Post-tramatic Stress and Post-resurrection Appearances

2 Easter  B       April 12, 2015

Acts 4:32-35   Psalm 133

1 John 1:1-2:2  John 20:19-31

Lectionary Link 

  Post-traumatic stress syndrome has become a common feature of our psychiatric news because of the horrors of war.   Can it be there are devastating human experiences from which we never recover?  Can the past mark our present and future in very unhelpful ways?

  Is there something patently unfair about the Easter experience?  Why did the friends of Jesus in the post-traumatic stress caused by his arrest and horrifying death get to have these post-resurrection appearances of Jesus just three days after his death?

  How come Christ could make post-resurrections appearances to his friends alone or in groups and why cannot our recently departed loved ones return to give us such reassurances of their immediate well-being?  Does the uniqueness of the post-resurrection appearances to the disciples of Jesus seem so unfair?

  What about the issue of a post-event syndrome; the return of the repressed in a future event in one’s life?

  What about the post-event syndrome of the post-resurrection appearances of Christ?

  Only a few were privileged with such sightings; Were these sightings post-event syndrome of an illusory nature; were they events of a chimerical Christ?  Could they be something like the syndrome known as “folie a deux,” the shared illusion of two?  If an illusion is shared by more than one person then it has more objective status.  One person can be crazy if one experiences something out of the ordinary but if two people share something then the one is absolved of the “individual” craziness.  One may resort to “mob” behavior to characterize the experience of mutual consensus by a group of people.

  How do you and I feel about living off “second hand” fumes of the resurrection of Christ?  We are so far removed from the intimate immediacy of the post-resurrection appearances; how can we think that we could have a valid experience of the post-resurrection appearances of Christ?

   How many of us have had post-death manifestations of recently departed loved one?  And if we have, would we even feel comfortable to admit to them because we want to avoid being called crazy?  Yes, we do admit that loved ones return to us in dreams and so dream space is an acceptable place for re-encounter with departed loved ones without being regarded to be too crazy.

  There is something unfair about the post-resurrection appearance of Christ to his disciples.  Why cannot every person who has had a post-traumatic stress syndrome experience some subsequent post-event experience which will heal the scars of loss and trauma caused by the traumatic event?

  Why can’t every soldier in battle know a post-resurrection appearance of all who are killed in battle and have a friendly meeting to have coffee or a drink together as reconciled friends?

 Why isn’t the post-resurrection experience of Christ replicated for each and every one of us in our events of stress caused by the horrendous effects of such permissive freedom in life which allows almost anything to occur?

  These questions are not just our questions?  They were addressed in narrative forms by the Gospel communities and this is most poignantly expressed in the story of the doubting Thomas.

  Is “being there” a  superior experience to knowing about being there second hand or by hear say?  The experience of Jesus with his disciples was so unique that if you weren’t there, your experience is impoverished and inferior, so you have good reason not to believe in the same way as an eye-witness because your experience is inferior and lacking.

  Were you there when they crucified my Lord?  No you weren’t.  Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?  No you weren’t.  Were there when the Risen Christ appeared to the disciples?  No you weren’t.  Were you there when St. Paul had an experience of the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus?  No you weren’t.  So just accept your impoverished experience of the Risen Christ.  It is second hand hearsay and so you are not responsible for having the same quality of faith that the disciples had.  Phew!  That lets us off the hook for being really faithful.

  The Gospel writer of John  presents Thomas the Apostle as an example that being there is the preferred and superior experience.  But the Gospel writer has the Risen Christ proclaiming the blessed state of the faith of people who were not there and yet who still had faith because of word of mouth reports, but finally because of the technology of memory called writing:  "These things are written so that you might believe……"  How intimate is a written report?  Well, most of us know how to get very intimate with some of the things we read.  Did you ever curl up with a novel and have your brain sizzle with how the arrangement of words can evoke the Sublime and change the chemistry of your brain to experience a passionate presence?  In the old days of the art of letter writing, did not such personal letters to you evoke the art of another kind of presence of a different order?

