Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe
What are we to do with good old Doubting Thomas? In most churches preachers will either trash him or rescue him. Some people would put me in the category of rescuing because I refuse to hold him up in contrast to all those blessed people who have never seen but believe.
The other disciples didn’t say to the Risen Christ, when he entered through locked doors, Oh Lord, you didn’t have to appear to us; we were blessed believers from the very beginning, even when we were running away to hide in fear.
What I want to do is to try to show that Thomas didn’t need any defending or rescuing.
When someone is baptized in the church, right after the pouring of the water, the priest will pray, on behalf of the whole church: Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart.
I submit to you that Thomas didn’t do anything more than what was expected of every Christian. The idea that established doctrines or even one’s ongoing faith can’t be tweaked or put under a microscope, or bracketed for further evaluation is an innovation by people who didn’t know any better.
The bumper sticker theology of: God said it, I believe it, and that settles it – is a naive reaction to the Modernism of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, when theologians and scholars had the audacity to question the absolute literal view of the Bible. It’s why we are still having the ongoing debate between evolution and creationism.
There isn’t much room in a God said it, I believe it, and that settles it approach to faith for an inquiring and discerning heart, is there?
In our Gospel this week, I believe we are presented with an inquiring and discerning Thomas, just the kind of disciple that Jesus was trying to mentor in his three years of rabbinic style teaching.
Thomas missed all the excitement of Jesus’ resurrection, but elects to come and stay with the others, all the while faithfully opening up to any possibilities that may come his way!
Throughout the ages, many spiritual leaders have made claims to have all the answers. Beware of anyone who claims to have absolute answers to all spiritual questions. Approach them with the kind of agnosticism that Thomas displays. The only thing that Jesus really had against the Scribes and the Pharisees, the holy and honorable men of his day, was their claim to have fully arrived.
Thomas did not sacrifice the integrity of his questioning mind for the sake of going along with the crowd. He wasn’t sure about the Resurrection, and he wasn’t afraid to inquire about it right there in front of his friends.
And we pray, Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart.
I really think that the way to be part of the blessed who have not seen, is to be like Thomas and fully admit we have not seen.
We Christians should be progressive in the sense that we are just as comfortable with questions as we are with what we believe to be certain. That is the only way faith can grow. To say, God said it, I believe it, and that is the end of it, not only limits the horizons of your faith, but it also limits the size of your God.
A friend of mine from a study group I used to attend, told me a story about a time when he was having a deep discussion with a seminarian and his wife at the dinner table. They were discussing, of all things, the nature of God. At some point my friend turned to his three-year-old daughter, Rachael, and asked her if God was a Mommy or a Daddy. She responded with Godly wisdom and without hesitation, He’s a Mommy!
Now you know why Jesus blessed little children and said, Let them come to me. Children by nature are completely open to new experiences of God! Now you know why Jesus didn’t rebuke Thomas but reached out to him.
There is one last thing that I noticed this time around in this Doubting Thomas Gospel. I noticed that Thomas didn’t just say, unless I actually see Jesus, I won’t believe. That’s what I would have said, but Thomas said, Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.
Do you see the difference? Thomas wanted to touch the wounds of Christ. That was more important than anything else to him. He needed to know that the Risen Christ hadn’t completely shed his human experience. He needed to know that the body of Christ hadn’t been sanitized, made whole and glowing on that first Easter. He wanted Christ to be one with him; he wanted Christ’s wounds to touch his wounds.
I believe that somehow Thomas knew that this was healing; in fact, it was the only healing that mattered. Each of us carries the scars of our childhood. Many of us still have the open wounds of broken relationships or the gaping hole left by the loss of a loved one. It should be as important to us as it was to Thomas to know that the Risen Christ of Easter has entered the depths of human pain, our pain. Sometimes empathy is the best medicine.
Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four-year-old child whose next-door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, Nothing, I just helped him cry.
There isn’t any pain that the Risen Christ doesn’t understand. No matter how bad it gets, the Risen Christ can help you cry.
Sometimes we think that being a Christian means we must be up all the time; we must feel triumphant all the time. If Good Friday didn’t address those feelings, then be thankful that Thomas was willing to hold himself up to ridicule and to touch the wounds of Christ.
Even when we raise the roof in praise on Holy Trinity Sunday, those wounds will be present in the Godhead. The wounds of human life are never far from the heart of God.
This is the way God intended it. This is how we will know that God will also bestow on us God’s healing, the eternal embrace and the comforting kiss of love.
Food for thought.💭
Thank you