Really — can you blame Thomas? How could he accept what the other disciples were telling him, “We have seen the Lord”? What other experience in his life could he draw upon to help him process what the other disciples were claiming? What they were telling him made no sense at all. It didn’t matter how close they had been to him during their years as they travelled together.
When someone we love and trust tells us something that others doubt, we believe them because of our relationship with them. But there are some things too incredible to believe — even when those closest to us are insisting on it . Place “resurrection from the dead” at the very top of the list of “unbelievables.” No one expected Jesus to rise — no one had before him and there was no credible reason to believe he had — despite the excited claim by the other disciples, “We have seen the Lord!”
But if Jesus did rise, then it was a whole new ballgame! Nothing would be the same — his disciples would have to view their lives and life in general, in an entirely new way. They would have to replay what they heard Jesus say, which at first sounded impossible or contradictory to them and now they would have to listen with new ears and new understanding. Things like: “Those who want to gain their life must lose it….The last shall be first, the first last….Unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it remains just a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it bears much fruit….Go sell what you have and give to the poor and then come follow me… etc.
Using the eyes of the world such teachings are naive or impossible. But if Jesus’ disciples were right and they had “seen the Lord,” then everyone and everything would have to be looked at through the lens of the resurrection. The life Jesus lived and invited his disciples to follow would now be possible — if Christ rose from the dead, as his disciples were proclaiming to Thomas.
John (and Luke’s) account of the resurrection appearances are more detailed than Mark and Matthew’s. He was writing for a later generation, like us, who had not seen. John wrote for those who were tempted to say, “I wish I had been there, it would be much easier to believe.” Thomas is a good spokesperson for our reservations, he puts words on our doubts. Because he words his doubts so firmly, “Unless I see the mark of the nails…,” his declaration of faith is more convincing to us.
Our fundamentalist sisters and brothers make much of a personal, even emotional, experience with Christ and his Spirit. We don’t follow that tradition. Still, our resurrection stories these weeks show people coming to experience Christ personally in various ways. Some met him in one they thought was a stranger — Mary Magdalene in the garden, the Emmaus disciples on the road. Some were anointed by his Spirit and met him as they prayed together. Peter and John experienced his power with them when they cured the crippled beggar as they entered the Temple (Acts 3: 1-10) .
Thomas, the doubter, finally comes face to face with Christ and makes a huge act of faith, “My Lord and my God.” He went from doubt to faith. Because of Thomas’ skepticism we learn that Christ was not merely a ghost revisiting old haunts. His wounds were real, the crucified one was tangible. Jesus invited Thomas and us to move beyond our need for tangible proofs by urging us, “Believe,” even without seeing.
In different ways each of us comes to an experience of Jesus’ death and resurrection. While most of us were baptized as infants and our faith is initially based on the words of others still, we can ask ourselves, “How have we personally seen and touched the risen Lord?”
For some, we met Christ through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in which we heard words of forgiveness and were assured of the same reconciliation the disciples experienced when Jesus appeared in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” We also experienced Jesus’ living presence in the Eucharistic breaking of the bread, as the Emmaus disciples did. Those who were baptized at the Easter Vigil have said they felt they saw and touched the risen Christ in their catechists and sponsors who journeyed with them in their faith walk.
Perhaps we met Christ in a dying person who possessed faith even as death approached. Or, we might have gone through a period of loss and failure and then received a glimpse of new life opening before us. The love of another person may have given us some concrete sense of how much we are loved by God — in other words, in these and many other instances, we saw and touched the Lord.
I wish living in the church today was as ideal as the picture Luke paints of the early church in our Acts reading today. He describes those Christians as being of “one heart and mind.” He says they were a church in which no one went in need and everyone shared what they had, just like a perfect family. Sounds like the old Ozzie and Harriet family of early television days. There were no personal feuds, differing sects, rivalries, lay/clerical divides, malfeasance, liturgical squabbles, individualism, etc. Luke sounds like he’s describing creatures from another planet! Not the church we live in.
You get a hint that Luke is idealizing the early Christian community because in the next chapter (5: 1-11) two church members, Ananias and Sapphira, lie and cheat, laying false proceeds from the sale of their property before the apostles. They are struck dead for their misdeeds. So, Luke introduces more than a little dose of realism into his narrative about the early church. And we might respond, “Now that’s more like it!”
Still, Luke seems to be setting out an ideal for us. No parish or religious community, no matter how good its members feel about themselves, their liturgies and good works, should be content in the light of Luke’s vision for the church. Luke seems to be proposing what we should look like as a community of Jesus’ disciples enlivened by his Spirit. Hearing his description of a Christian community, we can only say to ourselves, “We have plenty of room for improvement.”