![Title: The Incredulity of Saint Thomas
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Now don’t get me wrong, this world can be a harsh and
cruel place. With Adam and Eve sin entered into this world, and at times it can
feel as though sin is rampant. We look
at wars and genocides overseas and see the mindless killing of human life. We
can look at our own country and the injustice all around us, that there are people
earning far more money than all of our incomes and savings combined, while
there are mothers or fathers working three jobs struggling just to provide a
roof over their families head or food for the table. We look at companies like
BP or Duke Energy who kill the very Earth our Lord created, and we look at
ourselves for demanding cheaper over smarter or safer. There are many things
out of our control that also haunt us, tornados, hurricanes, mudslides, heart
disease, and cancer. With all of this
pain and turmoil it’s no wonder that we cling to some respite, so peace that we
have after this live, and thank God that we have it in Heaven.
It is after all part of the good news that we hear at
this Easter time. Jesus Christ died and
rose again conquering sin and death, not just for himself but for all creation.
That the words that we hear in John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son that whomever believes in him shall not die, but
have eternal life.” These words ring true.
Through Christ we do have eternal life, through Christ death does not
have the victory. That as Paul says to
Timothy as his own death approaches, “I have fought the
good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 From
now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all
who have longed for his appearing.
As Christians we so often cannot wait to “claim our salvation” to claim
that crown reserved for us in heaven, if
we can just hold on in this life, do the right things so that we don’t go to
hell, then we can cherish salvation in Heaven.
As Christians, this is what many of us believe, and yet this thinking is
wrong, or at least incomplete.
We often hear the Easter story, we hear about eternal
life and salvation and we jump to thinking about the afterlife. We begin to
think that salvation simply means getting into heaven. This leads many
Christians to view salvation as only pertaining to one’s soul. Our bodies, creation, none of that really
matters as long as our souls are saved.
That theology is troubling enough by itself, but add to it that for many
our souls are saved in heaven not here on Earth. This line of thinking makes it
seem as though our bodies our useless, in fact our time on Earth is useless,
all that matters is what we do to ensure our place in heaven. This dangerous
theology is nothing new, but has been around in Christianity almost since the
beginning. In Early Christianity there were groups called the Gnostics who
rejected the earthly world and embraced the spiritual. [1]
Another group called the docetics
believe that Jesus Christ’s appearance from the grave was not actually a
bodily resurrection but just some spiritual form that looked real. While for us this sounds crazy, if we only believe the resurrection helps to
save our soul for Heaven, then why is the bodily resurrection so important?
Could the docestics be right?
Our scripture for today gives a definitive no to that
answer. Jesus appears to the disciples, pours out the Holy Spirit upon them,
but we know the story, Thomas wasn’t there for the event so he did not believe.
He cries, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his
hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I
will not believe." So often
when we read this text is for us an example of unbelief on the part of Thomas.
We liken it do our own doubt since we have not seen the marks for ourselves.
Rarely though do we recognize the significance of Thomas’s actions. Easter Sunday we heard of Mary not
recognizing Jesus who stood before her, and in our story this morning we hear
of Jesus somehow coming through a locked door. These stories could lend some
credence to a belief that Jesus was only resurrected in spirit, but then there
is Thomas. Thomas puts his finger in the holes in Jesus’s hands and side,
Thomas touches the resurrected Jesus, the body of Jesus, not a spirit.
And so it brings us back to that question why is the
bodily resurrection of Jesus important? Why is it important that we know that
Thomas touched the wounded body of Christ? The answer is that Jesus’s bodily resurrection
teaches us more about salvation than we may think. If salvation were only about
the afterlife, why would Jesus need to come back body and all? The truth is
that salvation is about far more than the afterlife, that salvation involves
the here and now. Salvation does not just involve our souls either but involves
our bodies as well. In fact salvation involves all of creation. God’s act of mercy and reconciliation through
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was not simply so that our souls may
be saved, but rather so that all that the Lord has made may be restored and
made new. It is as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, “So if
anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new! or as the voice in John’s Revelation says, “See,
I am making all things new!” Thomas being able to put his finger in the
side of the risen body of Christ, reminds us of the magnitude of God’s
redemptive love. Dr. Norman Wirzba says it so well in article he wrote for the
Duke Divinity School Magazine. He says, “God did not
become incarnate in the body of Jesus Christ in order to then condemn bodies
and leave them behind. He came to heal, touch, and feed them; and in doing so
he leads the whole of creation into redeemed, reconciled, and resurrection life.”
