July 21, 2012.
Halifax Nova Scotia. Tall Ships
Festival. Parades, boats, sailors and to
top it all off, a once-in-a lifetime event down at the waterfront overlooking
the Halifax Harbor!
I was in my fourth year of studying to become a minister
and we had an opportunity to go hear a live concert as part of that
festival. $35 for a ticket to the event
featuring a host of local musicians. CBC
was the MC and the last performance was the local orchestra performing
Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture. Wow!
Now, we could have gone and heard it for free on the
waterfront like many people did, but my buddy, a great music aficionado, had
never been to a live performance of an orchestra. He grew up and lived in rural New Brunswick all
his life. He loved classical music but
had never heard more than local musicians playing folk or jazz or rock. He had an impressive collection of cds and
knew the difference between a Brandenburg concerto and the Wagner Ring Cycle.
Sitting beside my friend as he listened to his first live
symphony was very special. It wasn’t
just the instruments on the stage. The
downtown Halifax churches rang their bells at just the right spot. Not only that, but the cannons that had been
brought down from the Citadel to the waterfront were fired to synchronize
perfectly with the bells and the orchestra.
And that triggered the fireworks overhead, also synchronized to the live
music. Wow!
We were sitting in the front row right in front of the
speakers. When the cannons went off, and
they were broadcast through those speakers, I felt my chest compress and
release, like an elephant was playing trampoline on my chest! I turned to my friend to ask him what he
thought, only to see tears running down his face! The real thing was so much more powerful in
person than it was on a record or on TV.
I found myself tearing up too and we were one of the last to leave that
tent to watch the last of the fireworks that night.
The real thing, a real live experience, that’s what Thomas
wanted. He wanted to be like everyone
else, to have that heart-thumping, life-changing tear-jerking, earth-shattering
moment that the other disciples had, that brought such clarity and passion and
enthusiasm back into their lives. And
maybe he was a wee bit exasperated with them.
After all, the Jewish faith expects mourners to spend a ritual seven
days in mourning, a practice called Shivah, where family gather and grieve and
read scriptures. Thomas would have been
scandalized and outraged at the behaviors of the other disciples. He would have seen it as disrespectful at
best and delusions at worst. No wonder
he wanted to see Jesus as they had seen Jesus.
We too want to see Jesus.
We want to put our hands in his hands, we want to have that concrete,
tangible and measurable experience of the Resurrection. All too often we have a logical response or
an emotional response and wonder if it’s enough to sustain our faith in
difficult times. I remember having an
emotional experience when I was ten after a week of vacation bible school where
my teachers talked about how important it was to accept Jesus as my personal
savior into my heart. I told them I
wanted to do it, and the teacher pulled me into a room for a private prayer and
I was released back into the group to proudly proclaim I was saved. My parents were not impressed, and the
feeling of pleasing my teacher faded very quickly. I’m much more like the founder of Methodism,
John Wesley, who claimed that he found his heart strangely warmed by a
religious gathering one day. I can
relate to a strangely warmed heart. I
never had the earthquake emotional experience of a live performance of
Tchaikovsky the way my friend did. I
grew up listening to the 1812 Overture; every couple of years my parents took
us to a live performance in Edmonton’s Jubilee Auditorium. In fact my most vivid memory when I was 5 was
falling asleep in the middle of Swan Lake and having the pretty ballerinas
dancing into my dreams that evening. So
while the cannons blasting and the bells ringing were glorious, they didn’t
give me the same experience that my friend had.
Whether we have a dramatic encounter with the living Christ
or a milder strange warming of our hearts, we are called to be a part of God’s
community of faithful followers. A
community that Jesus saw as blessed no matter what kind of experience we’ve
had. Why blessed? Because while we may ‘suffer the distress of
many trials” as Peter put it, we have a community of faith to support us. Thomas did not have an experience of Christ
when he was by himself, it was when he was with the other disciples that Christ
appeared. So for some of us, Jesus
appears when we are gathered together to strengthen our faith. I know that there are times when the weight
of the world’s events weigh me down, especially when the flags are at half-mast
at the RCMP detachment, or the budget looms over of my head. But when I gather with you, it strengthens my
faith too. Our faith is more precious
than gold. And while we may still be
growing that faith, even though we may have never put our hands in the nail
marks of crucifixion, let us rejoice with inexpressible joy touched with glory,
that however we have had our hearts strangely warmed, we know that we are
blessed and we are in the presence of Jesus, whom we claim as Christ, our judge
and our hope. In life, in suffering, in
death, God is with us, we are not alone.
Thanks be to God!
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