Acts
2:14a, 22 – 32
Psalm 16
I Peter 1:3 – 9
John 20:19 – 31
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, April
16, 2023 by Fr. Gene Tucker.
“THE LORD FROM WHOM NO SECRETS ARE HID”
(Homily text: John 20:19 – 31)
Imagine a scenario in which a person’s
innermost thoughts, desires, and actions become known. An example of that might
be someone who’d committed a crime, whose deeds are now known. Or, perhaps, a
remark made in private which is then disclosed to others. Both of these scenarios
would normally lead the person involved to feel exposed and vulnerable.
That seems to be the case with the
Lord’s offering to Thomas, that Thomas would be allowed to do the very things
that he had demanded in order to come to believe that the Lord’s resurrection
was an actual event.
We need to back up a little into this
account, for it will help shape our understanding.
A week before, on that first Easter
Sunday, the Lord appeared to ten of His disciples. John tells us that Thomas
wasn’t with them on that occasion. But then, Thomas was with them a bit later
on (we don’t know exactly when). At the time he is with the other ten
disciples, he is told that the Lord is alive, and that He had appeared to them.
In response, Thomas says that he won’t believe unless he is able to put his
fingers 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.
Then, on the first Sunday after the
first Easter Sunday[1],
Thomas is with the other disciples, and the Lord appears to them. Looking at
Thomas, the Lord gives Thomas permission to put his fingers into the print of
the nails, and to place his hands in His side. In response, Thomas says, “My
Lord and my God!”
Notice that the Lord knows what Thomas
had demanded to be able to do in order to come to faith. All throughout John’s
Gospel account, Jesus knows things that only God can know. (It is a marker - in
John’s account - of Jesus’ divinity, His
oneness with God the Father.)
A logical conclusion we can draw from
the Lord’s foreknowledge of Thomas’ demands is that, if the Lord knew what
Thomas had said, then He also had the ability to know everything else about
Thomas: His thoughts, his actions, his desires, his attitudes, and so forth.
Thomas had been “found out”.
But notice what the Lord did: He said
to Thomas, “Don’t be faithless[2], but
believing.”
The Lord could easily have invaded
Thomas’ heart and soul for the purposes of wreaking havoc in Thomas’ innermost
being. But the Lord does just the opposite: The Lord grants Thomas permission
to come to faith, to be able to be completely whole for the first time in
Thomas’ life. (Remember that Thomas is portrayed in John’s Gospel account as a
fairly dour person. See John 11:16 for an insight into Thomas’ character.)
As a result of Thomas’ transformation,
he is now fit to serve the Lord as an emissary of the Good News of God in
Christ. We know from tradition that Thomas became just such an emissary,
traveling as far as the subcontinent of India, carrying the Gospel story with
him.
If the Lord knew all about Thomas, then
the Lord also knows all about us….our thoughts, our actions, the ways in which
we have fallen short of God’s high standards of behavior, our unwillingness to
surrender ourselves completely to God’s invitation to a new and transformed
life.
For, we need to remember, we’ve all
been “found out”.
In the face of such a realization, we
might want to hide from God’s gaze. But God comes, not to rummage around in our
hearts and minds in order to create havoc, but to ferret out of us all that is
unseemly and all that that falls short of a complete transformation of heart,
mind and soul.
Absent such a complete self-surrender,
our walk with God hasn’t really begun. For our journey into the waters of Holy
Baptism signifies that we have died – completely died – to our old way of life,
in order to be raised to a new way of life.
Thank you, Thomas, for your complete
and total surrender to the Lord’s sovereignty and will. May we do the same.
AMEN.
[1] This would be the eighth day after the resurrection. The timing of this
event is one reason why we hear today’s Gospel text on the first Sunday after
Easter. By the way, the number eight in the Bible signifies a new beginning.
For Thomas, the events that took place on the eighth day was a new beginning in
his life.
[2] Thomas has become known as “Doubting Thomas”
because of this incident. But the Greek word is better translated as “faithless” or “unbelieving”.
