Confessing Thomas [Easter 2]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

 

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Ezekiel 37:1-14

• 1 John 5:4-10

• St. John 20:19-31

Grace, mercy, and peace [are yours] from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Tim 1)
 
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His Service, saying: 
“Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’”
 
Before we set one foot into the Gospel of Christ, I would like to give thanks. Thank God for St. Thomas. Thank God for the man who doubted Easter.
 
Yes, for his pig-headedness, for his doubt, for his denial, for his dyed-in-the-wool skepticism – for all that, I thank God. Why? Because, as St. Gregory put it, “More does the doubt of Thomas help us to believe, than the faith of the disciples who believed.” I thank God that Thomas doubted, for when he later “touched the wounds in the flesh of his master, he healed in us the wounds of our unbelief.”
 
So today we will vindicate St. Thomas, but we will not be doing so in parables. For it is popularly taught that Jesus is teaching blind faith, in this Gospel lesson. That, like St. Thomas, you have to just go by someone’s words, as Jesus says at the end, “blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.”
 
In this line of thinking, we get any number of movie references to struggles where the future isn’t certain, but if you just take a leap of faith, God will put the path under you, even if the next step appears to be off a cliff. Get out of your comfort zone, they say. do the unthinkable. think the impossible. Follow your dreams. god will be there to catch you.
 
No. None of that.
 
We are also not going to stop our understanding at the Word. For though this lesson is there, that is to rely upon the Spoken and preached Word of God, instead of what we see, St. Thomas teaches something more. 
 
What we see is not Doubting Thomas, but Confessing Thomas.
 
We are the blind leading the blind, as Jesus said in St. Matthew 15:14. But what was He talking about there? Just about knowing yourself and standing up for yourself? Jesus goes on in that chapter to explain exactly what He means about blind leading the blind.
 
He says, “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person” (15:18-20).
 
This means that being blind is directly related to how much you trust your own heart. It is your heart that tells you to throw your family under the bus as long as it advances your spiritual ascension. It is your heart that tells you “you are right”, regardless of what anyone else says. It is your heart that tells you, you have the truth and no one else does.
 
This turns what we are doing into a circus side-show. Is that all the Resurrection is? Just some form of entertainment. Some nice thing to think about, but we have better things to think about? Right, because when the Twelve told St. Thomas “we have seen the Lord”, he immediately replied, “Oh boy! Now we’re gonna see Him walk through walls and locked doors!”
 
Repent! This is not a show. We do not spend hours of our lives in Church to be entertained or to seek our own truth inside ourselves. 
 
Jesus presents nothing to all people, except Himself. He does not present to them their hearts, their minds, or their deeds. He does not present to them a test or a choice or some other sneaky lie to see what we will do with it.
 
Jesus has done nothing except present Himself from the very beginning. In Genesis, He presented His love in creating all things for man. In the Old Testament, He presented His openness and long-suffering, allowing His Name to be spat upon, while He dwelt with a stiff-necked people.
 
In the New Testament, He opens Himself even further to vulnerability as an infant, ridicule as a teenager, suffering at the hands of sinners, and even literally being opened by scourge, nail, and spear. 
 
This is the evidence that Jesus offers on Easter and it is presented to us in Word and Sacrament. In the case of St. Thomas: when the Apostles saw Jesus, they said, “We have seen Him”. When St. Thomas sees He proclaims, “My Lord and my God!”
 
Thus, St. Thomas gives us the most clear confession of Christ’s Lordship and divinity in the entire Bible! By Faith, St. Thomas saw more than the others. He knew what the Resurrection was really about. No more will we have to deal with voices in our heads, or phantoms in our midst, or ghosts walking on water, as we hear in St. Matthew 14:26.
 
St. Thomas says, I have been addressed. I have been called by the Lord and I cannot see Him with out Him speaking to me. “Peace be with you”, He says, and I have peace. You are raised, I am raised. You send me, I am sent. You forgive, I am forgiven.
 
When confronted with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ one must confess, or rather, there is no way you can stay silent. The Resurrection is all about beholding and confessing. Beholding Christ on the cross, for those were the proofs offered to us today. Jesus is Christ Crucified for us.
 
The resurrection of Jesus does not move us beyond the cross. Jesus does not say, “now that that’s done lets move on to magic tricks”. He says look at my hands. Look at my side. How did I get those marks, guys?? Confess!
 
The true Resurrection message is, that in that cross of death there is life. In that cross of condemnation, there is forgiveness. In that cross of apparent defeat, there is the Kingdom of God and freedom from satan.
 
Now, the Faith given to us sees that life is “take up your cross and follow Me” (Matt 16:24), Power is Christ Crucified (1 Corinthians 1:18), and the Lord is “the Lamb Who was slain” (Rev 5:12) all of which is only made known in His Holy Scriptures, for us.
 
But more than that, by the Power of the Holy Spirit, the same hands and side that St. Thomas’ fingers read like braille, are placed into our hands and mouth today. For we too receive the same exact peace that was given to the Apostles on Easter, in the Body and Blood of Communion.
 
We ask for and can expect no more than was given to St. Thomas. that is that true Faith and forgiveness are found only in the Body and Blood of Christ and that in suffering, death, anxiety, loneliness, despair, hunger, thirst, and tragedy; at that cross we will speak “Peace be with you”. 
 
And there will be peace. The true Peace, Jesus Christ. And we will believe His written Word and by believing, have eternal life in His Name. For the same God-man that told St. Thomas to “put out his hand”, invites you to do the same at His Altar today.
 
Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!