Easter 2c, April 3, 2016
The Incredulity of St. Thomas by Caravaggio |
John 20:19-31 19When it was evening on
that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the
disciples had met were locked for fear of the Judeans, Jesus came and stood
among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he
showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw
the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”22When he had said this,
he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you
retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24But Thomas (who was
called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he
said to them, “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.”
26A week later his disciples were again in the
house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and
stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27Then he said to
Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it
in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28Thomas answered him,
“My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because
you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to
believe.”30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence
of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But 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.
There is something about getting a week of spring that brings
hope. Having the doors and windows open to let in the sunshine and the breeze,
smelling fresh flowers that are just opening helps me to trust that winter will
not last forever and grey days will come to an end. I think I had almost
forgotten what it was like to see blue skies every day.
Life can be like that- where we forget that things will get
better. Of course, we have phrases to tell ourselves, things like, “this too
shall pass,” or “everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not
the end.” Those phrases can be great, but there are times when the situation is
so difficult or complex that the encouragement is impossible to believe.
In the bible, those truly difficult
times are called “thlipsis”, which is defined as “pressure, a narrow place that
hems one in, tribulation, especially the internal pressure of tribulation,
feeling confined or without options or no way of escape. I think of it as being
between a rock and a hard place. If you’re truly between a rock and a hard
place, it’s hard to believe that “this too shall pass.” It’s hard to have hope.
Although it’s not quite in the scripture
we heard this morning, the word “thlipsis” comes up in the very next verse in the
text from Revelation. It was because the people were suffering that they needed
this word of grace and peace. This kind of tribulation wasn’t just happening to
the original recipients of the book of Revelation. It was happening already to
the early Christian church, as we heard described in Acts, and the disciples in
the upper room lived it, too. That’s why they needed those greetings of
assurance from Jesus, in which he says to them twice in our gospel reading from
John, “Peace be with you.” Fear, doubt, suffering- these were all familiar
feelings for early Christians, even for those who had heard the good news of
the resurrection, even for those who had seen the resurrected Christ.
Yet somehow, there were some in every
age who held out hope, who continued to cling to the promise that God would be
with them in every circumstance and would bring them to a new day. In the acts
passage, it is Peter and the apostles who put their trust in God’s authority
even when it puts them at odds with human authority. In Revelation, it is John
who assures the people that their present suffering will end, because the Lord
is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. In the gospel story, it
is Thomas who insists that he would know his Lord by the marks of his
suffering. These folks are the heroes of
faith, or as we call them in the church, saints.
Yet as we see in the scripture, these
folks were not perfect all the time- Thomas is not known as Thomas the faithful,
but Doubting Thomas. Peter may have stood up to authorities in this story, but
he wasn’t so steadfast when Jesus was arrested. And the folks living in the
time of Revelation wavered so much that some of them wanted to be rebaptized
after the whole thing was over. But that’s a story for another day.
The way the church came through that
time and the way we humans get through these terrible times is by trusting in a
God who brings a new day, even when it seems impossible. And when we cannot
believe it on our own, we hold that trust for each other, greeting one another
with Christ’s peace. For we know that just as winter does not last forever and
new life returns, so too does new life spring from death, resurrection joy
comes after Good Friday sorrow, and suffering will not last forever. Christ is
our alpha and our omega, our beginning and our end, and we trust that he is
with us always, no matter what.