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The Second Sunday Of Easter
Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery hast established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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The Second Sunday Of Easter
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A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
✛
Doubt and Joy
In this gospel Saint Thomas, our guy, first does not believe that Jesus has risen from the dead and then does believe when he sees the wounds. Thomas can show us that doubt and faith are not like an on/off switch, so that just as a light is either on or off, so you either have faith or you don’t, and if you have faith you don’t have doubt, and if you have doubt you don’t have faith. To the contrary, doubt and faith are complexly interrelated; they are all tied up with each other. I want to pick up on these thoughts today by starting at the end of the gospel passage.
It is the end of the 20th chapter of Saint John’s gospel. Wrapping it all up, Saint John says: Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe. Believe what? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.
One might well look at the story of Thomas, his initial disbelief, his final belief—after he sees Jesus and sees Jesus’ wounds, Thomas says, “My Lord and my God”–-one might well look at this story and just stop there. But John, writing the story, immediately brings his gospel to its conclusion [on the customary assumption that chapter 21 is an appendix] and, in doing so, reveals that this story about Thomas is a “sign”—Jesus did many other signs, John writes. So the Thomas story is taken to be a sign, a sign that is written for the sake of our belief in Jesus as the Christ, God’s Son, and the reason we have that belief is so that we may have life. Here then is the claim: the story is a sign; the sign is for the sake of our belief; our belief is for the sake of our having life.
We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t with the other disciples on the evening of that first Sunday when Jesus made his inaugural resurrection appearance to his disciples. They were behind shut doors somewhere, and Thomas was at least out of those doors. Every imaginable possibility is open to us. Thomas might have been so sad he wanted to be alone. He might have been shopping. He might have been just unlucky. Who hasn’t had that kind of bad luck, to be out doing something when a very special thing happens to your closest friends. “If only I had been there!” we would think, kicking ourselves about it.
Like Thomas, Thomas’s friends had been utterly dejected by the defeat of Jesus’ mission. They had expected triumph and glory; what they got was a humiliating death, and then a corpse. Two of them had run to the tomb that morning on the basis of a tale told by a woman. One of them, it is said, “believed,” but neither of them saw Jesus. What they saw was an empty tomb, the linen cloths that had wrapped Jesus’ body, but no body. They spent the day, we may surmise, in uncertainty.
Which uncertainty was decisively resolved by Jesus’ appearance that evening. Behind closed doors they were, and without the door opening Jesus was suddenly there. He gave them his peace. He gave them his authority over sin. Everything was changed.
But Thomas was not there, and when he was told they had seen “the Lord,” he did not believe it. Had I been Thomas, I would have said something like this: You guys have always been the most gullible people on earth. Jesus died in a painful and humiliating way just days ago, and you are letting your fickle emotions turn you on a dime. I’m not going to forget it: he was betrayed by one of us, he was condemned in the most unfair judicial process ever, nails were driven into his precious body, people mocked him and spit on him, there was all that blood and those screams from the others, there was darkness, there was a spear that they stuck into his side even though he was dead (couldn’t they have left even his dead body alone? They had already killed him!)—we were scared to death (most of us, excluding you, John), scared and scattered and defeated. And now you say he is alive and you’ve seen him, and you’re whistling Happy Days Are Here Again. I say, you have always been the most gullible people on earth. How do you know it was Jesus? Did you really look? I bet you didn’t even check out his hands. There were nails there, you know! And how about his side? You didn’t, did you? Well, I’m not going to believe it until I see those wounds. If the wounds aren’t there, it isn’t really Jesus.
And, as you heard, the next Sunday they were all there together, including Thomas, and Jesus appeared again, and he gave Thomas what he asked for. And Thomas believed.
Saint John says, all this is a sign. But how is it a sign? Perhaps it’s a sign that if we want to see Jesus for ourselves we need to see the wounds. I think that’s true, and the reverse is true also: if we see the wounds, we will see Jesus.
None of us has seen Jesus in the flesh, but I think we do see Jesus in the wounds which are all around us in this life. People are being betrayed every day. Some are tortured, some are burnt alive, some are caught in a ferry boat as it sinks into the deep, some are ravaged by a sly cancer that spreads through them as the unintended consequence of a treatment aimed to help. People lose jobs and have to move away. And even without torture or calamity, people who are dear to us just die. There is an inescapable woundedness to our existence.
And if you see these wounds, you will see Jesus. This is because (may I say it again?) Jesus has come down, come down all the way from heaven his home to this earthly life where he had close friends who were ill, who were crazy, who died, and who betrayed him and abandoned him. Jesus came all the way down. And that means, however far down we go, however much we allow ourselves to enter into the wounds of things, there we will find Jesus. He is already there.
It is undeniable that there is a deep sadness to things. It is always down there, for every one of us, no matter what our life. But when the tears of things come over you, you also find—or at least (it’s my testimony) I have found, but I don’t think I’m unique—you find that there is something deeper than the wounds. That deeper something is joy. However deeply you probe into the wounds, you will find that there is a joy that surrounds and contains them. The wounded innocent body has been raised from the dead.
This is what the Thomas story is a sign of: if you see the wounds, you will see Jesus. Thomas is a sign for those who have doubts, for those who get drawn down into the woundedness of things. There is no need to fear doubts or wounds. However far you go, Jesus is already there. He is there with the nailprints in his hands. He is there with the gash in his side. He is there also in beauty and love, in a glorious body that will never decay or die. He is there indeed with the offer of a life that is for you to live, a life that you can live in the midst of the tears and the wounds and everything. To put it another way, however far you go, Jesus is there with that real joy that is the last word on human existence. To have life in Jesus’ name is to know that before and after and surrounding all the wounds, there is joy.
