Unseen

Scripture: Second Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2014 A

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

I feel like St. Thomas really gets a bad rap. We all know him as Doubting Thomas, the Apostle who didn’t “buy into” the Resurrection, but that seems terribly unfair.

After rising from the dead on that glorious Easter morn—with Hell harrowed, the dead liberated, and the veil of Heaven torn open—Christ continued to appear to His Apostles, and disciples, and even to large crowds for a full 40 days. 40 is one of those significant numbers in the Bible that turns up over and again. It represents new birth, new life, something coming to fruition. For 40 days, Jesus consoled and strengthened and grew His flock, preparing them for the great Pentecost to come.

It is a hard thing to believe in the Resurrection. Yes, the Old Testament clearly teaches that there is an afterlife, that our souls continue beyond the grave. And yes, the prophets clearly teach a Resurrection, a return of the dead to life, at the end of time. But it’s one thing to read these notions in the holy books, and quite another to encounter them in real life. The Apostles, and indeed all of Jerusalem, had just watched Jesus die in the most horrible and public of ways.

Once in a while you find the odd conspiracy story about how Christ didn’t really die on the Cross: how perhaps He was drugged or entered a trance and only appeared to die. Obviously the folks dreaming up such ideas have never seen a crucifixion. There is no surviving what the Romans did to our Lord. Entire books have been written laying out the gory details. The flogging alone probably would have been enough to kill Him. Romans used special whips called flagrums, which had multiple tails entwined with lead weights and sharp hooks and bits of bone and metal. Flagrums literally tore flesh from bone, flaying the victim alive, and bruising internal organs. The trauma and blood loss alone might well have been fatal.

Then there’s the agonizing walk from the pillar to the rock of Golgatha, carrying that massive cross, falling under the crushing blows of its weight. Little wonder that Simon of Cyrene had to be called from out the crowd to assist with the burden. And finally there’s the crucifixion itself, which was far more clever and devious than we usually assume. The nails were expertly placed where ankle meets foot and wrist meets hand, piercing clusters of small bone strong enough to support the weight.

But there are nerve clusters in just these spots, maximizing the amount of pain involved. The agony in your wrists causes you to push up with your feet—and the agony in your feet causes you to hang down from your wrists. Thus a sort of gristly “dance” ensues, as the victim shifts up and down, until he is finally too exhausted to go on, and gradually suffocates under the weight of his own body. This all occurs publicly, in the open air, naked and hopeless and pathetic.

Now, something a little odd happened to Jesus; He died more quickly than was expected. The Romans themselves expressed surprise to find that our Lord expired so much faster than they anticipated. He died within six hours or so, whereas some victims linger for days. The thieves on either side of Him had to have their legs broken to speed along the suffocation. But Jesus didn’t die of suffocation. He was able to speak at the last—then to call out in a loud voice and expire suddenly. It sounds, in fact, like He suffered an aneurysm in His heart, brought on by the flogging and the falling.

The peritoneal sack around His heart would’ve filled with blood, giving Him a sudden, dramatic end that He could feel coming. This appears to be confirmed when the old centurion uses his spear to pierce Jesus’ side up to the heart—when blood and peritoneal water pour out from the sack, confirming that He’s dead. Then there’s the taking down, and the embalming, and the sealing in the tomb…

Now why, do you suppose, am I relating the bitter details of Jesus’ death, especially now that we have left Good Friday behind us and entered our season of Resurrection joy? Certainly I don’t mean to be off color. But I want us to realize where Thomas is coming from. Thomas is not a coward, or a lukewarm disciple. When Jesus embarks on His final journey to Jerusalem, Thomas realizes that it is, in effect, a suicide mission, and states baldly: “Let us go also, that we may die with Him.” Thomas was faithful. Thomas stood by our Lord right up to the Garden of Gethsemane, which he only then fled along with all the others.

When Jesus rose and appeared to Mary Magdalene, the Apostles would not believe it—not even Peter, who had seen such wonders. They had witnessed the Crucifixion. And brother, nobody walks away from that. Nobody “gets better” after that. On that Cross, death was displayed in the most explicit and public way possible. The worst sort of death fell upon the best sort of Man, and the finality of it all—the scourge, the beam, the nails, the spear—it was all too horrible, all too real. Christ was dead, as dead as any person had ever been. They’d all seen it.

The Apostles only believed when Jesus appeared to them, whole and glorious, full of the Resurrection life. He was in perfect health, yet retained the scars of His Passion and Crucifixion. He walked through walls, appeared at will. Who would believe it had they not seen it? And Thomas did not see it, because he was not hiding with the others when the Risen Christ appeared to them. He was presumably out and about somewhere—seeking, perhaps, to die with Jesus as he had promised.

When the Apostles breathlessly related to Thomas what they themselves had seen and heard and touched, that Christ is alive, Thomas simply couldn’t believe. How could he? Indeed, he asked only for the same proof that the others needed. Peter did not believe Mary until he had seen Christ for himself. Even Mary did not believe the angel, until Jesus came to her in the garden.

Of course, the following Sunday—the second Sunday of Easter—Jesus appeared to His beloved disciples again, and this time Thomas was with them. He touched the holes in our Lord’s hands, placed his own hand into Jesus’ spear-pierced side. And then Thomas put into words what others up until then had only stated obliquely. He fell on his knees and proclaimed Jesus Christ, “my Lord and my God.” Thomas recognized that Jesus is God in the flesh, the God Who has died and conquered death for him. And Thomas recognized this in Jesus’ wounds.

“Have you believed because you have seen Me?” Jesus asked him gently. “Blessed,” He said, “are those who have not seen and yet believed.”

Thomas, I might note, went on to carry the Gospel all the way down to the southern tip of India, in the region of Kerala, where a community of St. Thomas Christians has flourished in the most peaceful and stable and beautiful region of India for some 2,000 years. The Portuguese were shocked to find ancient churches in deepest India when they as the first Europeans arrived. Thomas was bold to the end. But we remember him most for this story, don’t we? And I wonder what lesson we take away from the Gospel this morning. On the one hand it is clearly a great comfort to us—we who had not the privilege of witnessing the Resurrection firsthand, we who have yet to reach out and touch our God in human form. Blessed are those, truly, who have not seen and yet believe. Such faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

Yet on another level, we are all like Thomas, are we not?—like Thomas and Peter and Mary and all of those who were sequentially informed of the Resurrection in words, yet could not believe it, could not accept it, until they had touched the Risen Jesus, had seen and felt and worshipped Him for themselves. It is one thing to hear the Gospel story and say, “Yes, this is the Word of God, I do believe and fervently hope that it happened just as we were told!” Yet it is quite another to realize that Jesus is more than a story, that He is in fact alive and present and hard at work, right here and now, in my life and in yours.

At first it seems that we can’t see Jesus, that we can’t touch Him as the Apostles did. But slowly, through prayer and humility, we begin to realize that Jesus is still alive among us. We see Him in the face of our neighbors, especially the needy or ill. We touch Him in the holy Sacraments, His promises made real for us in bread and wine, in water and Word. We speak to Him in our prayers, no matter how broken or unsure. And we behold His glories everywhere reflected in Nature and Mankind.

Jesus comes to us, to our very homes and families, even in the midst of our doubts. And He urges us, “Put your finger in the holes in My hands. Place your hand into my open side. Enter into the wounds of Your God; find that I meet you, that I have waited for you, in your suffering; and you will see Me for Who and what I AM. Blessed are those who do not see and yet see. For lo, I AM with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Thanks be to Christ, Whose wounds we touch every day. In Jesus’ Name. AMEN.