We respond to loss in a variety of ways. There is no
predicting how people will act when they lose something they
cherish. I have seen everything from screaming and wailing
to solid stoicism to outright laughter. I have conducted
funerals where people have wept openly, and others where
they have checked their watches to make sure they didn’t
miss a good TV show! There is no predicting how people
will behave when they deal with loss. Sometimes they will do
things that don’t seem to make sense; but somehow, in their
own souls, it works. Loss is a strange taskmaster.
I was nine years old when I first looked serious loss in the
face. My eighty-five-year old grandfather was suddenly a still
body in a bed, and I didn’t know what to do. I knew that he
meant much to me. He had taught me how to use tools; to
this day when I attempt some little bit of carpentry I
remember what he taught me about using a handsaw. I
knew that he had shown me the value of being organized; I
can still see his basement workshop, with all the screws and
bolts classified by size and in neatly labeled jars. This man
meant much to me, and taught me much, but now he was
dead. I didn’t know what to do with a child’s grief.
A few weeks later my grandmother decided that she no
longer wanted to live alone, and so she moved to an
apartment. My father undertook to remodel the place,
because it was quite a mess. The previous tenants had not
treated Apartment 4 kindly. Screens had to be repaired,
broken windows had to be replaced, and, above all, a
disgraceful bathroom had to be renovated. My father
decided that in that bathroom he would use a product then
new on the market, because it would easily cover the gaping
holes in the old walls. He would use rubber tile on the
bathroom walls. Rubber tile was soft and pliable, easy to
work with, and easy to clean. Rubber tile was just the thing
for that bathroom. And when my father was done, he was
justifiably proud of the look of the place. Gleaming, clean,
soft-looking, soft-feeling rubber tile freshened up that
bathroom beautifully.
There was something about that stuff, however, that
attracted my curiosity. I could not resist touching that tile,
feeling it, prodding it, wanting to get a sense of what it was
really like. That afternoon I kept going back to the bathroom
to poke at the rubber tile one more time – just to know what it
felt like. But now remember, this was a construction site,
and on the floor of the bathroom my dad had dropped a stray
nail. I picked up that nail and used it to probe at one soft,
spongy tile, particularly where it covered a big hole in the
original wall. I poked, I prodded, I pushed, I probed, and
pretty soon I plunged that nail into the tile. I put a hole in my
father’s pristine creation. It was very obvious; a perfect
piece of work marred by an ugly, ragged, nailprint.
Later that day my father bellowed for me to get in that room
and explain this thing right away. I did about what you would
expect a nine-year-old boy to do. I hemmed and I hawed; I
pretended to know nothing. In a word, I lied. But my father
knew. Whether I told him the truth or not, he knew. For
nailprints don’t lie. I may have lied; but nailprints don’t lie.
Today, years later, I think I was acting out the grief I felt over
my grandfather’s death. But I certainly didn’t know that at
the time. I just drove in the nail and lied about it. But
nailprints don’t lie.
We respond to loss in a variety of ways. There is no
predicting how people will act when they lose something they
cherish. Sometimes they will do things that don’t seem to
make sense; but somehow, in their own souls, it works. Loss
is a strange taskmaster.
When the disciple Thomas faced the death of Jesus, strange
things happened in his soul. The one who had taught him,
led him, and sustained him these three years was now gone;
that was too much for Thomas. Yes, it was too much for the
other disciples, too. But each of us deals with loss in our
own way, and Thomas chose a way different from his
colleagues. In the end, Thomas will teach us more about
ourselves than any of the others, for Thomas will teach us
that nailprints don’t lie.
I
You see, sometimes, like Thomas, we choose to live in
uncertainty. Sometimes we choose to live with nothing
settled, nothing clear. We choose to live with our minds not
made up and with our life directions unresolved. We want to
keep all our options open, because we know that when we
settle on something, it will claim us. It will make demands on
us. If we can stay uncommitted, we can pretend that we are
just waiting for things to clear up, and then we’ll get on with
our lives. The issue is that once we face the truth, the truth
will claim us and make demands on us.
When Thomas came into that upper room and heard his
brothers say that Jesus was alive, he set down an ultimatum:
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger
in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
Thomas set up impossible conditions so that he could keep
himself uncommitted. He may have known that eventually
he would be confronted with the hands of Jesus. He must
have known that if the risen Christ were right there, squarely
in front of him, he would have had no choice but to follow.
