Morning After Preaching, Second Sunday of Easter

I have a lot of sympathy for Thomas. In fact, I think he gets a pretty raw deal in the Christian tradition, probably because of Jesus’ rebuke. (Of course, Jesus rebuked the disciples – and most especially Peter – all the time, so it’s not exactly anything to write home about.) But Thomas is forever remembered as doubting.

I have a theory about this. After time passed, after Pentecost, when the early Christians could no longer see the risen Christ in the flesh, Jesus’ words are a sort of balm: Blessed are you who do not see but yet believe. If you have no chance to physically put your hands on Jesus, well, your consolation is right there in his very own words.

Human beings are sensory creatures. Taste, touch, sight, sound – these are how we experience the world. If you’ve ever been around a very young child, you’ve seen this at the most basic, instinctive level. As we grow up, we learn not to put everything in our mouths, not to touch certain things, like an open flame, sharp knives and so on.

But the underlying principle of human knowing abides: I know because I have seen, felt, tasted, heard – for myself. This is, in fact, the basis for scientific inquiry, for discovering the world and its material properties. Our whole modern world is based on the very human impulse that we share with Thomas – the urge to know through our senses, in order to fully experience the reality of any given thing. Thomas’s reaction is exactly what our academic culture prizes: not relying solely on what others say, but investigating for oneself. Not taking anything on faith. This is precisely the opposite of what Jesus praises, however. Jesus’ words – that those who believe without seeing are blessed – go against our natural impulses and against everything we’ve been taught.

Part of my sympathy for Thomas is that he only asks to see what the other disciples saw. Jesus came and stood among them; he showed the other disciples his hands and his side. Why is Thomas so maligned for wanting to experience as the others had?

I’m willing to bet that if we were given the chance to see and touch the risen Christ in the flesh, we’d take it. I certainly would! Perhaps Jesus’ rebuke is for all the disciples who were privileged to see him in the fifty days after Easter morning, so that they would remember that their privilege places an imperative on them, one that is passed on to us.

Jesus came that we should have life abundantly. The responsibility that comes with knowing and believing in Jesus is that we share the good news with others. We are called not only to believe but to proclaim Jesus as the Christ and as our Lord, so that each person might know the risen Christ and so that they too might share in abundant life.

It is this responsibility that took the apostles to the temple in Jerusalem to proclaim Jesus as Lord. It brought them imprisonment. It took them across the Mediterranean and throughout the Roman Empire. It led Peter to declare that “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” It brought the apostles and the early Christians into conflict with religious authorities and with the state. It would cost many of them their lives in this world, but not the abundant life that Jesus had promised.

Most of us will never have to risk our lives or our freedom in order to proclaim the gospel. It might require sacrifices of other kinds, or it might be so simple as to be forgettable.

This is precisely the kind of moment that I have experienced. I didn’t grow up going to church. My parents and sister didn’t believe in God. But when I was eleven, a friend taught me the Lord’s Prayer. And in that small moment, the seed of Christian faith took root in my life. I don’t remember my friend’s name, and I’m sure she’s long since forgotten me. But that small, simple moment had real and enduring consequences for my life.

It shaped my choices about how to live my life. It defined how I treated other people and how I nurtured my relationship with God. It brought me here, to this very moment. It opened my eyes to the abundant life that we have in Jesus.

Knowing all of this, believing in all of it, I can do nothing else but proclaim the good news – that Jesus is my Lord and that he is risen – in small ways and in momentous ways, in every way that I can, at every opportunity that I am given. Our faith does not stop at believing. It should pervade everything we do, the choices we make, and the ways that we interact with one another and with everyone.

That is the responsibility that rests on all of us who have come to know Jesus not by sight, but by faith, who have experienced the paschal mystery of Easter, and who have responded by believing: to show forth our faith, because it does not belong to us. It belongs to God. It is a gift that we, having received it, must share. Thomas, for all his doubts and his need to experience though his senses the fullness of Christ, invites us to remember that we are blessed to know Christ and that that blessing is something to share. Amen.