I feel that the message that usually comes with this gospel is something along the lines of “it’s wrong to doubt God. Take the disciples at their word. Don’t underestimate God.” But I disagree. One of the things I treasure most about the Episcopal church and this environment I’ve grown up in is the way we welcome those doubts. We try to answer the questions we can and sit with those we can’t.
I want Jesus’s resurrection, whatever happened at the tomb that day, to change and heal my life. I want its power to change and repair this broken-down world. I want it to matter to lives like ours and a world like this one. Don’t you?
The ancient Hebrew people saw ram’s horns as similes for that which in humans aspires toward the highest. The horns, while they reach up to the sky, are rooted in the animal. They are signs of joining together heaven and earth. That is what this night is all about.
Yes, it can all come undone. And too easily. With a word, with a kiss, with a missed moment to say the brave thing, with nothing at all we could have done differently. And yet, as all the threads and yarns unravel, as the tapestry comes to shreds, somehow God is still here. Even now.
While the command to love is old, the demands of love will always be as new as the moment at hand and the person in front of you. It may even be that love is not the action, so much as it is the curious attention itself.