John 20:19-29
Later on that day, the disciples had gathered together, but, fearful of the Jews, had locked all the doors in the house. Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, “Peace to you.” Then he showed them his hands and side.
The disciples, seeing the Master with their own eyes, were exuberant. Jesus repeated his greeting: “Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you.”
Then he took a deep breath and breathed into them. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he said. “If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?”
But Thomas, sometimes called the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, “We saw the Master.”
But he said, “Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won’t believe it.”
Eight days later, his disciples were again in the room. This time Thomas was with them. Jesus came through the locked doors, stood among them, and said, “Peace to you.”
Then he focused his attention on Thomas. “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving. Believe.”
Thomas said, “My Lord! My God!”
Jesus said, “So, you believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.”
This story of Doubting Thomas only appears in John’s gospel. We so often focus on the story of this doubting man that we overlook a great deal more that is here in this brief story.
First, there is Thomas’s extraordinary exclamation: my Lord, my God! My “God”? Now, where did that come from? We’ve had Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question of who Peter believes he is: you are the Christ, the Messiah, but neither of those are “God.”
We need to know here that this is John’s gospel and the writer of John makes no bones about his belief in the full divinity of the Christ. This is, after all, the gospel which begins:
First, there is Thomas’s extraordinary exclamation: my Lord, my God! My “God”? Now, where did that come from? We’ve had Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question of who Peter believes he is: you are the Christ, the Messiah, but neither of those are “God.”
We need to know here that this is John’s gospel and the writer of John makes no bones about his belief in the full divinity of the Christ. This is, after all, the gospel which begins:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God...
And then goes on to identify the “Word” with Jesus, the Christ.
The other three gospels never (or only obliquely) make this claim for Jesus. In them, Jesus is God’s Son, the Chosen One - but never co-existent with God’s self. He is Lord, and Master, but none of these go as far as God. Among the four gospels, it is only in John’s gospel that we find this complete identification of Jesus the Christ as the 2nd person of the Trinity. In time the church will develop this more fully, but that is later, as second, third and fourth generation Christians struggled to identify just who this was who lived and died and then lived again among them. And so Thomas’ cry is no surprise when we remember who is telling this particular story. This is a theological point that we could talk about for the next several months – but not today, because there are other things I think are important to say about this reading.
We are so caught up here in the miraculous fact of a dead man walking into the room – through the locked door – that we never seem to question “why” he has come. When we re-read the story and bother to ask that question we realize it wasn’t just to pop in and say, “hey, look - I did it - pretty cool, huh?”
Jesus has come here to the disciples with the express intention to send them out and back to work doing the good work out there in the world. He breathes his Spirit in them and tells them to get up off their posteriors and go back to work – his work. There is a world waiting out there for what they have to give. As in the other gospel accounts, he appears to remind them they can do this because he is with them and will always be with them and then he sends them out.
All week while I have been thinking about this reading I’ve also been remembering St. Teresa of Avila’s famous prayer:
The other three gospels never (or only obliquely) make this claim for Jesus. In them, Jesus is God’s Son, the Chosen One - but never co-existent with God’s self. He is Lord, and Master, but none of these go as far as God. Among the four gospels, it is only in John’s gospel that we find this complete identification of Jesus the Christ as the 2nd person of the Trinity. In time the church will develop this more fully, but that is later, as second, third and fourth generation Christians struggled to identify just who this was who lived and died and then lived again among them. And so Thomas’ cry is no surprise when we remember who is telling this particular story. This is a theological point that we could talk about for the next several months – but not today, because there are other things I think are important to say about this reading.
We are so caught up here in the miraculous fact of a dead man walking into the room – through the locked door – that we never seem to question “why” he has come. When we re-read the story and bother to ask that question we realize it wasn’t just to pop in and say, “hey, look - I did it - pretty cool, huh?”
Jesus has come here to the disciples with the express intention to send them out and back to work doing the good work out there in the world. He breathes his Spirit in them and tells them to get up off their posteriors and go back to work – his work. There is a world waiting out there for what they have to give. As in the other gospel accounts, he appears to remind them they can do this because he is with them and will always be with them and then he sends them out.
All week while I have been thinking about this reading I’ve also been remembering St. Teresa of Avila’s famous prayer:
“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours, no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world.
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.”
I’ve been thinking about a story I shared last week. Some of you weren’t here last week so I’m going to quickly share it again, so we’re all on the same page.
On the day before Easter, Hilary and I were in Sacramento – actually in Rio Linda, one of the poorest areas of greater Sacramento – where Hilary was performing for a benefit concert given to bring in food and money for a local food pantry there.