But Thomas preferred to deal with his life issues by
postponing his choices, just remaining uncertain, because
when you settle on something, it claims you. It makes
demands on you.
Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a kind of perpetual
adolescence? Wouldn’t it be fun if we could always keep
ourselves uncommitted? Oh, what fun we could have,
dabbling at this and trying that. Perpetual adolescence.
Well, that’s fine for young people to be unclear about who
they are and what they are going to do with their lives. We
expect that. I discovered back when I was a college chaplain
that typically students change majors several times before
they finally settle down; and even then, many of them don’t
actually do what they trained to do. For example, you are
listening to a former engineering student this morning. It’s all
right. For a while, we expect everybody to live in some kind
of uncertainty.
But many of us adopt uncertainty as a way of life. We do our
best to make no decisions that will actually cost us anything.
We resist committed relationships like marriage because we
know that costs something. We resist taking on
responsibilities in the community because we know that will
involve time and energy. And we hold back from following
Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, because we know that He
will not accept just half of us, nor three-quarters of us, nor
even ninety-five percent of us. He will claim us entirely, one
hundred percent! And we are scared of that. It has been
well said that if He is not Lord of all, He cannot be Lord at all.
That does not set well with us. We’d like to hang loose.
We’d like to set up an ultimatum, as Thomas did: “Unless I
see the mark of the nails in his hands ... I will not believe.”
Let me put off this decision as long as I can.
But mark my word: the risen Christ is among us today. He is
with us right now. He is here to stay. He does show us the
mark of the nails. The mark of the nails is right there in our
own anger and frustration and pain. We have done so many
things that tear at the heart of the Father, and we don’t want
to own up to it. But the truth is that sin is real, guilt is real,
shame is real, and the sooner we acknowledge that, the
better off we’ll be. Oh, we see the marks of the nails in his
hands, all right. We see what our sin has done to the
Father. We see how our acting out has pained our God.
When you see the Cross, you see how we have driven nails
right through the Father’s pristine and perfect work. It is time
to go beyond keeping the options open. It is time to see Him
for who He is. It is time to acknowledge His claim. It is time
to turn to Him and to believe.
It is high time, for nailprints don’t lie. Time to give up that
luxurious uncertainty and to make a commitment to Jesus
Christ.
II
But it is also true that there is another way we deal with loss.
We deal with our lostness by drowning ourselves in
loneliness. We avoid the company of others. We go it
alone. We pitch private pity parties. We think we can
handle our issues all by our lonesome. And the reason is
quite simple: we know that if we turn to somebody else for
help, the time will come when they will want help from
us. That will cost us something. That will involve
responsibility. And we don’t want it.
Now if we are in a little trouble, we do know that it’s good to
have others sustain us and support us. That’s all to the
good. But we also know that when we are in fellowship with
others, we not only gain , we also have to give. We deal
with loss by putting ourselves into isolation. We go it alone
so that we won’t have to do anything for anybody else. We
go it alone.
Why do you suppose Thomas was absent from that upper
room? Why, when the others had pulled themselves
together in a time of grief, would Thomas go off by himself
and think he could handle this loss on his own? Could it be
that Thomas is just like many of us – when we get in trouble
– when we experience loss – when we have a bad
conscience – when we are in a precarious place -- we shut
ourselves off, we close our doors behind us, and we go it
alone. We tough it out. We think we can handle our own
stuff by ourselves.
That may sound big and strong and macho. It may even
sound courageous. But let me name that for what it is. Let
me call it by its right name. It is arrogance. It is selfishness.
It is self-indulgence, to think that nobody but you has ever
experienced life this way, that nobody but you really
understands, that nobody but you can make sense out of the
mess you’ve got in your life. When you and I fall into that
trap, we have fallen into self-centered, self-defeating, and
self-indulgent nonsense. For God has not made us for
ourselves alone; God has made us for fellowship. God has
made us for fellowship with Himself, and for one another.
