Acts 4:32 – 35 / Psalm 133 / I John 1:1 – 2:2 / John 20:19 – 31
This is the homily by Fr. Gene Tucker provided
for St. John’s, Huntingdon, PA for Sunday, April 11, 2021.
“HOW DO WE ARRIVE AT THE
PLACE WHERE THOMAS ARRIVED?”
(Homily text: John 20:19 – 31)
The planners of the three-year cycle of readings
which are appointed to be read in church on Sundays have done an excellent job
of appointing the account of Thomas’ encounter with the risen Christ to be read
on the first Sunday after Easter Sunday (the Second Sunday of Easter), for it
was on this day that our Lord appeared to Thomas.
If we were to summarize the point of this text, we
could easily say, “The Lord gave Thomas what Thomas needed in order to believe
that the resurrection is real.” The Lord offers to Thomas exactly what Thomas
had demanded: To be able to place his finger in the nail marks in the Lord’s
hands, and to put his hand into the spear wound in the Lord’s side. Jesus
offers this to Thomas, and then says, “Do not disbelieve, but believe.”[1]
As is often the case in Holy Scripture, and
particularly in John’s account, there’s a forward-looking aspect to this event,
and it is to be found in the Lord’s words, “Have you believed because you have
seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (I don’t
know about you, but I believe that statement applies to every believer since
those words were spoken….it’s as if there’s an imaginary blank in that
statement for each one of us to insert our names.)
As we look at Thomas’ reaction to the Lord’s
appearance, we read that Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!” Thomas had come to
believe. Thomas’ believing took him, tradition tells us, as far as the
subcontinent of India, where he proclaimed the Good News (Gospel) of Jesus.
Still today, there is a church in India which bears his name, the Mar Thoma
Church.
How do we come to the same place as Thomas did, to
the place where we, too, can say, “My Lord and my God”? After all, we haven’t
seen the Lord in person, as Thomas did, but the Lord says we are blessed if we
come to faith, as Thomas did, without being able to physically see the risen
Lord.
Perhaps the proof we need, the basis we need (after
all, faith and believing needs some sort of a foundation upon which to rest) is
of the same sort of thing that our Lord’s resurrection is: Some evidence that
an event is beyond our normal human experience. That’s essentially what the
Lord’s resurrection is: A reality which lies beyond our human experience.
We then, could look for events that go beyond our
ability to explain. Things like lives that are turned around when everything
that we human beings could do to bring about a change of direction in a life has
failed. Something like substance abuse, for example. (My own father is such an
example….his life was completely turned around after everything that normal
human abilities had failed to do….this was God’s doing, God’s alone.) Perhaps
evidence of God’s hand at work might involve a miraculous healing, something
that medical science was unable to accomplish…I’ve known of such miraculous
healings in my own experience. That’s evidence of God at work.
These are but two examples. But there are others.
Could we open our eyes to see God’s hand at work in the world about us,
bringing about a new reality that our normal human experiences tell us are
impossible things to hope and pray for? Perhaps that’s exactly what God would
have us do. When we see God at work, could we then exclaim with Thomas, “My
Lord and my God!”?
AMEN.
[1] This translation, from the English Standard Version, is an excellent rendering of the Greek word apistos, which means “disbelieving”, or, literally, “faithless”. For some reason or another, the common way of referring to Thomas has come to be “Doubting Thomas”.
