Sheltering Behind Closed Doors, 4/19/20

2 Easter, 19 April 2020
Homily from the Rev. Clarence E. Smith

Acts 2:14a, 22-32; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

“…the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear …”   John 20.19

Sheltering in place, i.e. literally remaining behind closed and locked door, except for greeting my daughter who insists that I remain removed from public places and, therefore, has taken it upon herself to deliver grocery essentials, or for checking my mailbox, or for venturing out into the rear garden to the trash can, has forced me to curtail the busyness which previously controlled my daily life.  I discover that sheltering in place can exert a positive, calming influence on my daily existence.  Indeed, sheltering in place has opened up other possibilities for occupying my waking hours, which I had, heretofore, laid aside or not realized as achievable or desirable.  I can no longer ignore my promise to myself to read some of the books, which in anticipation of my retirement that by my choice never seemed to come, I had shelved.  Sheltering in place has allowed me to recall some of those individuals whose ideas formed and directed my life, allowing me to give belated and posthumous thanks to those many and varied mentors.  One could argue almost that our social distancing mandate has made real for me a resurrection of sorts of long suppressed presences.

While reading the gospel appointed for the second Sunday in Easter, my father and one of his odd sayings came to mind, a saying [that], when I was growing up, made initially absolutely no sense.  The old man would say: ‘Locks are for keeping honest people honest.’  A variant of that was: ‘Locks are for keeping honest people out.’  He had other such maxims [that] he had undoubtedly heard from others and [that] I have not only incorporated into my life but now pass on, as if they stemmed from my own genius.  I recall wondering, why would honest people need locks and closed doors to keep them honest?  After all, were not locks and closed doors for keeping thieves and burglars at bay?  To check out my own interpretation of that saying, I asked him once whether it meant that locks and closed doors helped people in resisting the temptation to enter where they did not belong?  And, of course, he said “yes.”  But, he added, locks and doors secured one’s right to privacy.

The gospel for the Second Sunday in Easter reminded me of that conversation, now many decades prior.  However, today’s gospel reminded me of something else.  Remaining behind closed or locked doors can provide safety, just as assuredly is the case as we observe our current mandated situation.  There is, though, another side [that] cannot be ignored.  Locked doors can hinder flexibility of movement, intellectual and physical.  The movie As Good as It Gets, starring Jack Nicholson as an eccentric writer named Melvin, reminded exactly of that.  Melvin is, in the jargon of that era, as uptight as one gets, focusing initially on what is going wrong, or that may go awry, and bristling with distance toward his neighbors.  In an early scene, we see him entering his Manhattan apartment [that], to enter, requires unlocking about six locks, each requiring a different key.  Once inside, he locks them again methodically in what we sense is a practiced ritual.  After securing himself in his flat, he enters his bathroom, runs the water until it is scalding hot, opens a new bar of soap, washes his hands, throws the fresh bar of soap away, opens another bar, and washes his hands a second time.

Life does not remain static for Melvin.  His neighbor, a gay man whom Melvin detests, comes to Melvin’s apartment to inquire about his lost dog, but Melvin speaks to him through a cracked door with the chain locks still secured.  The neighbor is not aware that his dog is missing because Melvin has dumped it down the trash chute in the building.  Melvin believes that the dog carries diseases.

Melvin is confronted with a further challenge.  His neighbor gets badly beaten by a couple of thugs who break into and burglarize his apartment.  When Melvin, concerned about the presence of EMT and police officers, goes next door, the unthinkable happens.  A friend of the badly injured man, in his rush to get to the hospital to be with his friend, tells Melvin that Melvin must care for the dog, the very same dog [that] he had dumped earlier down the chute.  Melvin is shaken, unsure of himself; nevertheless, he takes the dog in.  And the dog, being a dog, takes Melvin outside.

The neighbor’s recuperation in hospital requires some time, during which Melvin develops a relationship with the dog, which becomes the center of life.  So much the center that, when the still-recuperating neighbor returns to his apartment and Melvin returns the dog, Melvin discovers that his life is empty, that he can no longer write. The neighbor, for his part, discovers that his dog is now more at home with Melvin than with him, the original owner.  The problem solves itself when Melvin does the unthinkable.  He invites his gay neighbor to move in with him, since he is still too battered to take care of himself.