Ten others gathered in the upper room that day to share
their griefs and nourish their needs. They knew that the pain
of the loss of Jesus would be more bearable if they were to
lift it together. Just as one man cannot by himself pick up a
huge tree trunk, but two or three or a dozen can make light
work of it, so also when we are in trouble, we need each
other. And better yet, when good news comes, it comes to
all of us. It is no accident that the risen Lord appeared to the
group – not to individuals one by one, but to the group, to all
of them at once. They needed each other in a time of grief;
they needed each other in a time of joy as well.
And so it is only as Thomas comes back to the group that he
gets the good news. It is only as Thomas comes to the
community that he receives the help he needs. It is only as
Thomas acknowledges that he has a relationship to some
brothers out there that he finds assurance. He stayed away
for a while, indulging his privacy; but thanks be to God, he
came to the fellowship and found, in their woundedness,
healing for himself.
Let me be as clear as I can be. Let me hit this head on.
Some of us sit loose to the church because we know that it
will make demands on us. Some of us take very lightly our
fellowship with believers because we know that somebody is
going to ask us for something. The pattern of attending
worship once or twice a year, on ceremonial occasions,
doesn’t get it done. If that is all you do, not much will
happen. You might gain a little something from the music
and the prayers; you might hear something from the readings
and even the preaching. But I tell you, it is very likely that if
you are not genuinely connected to the church, if you are not
an active participant in its life, you will gain very little. True,
you will give very little, and that may be what you are after.
But you will also gain very little. And your issues will remain
unresolved.
Thomas came back to the church when it got tough out
there. Thomas came back to his brothers when he couldn’t
stand it on his own any more. Thomas may not have thought
there would be anything there, because they were as
messed up as he was. But guess what? Thomas found out
that in the fellowship of messed-up people, all of whom have
put terrible scars on the body of Christ, there is tremendous
strength. There is immense help. Because this is a
community of truth. This is a place where people don’t hide.
This is a fellowship where men and women are who they are,
but, more than that, they are on the way to becoming what
God wants them to be. Is the church made up of perfect
people? By no means! We are not perfect, but we are
forgiven. We are not what we ought to be, but we are so
vastly more than what we used to be. We are not what we
could be, but we are on the way. For we are a fellowship of
truth. And here, nailprints don’t lie, not even the ones you’ve
tried to ignore. The memories of all the mistakes we have
made are still visible. But they don’t matter any more.
Nailprints don’t lie.
Conclusion
I had a hard time admitting to my father that I was the one
who punched that horrible hole in his perfect wall. I could
never have explained why I did it. I didn’t understand it
myself. It was just irresistible.
But I do know that for several weeks after that the spot on
that wall accused me. Each time we would go to my
grandmother’s apartment, I would become very aware of the
mark of my vandalism. Each time I went to that room, the
scars which could never be fully repaired reminded me of
what I had done and that I was lying about it. And just as I
didn’t know what to do with my grief for the loss of my
grandfather, so also I didn’t know what to do with my shame
for the loss of my innocence.
The uncertainty weighed on me; it got less and less
comfortable to live doing nothing about that issue, especially
since it was no longer just about a hole in the wall. Now it
was about a hole in my relationship with my father. That felt
very bad; that was very serious.
And the loneliness pressed down on me too. No one else in
all the world knew about this thing but me and my father.
There was no one I could tell, no one who would understand,
no one who would help me, or so I thought. It felt truly
painful to be carrying this burden all alone.
Uncertainty and loneliness, guilt and shame -- quite a lot for
a nine-year-old soul to work out. My brain buzzed with fears
and doubts.
And then one bright Sunday morning I heard it. I truly heard
it. They sang that Sunday, “I see His hand of mercy, I hear
His voice of cheer, and just the time I need Him, He’s always
near.”
“I see His hand of mercy”. That day I saw a hand with its
nailprints, put there by the likes of me. I saw what I had
done, what I was doing, and what I would likely continue to
do if I didn’t make a commitment to Christ. I saw the
nailprints, and my name was on them.
“I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer”. I saw
and I heard, up there in the bathroom of Apartment 4,
grieving over my sin and running it around in my own mind. I
was going nowhere. If I didn’t share my mess with
somebody, I’d stay in that nowhere forever. I saw the
nailprints, and my name was on them.
And so on Easter Sunday of that very same year, a nine-
year-old boy received Jesus Chris, slipped into the waters of
baptism, and shouted out as Thomas did, “My lord and my
God.”
For, after all, nailprints don’t lie.
