Behind closed doors
The 20th chapter of John’s Gospel begins with the story of Mary Magdalene and ends with the story of so-called ‘doubting’ Thomas. In the midst is Jesus. To what end? That our hearts and minds might be opened out to the greater life of God, to the possibility of acknowledging what the American writer and theologian Marilynne Robinson calls “the miraculous privilege of existence as a conscious being,” a wonderful phrase.
The tomb becomes the womb of new life in spite of our griefs and sorrows. “Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted;” the words of the Beatitudes take on a fuller meaning in these stories. Jesus appears behind the closed doors where the disciples are huddled in fear and uncertainty. He shows them his hands and his side and speaks of peace and forgiveness, and of a kind of knowing, faith, that says there is more though not less to reality than what can be seen and experienced. The two stories are a powerful reminder that we are essentially spiritual and intellectual beings in and through the limits of our knowing and experience. They are not everything but neither are they nothing.
The resurrection belongs to the idea of things metaphysical as the underlying principle of all life. It is a breakthrough of the understanding that frees us from the closed doors of our minds. We see this in both Mary Magdalene and Thomas. They are changed and set in motion but not through the negation of what belongs to themselves and the truth of their individuality. They do not become other than themselves but more fully themselves precisely through the awareness of their unknowing and confusion. This is the possibility of the greater transformation. It is neither a flight from reality nor a denial of creation. It is, to put it theologically, about the redemption of creation and of our humanity, individually and corporately.
In our post-Christian and post-secular world, religion is largely regarded, if regarded at all, as a matter of personal faith and identity, a matter of various agendas and interests. What, then, is the role of Chapel at the School? It cannot be the affirmation of personal faiths or non-faiths, or of the particular claims and assertions of identity for that would be impossible. Neither is Chapel about proselytizing, about forcing or coercing an agenda. It is really more about what we see in these stories: the encounter with ideas that may change us through our being opened to what is greater than ourselves whatever your interests and agendas. Education is about the exposure to ideas. What you do with them is another matter. In this sense, Chapel is simply part of education; the opening out of ideas.
What we see in these stories is quite intriguing. They challenge our perceptions and assumptions through the way in which Mary and Thomas are challenged. To put it simply, what is opened out to view cannot be contained in the prisons or tombs of our minds. The idea of the Resurrection does not negate empirical reality – the world as grasped through our senses – but it cannot be reduced to it or to our claims. It is not about ‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’ but about Truth as greater than ourselves. In other words, we do not possess the Truth; it possesses us. That is actually freeing and freeing in exactly the way we see in the figures of Mary and Thomas. “My Lord and My God,” Thomas says as he beholds the risen Christ who bears the marks of the Cross.
In art and scripture, the Resurrection in the Christian view is always portrayed with the marks of the Crucifixion. Fra Angelico’s depiction, in the Convent of San Marco in Florence, of the encounter between Mary and Jesus shows the stigmata, the marks of the cross. The past is not eclipsed nor extinguished but transformed. The marks of the Crucifixion have become the marks of love, the divine love which overcomes sin and death. That is the triumph of essential life for us and in itself; “the miraculous privilege of existence as conscious beings.” It means peace and forgiveness in the face of the animosities and divisions of our world and day. Such things speak to the idea of an education that is about character, about how we might learn to face things with strength and courage, with faith and compassion.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy