It’s a strange reversal: Jesus is risen from the dead, his body no longer in the tomb—and the disciples? Hidden behind locked doors, sitting motionless in a sturdy tomb of fear and confusion. They didn’t know what to make of the words Mary spoke after she returned from the tomb, earlier that day. “I have seen the Lord,” she said, “and he spoke to me. He told me to tell you this: ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” It was in the evening of that day; they were together, but nobody said anything. I imagine Mary sitting in a corner, frustrated that all she had were words, and her words were not enough to break the paralysis of fear and guilt, not enough to let her fellow disciples hear what she had heard and see what she had seen. Her words were not enough.
Then Jesus came and said, “Peace be with you.” The first word of the Risen One to the gathered disciples was peace. The last time they had been together, he had told them, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[1] And now Jesus stood among them, after they had betrayed him, denied and abandoned him—they saw him, he stood among them, and he didn’t say, “Shame on you, you sorry bunch” or “OK, friends, we need to talk,” but, “Peace be with you.” The Risen One spoke his peace into their troubled, fearful hearts. He showed them the wounds in his hands and his side, and his presence transformed that dark tomb into a house of joy, with laughter pouring into the street. The living Christ was once again the center of their lives. Only moments ago they had been little more than bodies in a tomb, now they were a community with a mission, a community of new life.
In the book of the prophet Ezekiel, the prophet looks at a valley full of bones, and the Lord asks him, “Mortal, can these bones live?” And the Lord tells him to prophesy to these bones, to speak to the bones and say to them, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”[2] In Ezekiel’s day, the bones represented the people of God in exile, lifeless, dry, dispirited and discouraged. I know Mary must have felt like she was talking to a pile of bones when her words couldn’t lift the pall of fear and grief that lay on the disciples. But now Jesus was in their midst, and he breathed on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. A small band of fearful disciples, held together by little more than habit, shame and fear—now they were the church, sent and empowered by the living Christ, born into living hope.
Since the days of Mary, frightened disciples could be the church because the Risen One has kept breaking in on us, breathing on the white bones of our lives, leading us out of our tombs, and placing in our hands, on our lips, the gifts of peace and forgiveness. Christ is risen from the dead, and now we no longer live toward the horizon of death, but toward fullness of life for all God’s creatures. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, but the resurrection isn’t merely something that happened to Jesus some two thousand years ago—the resurrection began with him and continues with those who hear the word of life. It is the transformation of our tired world into the new creation. It is the wind that blows from the future of fulfilment, the breath that brings life to dry bones, the dew from heaven that renews the earth.
Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus came in the evening of that day. Neither were any of us there. All we have is what Thomas was given, the words of witnesses. The other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But their words, just like Mary’s before, didn’t get past his skepticism. Who knows whom or what they had seen, what apparition might have fooled them—he needed to see for himself, with his own eyes and his own hands. “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.” He needed to see, he needed to touch, he needed to get close.
Thomas wanted proof—not a convincing argument about the general possibility of bodily resurrection, but tangible proof that Jesus was risen, that the Crucified One had been raised. He needed to see, he needed to touch, he needed to know himself what they said they knew—and he needed to know it not just in his mind, but in his whole being.
A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. They were together, all of them—the ones who declared, “We have seen the Lord,” and the one waiting to see for himself. No one had been pushed out, no one had been forced in. And then the scene of the previous week repeated itself, solely for Thomas’s sake, we suppose. Jesus came and stood among them and said, for the third time now, “Peace be with you.” And far from rebuking Thomas for his stubborn insistence on something more tangible than words, the Risen One said, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And Thomas responded, “My Lord and my God.” We’re not told if he did reach out his hand or not. But Thomas who wanted proof, who didn’t settle for repeating the words of others, but held out for an experience of the Risen One on his own terms, this Thomas made a confession of faith unlike any other in the gospels.
Thomas has been remembered in the church as the doubter par excellence, and he has often been called upon when the questions of some became uncomfortable and needed to be squelched—whenever church became a matter of pushing out or forcing in. I don’t think we should remember him as a doubter. I suggest that we remember him as one who insisted on the continuity between the ministry of Jesus and the mission of the church, one who insisted on seeing the glory of God in the wounds of the crucified Jesus. John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and close to the end of the gospel, it is Thomas who affirms that statement in the presence of Jesus, crucified and risen, “My Lord and my God.”
The resurrection is not something that happened to Jesus some two thousand years ago; it is a new reality that began when God raised him from the dead. In John’s Gospel, the disciple whom Jesus loved came to the tomb and saw the linen wrappings; then he went inside, got a little closer, and he saw and believed. Mary Magdalene had seen angels at the tomb, but they had no comfort for her; then a stranger spoke her name, and she recognized Jesus and believed. The disciples believed when they saw the risen Jesus, and they rejoiced, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas believed when he saw Jesus in the company of the other disciples, and he confessed, “My Lord and my God.”
In the final verses of this chapter it becomes clear that the Sunday evening scene wasn’t repeated solely for Thomas’s sake, but also for ours. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” We have not seen what the first disciples saw, but we continue to hear their witness. In the final verses of the chapter, we read a note from the author to the readers, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” We trust the Word that comes to us through the proclamation of the first witnesses and the witnesses that surround us. We follow the call that comes to us through their word and the work of the Holy Spirit. And the witnesses themselves tell us to be patient with our questions and our hunger for certainty. Much of the time, our faith will be a mix of belief and disbelief, a back and forth between clarity of vision and stumbling in the dark, moments when we are able to speak with great confidence and moments when we realize that, deep in our bones, there’s an awareness of things for which we have no words.
The witnesses encourage us to be patient with our questions and our hunger for certainty; they encourage us to come and see. They invite us to let ourselves be drawn into the life we can only know by entering it. They invite us to enter the wonder of God coming among us in human vulnerability. The wonder of God living and knowing life through our flesh—flesh that can be stroked gently and struck violently, flesh that can be honored and tortured, anointed and abused.
In our Good Friday world, we don’t need to be reminded of the human capacity for inflicting hurt, but we need to remember that God is present in that suffering, and that God is committed to healing the wounds of creation. Jesus has been raised, the firstborn from the dead, and he still bears the marks of our weary world in his body; the resurrection does not erase the past, it transfigures it. In the resurrection, the wounds we bear in our bodies, wounds we have inflicted and received, these wounds are no longer denied, buried, hidden, covered up, ignored or forgotten, but revealed and healed in the peace of Christ.
Mary didn’t ask to see, and Thomas insisted on seeing. Both of them came to see and believe, and with them we look to the day when all of creation will know the peace of Christ.
[1] John 14:27
[2] Ez 37:1-14