Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
-John 20:27
In moments of duress we respond with either “fight or flight.” How many times have we heard that adage? It’s become so commonplace, we often take for granted that it is simply true. We have only these two choices whenever we’re anxious, right? We either fight or flee. A centipede will do that. As will a barn swallow. And so will a cow. Maybe that’s the point, that in our evolutionary-minded culture we just assume that we came from the same amoebic slime and have these responses as hold-overs to our ape-ish great-(to the n-th degree)-grandparents. An article found on msn.com’s homepage today echoes this assumed reality: “The famous fight or flight response mechanism—yep, the same one that helped our ancestors outrun saber-toothed tigers…”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I guess, I’ve always felt like these were pretty limited options and somehow pretty animalistic. Maybe as a weary, worn-out people, this is what we often do. Much of what I see in my counseling office is people anxiously combating or fearfully avoiding relationship or situations — and that seems to fit the bill. What other options can there be?
Recently I was challenged to consider a baby’s response to his environment. Raised in a healthy environment, whenever hungry and needing his mother’s breast, the baby reaches. Whenever frightened and wanting comfort, he again reaches for his mother. Whenever exposed to new things or people and uncertain about them, he reaches for security from mom. There is no fight or flight in him. Not yet. It is all reach.
It is only as that baby grows and experiences the fallen world, repeatedly exposed to fearful and painful events where he reaches and finds no one, that he learns to defend or hide. As an adult, then, he has learned to “live out all the other selves,” as Frederich Buechner put it, “which [he is] constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.” The original innocence is all but lost. Accessibility, vulnerability, authenticity, strength — gone, or buried. Buechener continues, “The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all.”
From my experience, when Buechener says, “most of us,” he is speaking literally. It is extremely rare to encounter anyone able to live out some deep and true and good heart. It is the stuff of fairytales and legends. When we see it, we are stirred and even captivated. We want to be like that, or be reached by someone who is like that. Think of heroes in Hollywood blockbusters. Or maybe the occasional firefighter running up the stairs of the collapsing Twin Towers to rescue bleeding and burning victims. The reason we write books and make movies depicting such a character is not because we see it around us (or within us), but exactly because we often don’t. Our souls are buried by demands, imprisoned by pain, blinded by fear. Broken and lost to us.
The loss of this treasured “original, shimmering self” is one of the greatest tragedies of the Fall. A tragedy so great, in fact, that it was for rescue and restoration of it that God launched the greatest invasion the world has even known. It is for want of this back that Jesus came “to seek and save what was lost” Luke 19:10. His mission in his own words is to, “bind up the brokenhearted… to comfort… to proclaim freedom for the prisoners… recover sight for the blind… release the oppressed…” (see Isaiah 61:1 and Luke 4:18).
One of the ways Jesus does this is by reaching. When Jesus “reached out his hand and touched” the leper (Matthew 8:3) and “reached out his hand and caught” Peter (Matthew 14:31), he was both saving them (from death) and modeling for them the courageous act of reaching. He reached the man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15) and the woman at the well (John 4:1-26) in a similar way (just more indirect, though no less subtle). The gospels are filled with stories of Jesus reaching out to us, of God stooping to face us and call us friends and bringing us up to His level. My own life is filled with stories of the same. So intent is He, in fact, to reach for and save the “original, shimmering self” that He obstinatly refuses to false self, the coats and hats we wear — which can often cause confusion over Jesus intent and motive. (Consider how confusing it must have been for the Pharisees that Jesus chastized and offended. In his offensive way with them, Jesus was still reaching for the buried self, even in refusing to address the pretense. Whenever one of them responded to Jesus with authenticity, Jesus would address him in kind [see, for example, John 3:1-21]).
Not only does Jesus reach toward us (and how far He comes to do that!), but His invitation is for us to reach back. Even when we are living out of the cynicism and despair and unbelief we’ve learned in this world. This was His approach to Thomas, who refused even to acknowledge Him at all. Jesus simply offered, “Reach out your hand and put it to my side. Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27).
I am constantly amazed at the courage of my clients that, after all the pain of living they have experienced, after all the encounters of reaching out and finding no one, that they are still reaching for something, demonstrated by the very act of coming to see me. Something in them balks at and refuses to completely embrace in existential despair that they are totally alone in the universe. Maybe it’s not the original expectations that someone would be there to offer the comfort and protection they needed, but the very act of stepping into my office and opening their hearts and lives to me is in itself a courageous reaching.
The reach response of an infant who hasn’t yet learned to fight in desperation or flee in fear, and the subtle and trepidatious reach found in some of us still hoping for someone or something on the other end, is an image of God in us. Maybe the most glorious part of that image in us, that part of “eternity set in the heart of man,” as Ecclesiastes puts it. In a way that is brutal and even demanding, Jesus still invites us to reach toward Him, out of the deepest love for us and desire that in the reaching, “we may have life, and have it to the full,” that in the seeking, we may both find and be found.



