For All Who Doubt
April 14, 2024 - John 20: 19-31
In 1978, Church of the Brethren leaders Bob and Rachel Gross conceived of the idea of the Death Row Support Project, “as a way to answer Jesus’ call to visit those in prison, as well as [a way to help] those outside prison walls to see past the sensational headlines that often accompany a murder conviction.”
“Additionally,” Rachel wrote in the June 2019 issue of Messenger magazine, “[Bob], based on his own time in prison (due to having returned his draft card in 1970), … observed that people who received mail were treated better by prison staff.”
Their project began with a list of the then four hundred inmates on death row, obtained with the support of the Washington DC Office of the Church of the Brethren and a notice in Messenger inviting readers to become pen pals.
By the year 2000, more than 2,500 people had been assigned a pen pal on death row, the majority of them from beyond the Church of the Brethren. Rachel Gross, who retired from this volunteer ministry at the turn of 2024, spent 45 years as the assigner of pen pals and writes in multiple venues of the peace-bringing relationships and renewed hope for life that she has witnessed transcend prison walls.
Somehow Jesus got through the locked doors of the house where the disciples cowered in fear after his crucifixion and still not quite believed resurrection. In that room, “he came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”
They had every reason to doubt and to fear a similar violent fate as Jesus had met. His presence with them, his Holy Spirit-loosing breath, and his words, “Peace be with you” were meant as a powerful balm and a witness to the love of God that will not be bound by locked doors, by any of our shortcomings, or even by death.
It must have been healing because the other disciples told Thomas who hadn’t been there, “‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’”
I have never been able to blame Thomas for doubting. It’s pretty unbelievable, the bodily resurrection of Christ.
In fact, if I’m honest, it's less important to me that Jesus stood before them in a physical presence as though this were a newspaper report and it's more important to me the deep truth this story shares of the unbound, new life bringing love of God.
Bodily resurrection for me could be real in the sense that we are all made of the same atoms. There are only 118 different kinds. Whatever makes up our bodies now doesn’t go away either. It is one way or another matter that will be taken up and reused somehow some way for new life. There’s no getting away from each other totally just as there’s no getting away from the unbound love of God. Whether we’re talking faith or science, for me, we’re all inescapably connected.
You may doubt that. And that’s okay.
I have come to have profound respect for doubt.
Doubt tells us something. Doubt tells us we have more to learn. Maybe doubt even tells us what we want next.
Thomas wanted proof. He wanted the impossible proof of Jesus’ physical crucifixion and resurrection altered body.
What is it we want proof of? And how do we go about getting it?
I don’t hear about it so much today. Maybe it’s the circles I run in or maybe the conversation is changing but I’m aware that there are plenty of people who doubt that humans are causing the climate change and environmental degradation we’re experiencing. I have witnessed conversations in which proof is offered to change that doubt but to no avail.
Even proof can be doubted.
On this topic of climate change, I’m more likely to run into a different kind of doubter and to sometimes even be this kind of doubter if I’m honest. That’s the kind who doubts we can overcome the incredible challenge that is the in-progress cascade of environmental crises before us.
Over the past few years, I have coached myself to look for proof that we are capable of forging a new, hopeful future. While the projected outcomes remain all too grim, I have found reason to hope in new science and in the growing work of folks of all ages to rally together to meet this challenge.
This proof though is not indisputable. It takes some faith to hold onto the hope that with the right scientific break-throughs, policy changes, and shifts in public practice we can avoid the worst wages of all we have done to neglect this Creation God so loves.
John 20 tells us, “a week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’”
That last bit is often interpreted as the writer of the Gospel of John either talking directly to or about the audience of his story – about hearers closer to the time of Jesus and us – hearers today. We are those who have not seen the bodily resurrected Christ.
We have to make a leap of faith to believe that God’s unbound love is really real and that new life can come out of the direst of circumstances.
Our proof is often slim.
But sometimes if we’re lucky we catch a little glimpse.
Every time I pick up the phone and press 5 to accept a call from Daniel Cummings an inmate at Central Prison in North Carolina I get a little glimpse of that unbound, new life bringing love of God.
Daniel is 68 years old and he has been in prison since 1997 following his double murder conviction in 1994. That’s about 30 years for those of you doing the math – a horrifically long time to be imprisoned. It’s made worse for those of us who care about him knowing that in neither of those convictions were the prosecutors able to produce eye witnesses or any physical evidence placing him at the scenes. Rather, he confessed to the murders, likely under duress.
So, Daniel has been in prison for 30 years. He has very little in the way of comforts in his cell. It sounds to me as if he is under near constant threat of violence. His one “window” is a thin slot that lets in light and if he gets up on his bed he can vaguely see the opposite wall that is his view of the outside.
But when he gets on the phone his voice carries this shining, upbeat light of hope and care for those of us on the outside who he has never even met in person. He always asks how I’m doing. He wants to know what it’s like outside. He remembers and cares about any trouble in the lives of his friends mentioned to him. He prays about it and follows up on the next call like I try to do when I am administering pastoral care. It just seems natural to him.
And he is blown away by the love of this congregation. That love has been spearheaded by John Lengle and by the Tuesday Men’s Breakfast Group. In 2019, John, after reading about the Death Row Support Project in the June Messenger announced one Tuesday that he planned to become a pen pal and invited the other breakfast goers to join him. And they did. They started writing. They started putting money in his commissary account so that he could buy basic things like snacks, hygiene items, over-the-counter medicines, dental supplies, clothing items, and stationery to write these letters back and forth. Then at some point, Daniel got access to a phone. And now he can make 15 minute phone calls like the one you heard him on today. I have been so blessed by those phone calls in the lead up to this day of welcoming him into membership.
As John wrote in Friday’s Weekly Update, “those of us who have spoken with him by phone are moved by his faith, his cheerfulness, and his positive attitude. Although the lone picture we have of Daniel does not convey the bright spirit we encounter in him, we often come away feeling we are the ones who are blessed to be a part of his life.”
I don’t know what kind of proof you’re looking for but for me the connection with Daniel across state lines and through prison walls, that has been a gift to all of us involved, is a powerful glimpse of the unbound love of God that brings new life somehow even in the places we least expect it.
I sometimes wish having faith meant being rewarded by being able to see and control the future or get everything we want or see that no one we love suffers harm. But I just don’t believe that’s how faith works.
I believe that faith is tied up with doubt. I believe faith is meeting our doubts and our fears as directly as we’re able, trusting that in those bound up places, God is still to be found, working a freedom bringing, resurrection story yet.
May it be so. Amen.