As Melvin becomes more and more involved in assisting his neighbor, an even stranger thing occurs.  One day, on his way to run an errand, he gets all the way to the elevator, before he recalls that he has forgotten to lock his apartment door.  A puzzled expression crosses his face, as though he were looking into a mirror, but does not recognize the reflection, his own image.  There is a long pause, as if he has been stymied by a light-shaft of grace and compassion, which has left him dazed for the moment.  It is as if he were Saul on the road to Damascus.

It took no little effort on Melvin’s part to overcome his fear of germs, fear of the real world, fear of relationships, about which he had written from the safety and sanctity of his sterile apartment, his fear of laying himself open to the possibility of failure.  Evaporated is the fear that once controlled Melvin’s life, for he dared to go beyond his door.  Melvin succeeds in finding a new peace, because he was not allowed to remain passive, locked in or locked out by complacency due to comfort, or fear due to the unknown.

Somewhere between the fear of being overwhelmed and the fear of letting the world in, stands my favorite disciple, Thomas.  I have often asked myself where Thomas may have been, when Mary Magdalen informed Peter and the other disciple of her discovery at the tomb and when, a week later, the risen Christ made his first visitation to the frightened disciples.  Had Thomas in the interim returned to his own family?  Had he sought out another sympathizer of the cause?  Had he locked himself behind a door in another location?  Had he taken a walk, in order to clear his head, to devise a plan of action?

The reason for his absence did not make it into the records, and so we may only speculate.  What is recorded, is that Thomas missed the first announcement of the resurrection, as well as the first post-Resurrection roll call and Christ’s blessing “Peace with you,” which accompanied it.  Thomas wanted what the others had received: a chance to see, and better yet, to touch his risen Lord.  To overcome fear on the one hand and to believe on the other are not so easy to pull off.  Yet, that is what the Gospel of John asks of us, namely to open the door to faith.  Would that it were so simple to step beyond the door, or to accept those things which we have not seen with our own eyes!  Just as we wish that we could contain our fears, just as we wish that we could always be in the right place at the right time, so do we wish that believing were as precise as pushing a button labeled “faith.”

There is no such button.  This is one thing that the writer of the Gospel according to John is absolutely clear about.  There is faith [that] is based on signs.  There is faith that is weak, and faith that moves mountains. There is shallow faith, and faith that is deep.  There is faith that one moment is certain, and the next isn’t sure of anything.  Faith is made once and for all, and yet faith has to be made new again and again. The disciples are proof of that.

There will always be not one, but many Thomases.  They are for me a necessity, for they keep us honest.  They motivate those of great empathy and care for their fellow beings, those with scientific and medical knowledge to continue to seek answers to perplexing problems of disease of the mind, body, and spirit.  They are the Thomases whose devotion to inquiry and to action make us move beyond our own fears and doubts.  They are the folk who wish to see, if we Christians in all our humanity are for real, and to check our palms and our sides for scars and wounds [that] surely come from accepting the commandment of the risen Christ to live not unto ourselves, but unto God through others.

It should be no puzzlement to us that Thomas questioned the validity of the report made to him by those who were locked behind closed doors.  He refrained from accusing his fellow disciples of engaging in idle chatter, as they had the women who had come to them; still, could not the men perhaps been drunk with wine, as was put to them at Pentecost?  Thomas questioned.  Still, Thomas was prepared not to remain hidden behind bolted doors, but rather to march forth with conviction when confronted with the reality of faith.

We are, you and I, a people of the Resurrection, a people of faith and, as such, we recognize that there are both physical doors and doors of the spirit and the intellect.  Physical doors are there for good reason and are more easily recognized.  Therefore, we shelter in place.  As people of the Resurrection, a far greater challenge are those doors [that] hinder our spiritual and intellectual well-being.  With the Spirit given to us by the risen Christ, our doors of fear in 2020 can be transformed into portals of spiritual adventure and, when we are no longer required to shelter in place, our doors can open to us a future [that] we could not have imagined, one that, with each unfolding sign, we can, like Thomas, exclaim “My Lord and my God.”

AMEN

Images:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Door-211714.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caravaggio_Doubting_Thomas.jpg