The person who organized this whole thing is a friend of Hilary’s – and he is not one you would necessarily recognize right off if you met him on the street as one who cared about doing Christ’s work. But you’d be very wrong. Billy is an ex-meth-head, and ex-heroin addict, a tough-looking guy – who is also a man who believes and cares deeply about the poor of his world. When he was welcoming everyone and thanking them for coming he made a statement that just blew me away. He said: Tomorrow is Easter, but today YOU are the second coming because today you are here helping to do Christ’s work on earth.
Hold on to all these thoughts, for a minute, but now, back to Doubting Thomas.
Thomas may be, after Peter, the most well-known among the disciples because he expresses – right there in front of God and everybody – all the doubts the rest of us feel. All the fear that keeps us from accepting the wonderful news that God really does care for us. Thomas just can’t believe that Jesus had really been there with the others in the flesh. So Jesus comes in again when Thomas is there and sticks out his hands and says, “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving.”
“Take your finger and stick it in the holes in my hands.” Think about that – Jesus is risen, he is right there living and breathing again - but the hands he holds out to Thomas are still wounded. They have not miraculously healed.
Now, lets take all the bits and pieces I’ve put out here in the last few minutes: Jesus coming back to send his followers out into the world to do his work. Jesus’ wounded hands. St. Teresa’s prayer that “Christ has now on earth no hands but yours.” And Billy’s reminder that we – no matter how battered about by life we may be – are the 2nd coming of Christ when we are doing his good work. When we add in Paul’s later teaching that we are the Body of Christ - the body Jesus said was broken ... it all seems pretty clear to me: we are the hands of Jesus – the wounded hands of Jesus. We are wounded – but so was Jesus. Wounded or not, we are the ones he told to “believe” and then sent out to do his work. Our woundedness can no longer be our excuse – instead, it is to be our very power and our glory.
I think about the reading off and on all week, and Hilary and I occasionally talk about our thoughts on the reading. Then on Saturday when I sit down at the computer to actually write this message out and try to order my thoughts into some coherent pattern, Hilary, being an extrovert, talks through his thought process, and so is in and out all morning interrupting me and bringing me his work and asking me to proof it and see if it works or not – until it all gets pretty confusing and sometimes it’s hard to know whose thoughts are whose – but this I know is Hilary’s because I copied it right off his paper, because I like the way he said it here:
On the day before Easter, Hilary and I were in Sacramento – actually in Rio Linda, one of the poorest areas of greater Sacramento – where Hilary was performing for a benefit concert given to bring in food and money for a local food pantry there.
The person who organized this whole thing is a friend of Hilary’s – and he is not one you would necessarily recognize right off if you met him on the street as one who cared about doing Christ’s work. But you’d be very wrong. Billy is an ex-meth-head, and ex-heroin addict, a tough-looking guy – who is also a man who believes and cares deeply about the poor of his world. When he was welcoming everyone and thanking them for coming he made a statement that just blew me away. He said: Tomorrow is Easter, but today YOU are the second coming because today you are here helping to do Christ’s work on earth.
Hold on to all these thoughts, for a minute, but now, back to Doubting Thomas.
Thomas may be, after Peter, the most well-known among the disciples because he expresses – right there in front of God and everybody – all the doubts the rest of us feel. All the fear that keeps us from accepting the wonderful news that God really does care for us. Thomas just can’t believe that Jesus had really been there with the others in the flesh. So Jesus comes in again when Thomas is there and sticks out his hands and says, “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving.”
“Take your finger and stick it in the holes in my hands.” Think about that – Jesus is risen, he is right there living and breathing again - but the hands he holds out to Thomas are still wounded. They have not miraculously healed.
Now, lets take all the bits and pieces I’ve put out here in the last few minutes: Jesus coming back to send his followers out into the world to do his work. Jesus’ wounded hands. St. Teresa’s prayer that “Christ has now on earth no hands but yours.” And Billy’s reminder that we – no matter how battered about by life we may be – are the 2nd coming of Christ when we are doing his good work. When we add in Paul’s later teaching that we are the Body of Christ - the body Jesus said was broken ... it all seems pretty clear to me: we are the hands of Jesus – the wounded hands of Jesus. We are wounded – but so was Jesus. Wounded or not, we are the ones he told to “believe” and then sent out to do his work. Our woundedness can no longer be our excuse – instead, it is to be our very power and our glory.
I think about the reading off and on all week, and Hilary and I occasionally talk about our thoughts on the reading. Then on Saturday when I sit down at the computer to actually write this message out and try to order my thoughts into some coherent pattern, Hilary, being an extrovert, talks through his thought process, and so is in and out all morning interrupting me and bringing me his work and asking me to proof it and see if it works or not – until it all gets pretty confusing and sometimes it’s hard to know whose thoughts are whose – but this I know is Hilary’s because I copied it right off his paper, because I like the way he said it here:
the 2nd coming
has happened,
is happening,
will happen
as long as we allow
the wounded hands of Jesus,
our hands,
to do the work of Christ on earth.
(Rev. Hilary F. Marckx, PhD)
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