John 20:19-31 is the Lectionary text for Easter III on next Sunday.
Jesus came to them. They were still afraid and huddled together, not sure what to do next. The whole movement seemed to be over. Jesus was, to put it mildly, the driving force behind this movement of Agape Love and Grace in the face of empire. Jesus was gone. Mary Magdalene claimed to have seen Him, but you know how grief is for folks.
But Jesus came among them. "Eireinei." "Shalom." Peace, completeness, wholeness and well-being be with you. And before they could even adjust their thinking to His presence with them, Jesus commissioned them and breathed on them the Holy Spirit, encouraging them to forgiveness. They now had the authority to forgive or withhold forgiveness. Just like that.
But Thomas.
He gets a bad rep here, and with it an eternally bad moniker. Maybe it was because of their grief that Thomas did not believe them. It was not Jesus that Thomas doubted, or that Jesus could be raised, necessarily. Thomas doubted their witness. Thomas needed proof.
When Jesus appeared to him, Thomas responded with belief, but Thomas needed proof. And for generations of people, he is saddled with being "Doubting Thomas."
Well, I have news. Just as with many of these accounts, we are supposed to put ourselves in the place of the characters, and this one is no exception.
We live on proof, that is we did, until the age of "alternative facts" and the post-truth era of conspiracy theorists, non-journalistic tv and radio news and cult of personality politics. People believe in a Kabal of liberals engaged in sex trafficking out of pizza parlors in the nation's Capital. They believe in lying multi-millionaires who claim to identify with them and care about them. They believe that violently stopping the Democratic process is patriotism. And they will not believe the proof to the contrary. They have proof and won't believe it.
Poor Thomas had no proof. Witnesses, clearly, though many, can be deluded! He wanted proof. When he saw Jesus for himself, he believed.
How many of us have dismissed the bodily resurrection of Jesus as a powerful tale, but unnecessary to our identification as Christians?
How many of us have acted as if this is a nice story of the past and Jesus is not still alive or relevant to our lives today?
How many of us have picked and chosen parts of the Word of Jesus in the Gospels that have aligned with our philosophies, ideologies and fleeting theologies, but have dismissed the rest of what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us on the living of Agape Love and Grace?
How many of us look for signs of God's love? Ask for signs of God's activity in our lives? Beg for proof of both?
How many of us perceive messages from God in our everyday lives, though they may indeed be coming from a very different source?
How many of us attribute all manner of ungodly beliefs, ideologies and perspectives to Jesus, though clearly the Gospel witness to what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us reveals otherwise?
Let's give Thomas a break, shall we?
My only hope is that I will continue to see Jesus in my life every day, that I will continue to believe in Jesus' Way as a better way for humanity, despite the political and economic and ecclesiastical messages of others to the contrary, and that I will be faithful to Jesus' Way until I am face-to-face with the Prince of Peace.
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