A homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, given at Christ
Church, Georgetown, Washington, D. C., Sunday, April 7, 2013 (for Evensong)
“FOCUSING ON ST. THOMAS, THE DISCIPLE”
(Homily texts: John 14: 1 – 7 & John 20: 19 – 31)
The
designers of our cycle of lectionary
readings from Holy Scripture have done an excellent job of putting St. Thomas,
the disciple, before us today. Yes, that
would be Doubting Thomas that we are talking about….
Our second
reading for this evening, taken from John, chapter fourteen, reminds us of
Thomas’ question to Jesus at the Last Supper, when he said to the Lord, “We do
not know where you are going; and how can we know the way?”
Then,
today’s gospel reading for Holy Eucharist is John 20: 19 – 31. This reading tells us of the special
resurrection appearance that the Lord provided to Thomas on the first Sunday
after that first Easter. This reading is
especially appropriate for this Sunday, and it is a gospel that we hear every
year on the Second Sunday of Easter.
Let’s
briefly recount each of these incidents.
Then, let’s connect them. Finally, let’s draw some conclusions for our
own faith walk, which is an important thing to do whenever we read and hear Holy
Scripture.
First of
all, let’s retrace our steps, reminding ourselves of these two events in
Thomas’ walk with the Lord.
Thomas asks
his question, “Lord we do not know where you are going; and how can we know the
way?” as the disciples sit with the Lord observing the Passover meal, on Maundy
Thursday, during Holy Week. Jesus has
just told them that He is going to go away to prepare a place for them, but
that when He does go away, He will return and take them to Himself, so that
where He is, they may be also. In
response to Thomas’ question, Jesus utters this saying, which has become very
well known: “I am the way, the truth and
the life. No one comes to the Father,
except by me.”
Now, let’s
fast-forward into Easter week. Jesus has
made an appearance to the disciples, but John tells us that Thomas wasn’t there
with the other disciples when the risen Lord came into the locked room where
they were gathered. The other disciples
said to him, “We have seen the Lord”. In
response, Thomas says that, “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.” Then, on this Sunday,
one week after the resurrection, Jesus comes into the locked room again, and
says to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put our your hand,
and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.” Thomas, you will remember, says in response,
“My Lord and my God.”
We noted at
the beginning of this meditation that the two events are connected. I believe they are connected in the following
way:
In telling
the Lord that the disciples don’t know where Jesus is going, and in asking Him
how they can know the way, Thomas is motivated, it seems to me, by a desire to
be where Jesus is going to be. Put
another way, we might say that Thomas is saying, “Don’t leave us…we want to be
where you are, with you.”
And so, in
appearing to Thomas and the others after His resurrection, Jesus is telling all
of them where He has gone, and in showing them His risen self, Jesus is
assuring them that they, too, will be with Him in a resurrection of their
own. In saying “I am the way, the truth
and the life,” Jesus is confirming that He is the way to the Father, that He
has opened up the way of eternal life by His victory over death. In saying, “I am the truth,” Jesus confirms
that all that He has said comes directly from the Father, for Jesus said, “I
and the Father are one.” The
resurrection confirms that the power of the Father to create life, and to
recreate it, is present in Jesus.
Finally, Jesus said that He is “the life”….in His resurrection, Jesus
confirms that He is the giver of life in its fullness, life that will never end
once our life in this world has come to an end.
Once the
Lord has appeared to Thomas, and has given him the proof that he needed in
order to set doubt and faithlessness (a better way to describe Thomas’
condition, by the way, for it fits the Greek more closely) aside. Thomas had said that he and the others didn’t
know where Jesus was going. Nor did they
know the way, Thomas added. Now, they
know the destination that Jesus has reached:
It is the resurrected state, life everlasting. Now, they also know the way to that blissful
state, through faith in all that the Lord has done.
What does
all this imply for your faith walk and mine?
As we said a moment ago, that’s always an important question to be
asking whenever we engage Holy Scripture.
As we look
back at Jesus’ resurrection, now so many years ago, nearly 2,000 years ago, in
fact, we can see that, at its most basic meaning, it demonstrates God’s power
to create things, and to re-create them.
In Jesus’
case, that divine power conquers death, the certain death of dying on a Roman
cross, for such a death was public, and it was complete. Jesus was truly and completely dead. For Thomas, that was the reality he
knew: Jesus had died just such a
horrible and complete death that there was no way that He could be alive
again. No wonder Thomas demanded such
graphic and physical proof that Jesus was alive….we shouldn’t be too hard on
Thomas, for he is simply operating out of the reality he knew. Thomas is expressing the concerns that each
of us has, for we want to know where the Lord is, so that we can be with Him
where He is. We also need to know that
the resurrection is a real event that actually took place. (It’s worth noting that the gospels, Luke and
John particularly, both take great care to tell us that Jesus rose from the
dead with His physical body intact, for the disciples proclaim that Jesus ate
and drank with them. Of that reality,
the disciples say, “We are witnesses.”)
For us,
living as Christians today, the resurrection continues to assure us that God’s
power to create, and to re-create is still available to us today. God, working through Christ, is able to grant
us new life as we pass through the waters of baptism….Let’s recall that St.
Paul likens baptism to being buried with Christ in a death like His (see Romans
6: 3 – 9). Then, Paul adds that, once
we’ve passed through those baptismal waters, we rise to a new life, a
resurrection, like His.
As we
continue our faith walk with the Lord, the Lord re-creates us, giving us new
perspectives, a new set of priorities, a new way of being, thinking and acting.
The Lord gives us the power to conquer
those things that would lead to death. This is God’s power to give life in the midst
of death, as we die to our old self, and rise in likeness to God.
Thanks be
to God!
AMEN.
