Acts 5: 27–32; Psalm
150; Revelation
1: 4–8; John
20: 19–31
This is the written version of a homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, given at St. John's in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, April
3, 2016.
“GOD’S
POWER: TRUSTWORTHY OR NOT?”
(Homily text: John 20: 19 – 31)
I often wonder how much
attention people pay to the advertising that is all around us as we make our
way through our daily lives. My suspicion is that most of us don’t pay a lot of
attention to the ads we encounter on television or radio, or in print.
Many of the ads that come
our way try to use some mechanism to gain our trust. The aim is to convince us
that the products or services that are being offered to us are worth buying or
using.
Here are some of my personal
favorites among the claims being used to get us to try (and buy) whatever’s
being offered (Or, perhaps I should say that these are the claims that prompt a
response):
“Clinically proven”: A product’s
ads say that the results being claimed for the product are proven in clinical
trials. My response, whenever I hear such a claim is to say: “OK, what clinics
exactly have proven your point?” (The
same is true for a product whose effectiveness is underwritten by laboratory
tests: I find myself wanting to know which laboratories exactly have tested the
product in question.)
“Reference prices”: A furniture store advertises a sale. In the TV
ads, they say that a major percentage of their price reductions is based on
“reference prices”. I’ve never heard of “reference prices” before. That phrase
was a new one to me. So I want to know what a “reference price” is. (The same
could be said for automobile ads which claim that sale prices are “below
invoice”.)
“25% more free”: Sometimes, I wonder if there isn’t a very secret
marketing agency whose only job is to dream up new marketing tools for the
makers of things to use. One such recent tool is the claim that a product has “25%
more free”. The reason I think there’s something going on that’s an organized
effort is the claim that “25% more” is free. Why should it be 25%? Couldn’t it
be “33%” or some other number. Whenever I see such a claim on a bottle or a
box, I want to get out a scale and compare the standard product to the “25%
more free” product.
Maybe I’ve made the point
with these illustrations. All of these things have as their basis an attempt to
gain our trust by claiming to offer something that is trustworthy.
In today’s Gospel account,
we hear and read about one of Jesus’ disciples, Thomas makes the same claim as
we have been considering with commercial products: Thomas needs a basis upon
which to believe that Jesus has really risen from the dead. (This is a text
that we hear every year on the Sunday after Easter, for it was on this day that
the Lord appeared to Thomas, granting him his request.)
If we put Thomas’ demand for
proof of the Lord’s resurrection into the terms of the “25% more free” category, then what Thomas is demanding
is that he must be able to not only see the Lord (as the other disciples had
told him that that’s what they had encountered), but that he (Thomas) must be
able to place his finger in the print of the nails in the Lord’s hands, and to
put his hand into the spear wound in the Lord’s side. If we put Thomas’ demand
into the “25% more free” category, it’s as if Thomas is demanding to take the
bottle and put it on the scale to see if there is really “25% more free” in its
contents. Thomas wants to know if the claims of Jesus’ new life are physically,
actually true
There are some details in the text that are worthy of our attention at
this point.
We’re already remarked on
the fact that Thomas’ makes a demand that goes beyond what the other disciples
had experienced…they had seen the Lord, but Thomas says that it isn’t good
enough for him to see the Lord, he needs to be able to physically touch Him, as
well.
But in addition, let’s
notice that the Lord, when He does appear to Thomas, already knows of Thomas’
demand. The Lord uses Thomas’ own words to fulfill Thomas’ need. The evidence
seen here is to be found throughout the Fourth Gospel: Jesus has the power to
know what only God can know. In this case, it’s the nature of Thomas’ demand.
Such an all-knowingness is a marker of Jesus’ oneness with God the Father (as
we read in John 10:30).
All Scripture is given in
order to provide a basis for each of us to trust God, to trust God’s power and
His love, to trust the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ, His
only-begotten Son. Of course, the Gospel writer takes care to let us know that
the reason these events have been recorded in the sacred pages of Holy
Scripture is precisely so that each of us will come to the point of believing
that these things are true and trustworthy.
We live in a very skeptical
age, an age in which the power and clarity of language is being degraded. It
doesn’t help that the claims made in commercials have the tendency to undercut
the power and clarity of language…is something really “clinically proven” or
“laboratory tested”? Are the prices of the furniture sale really based on
“reference prices”, and if so, just exactly what is a “reference price”? Is
there really “25% more free” in that box or bottle?
Many of us have learned to
be wary of any and all claims. We – like Thomas – demand proof (often physical
proof) of the claims that come our way….we want to shake the bottle to see if
it really has “25% more free” inside. We want to know which clinics and which
laboratories have tested a product to assure its effectiveness. We want to see
what the “reference price” is for the furniture we’re considering buying.
What we’ve said about our
contemporary lives is also true of our faith lives: We need a solid basis upon
which to base our trust in God’s character and in God’s promises. In this, we
are no different than Thomas was.
So where is the proof we
need to be able to trust God?
It is to be found in the
evidence of changed lives. Allow some clarification at this point: Whenever a
person encounters God, distinctive markers change the nature of that person.
Certainly, this is true of Thomas (Doubting Thomas), who exclaimed, “My Lord
and my God!”. Tradition tells us that Thomas went off from his encounter with
the risen Lord, carrying the Good News of God in Christ as far as the subcontinent
of India. A church there in India still bears his name today, it is called the
“Mar Thoma Church”, a church which was founded (tradition tells us) by none
other than Thomas. Thomas’ life, it is safe to say, was completely changed once
he’d encountered the risen Jesus.
Evidence of God’s nature,
made known to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ, is all around us. It
can be seen in lives whose character has been radically changed as a result of
God’s work. As we said a moment ago, the markers of God’s movement in a
person’s life are distinctive: There’s nothing else quite like God’s power and
movement in a person’s life.
My father was just one such
a person, for he was an angry and bitter man as his life went along. Chained in
the bonds of bitterness and hemmed in my two different addictions, he descended
further and further into isolation from God and from everyone else. But God
intervened in his life in a dramatic and powerful way, giving my father a new
lease on life after a life-threatening heart attack at the age of 72. My father
awoke from a three hour battle, as the doctors and nurses struggled to get his
heart restarted, and to keep it running, to hear God’s voice in the words of
the doctor, who said, “Jess, if you want
to live, there’ll need to be some changes.”
Changes there were, complete
and total changes. Is there any doubt in my family about God’s power and God’s
trustworthiness? No, none at all.
For we’ve seen God’s power
at work, a power that overcame all the human limitations to change my father’s
life trajectory.
So, as we consider Doubting
Thomas’ demand, may we look around us to see the evidence of God’s power, made
known to Thomas, in our world and in our lives today. The evidence of God’s
acting is there to be seen, today, as it was seen in that upper room with
Thomas nearly 2,000 years ago.
Thanks be to God!
AMEN.
