Acts 5:27 – 32 / Psalm 150 / Revelation 1:4 – 8 / John 20:19 – 31
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania,
by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, April 24, 2022.
“LOOKING FOR EVIDENCE BY TRYING TO LOOK FOR ITS ABSENCE”
(Homily
text: John 20:19 - 31)
“Have
you believed because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen, and
yet believe.”
Those
words are those of the Lord, spoken to Thomas as Thomas has declared Jesus to
be “My Lord and my God!”
If
we’re thinking about Thomas (yes, that would be the one we often refer to as
“Doubting Thomas”), then it must be the first Sunday after Easter Sunday. And,
indeed, it is, for we are treated to John’s account of Jesus’ appearance to
Thomas eight days after the resurrection. In each of the three years of our
cycle of readings, the Second Sunday of Easter’s Gospel text is always the
account of Thomas’ encounter with the risen Lord.
Thomas
was treated to something that you and I cannot experience: He not only saw the
risen Lord, but was given an invitation to touch the Lord’s resurrected and
glorified body. We can’t do that. Thomas got not only what he demanded, but he
was given whatever it was that he needed in order to believe the reality of the
resurrection.
If
we ask the Lord for whatever it is we need in order to believe, I am convinced
the Lord will give that to us somehow.
We
can come to faith by seeing evidence of God’s acting in the lives of others.
For example, we can point to miraculous healings, something that goes beyond
the scope of medical knowledge to explain. I know of such things myself, having
seen evidence of them. Or, we can point to someone’s life that has been
completely turned around. I think of situations in which there seemed to be no
hope of a better and brighter tomorrow, and yet, when all human abilities had
fallen short, there was new life and new hope. I know about such things, as
well. The complete and total turnaround in my father’s life would be a good
example.
But,
ultimately, coming to faith is an individual matter. It’s God and us,
individually. It is, also, God and us collectively, for sometimes God gives us
what we need when we see God at work in the lives of others. That is one reason
that the Church exists, to be the laboratory where God is working and moving,
allowing us to see evidence of that in others.
Searching
for that evidence might be a challenging enterprise. So, perhaps, it might be a
novel and productive way to go about looking for the evidence of God’s hand in
our lives by looking for the absence of God. We might ask ourselves, “What
would my life be like without God in it?” Going about the search in this way is
a little like realizing the value of something in our lives once that something
is gone. So, for example, we might imagine what it’d be like if some cherished
family heirloom was suddenly no longer a part of our daily existence. We can imagine
losing the associated memories of that object, for objects in our lives often
aren’t simply “things”, they are attached in our consciousness and our memories
with meaning and memory.
It
can be like that with our faith in God. So maybe we ought to be looking to see
what we’d miss if it wasn’t there, the things of God.
Maybe
that’ll help us to “see” (though not physically, like Thomas was able to do)
the risen Lord.
AMEN.
