John 20.19-31: Proof

How do you know the current state of things? You ask for proof, right? The deposit has been made? Let me just check that. You've finished your homework? Let me take a look. It's cold enough for a sweater? I'll just step outside and see for myself. Thomas was no different. In fact, he might be excused for his desire for proof. You say Jesus, who died, came back to life and walked through a wall to get to the room where you were? Well, I'd like to see that for myself. (John 20:19-31) Sometimes you need to see for yourself how things are at the moment before you can move ahead.

Artists need that too, especially printmakers. While painters can step back from an easel and assess a painting in process, printmakers can't do that. The printmaker is developing the composition on some kind of plate (a slab of wood, a piece of linoleum, a metal plate). Once the plate is manipulated according to the artist's plan, ink is applied to the plate and the inked plate is pressed to paper. The paper is lifted from the plate to reveal a mirror image of the plate. So printmakers may pull a print while still in the development process to see the current state of the print and what it will look like on paper.

All photos from the Kirkland's Museum's online exhibit Process and Print, part of the museum's March 2020 Month of Printmaking. 

Those prints are called working proofs. They help a printmaker see the picture as it will be. It allows the printmaker to adjust, change things, modify elements and move ahead with the best possible information Perhaps this episode in John's gospel is Thomas' working proof. It's a chance to see in reality something that he has been working on in mirror image. It's a chance to move ahead having seen the end result.

The Easter Day Meal

For additional thoughts on Easter, click on the Liturgical Calendar tab above as well as individual texts in the scripture indices.

It was on the night of Easter day that Jesus surprised two travelers returning to Emmaus from Jerusalem (Luke 24:13-35). But in the Diego Velazquez painting shown here, that story is (literally) in the background. At the left of the composition, visible on the other side of a window or pass-through, Jesus sits at table with two people (one is visibly present only through a gesturing hand), bread in his hand and a halo behind his head. Presumably the visible halo signals that Jesus has been made known to his companions.

But that really is just background.

Diego Velazquez. Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus. 1617-1618. Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland.

The main subject is the Moorish kitchen worker. Even as the Emmaus pilgrims are finding their world turned upside down, the worker in the kitchen continues to work. There is no change for that worker. Tintoretto's version of the Last Supper at San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, shows servants preparing the meal and even doing the dishes in the room where all manner of supernatural things are happening. Someone had to make the meals, serve them, and clean up afterward.

Will the servant in Velazquez' painting learn what the men learned at the table? Will the servant be able to partake of the resurrection promised through Jesus Christ? It all depends on what Jesus' traveling companions do with the experience they had when bread was broken. How and with whom will they share the risen Christ?

Holy Saturday: Waiting

What do the disciples do on Saturday? After the emotional events of Friday and with the restrictions of the Sabbath, there isn't much for them to do but hunker down and home and wait. But how did they wait? With resignation? In fear? What did they do in that time? Did they tell stories of their time with Jesus? Remember the good old days? Sit in silence after the unspeakable horror of crucifixion?

Eugene Burnand has chosen Holy Saturday as the subject of a painting. Here the disciples are gathered around a single table. They sit or stand, eyes staring vacantly or looking expectantly at one another. One disciples has his head in his hands.

Eugene Burnand. Holy Saturday. 1907-1908. Musee des Beaux Arts, La Chaux de Finds, France. 

Is it despair? Is it sadness? Is it sorrow or anguish? Regret? Disibelief? Are they waiting for something or are they just at loose ends? How would you characterize their waiting? How will you wait on this Holy Saturday...and all the others that follow?

Jesus will find the disciples gathered in a locked room, sitting and waiting in fear on the first night of the week that began Easter morning. The Holy Spirit will find the disciples together in a room on the day of Pentecost, waiting in the city as Jesus had instructed them (Luke 24:49). Were the disciples better at waiting than we are? Or did they just not record their impatience, their despair, their doubts?