The Gospel writers were promoting the art of resurrection presence of a different but equally valid order than the experience of actually being there.

  You and I can bawl like babies during a “chick flick” or some other cinematic presentation.   You and I can come to tears at unexpected times when observing the grief of others, even while we might in our own immediate loss be shocked to have any tears or response at all.   And so the post-traumatic effect of the artistic representation of events of grief or joy can have the effect of moving us to a cathartic experience of release.  And this is another kind of valid presence.  The early church knew this and they were in the Gospel narratives as literary artistic presentations already extolling the validity of the artistic presences of Christ.

  The superiority complex of physically being there has raised its head in the history of the church.  I think that the “being there” complex drove the church in the 11th century to develop the transubstantiation theory of the presence of Christ in the bread and the wine.  Bread and Wine were regarded to be changed to the physical presence of the body and blood of Jesus.  Why? because of this subtle belief that that regarded physical presence to be a superior and a most valid presence.

  Modern science forced many people of Christian faith into a “being there” complex.  The empirical parallel of modern science in history was to grant “being there” superiority only to accounts that assumed that if one was there they could be empirically verified in scientific ways.  So Virgin Birth has come to be viewed by many through modern biology; miracles and cure has come to be viewed in the ways modern medical science regards healing and cure.  And the resurrection has come to be viewed as a scientifically verifiable event.  And what was denied?  The art of story and the evocative art and equal validity of the Sublime presence which can only be known through the cathartic experience of the artistic event.  The faith of those who believed in artistic real presence has been regarded to be inferior to those who assumed all of the biblical events were events of scientific empirical verification.

  I believe that the Doubting Thomas story was evidence  of the early church granting full status to another order of Sublime Presence, which was in fact the full artistic response to the impact of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

  No one can go back and make historic event not happen or re-occur.  How do we integrate the past in the present in the best possible way?  We do so with artistic remembering through the entire range of artistic manifestation given to us as the creative gifts of our lives.

  For the early church the artistic re-enactment of a new family meeting in the founder’s meal was an artistic event.  Bread and Wine in the Eucharist are artistic elements which evoke a sure and certain real presence.  We find another valid presence in the words which we read, a literary artistic and real presence.  Another artistic presence is known as we learn the art of rearranging our interior lives to express and evoke the experience of peace and as we learn and practice the art of being peace makers.  In the experience of individual and community peace one can find the artistic evocative presence of Christ.  There is another gifted art which is truly divine presence indeed.  It is the God-given art of forgiveness.  It is the human tendency to retain each others sins and faults; it is the God given presence of Christ to be able to forgive one another.

  The doubting Thomas event signifies what also might be called a “Breath Transplant.”  Jesus breathed upon his disciples; they had died in their sadness at his death but then they were resuscitated by the Holy Breath of Jesus.  This story of the transfer of breath is the story of the realization of God’s Breath, God’s Holy Spirit which is always already within us to be released as we mobilize creatively the very essence of our life force.

  Today, we are invited to the validity of the art of the resurrection presences of Christ in our lives.  We are to be like the proverbial oyster; we are to let all of the irritating grains of our previous stress and loss be made into the pearls of the new artistic experiences of Christ’s resurrection graceful Presence under the guise of creative recovery with healthy and affirming outcomes in our lives.   
  But we also need to be patient to realize that some irritations will remain in our lives and in the lives of others forever.  Not everything will become a pearl in this life and so resurrection life means that we continue to care for one another in our continuing loss and grief.  Not everything gets resolved or finished or redeemed in this life and the resurrection of Jesus means we also have the faith to live with the unresolved issues that are a part of our lives.

  Let us not lock the validity of the life, death and resurrection of Christ into the being there experience of a few people two thousand years ago.  Let us know the artistic release and remembrances in the many ways in which the resurrection Christ can be morphed and interwoven within the specific experiences of our current day to day lives.  And let the resurrection energy of Christ make us all artists who are ourselves weaving webs of the presence of Christ to trap all in this maze and labyrinth of heaven on earth.  Amen.