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Thomas is Us

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Peace Be With You
John 20: 19-31

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)

Thomas’ doubts are really ours. That’s why the Gospel of John tells this story. The gospel writer tells us himself that there are so many stories that could be told about Jesus, that he couldn’t begin to tell them all; so he clearly has chosen the story of Thomas’ doubts to make a point. And the point is that Thomas doubts the same thing that we do. How does a pie-in-the-sky religion address our concrete reality here on earth? People are wounded, people are bleeding. A spiritualized, other-worldly faith really doesn’t offer much hope for a wounded, bleeding world, does it?

The issue is not whether the disciples have seen Jesus. The issue is not whether Jesus’ resurrection is true or merely a fantasy.

The issue is whether it matters.

For Thomas, and us, this is the question that matters most because it affects everything else. It really has cosmic consequences. Jesus lays those cosmic consequences out for His disciples in his first meeting with them in the locked room. Because I have been raised from the dead, He says, you will have peace. Because I have been raised from the dead, the world will have peace. Because I have been raised from the dead, you are sent into the world to proclaim a gospel that can change the world. Because I have been raised from the dead, you have the ability to forgive sins, or to retain them.

For us Christians, to believe that Jesus is raised from the dead is to believe that God has filled us with the Holy Spirit and the ability to heal the world’s ills through the power of forgiveness and accountability. The world’s ills are not minor things. They are war, violence, greed, hatred, poverty, oppression, and selfishness on a massive scale. If forgiveness and accountability and telling a story of good news are to bring peace, healing, and hope to the world, that’s what the gospel has to address. It has to address our wounds.

These wounds aren’t going to be healed by mamby-pamby, spiritualized religion that says, you ought to do this and it’s bad to do that, and that you’re going to go to heaven or hell eventually for what you do on this earth now. It has to be more than “wishing makes it so.” It has to have the power to heal the wounds—to stop the guns from firing—to make people forget their differences and sit down and talk things out—to give them a shared vision for a world of hope and peace and friendship and the breaking down of barriers.

And it has to be a faith that makes us get up and take risks. It has to be a faith that makes us willing to bleed a bit to make the world a better place. It has to inspire us, it has to set us on fire, to make us passionate enough, and confident enough in God, that we’re willing to get off our rear ends and do something about the mess the world is in.

A spiritualized, floating-around-us-making-us-feel-good Jesus isn’t going to inspire that. Lots of religions have spiritualized gods or divine figures who tell us to do good and be nice to one another, but they don’t really make a difference, because they don’t deal with our down-in-the-dirt reality. Those religions are fine as long as you aren’t facing serious troubles in your life. And they’re fine if you want to be an escapist and pretend like the troubles of the world aren’t real. They’re fine if you want to compartmentalize your daily life and your religious life, so that you go to church on Sunday and say “I believe” but the rest of the week you live as if your faith doesn’t matter.

Thomas doesn’t want anything to do with that kind of religion. He’s seen enough of it. The Jesus he knew, the Jesus he followed, dealt with the dirty, gritty reality of the real world. He loved real people in real situations. And He was horribly killed for it by the powers that be. Thomas doesn’t want the Jesus he knew and loved and who sacrificed so much to be turned into another figurehead, spiritualized God who gets used to justify the way the world is and who promises us “pie in the sky bye and bye when we die.”

Give me a god who is wounded as I am wounded, he says, who bleeds the way the world bleeds. That’s a God I’ll believe in. That’s a God who matters. That’s a God who can make a difference.

Show me the wounds.

Thomas shouldn’t be held out as the least faithful of the disciples, as he often is. He should be celebrated as the exemplar of faith. His demand to “show me the wounds” needs to be our demand as well. It’s the ultimate litmus test of faith. Are we willing to look at the world as it is—or do we use our religion to hide away from the wounds of the world and to build ourselves an enclave fortified against harsh reality? Is our religion our way of avoiding getting wounded, or is it a way to heal the wounds of the world? That’s a real clue for us about whether we worship a spiritualized, powerless Jesus, or a resurrected Jesus who walks with us and with all people in the real world today.

Thomas believes because he sees the wounds with his own eyes. He recognizes Jesus by His wounds. And that is also how the world will recognize the truth of the gospel in our personal lives. They’ll recognize it if they see with their own eyes how much we love the dispossessed, the needy, the lost, those who are suffering. They’ll see it in our willingness to bleed for them, to share their wounds—to make sacrifices for their sake, because that’s what our Lord has done. In kindness, in mercy, in forgiveness, and especially in our willingness to do those things even at cost to ourselves–in those things non-believers will see the resurrected Lord in our lives—real and in the flesh: by our willingness to be wounded and to love those who are wounded.

Most of the world is full of Doubting Thomases. They don’t believe that God actually cares about our human frailties and fleshly needs. They either believe that God ignores people altogether, or that God only is with the rich and the successful. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is with the wounded—with the victim—with the helpless. God is with all people in their time of need. That’s when God is the most real. But it’s hard for people to believe that. So we have to show them. We have to show them by our willingness to be with the wounded, and even to be wounded for them.

Until Thomas sees the wounds, he is not at peace. When he sees the wounds, at last, he finds that peace. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from others, and have found out personally, that when we see the wounds we find peace. People will tell me they were afraid to see the homeless at RITI, or go as Deacons to see someone sick in the hospital, or stay by the side of someone dying—but when they got up the nerve to do it, they found something new in themselves, a new kind of wholeness. Likewise people in the midst of trouble and need find a deeper wholeness and peace when their friends and brothers and sisters in Christ take the time simply to love them and be by their side. Peace doesn’t mean absence from turmoil—turmoil and struggle are inevitable. But it means that even in turmoil we can find new and amazing wholeness—completeness—in Christ.

That peace isn’t available to only to us, but to the whole world. Imagine if the church forgot its troubling self-involvement and engaged itself in a massive world-wide effort to show the world that we stand by them in their woundedness in the name of Christ. It’d be the beginning of a new kind of peace—that unique wholeness that unites humanity with God—what Jesus’ cosmic death and resurrection are all about.

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Peace be with us.