I love the readings after Easter with the retelling over and over again, year by year the stories of Jesus's appearing to his disciples:
- John tells again next week how Jesus prepares breakfast for the disciples on the shore of Tiberius.
- Luke tells of the walk to Emmaus.
- Mark & Matthew have him appearing in private to the eleven and giving them the great commission.
But of them all today's is the most comforting to me—Thomas. Thomas isn't one of the well known Characters in the Gospels. We hear in St John's Gospel that he is a twin. Do you remember when Jesus is about to return to the home of his friend Lazarus who has died—and this would mean him returning to Judea where they had left because the Jews had tried to stone him there—John says: “Thomas, who was also called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, Let us also go, so that we may die with him." In fact that is what the name Thomas means—just twin. We also hear him speaking at the Last Supper. After Jesus has said he goes to prepare a place for them so that where he is going they can follow, good old practical Thomas says: "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Then his final appearance is the one for which he is famous and which we hear in our gospel today. Thomas wasn't there when Jesus appeared to the others why? We don't know. Was he still in hiding 'for fear of the jews' Had he ran away farther than the others? Did he feel guilty for deserting his Lord as the others did or was he so bereft with grief and loss that he became locked into his own world of self recrimination and hatred? We shall never know, all we do know is—he wasn't there!
And once again, in this story, we see how God uses what is negative to work the greatest positive—to turn things upside down. The doubt of Thomas is turned into the greatest cry of faith known to all people: 'MY LORD AND MY GOD'. Even in secular society people who have never read the bible or heard the Easter story know the name of Thomas as it has become synonymous with doubt. I even saw someone in a computer magazine called 'a doubting Thomas'—I wonder how many of the readers got it. Perhaps many rushed to Google—and if you do, you find 1,070,000 references to doubting Thomas.
To me, this fellow Thomas sounds like a down-to-earth, practical sort of chap! Someone I could have got on with.
St Augustine said, 'We are the Easter People and Alleluia is our song.' To be Easter people means we must have left Good Friday, and doubt, behind.
As Christians I think we sometimes get stuck in Good Friday or even Holy Saturday and don't move forward to the resurrection.
Even our churches often give that feeling or show it, here at Advent what is our most prominent symbol as we enter the building? Yes, the crucifix. And it is important, it is the central symbol of our faith. But it is a symbol that is meant to liberate us to live the life of the risen Christ. A question we would do well to ask ourselves is, ‘Does it do that?’ Or does it imprison us and nail us to an old life that is comfortable and hassle free? Four weeks ago I was in Assisi, the Franciscan Holy Land, and there knelt before the San Damiano Crucifix, the actual icon style crucifix that spoke to Saint Francis over 800 years ago. Saint Francis heard the Lord speak to him from the crucifix in San Damiano Church in Assisi, and I am always aware when I am praying in front of that crucifix that the Christ of the San Damiano Crucifix is alive—his eyes are open and the eyes look directly at the person who is looking at it.
Saint Francis became obsessed with the passion and crucifixion, what I think was an unhealthy obsession with it. He continually prayed to the Lord that he would allow him to share in his sufferings of the cross—so much so that at the age of 42 he was marked with the stigmata, the nail prints in his hands and feet and the lance wound in his side. These made it diffIcult for him to walk and they were continually infected.
I think that it was the Lord's way of saying to Francis: 'Hey, this isn't all it's cracked up to be. D on't glorify it so much. Give it a try.'
And for the next two years of his life ‘til death at 44 years old he suffered the pain of those wounds. Yet the interesting thing is that his most creative work was done in the last two years of his life and where he spoke most of the risen life and its implications.
I think Francis had allowed his devotion to the passion of Christ to imprison his very soul and stopped him moving through it to a new and fuller life. Sometimes what is meant to liberate and set free can imprison and take away life.
This time of year invites each of us to reflect on our own lives—are we trapped in the tomb with the dead Christ or are we living the resurrected life with Jesus?
The crucifixion and resurrection invite us to go through the cross, into the tomb, to rise again and roll away the stone. And, for most of us, we have to push our own stone away. There are no angels to do it for us. But before we can rise we have to leave behind the shroud, and the bands that bound us, the things that stop us from embracing this new life. These bands are unique to each of us, but unless we can have the courage to let go of them in the tomb, we will not be able to rise. So many things can keep us nailed to the cross or imprison us in our bands:
- holding on to old doctrines, traditions and forms of prayer that have for so long been part of us but no longer lead us into a deeper relationship with the living God
- old patterns of thinking and doing—Is the risen Christ inviting us into some new way of the ministry of service and calling us to let go of one we have been doing which has become comfortable and complacent? Ministry should disturb us into prayer and action. It should not be nice and comfortable. When I say Mass at The Sanctuary Homeless Shelter on Sunday and when I work on the streets at night with the Night Ministry I come away disturbed and saddened and angry because God's children are homeless, medication-less, treated less than our baptismal covenant requires each one of us: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?'
I know that the day I come away from The Sanctuary feeling none of those angry feelings is the day I need to give up. Ministry should disturb and move us into prayer and, many times, action. This is being political, and the one thing Jesus was was political!
Is the risen Christ calling us to leave the security we have behind and to embrace a new vocation, job, careers altogether—perhaps to take us a new life as a deacon, priest, religious member of a lay Order, a Benedictine Oblate, a Franciscan Tertiary or an Associate of an Order?
There is a wonderful picture by Leonardo Da Vinci of the resurrection. In it the dead are trying to get out of the tomb they are struggling. It is not easy, they are stiff and can hardly move. By the looks on their faces it is painful. Resurrection is painful. Resurrection means leaving the security of the past behind. Resurrection means embracing the new. It is hard work and scary. Thomas did just that. The Lord didn't say to Thomas: ‘You stupid man believe.' No, he invited him to do what he needed to do for faith, to touch and embrace the wounds and so believe. His lack of faith led him to a deeper faith. He had to let go of his rational and logical mind. He had to let go of the way he had probably been schooled. He had to let go, and in letting go he embraced and moved to a new place of believing.
Thomas climbed out of the tomb that day. This Eastertide God invites us to New Life. God invites us to let go of the doubt that won't allow us to believe in ourselves or love ourselves, that won't allow us to accept that we too are divine and deserving of sharing in the Resurrection of Christ. That is what we need to let go of—all that imprisons us and keeps us nailed to that cross so that we cannot fully accept the gift of life God offers to us continually in his Son Jesus Christ who died and Rose again so that we could share in the eternal life of Trinity. As Jesus said: I have come that you may have life, and have it in all its fullness.
As Francis heard the voice from the crucifix, so the Lord speaks to everyone of us today and invites us into that fullness of life, so we can say with Thomas: My God AND my all.
Amen.