May 1, 2011

The story of Thomas’ encounter with the Risen Christ may be my favorite gospel story. I love it because I have long felt a kinship with Thomas. When I was growing up, I was one of those kids that Sunday School teachers must have hated because I liked to ask uncomfortable questions. I still do. I remember one time in particular when an exasperated teacher responded to one of my questions with “Well, doubting’s a sin.” I thought at the time, if that’s the case, then I know I’m going to hell. I still have questions, I still doubt, but I’ve also learned through life and from the story of Thomas, that far from being a sin, at least for me, doubting opens the door to a deeper faith, it opens the door to a richer encounter with God, and a richer life of faith.

Today’s gospel reading from John 20 is often used or mis-used by people who want to bring non-believers to Christian faith. Thomas is depicted as the epitome of the doubter—hence his unfortunate, and inaccurate epithet, “Doubting Thomas.” The moral of the story is usually that all someone who doubts needs to do is close their eyes and believe. In fact, to focus on Thomas, and to interpret Thomas as an example of who not to be, is to miss the overarching themes of the story.

As is the case for much of the gospel of John, this story operates on a number of levels; it has several different meanings. For one thing, it is John’s version of the Jesus giving the gift of the Holy Spirit and the power of forgiving sins. In addition to that, there’s the story of Thomas. Finally, our reading also serves as something of a conclusion to the gospel. The last verse sounds very much like the end of the story: “But these are written so that you might come to believe, or continue to believe, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name.”

It’s a story, then, that is pregnant with meaning; for it links the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and those who witnessed it, with the faith of those who came long after the events recorded. The story is about both Jesus and his disciples. As I’ve said on other occasions, one of the interesting things about the appearances of the Risen Christ to the disciples, is that, in almost all of them, the disciples at first do not recognize him. People’s tendency, when I point this out, is to try to explain it—well perhaps Jesus looked different, or they weren’t expecting to see the risen Christ. That’s all well and good, but it’s important to explore the significance of that lack of recognition. How, in these stories, do the disciples come to know it is Jesus? In this story, it is not until Jesus shows them his hands and his feet, the wounds from the crucifixion.

What this suggests to me is that what is most remarkable and unique about the risen Christ is not the resurrection itself, however unique it may be. Rather, what is important, significant, earth-shattering, is that when Jesus is raised from the dead, he continues to bear on his body the marks of his suffering, his crucifixion. To put it another way, what is remarkable is not the transformation, but the continuity. It is that which surprises the disciples and at the same time, makes clear to them that this being appearing before them now, is the same Jesus who walked with them in Galilee.

In fact, one might interpret Thomas’ insistence to see the marks of Jesus’ wounds, not as a matter of his doubt, but as a symbol of something else. There was a tendency in early Christianity, just as there remains a tendency for Christians, to spiritualize the resurrection. We are uncomfortable with the notion that the resurrection was physical. But the gospel of John is, on one level, very sensual. It emphasizes our bodily experiences of taste, smell, sight, and touch. It does it in all sorts of ways, sometimes simply, other times profoundly. There is, for example the smell that Mary worries about when Jesus asks that Lazarus’ tomb be opened. There is also the smell that fills the room when Mary anoints Jesus with costly perfume.

For Thomas to demand to see and touch the wounds of Jesus is to do two things. One is to make the connection between the Risen Christ and the one who suffered on the cross. Indeed, it might be that his insistence on seeing and touching the wounds is a demand to know not that Jesus had risen from the dead, but that it was the same Jesus who had suffered and died—and it was only by seeing and touching those wounds that he would know they were one and the same. But the other important piece of Thomas’ demand is to know certainly that Jesus’ was a bodily resurrection; that the Risen Christ was not a ghost or some spiritual, ethereal being, but a human with a real, albeit transformed, body.

Thomas gets a bad rap in the Christian tradition, because we want to think of him as someone who wouldn’t take someone else’s word, or testimony at truthful. The other disciples saw Jesus’ hands and feet, it was when Jesus showed them to the disciples that they recognized him. Thomas asked for nothing more than what the others had been given. True, he says that he wanted to touch the wounds themselves, but the gospel never states that he did so. Seeing was enough for him, as it was for the others.

But unlike the others, it’s not just that Thomas now knew Jesus, that he recognized him. Rather, the gospel writer puts in his mouth the most extreme, the most profound confession of faith found anywhere in the Gospel. When Thomas sees and recognizes Jesus, he exclaims, “My Lord and My God!” It is the grandest confession of faith found anywhere in John, anywhere in the Gospels. It is nothing less than the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh, Elohim, Lord God, as it was translated in English Old Testaments.

Jesus’ response to Thomas is both an affirmation of his faith, and an expression of the gospel’s key idea that true faith, deep faith, is not reliant on what the gospel calls signs, or we might call the miraculous. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe .” The disciples do not have greater faith than those Christians who have lived since the resurrection and did not bear witness to it. Rather, those later Christians, we, have the greater faith. Yet we rely on them. It is their witness, their testimony that gives rise to our faith. And in that sense, Thomas does serve as something of a negative example. He didn’t take their word for it. He wanted to see for himself. We don’t have that option.

The gospel writer adds a summary or conclusion to the story, and perhaps a conclusion to the gospel, although it goes on for another chapter. “These are written that you might come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.” The Greek is a little more nuanced than that and could also be translated as “that you might continue to believe.” It’s that translation that I think is the better one, at least for us in the twenty-first century.

I don’t understand the resurrection, I can’t hope to try to explain it. For that matter my faith is as mysterious to me today as it has ever been. I don’t know why, or how, I believe. Faith remains a miracle. It also remains a daily struggle.

That struggle has its rewards. The resurrection is a great mystery, but it is also the cornerstone of our faith. To proclaim Christ risen from the dead is to assert the power of God in the world and in our lives. To proclaim Christ risen from the dead is to proclaim God’s power to transform us and the world. But that transformation is not an easy thing and it isn’t a total break with the past.

The Risen Christ bore on his body the signs of his suffering—it was his wounds that brought the spark of recognition in the disciples’ eyes. The risen, the glorified Christ carried with him his full humanity, the scars of his suffering. Our resurrection faith is the same. For all of its divine source and power, it is carried in our human bodies, with all of our frailty, uncertainty, and weakness. Yet in that very weakness, we proclaim, with Thomas, “My Lord and My God!”