THE SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY)

[cappie]

Every material has a breaking point. A point at which it can no longer take the stress placed upon it. That stress will cause the material to bend, to stretch, to deform, and eventually to break. Engineers even have a term used to describe the ability of a material to withstand stretching before it breaks or fails. That term is tensile strength. The greater the tensile strength the stronger the material.
 
Steel has a very high tensile strength. That strength has allowed us to use steel to construct ever larger and taller structures. But steel and all other materials have a defined tensile strength. They all have a breaking point.
 
What is true for steel, is also true for human relationships. We might say they have a certain tensile strength. Most relationships have a point where the people involved in them cannot stretch themselves any further and those relationships break apart.
 
That can happen in a marriage,  it can happen in a friendship,  it can happen in a business partnership. In those cases, relationships break.
 
This Sunday's Gospel (John 20:19-31) is about the strength of the Lord's relationship with us.

We really don’t know enough about Thomas to assess his character, let alone to accuse him of being a habitual doubter. He’s Jewish. He’s a twin but we don’t know who his twin was. He’s devoted enough to Jesus to at least contemplate dying for him. He doesn’t want to be separated from his Lord. He wants to know where Jesus is going and how to get to him. And for all that, Thomas isn’t there for Jesus when he is arrested, tried, and put to death. He runs away.

After the crucifixion, as he hides in the city, he must be a bundle of fear, grief and guilt. There are few human emotions so devastating. To then discover that his friends, equally guilty, equally grieving, had been visited by Jesus and given authority to heal the very emotions with which he suffered was more than he could absorb or manage. Filled with shame he blurts out: “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.” Thomas won’t believe it for himself. He certainly won’t believe it from the mouths of his friends, who have been empowered to restore relationships: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

But Thomas still hangs around, even though he is convinced that nothing can ever get better for him, that he deserves nothing better. The next week Jesus appears again, says Shalom, and immediately invites Thomas to touch his wounds. Like a dam bursting, Thomas’s fear, grief, shame, and hopelessness floods out and he collapses in adoration. “My Lord and my God”.

The writer of John’s Gospel, concludes the story by telling us why he selected this one from among all the incidents he could have recounted. He writes: “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.”

In one way or another we all stumble into life moments when we are seized by fear, remorse, grief, and loss. Our lack of belief that things can get better isn’t atheism or agnosticism, but rather a deeply personal conviction that we are the exception, the one left out. We may even believe that the Christian community is empowered reconcile, restore and forgive and that priests and bishops are chosen agents of reconciliation. There’s a much-neglected sacrament of reconciliation. Yet we still exclude ourselves as if clinging to remorse rather than the life we deserve.

I wonder whether John points us deeper in that direction, that “Way, Truth and Life”? Is there significance in the gap of a week between encounters, one that the first Christians would have grasped? Is this a seven-day gap between Lord’s Days? As we do, the Early Christians offered the Shalom, the Peace, during which Jesus comes among us and invites us to explore his wounds. As we touch him, he enters us and, by faith, we let loose everything that has obscured his presence. He offers new life when we couldn’t believe one possible, and we drop to our knees and murmur: “My Lord and my God”.

 Thomas and the others saw "many other signs" after Jesus was raised from the dead. They saw and they believed. They have been given His life, which continues in the Church's Word and sacraments, so that we who have not seen might inherit His blessings, and "have life in His name."