "It's like if Brother Bill is willing to take a bullet because he loves you that much, it makes it harder for you to hate the other side. I think that's why the shooting stops." " I think he's an angel," says a 22-year-old Vice Lord, "I really believe God sent him here." "I ask myself," says Brother Bill, "what would St. Francis do?"
Isn't Brother Bill's story captured in that shrewd and wonderful observation: "one of those figures impassioned to meet God in other people?" It is this kind of person who seems to embody in our own time the very essence of this vivid, explosive narrative John offers us about Thomas.
Here is one who understands the kind of peace Jesus brings involves wounds, and risk, and perhaps blood, and maybe a life and a death on the line. Here is one who, no more than Thomas, saw Jesus, but who believes and whose belief, as demonstrated by his very being, challenges and inspires our own.
Here is one who hears the words of the risen Christ, "As the father sends me, so I send you." And we know we are sent not to the smug, complacent settings in this world, but to the settings looking like those Jesus plunged into, settings where one hopes against hope, settings where love seems to go down a vast, bottomless pit, settings demanding faith where, if you want, cynicism could explain everything. "Just as the Father sends me, so I send you."
And thus our question this week after Easter in this troubled world of ours: is our confession of God's ultimate victory over the powers threatening to do us in and destroy us -- are we engaged in a giant fraud, or can we count on Love's steadfast promise? The Gospel of John and the testimony of the church for nearly two millennia is certain. Believe it, my friends; we can trust without reservation the triumph of God through the worst life can do to us. And be assured, that when in our lives we encounter the risen Christ we will be sent to those most troubling and risky of human flash points, indeed, we too, in awe, in faith, in commitment and readiness to serve will confess with our lips and with our lives alongside Thomas our brother: "My Lord and my God."
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