A homily by Fr.
Gene Tucker, given at St.
Mary’s Church, Robinson , Illinois
“THE RESURRECTED CHRIST AND GOD’S GRACE”
(Homily texts: I John 1: 1 – 2: 2 & John 20: 19 – 31)
God’s grace
has been very much on my mind this week, as I have been preparing to give a
talk at the Cursillo retreat at the Toddhall
Conference Center
in Belleville
Perhaps
it’s best if we define the word grace. (Sometimes, I think we throw some key words
around in the Church without really considering what they mean, exactly.)
Grace is defined in the Catechism which
is found at the back of the Book of Common Prayer (page 858) as “God’s favor
towards us, unearned and undeserved.”
It strikes
me that this is an excellent definition for the word, as we apply it to the
life of faith, the life lived in God and with God.
Now, let’s
apply the concept of grace to the
resurrection appearance which was granted to Thomas on this very day, the first
Sunday after the Sunday of the Resurrection.
(Before we
proceed, we ought to take a moment to remind ourselves that this is a gospel
text we hear every year on the Second Sunday of Easter.)
Thomas
must’ve been a hard case for the Lord to tackle….Notice how he demands a sign
that the resurrection had actually taken place.
Here are his words, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails,
and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I
will not believe.”
An aside is
appropriate here…Notice that, in the crucifixion accounts in each of the four
gospels, no mention is made of the use of nails to fix Jesus to the cross. It is here, in the words of Thomas’ demands,
that we learn that this was an aspect of Jesus’ suffering and death. Obliquely, we also know this fact from Luke’s
account, as he records the fact that Jesus showed the disciples His hands and
His side (see Luke 24: 40).
But let’s
return to Thomas’ demands for a moment.
Notice that Thomas isn’t satisfied to see the risen Lord, he demands to touch Him as well, and not just the Lord’s hands, but the Lord’s
side, too.
Thomas
seems to dismiss the other disciples’ witness as they tell him, “We have seen
the Lord.”
Despite
Thomas’ high standard of proof that the Lord is alive, the Lord grants his
request. In fact, in a thread which runs
throughout John’s gospel, the Lord knows exactly what Thomas has demanded
without being told. In John’s gospel,
time and again we see that the Lord knows things that ordinary human beings
cannot know. This divine foreknowledge is one of the signs that Jesus is one with the
Father, possessed of knowledge that only God can possess.
Here, God’s
grace – His undeserved and unearned favor – is given to Thomas, as the Lord
appears to him and invites him to touch the risen Lord.
If we think
about it, the Lord didn’t have to grant Thomas’ request at all. The Lord could have let Thomas come to the
point of believing that He had, in fact, risen from the dead all on his
own. After all, Thomas could have come
to the point of belief by watching the changed lives of the other
disciples.
That’s what many early Christians did: They watched and heard the testimony of the disciples as they told about seeing the risen Lord. Our reading from Acts this morning bears that reality out: Acts says that “with great power, the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.”
The testimony of those who had seen and had touched the Lord, as the First Letter of John puts it, must’ve been powerful and convincing.
But the
Lord, acting with grace toward Thomas, wants Thomas to know for certain that
the resurrection is real. Thomas
apparently needed that convincing proof in order to be an effective and
powerful witness to the Lord’s resurrection.
As a
result, Thomas became a powerful witness to the Lord’s resurrection. Tradition tells us that he travelled as far
as the subcontinent of India India that bears Thomas’ name, the Mar Thoma
Church
You and I are called to come to faith, just as Thomas did.
In a sense,
our journey to faith is harder than Thomas’ was, for we are not granted a
resurrection appearance of the sort that he was.
We are
called to trust that the witness of the early disciples-become-apostles is a
true one. After all, isn’t that what the
gospel writer says to us this morning as he writes, “Now Jesus did many other
signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but
these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God, and that believing you may have life in his name.” Essentially, the gospel writer is telling us
that the written record of Jesus is the record of the disciples’ eyewitness
accounts of the Lord’s work.
In order to
come to the point of believing, we will need God’s grace in order to become a
believer. The truth of the resurrection
goes beyond our powers to reason the truth of it out. Our minds tell us that no one rises from the
dead….perhaps, after all, that’s why Thomas made such stringent demands of
proof in order to accept the truth of Jesus’ resurrection.
Ultimately,
believing that Jesus really rose from the dead is a matter of faith. Jesus tells Thomas, “Do not be faithless, but
believing.” But Jesus does not ask us to
make a leap of faith into the unknown.
The Lord offers us the proof of the witness of the
disciples-become-apostles, for the witness of Scripture is the record of the
disciples’ experience of the risen Lord.
The Bible points to the experiences of those who heard the Lord, who saw
the Lord, who touched the Lord, as the First Letter of John tells us.
The
beginning of this journey of faith into the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, and
into the new life that He offers us, begins with God’s grace. Simply put, God enables us to believe. If we accept that divine favor, unearned and
undeserved, then God will honor our response and will strengthen our ability to
accept the reality of the resurrection.
His grace continues as we come to believe more and more, and as we
believe more and more, we come to know that these things are true. We can then believe even more deeply as a
result of having come to know that the resurrection is true. This process is summed up in the saying, “I
believe in order to know, and I know in order to believe.”
If we come
to believe, our gospel reading this morning offers us a blessing that Thomas
could not receive…Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have
seen me? Blessed are those who have not
seen and yet believe.”
May God’s
grace enable us to believe – either for the first time, or yet again and more
deeply – even though we have seen only with the eyes of faith.
AMEN.
