SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (Low Sunday)

[cappie]

 The disciples had gathered in fear and sadness, and Jesus appeared among them, risen, and still scarred. 

However Thomas misses out on Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples. It is Sunday night, and they have been locked in the Upper Room, afraid for their lives since Friday night.  But not Thomas. Where is he? Was he terrified and trying to hide by himself,  or was he, full of courage, the only one brave enough to venture out and bring back food to his friends?

Whatever it was, he was not there when Jesus appeared in the locked Upper Room. They so desperately want their dead friend and leader not to have been condemned to death and executed, that they have dreamed up this vision they experienced.

And who knows, Thomas would not put it past Jesus to come to them as a ghost. he did stranger things than that when he was alive. But he is no longer alive. He is dead, and Thomas knows that denying that will not help anyone.  Thomas remains in this state, unable to trust the word of his friends, for an entire week.  Thomas has had only his own stubbornness to keep him going.

Stubbornness and maybe a tiny spark of hope.  By all rights, he should have gone home to his fields or his fishing boat.  But Thomas did stay. Is it possible that a small part of him wondered if this story his friends were telling him might possibly be true? He reveals himself a bit in his answer to their claim that they have seen the Lord. He says, “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 is laying out the challenge to Jesus. He’s saying, “Come and show me, Jesus, come and prove it to me. Just come to me, Jesus, on any terms.”

Thomas wants to be tough and uncaring and sceptical, but he loved Jesus.   He is throwing out this challenge to provoke Jesus into coming to them again, because Thomas just wants to see his friend. Ghost or vision or real person, it does not matter.

And Jesus does not disappoint him, as soon as Jesus arrives, and  bids them peace, he calls Thomas to him and says, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

No issue before the church today is of comparable importance to the truth of the Resurrection, together with the Incarnation. And it was only, as we will hear when Thomas was welcomed back into the  community that he encountered the risen Jesus and so found his faith again. That would not have happened if he had stayed away, or the community had reacted by finger-wagging and condemnation.

Even in his resurrected body, Jesus’ wounds remain.  Jesus is resurrected to new life, but he is still himself. And he helps Thomas recognize him through his wounds. That is lesson for us.   Our wounds are not erased as though they had never existed. They are still present but no longer cause us pain. They are proof to one another that we are new and whole, but it was our woundedness that got us to this day of resurrection in the first place.

 Today is the day when the loud and public festivities are over, and we return to our normal, everyday lives. But today is also the Day of the Resurrection for Thomas. It is the day when  Thomas sees the wounds on Jesus’ body, the same physical person that he knew and loved and now recognizes as both wounded and whole, alive, and breathing. Thomas was a week late to the Resurrection, but he made it all the same.  

We see the kind of community enjoyed by the first Christians delineated in Sunday’s first reading, from Acts. They supported one another by praying and worshiping together, and by looking out for each other. Above all they did it by welcoming those with whom they disagreed to fellowship at the one Eucharist: the story of Thomas is a parable of that. Our ministry to one another consists not so much in doing things for one another, as in travelling together.