“Finding Peace in the Cave”

An Eastertide sermon by Paul Peters Derry on John 20:19-31

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

After spending 500 days alone in a dark cave some 70 metres below the Earth’s surface, assailed by a plague of flies and the odd tantalising vision of roast chicken, 50-year-old Spanish athlete Beatriz Flamini emerged a little after 9:00 am on Friday, and after a quick checkup with a doctor and psychologist, was treated to a 50-minute press conference in which she endeavoured to explain the almost inexplicable.

“I was expecting to come out and have a shower,” she announced to a room full of reporters. “I wasn’t expecting there to be so much interest.” As the media reports noted, “That was one of Flamini’s rare miscalculations.”

On Saturday November 20, 2021 – three months before Russia invaded Ukraine – the elite sportswoman and extreme mountaineer entered her “Stygian” – I had to look that one up, it relates to the Styx River, in other words, “very dark” – lodgings in the cave outside Granada, Spain, determined to learn more about how the human mind and body engages the challenge of extreme solitude and deprivation.

Monitored by a team of scientists from the universities of Almería, Granada and Murcia, who kept in touch through special, limited messaging technology, Flamini is now thought to have broken the world record for the longest time a person has spent alone in a cave.

Who knew there was even such a thing?

In any case, while the disciples had not hunkered down in a cave deep below the ground for 500 days, toight’s gospel reading records how they had sequestered themselves, separated themselves apart from the outside world, gathering behind locked doors. It seems that interaction with the outside world had felt too risky. Who could blame them? How were they – or we – to explain exactly what happened? We were there when they nailed him to the cross. We were there when the sun refused to shine. We were there when they laid him in the tomb. We had gone to the tomb early in the morning, and were startled to find it empty. Mary mistook him for the gardener, only to have Jesus call her by name. Just how do you explain all, or even any of that?

Gennifer Benjamin Brooks comments how “for too many, the major focus of this text has been the reaction of Thomas, often called the doubter,” offering instead the notion that “this is a resurrection text,” with the theme of resurrection predominant throughout this passage. Her assessment: “John is not satisfied with narrating the events of the morning, the message of the risen Christ travels through the day and here, he gives an account of the events of the evening as experienced by the disciples.”

Recurrent in John’s gospel account is juxtaposition of themes. Light and shadows. With tonight’s gospel, it’s juxtaposition of fear and peace. The disciples are huddled together in fear behind locked doors. They might as well as been hunkered down in some deep dark cave. Jesus comes into their midst, and brings a word of peace. “Peace be with you.”

The word carries multiple meanings, not the least of which being a simple hello. John understands Jesus’ greeting as much stronger, a sort of imperative understanding or word of peace. The greeting is said twice, perhaps for emphasis, and/or because the disciples were so awe-struck that they could not respond to Jesus’ first salutation.

Our gospel text says that the disciples had gathered behind locked doors in fear of the Jews, and it is important that this notation be understood as for all too much of the Church’s history, support an antisemitic bias. Emphasizing “for fear of the Jews,” likewise misdirects our focus from the actual locus of concern.

It was the events of the previous days and weeks that had rattled, unsettled and unnerved the disciples. Alongside his crucifixion, Jesus’ resurrection eroded any sense of normalcy, security and peace the disciples might have felt. All of which made a word of peace essential for calming the disciples’ fear, and for settling their hearts, minds and wills still paralyzed in the grip of understandable, natural doubt and unbelief.

Full disclosure: I am not one of those people who always embody a sense of calm and peace. Even when I look calm, cool and collected on the surface, or sport a countenance that might be received as hopeful or optimistic, not only is it true that there’s lots churning away under the surface of the waters. More to the point, I feel the rush of waves of intensity. For me, peace means not an omnipresent smoothing of the waters, but rather, a sense of riding or surfing the waves. With all of predictable unpredictability that affords.

It's been said that “the human mind searches for order: to make sense of things, to understand the world, to organize all the data that comes to our awareness.” (Clayton J. Schmit) Even so, a greeting of peace, whether from Jesus to his disciples gathered behind locked doors, or the exchange of peace we offer each other Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, brings calm, helps restore order where there has been disruption or unsettledness in our lives, and accompanies us as we ride the waves of intensity which, if we are truly honest with ourselves and our life experience, never really disappear.

The gathered disciples, not the least of which being Thomas, are caught in a vortex of events that are beyond their control, yet holding great impact on their lives and well-being.

Returning to Beatrix Flamini’s post-emergence press conference, she explained that she lost track of time after day 65. Asked how she succeeded in keeping herself sane for so long, Flamini pointed to her extensive experience and mental preparation, adding: “I got on very well with myself.” Did she talk to herself? Yes, but never out loud. The silence of the cave had to be respected. The key, she added, was consistency. “For me … the most important thing is being very clear and consistent about what you think and what you feel and what you say,” she said. “It’s true that there were some difficult moments, but there were also some very beautiful moments – and I had both as I lived up to my commitment to living in a cave for 500 days.”

Flamini said she passed the time calmly and purposefully by reading, writing, drawing, knitting – by enjoying herself: “I was where I wanted to be, and so I dedicated myself to it.” Put bluntly, the trick was living in the here and now: “I’m cooking; I’m drawing … You have to be focused. If I get distracted, I’ll twist my ankle. I’ll get hurt. It’ll be over and they’ll have to get me out. And I don’t want that.”

An athlete, she managed to keep fit, plough through 60 books and use two cameras to chronicle her experiences for a forthcoming documentary.

It sounds like Beatrix Flamini found peace in the cave. Or in the cave, peace found her. Along that line, I’m reminded of the scene in Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal, the poignant film about a roguee artistic troupe tasked with updating a parish’s traditional passion play. In the film, the actor chosen to portray Jesus is pictured reading through books about Jesus, when the librarian, a fine French Roman Catholic nun, approaches him with interest, suggesting about his quest to find Jesus, “C’est Jesus qui va vous trouver.” “In searching for Jesus, it’s Jesus who will find you.”

In our quest to find Jesus in whatever Easter cave in which we are wrestling and living, it’s the peace of Christ which will find us.

Continuing with how John records his gospel account: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

AMEN