READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Ezekiel 37:1-14
1 John 5:4-10
St. John 20:19-31
To you all, my true children in the common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (Titus 1:4)
Who speaks to you today, saying:
“Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.’”
You may be wondering why the baptismal font is front and center along with the Paschal Candle. They are there because I want you to run into them. I want you to trip over them and spill the water upon yourself. I want them to be in your view and in your way to remind you of how you got into your pew in the first place.
So I’d like to keep them there, at least for Easter, because if you ever pleaded to God to touch your life, there is where your answer from Him lies. For, in baptism God laid His hands on you and made you His and you should be reminded of this when you are at church, when you are not at church, and every other time. The font was your entrance into the faith, into the Church, and into the Body of Christ. Heaven touches earth, here.
On that note, you may be wondering why we have a church building at all with all this other churchy stuff around. I’ll tell you that its for the same reason St. Thomas wanted Jesus’s hands and side displayed in front of his face. Both Jesus and St. Thomas knew that physical contact is not only extremely important, but necessary for faith and life.
In fact, one of the blessings of coronu-19 is this newfound appreciation for and thankfulness to God for His blessing of physical touch. We need physical contact, especially with those we love. It is necessary to live, to be human. Isolation is an abomination, hence its use in prisons. Ask any child. Worse than that, every animal shelter or place where animals are raised in captivity never allow infant animals to be without contact. We take better care of animals than our own people.
So it is that the Resurrected Jesus comes into physical contact with St. Thomas, because touch has always been a part of Salvation.
From the beginning, even the Serpent and Eve knew that touch was important, when Eve misquoted God by telling the serpent don’t eat of the tree or “touch” it (Gen 3:3). Of course God never gave the command to not touch, but it is implied. Why would you want to touch something that is death if eaten?
Similarly, when God brought Israel out of Egypt and presented Himself to them upon mount Sinai, He warned them, “Touch the mountain and you die” (Ex. 19:12). When God presents Himself in front of people, there is the real possibility of dying. Again, in Numbers 17:13, touching the Tabernacle would cause death. Even Job had to suffer under the devil’s touch, when God allowed him to bring calamity upon Job (1:11).
So it is, that God, in His majesty, is untouchable solely because of sin. In sin, Eve made the declaration about not touching the tree, but it came true anyway. Sin had separated her from the Lord’s touch and that means death.
Now, returning to our Gospel reading today, we are in a quandary. Probably the same scenario was running through the mind of St. Thomas. Do I touch Jesus and die or do I remain separated and die? Do I touch this Man, Who is obviously God, raised from the dead and die from touching Him, or do I double-down on my unbelief and be condemned to hell, to die forever?
Repent. Is God’s blessing of physical contact to you so little that you cast it aside? Is it something so beneath you that you do not seek the same contact with God as you do with others? Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary God also? (Isa 7:13)
Hear, then O House of Israel. God Himself shall give you a sign and He shall make it as deep as Sheol and as high as heaven. And this shall be the sign, not when you finally touch God, but when He touches you in His own body and His own soul. When He touches you and you rise from your graves. When He breathes on you and gives you His Spirit that you may live, says our OT reading (Ez. 37:13-14), then you will know He is God.
Reaching out to God to touch Him was never the plan. Doing so, in sin, results in everlasting death, as we heard today. You reaching out is not the plan. God reaching out, is.
God reaching out from heaven to touch earth is the plan. Not to make the mountains smoke (Ps. 144:5), but to water the earth and make it spring forth a Savior, the God-man, Jesus Christ (Isa 61:11). In a step beyond forming man from the dust of the ground and breathing life into him (Gen 2:7), the Lord takes dust upon Himself and breath for Himself, that He might save all humanity by coming into contact with us, Himself.
Yes, in prophesies and lessons taught alongside those of “not touching” are those of “touching”, but in these cases its God touching man. Though touching the mountain and Tabernacle was forbidden, touching the things God already made holy in the Tabernacle gave holiness. Touch God’s Altar and its holiness was transferred to you by touch (Ex. 29:37).
Touch the other holy things in the holy place and they also transmit God’s holiness (Ex 30:29), which included the Bread and the wine in there. Which should have been obvious to all of Israel, for that bread was called the Bread of the Presence (Ex 35:13), as in God is present to commune with and to physically contact His people. Eat it and be made holy (Lev. 10:12).
All this is because God made it this way. God said this is the way we are to come into contact with Him and not any other way. Not through the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, not through His majesty, and not through a deep-thinking, penetrating mind. It will be touch by His own hands, saith the Lord.
“Touch Me” Jesus says to St. Thomas. Not just in your metaphors, but touch my hands with your hands. Touch my side with your side. Breath my air with your breathing. Eat what I offer you, touch it with your lips, and you will be saved, just as happened to Isaiah and Jeremiah in 6:7 and 1:9 of their books, respectively.
In Christ, the touch of God is eternally necessary, for it is His crucified hands that must baptize you, comfort you, and feed you His forgiveness. It is His crucified body that must make payment for all your sins, and it is His touch that brings St. Thomas and you back from the brink of death in your sins.
Now that you are touched by God by His Word and Sacraments, the evil one can not touch you, says St. John in his first letter (5:18). We may go through hardships as Job did, but we will no longer be touched with eternal death. We will live with the Lord and God will hand out vengeance to those who touch His people.
For the new command is to “touch not”. As in: “Touch not my [Christians], do my prophets no harm”, says Psalm 105:15, if you do, “…[if] all my evil neighbors…touch the heritage that I have given my people Israel to inherit: ‘Behold, I will pluck them up from their land, …I will utterly pluck [them]up and destroy [them]” (Jer 12:14).
Those who are touched by the crucified and risen Body and Blood of Jesus are defended from all danger and guarded and protected from all evil, such that even if they die they will live.
Just as Jesus came to the 3 young men in the burning, fiery furnace such that the flames couldn’t touch them, so does He come today to touch you on your forehead, on your heart, and on your lips. “For you have not come to what may be touched:”, says Hebrews 12, “a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them” (v.18).
No you have been brought to what can be touched, and it is something to be touched for your eternal salvation. You have been brought to the Spirit, the water, and the blood that may be touched and handled. You have been brought to the one true God Who hides Himself in sacraments that you may live in front of Him forever.
You have been brought to a merciful Savior Who takes on flesh and blood in order to touch you, breathe on you, and give you His clean Spirit that you might believe that Jesus is the Crucified Christ, the only Son of God, and have life in His Name having been touched by His true Body and true Blood.
So we keep these physical reminders in front of us, the Font, the Supper, the Gospel, the Fire in order to never forget where exactly God intervenes in this world and intervenes in our life. All this in order that with all 5 of our senses we may interact with God and, in front of Jesus’s Body and Blood, fall down on our knees with St. Thomas and declare: “My Lord and my God!”
For the point is not the hands and fingers of St. Thomas, but the hands, side, and Body of God, in Christ.
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