Faithful Thomas

Scripture: The Second Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

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

If we know anything about the Apostle Thomas, it’s probably that he was “Doubting Thomas,” the skeptical disciple of Jesus.

On the evening of Easter Sunday, the Risen Christ appeared to His Apostles in the house where they were hiding. He managed to enter a locked room without opening any doors. And the first words out of His mouth, I think, prove rather remarkable: “Peace be with you,” He says. This to the Apostles, who scattered and abandoned Him. This to Peter, who denied Jesus no less than three times. This to mankind, who had nailed Him to a Cross and run Him through with a spear. Of all the things He might’ve said, it’s “Peace be with you.”

Jesus returns after descending to the dead, conquering Hades, and raising up to Heaven the souls of all the righteous who had died before Him. And He rises from the tomb not with an army or casting about bolts of lightning, but offering peace. He shows them the wounds in His hands, feet, and side. Yes, He is the same Jesus whom we crucified. No, it wasn’t an illusion or a dream. The Resurrection has not erased His Passion, but has transformed these marks of shame into emblems of triumph.

And Jesus then breathes into the Apostles the Holy Spirit—the same breath of God that once animated Adam in the Garden of Eden—and He entrusts them with a most remarkable power. “If you forgive the sins of any,” He proclaims, “they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Jesus has given His Apostles the authority to forgive sin. This is astounding, for indeed only God can forgive sins. It was His claim to this very authority that got Jesus arrested and executed on charges of blasphemy, yet nothing less than the Resurrection itself has vindicated Him now.

In other words, Jesus follows up the triumphant assertion of His authority over sin, death, and hell by passing this authority on to those who believe in Him. We are given the power to proclaim the forgiveness of sins. We are entrusted to continue Jesus’ mission—to continue Jesus’ life, as His Body—here on earth. How utterly astounding! How utterly scandalous! Who could believe such a thing?

Jesus then enigmatically takes His leave, as indeed He will continue to pop in and out of the Apostle’s lives for the next 40 days leading up to His Ascension back into Heaven. And Thomas, who happened to have been out and about during all this commotion, returns to find his fellow believers in something of a tizzy. “We have seen the Lord!” they cry, speaking of the wounds, the Spirit, the unspeakable authority now delegated to mere mortals. And Thomas replies, quite sensibly: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands, and put my fingers in the mark of the nails and my hand in His side, I will not believe.”

Oh, boo. Bad form, Thomas. Why can’t you be like the other disciples, the faithful disciples, Thomas? Why must you doubt what you have not seen? Where’s your blind faith?

But Thomas, mind you, has no lack of faith. If anything, Thomas tends to be braver than the rest of the Twelve. Remember that when Jesus insisted on traveling to Jerusalem, despite the very real dangers to His life, even going so far as to predict His own death upon the Cross, it was Thomas who turned to the other Apostles and said, “Let us go also, that we may die with Him.” How is that not faith? Why was Thomas not there in the house with the other disciples, who had locked the doors for fear of the Roman and Jerusalem authorities? Obviously he was the one brave enough to be out and about on the streets, putting his life at risk.

To single him out as “Doubting Thomas” is ridiculous. All the Apostles doubted. No one seems seriously to have believed Jesus when He prophesied that He would rise from the tomb after three days. No one accepted that the Cross had become part of God’s plan. They did not believe the prophets, did not believe the angels, did not believe the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene didn’t believe until Jesus spoke to her, personally and tenderly, in the garden by His own grave. The Apostles didn’t believe until He appeared in the midst of them as they hid locked away. Thomas isn’t asking for anything other than what the others needed before they believed.

You see, in the writings of St. John—his Gospel, the Johannine Epistles, even Revelation—belief isn’t about the blind acceptance of others’ assertions. Belief isn’t even about proof, sticking your fingers inside the wounds of Jesus’ Crucifixion. In the writings of John, belief is always about relationship. When John talks about those who believe in Jesus, he’s not talking about those who can recite the proper facts or dogmas of the Church. He’s talking about knowing and loving and trusting Jesus. You don’t believe in Jesus the way that you believe in gravity, or that two and two are four. You believe in Jesus the way that you believe in your husband, or your parents, or you best friend. We believe in those we love.

One week after He appeared to the Apostles—that is, this Second Sunday of Easter—Jesus returned to the same locked house, in the same miraculous manner, only this time Thomas was there with the rest. And Jesus, knowing what Thomas had demanded, says to him, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

Now let’s be clear. The message here is not that Peter and the other Apostles believed without having to probe Jesus’ wounds, therefore Thomas should be ashamed for needing physical proof. To the contrary, there’s no indication that Thomas takes Jesus up on this forensic offer, like some episode of CSI: Jerusalem. Instead, Thomas, immediately upon Jesus’ arrival, falls to his knees and is the first of us all to confess clearly and unambiguously: “My Lord and my God!”

I fear that this story traditionally has been misused to justify blind faith. I fear that people have told stories about Jesus, about what Jesus has done in their lives and in countless others, and they have demanded that any hearer take their claims at face value. Accept without questioning! Don’t be a doubting Thomas! But that’s not what the Church offers to the world. We who believe in Jesus do not simply insist upon blind acceptance of assertions about Jesus. That’s not what we offer. We offer Jesus Himself. We offer actual relationship with the living Christ.

Do not listen to the story of Christianity as if it were a series of dogmas to accept, a checklist of theses to be affirmed. Doctrine has its place, but doctrine is not God. Jesus is God. Demand a relationship with Jesus! Reach out and place yourself inside His wounds. Ask Him to be present in your life and your home as He has been present in the lives of so many others, within and without the Bible. The point is not to believe things about Jesus but to believe in Jesus, to trust that He is Risen and will be with us until the end of the age.

That’s really what forgiving sins is. It’s the authority to claim a relationship with God.

We do not simply offer history. We do not speak of people who once lived but are now long dead. We exist, the Church exists, to share the living Christ with one another, and if the Gospel has taught us anything today it’s that the Risen Christ is not limited to the four walls of any building. He pops up where we least expect Him. God doesn’t care what you believe if that belief makes no difference in your life. God invites you into a living relationship, which is both communal and personal. And in a relationship you can question, and you can doubt, you can even make demands of Him. He does love you, after all.

Mind you, He’s not some genie, appearing and obeying whenever summoned. We are talking about God here. But neither does He abandon us. Neither does He ever break His promises.

It is in our time of doubt, our time of questioning, that the wounds of God are closest to us. And when we experience them for ourselves—when we see the depths of suffering God endured for love, and the depths of love revealed in that suffering—how can we help but fall on our knees, wherever we are, and confess to His face: “My Lord and my God”?

If only we could all doubt like Thomas, so that we might have the faith of Thomas.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.