Loading...Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
I’m not sure why, but every year we hear these this Gospel the Sunday after Easter.
Maybe it is in the afterglow of the resurrection, the time with family and friends, the ham dinners, and too much Easter candy that anyone might begin to experience some niggling of doubt or curiosity or wonder about this miraculous story. You know, that feeling that maybe what just happened was not real, was some made-up fantasy, or it was only a dream. It might be like what some you are someone who has vivid dreams, there can sometibe confusing moments when waking up, wondering what is real—the dream or what you know to be true.
It doesn’t seem to matter that Mary Magdalene told the disciples that an angel or Jesus sent her to them to tell them Jesus was raised from the dead. Or, depending on which Gospel story is read, they are to go to Galilee to meet Jesus. Maybe they were the pair walking the road to Emmaus when a stranger, who they are unaware is their beloved Jesus, joins them. In this story from John, they are still sequestered in a locked room, afraid and grieving.
No matter the version of the story, Jesus shows up for them. He comes to them. In this Gospel, he appears, standing right in front of them, somehow entering the locked room. There were no barriers to his desire to be with them these next 50 days.
I’ve preached this story for ten or eleven years now. Most of us have heard it for even more years. It feels like there couldn’t possibly be anything new to learn about. Maybe that’s the point of repeating it annually the week after we’ve celebrated the resurrection.
Maybe this is the story of where faith becomes a way of life. Because when Jesus says, “blessed are they who have not seen, but still believe” he is calling on all who choose to follow him to trust that believing does not require seeing him in the flesh.
This story gives us the courage to say it’s okay to believe in something that many think is impossible, unbelievable, or even mind-blowing. We are, as Jesus Followers, sent out into a world to tell this story that just doesn’t seem like it could have ever happened. That may even be considered too good to be true.
But it is because of these stories and the recounting of what Jesus said and did that we can believe in the power of a God that provides us both comfort and direction. We can know this risen Christ and follow his lead by expressing those behaviors and emotions that can sometimes be so incredibly hard—love, compassion, humility, mercy, kindness, forgiveness.
The world hungers and thirsts for these things.
Yet we, still, like the disciples and other followers in that room, need some kind of proof to know that Jesus rose from the dead, as he promised to do.
And here we are. Listening again to the story that we have dubbed “Doubting Thomas.”
I have struggled with calling him “doubting.” It is unfair to single his skepticism out from the rest, especially when they all needed the proof of seeing and feeling the wounds in Jesus’s hands and feet. They needed to see his divinity in the breaking of the bread. They needed his words of encouragement to remind them that they had a purpose that did not end that Friday on the cross.
They all doubted. They all feared. They all hid. And they all had a hard time believing Mary Magdalene until they had their own encounter with the risen Christ.
In that encounter, it took seeing the wounds, the holes in his hands and feet, the slice in his side where the sword cut in, drawing both blood and water. It was those tangible wounds that helped the disciples know this was their Jesus.
Have you ever thought about that? I mean, we hope when a loved one dies that their bodies become whole and able and their minds become clear. But Jesus comes to his friends, still bearing his wounds, still with the signs of being beaten and pierced. Have you ever wondered why?
Biblical commentator and professor, Richard Swanson, has written about this for a few liturgical cycles. He ponders why Jesus would resurrect still bearing those wounds. Why, indeed?
He puts it simply: Life leaves marks. Marks of pain, abuse, injury, illness, starvation, oppression, war, ecological destruction, the list goes on and on. And because life leaves marks, keeps leaving marks, life keeps wounding people and the earth we live on. Swanson wrote in 2017: “The gaping wounds of Jesus in this scene make it clear that we cannot shut our eyes.
That may be the most important message of this little scene: resurrection and reality cannot be separated. We cannot hope in the resurrection if we close our eyes to the wounds suffered by Creation.
Our reaction is crucial. Now we will discover whether we want resurrection hope or just reassurance. Now we will see if we just want to “go to heaven” and be done with it, or if we are willing to participate in God’s act of resurrection for all of Creation. …
Seeing the resurrection, this scene suggests, requires seeing and knowing the gaping wounds of the Creation.”[1]
These are powerful words. They are words that require our response, our action, our recognition that the work of Jesus continues every time we see the chasms between wealth and poverty, health and sickness, peace and war. When we learn how systems that were developed to protect wildlife and ecosystems are being dismantled, threatening the world we live in. When we see how systems that provided for the health and wellness of people around the world are being eliminated.
The gaping wounds of the Creation are often caused by our own unwillingness to see them and respond in meaningful ways. That does not mean we don’t try, of course. Rather, it is because the enormity of the gaping holes will take more than any individual can do.
Jesus shows the disciples that while he is God’s beloved son, his life, death and resurrection did not solve the world’s problems. The work of Jesus requires those that believe in him, trust in his righteousness, hope in his forgiveness, and love with broad strokes that they will act in ways that reflect God’s desire that everything God created has value, deserves inclusion, and requires protection.
We have a choice. We can remain in that locked room, sequestered from the realities of the world, as the disciples were doing in the days following Jesus’s death. We can be afraid that all that Jesus meant died with him.
We can forget all the words and examples he used to prepare his followers to go back into the world and keep the movement alive. We can question our purpose, our commitment, our responsibilities as Jesus Followers, and linger in the doubt that anything Jesus came to do could ever happen without his presence.
Or we can put our fingers through the holes in his hands and recognize that the work has only just begun. That it is through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus that we have been given the manual of what God intends for this place we inhabit.
In this time of war, of unrest, of significant ideological and political division, we are to not only recognize that this world is wounded, but we are to leave that locked room, this sanctuary, where we might feel safer, and venture out, wearing the cross of Jesus, strengthened by his words, his actions, his trust in us, and his love for us, to show the world that there is an alternative. That love, true love for all that God created, is the way. It is the truth. It is what brings us life.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
May we go into the world to spread this message and show the world that the work of love will lead us to everlasting peace. Amen.
[1] https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/a-provocation-the-second-sunday-of-easter-john-2019-31/ Retrieved 4/11/2026 at 11:23 a.m.
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