The disciples had seen Jesus feed thousands, walk on water, calm storms, give sight to the blind and cure lepers. They even saw him call Lazarus from the tomb. One would think they would expect him also to rise from the dead.
Yet the disciples still seemed to be trying to figure it all out. They had more questions. Even after they examined Jesus’ empty tomb and listened to the evidence of his appearance to the women, they still had questions. Another witness was the man dressed in a white robe who said, “He has been raised up.” Jesus then appears to the disciples in the locked room, and when they tell Thomas about it, he still has questions. So Jesus appears to the disciples a week later, and even then, with the truth before his eyes, Thomas still has questions.
Today’s gospel invites us to listen carefully to the part that says: “Blessed are they who have not seen and have believed.”
Scholars believe that the different gospels had specific theological and pastoral reasons for writing their accounts of the resurrection appearances. While Mark and Matthew keep their versions short and declarative, Luke and John offer narratives and add more details on Jesus’ appearance, what he did and said. The fact that Luke and John were written later, and to audiences more removed and distant from eyewitnesses, suggests that the authors may have been responding to believers who were already beginning to lament the fact that they were at some disadvantage.
Luke counters any suggestion that the risen Christ was only an apparition: “Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at my hands and feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see.” Luke even has Jesus eat a bit of fish!
Yet, nowhere do we, contemporary believers, who also may feel at a disadvantage these 2000 years after the fact, find such a wealth of gospel detail as we do in John’s wonderful account of doubting. Thomas puts into words our own insecurities. Was the resurrection real? Are we talking about really seeing Jesus after he died, or is our faith the fervent assertion of something less clear, more spiritual?
The challenge, of course, is to realize that the event described is surely a theological one, that is, more than just fact, more than just visible, tangible evidence. The Risen Christ who invites Thomas to put his finger through the hole in his hand, his hand into the wound in his side, is more real than anyone Thomas has ever known, revealed into dimensions, one of time and place, the other already in eternity.
The divine Lord Thomas beholds and acknowledges in a breathless, heart-rending act of faith bears the marks of the crucifixion in his body, a shocking, wondrous reality that conveys the very heart of the gospel message the apostles will take from the upper room. Our sins are forgiven. Everyone’s sins have been forgiven, because of Jesus’ death on the cross.
The Crucified-Risen Christ is our passage back to God, the body we are now being incorporated into through baptism and our regular sharing of the Eucharist. See, touch and believe!
But think again about the disciples trying to tell Thomas that they have really seen
Jesus, the Risen Lord. And Thomas refuses to believe unless and until. This situation happens over and over even today…frequently between parents and children. Parents or other adults are convinced by their own life experience of the truth and value of something, and they very much want their children to share it. Not because they’re into a power thing, or trying to clone themselves, but simply because they want the people they love to know the truth. But to the children, it sometimes doesn’t sound like the real world – the little they know about!