You see the news of the risen body is truly good
news. It is in fact incredible news far
beyond what we could ever imagine. It teaches us that salvation is not just
some escape from this world. It teaches us that our goal as Christians is not
some Nirvana, our goal is not even Heaven. Our goal as Christians is to be
reconciled with God, with each other, and with all creation. Our goal is to be
drawn into a perfect relationship with Christ so that we may be restored, so
that creation might be restored to a right relationship with God. But the news is even better than that. We aren’t just being restored to the
wonderful life that existed before the fall of Adam and Eve, before our
banishment from Eden and into the sin plagued world we live in now, God is
making all things new. This transformation that God is working in the world
through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and now through the power
of the Holy Spirit is taking us into time and place even greater than our
original paradise on Earth. Why would we want to escape from this wonderful
transformation that is taking place?
You see, Jesus’s bodily resurrection does mean something;
it means that the here and now matters. It means that our bodies, the animals,
the trees, in fact all creation matters. That a wonderful transformation is
taking place right and front of our eyes if we are only willing to see it. What
about me you may be asking? What does anything have to do with me since I will
probably die before this transformation comes to completion? And yet this
transformation is already happening in you. Through grace those of us who have
been baptized have already been justified, aligned, turned towards God and away
from the snares of sin and death. Each
and every day that you spend in scripture reading or prayer, serving the needy,
or receiving Holy Communion you are allowing opportunities for the grace of God
to work in you and draw you closer to Christian Perfection, yes perfection.
Each year at Annual conference as clergy prepare for ordination they are asked
these questions, “Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made
perfect in this lifetime?” The correct answer to each is yes. We are going on
to perfection, and that we truly can experience that in this life. That doesn’t
mean that we become superhuman or can’t make wrong decisions, but that our
hearts are in perfect alignment with God’s, that what we desire above anything
else is for God’s will be done. If you don’t believe this is possible, look at
some examples throughout history who have demonstrated this love, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day or Nelson Mandela,
or maybe someone closer to home maybe even from this church who always seems to
be a shining example of someone who lived the love of God at all times.
And if we look at all of these saints of the church we will start to see that they all had
something in common, they all served the Lord.
Whether it be through serving orphaned children, feeding the poor
or working towards bringing racial
reconciliation to a whole country, these saints served God in the here and now.
These saints were part of the transformation that we talked about, these saints
were kingdom builders. They had aligned
their hearts with Christ and in doing so developed a heart for a creation, a
heart that saw a world of turmoil but also saw the hope of transformation. Today, we are all called to be kingdom
builders. We are called to serve, to love, to take care of creation, and to
work with Christ in his transformation of making all things new. Christ did not
come to Earth in flesh so that we can simply disregard the things of the
Earth. In putting his finger in Christ’s
side, Thomas reminds us of our calling to help bring forth the Kingdom of God,
here on Earth.
And yet the good news is that Heaven does matter. As Paul says in Corinthians, “ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all
creation; 16 for in[h] him all things in heaven
and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for
him… and through him God was pleased to reconcile to
himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the
blood of his cross.” God is God of both Heaven and Earth. God is God of all things visible and
invisible. While Heaven is not the goal
of Christianity, it is a rest that God provides for us. Like one of the hymns
from our hymnal exclaims, “For all the saints, who from their labors
rest, Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy Name, O Jesus, be
forever blessed.” You see as Christians we don’t believe in a
Nirvana, we don’t believe in Heaven as an escape from an evil world, we believe
in Heaven as an eternal rest from our labors of Kingdom building here on Earth,
until the Kingdom of God comes in its fullness and we rejoice at the beautiful
reconciliation and restoration that the Lord has completed, and yes that we
were a part of. Now that’s good news.
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