Christ Appears in Locked Rooms

a post-script homily

*

On May 16th 2004, Rowan Williams, then the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave a sermon on the tenth anniversary of the ordination of women in the Church of England. He took as his text John 20:18, which reports that Mary Magdalene had been sent to the disciples with the news of Jesus’ resurrection, and he delivered the sermon entirely in her voice, construing the conflict playing out in her heart as she made her way to the locked room where the apostles were hiding:

“Tell them,” he said to me. He didn't say whether they'd listen, but I can make a guess. Why should they, after all? When have they ever? So what's he doing, asking me to tell them?”

Mary, as Williams imagines her, is greatly troubled—primarily because she knows how others see her; she knows they define her by her history as surely as by her sex:

It's harder with the ones who know me better, the ones who knew him better. They remember who I was, they remember the seven devils. When they listen to me, they think, “Yes, she lived in a world of terror and fantasy and pain all those years, she's had a life that's been so damaged, you can't really be surprised if she's still only half in touch with normality.”

They'll say that and mean it kindly, of course. It's true; I lived with devils, I was being eaten alive from the inside for years… I lived with devils. I thought I was infectious, dangerous for everyone. They remember that.  So do I… So what happens if he tells you to tell them and all they can see is someone who's bound up in their minds with devils and poison and infection? Bad enough being a woman to start with—they'll know exactly what you can and can't do, they'll know that you're the kind of human creature that changes and varies with the seasons, so that you don't know when you might be polluted if you touch them. But worse to be a woman whose life has come apart and been put together again very slowly, very precariously. And they all know and are sympathetic and serious and kind...

At last, Mary reconciles herself to the fact that she cannot make them listen; she can only say what she has been told to say:

In a moment I shall be climbing the stairs again to the locked doors. I'm not a young woman any more and my steps are slowing down and my breath is short after all that has happened this morning. I shall knock on the door. And if they let me in I shall tell them what he said, I shall tell them what he has done, I shall tell them who he has made me. And perhaps they will believe. And if they don't, he is there still; no door is forever locked to him now.

You are being entrusted with the very same work Mary was given to do, and I draw attention to this sermon because I believe what Williams hears in her story forecasts something of what you will see happening in your own.

**

It is not lost on me, as I know it’s not lost on you, that you are being ordained on Christ the King Sunday. What do we mean when we say Christ is “king”? We do not mean that whatever happens is his doing—definitely not that. We mean that everyone and everything without exception answers fully and finally to him. We mean that whatever happens happens within the unfolding of his purposes. What he says goes.

It takes time for his purposes to be accomplished, of course. Sometimes, it takes too much time, or so it seems. Despite the fact that women were the first to bear the message of new creation, our sisters have as a rule been ignored, forgotten, maligned, silenced—“handled” exactly as Mary must have feared she would be. Christ’s will is all too rarely done on earth as it is in heaven. Still, despite all resistance, his intentions have been and are being realized. He wanted Mary to be the apostle to the apostles, and so she was and is. Now, he wants you to take up that work, and so you are. That, nothing less than that, is what is happening here.

***

I have another reason for drawing attention to Williams’ sermon: it is an especially powerful reminder that how we hear God is inextricably bound up with how we speak to ourselves.

Today’s OT reading returned us to Isaiah’s vision and calling. A few years ago, I wrote a poem imagining the prophet at the end of his life remembering what had happened to him the year King Uzziah died. This is what I heard him saying to himself:

whatever I said then
here I am
it was too much to take in
woe woe woe
now I remember
high and lifted up
nothing but the pining 
look but do not perceive
feathers in my throat
each had six wings
hollow in my bones
one cried unto another
who can save us from God
the great forsaking
who comes in smoke
the posts of the doors are shaking
gives fire for water
how long
not bread but a stone
how long
strips the terebinth down to its stock
how long
until the city is wasted
the suckling forsaken 
and the holy left utterly desolate
send me

In the days to come, you will sometimes find yourself unsettled, dis-eased. You’ll doubt yourself, question yourself. And you’ll be tempted to accuse and condemn yourself. Believe me, so much depends on how you respond to that temptation.

Isaiah’s woe was holy. His troubledness arose in the presence of his hope, his healer. But not all troubledness is holy, and there is all the difference in the world between saying “I am lost; I am unclean” to Jesus and saying it about yourself. Prayer and accusation are absolutely mutually exclusive. So, like Isaiah, you have to come to know your uncleanness as nothing compared to his cleansing, clearing love. Like Mary, you have to see your past only in the light of the future he has made for you.

Williams imagines Mary finding her resolve at the end. Standing at the foot of the steps that lead to the locked door, she says to herself: “If they let me in, I will say what he told me to say, and perhaps they will believe me.” Thankfully, they did open the door. And they listened to what she said. But of course you will find the door does not always open. You will not always be believed. No matter. When you are left out, when your way is barred, you do not have to panic. You do not have to shout to be heard in the streets. You do not have to kick down any doors. Jesus is not so easily stymied. Ask Thomas!

Christ appears in locked rooms—whether you’re locked in or locked out. This is the hope that will sustain you. And sooner or later, those who refused you will see that your readiness to wait outside, your willingness to hold your tongue, to not cry out or raise your voice, proves that you have indeed seen the Lord and that he has in fact sent you.