2nd Sunday of Easter 2026 Thomas
In our human ways of imagining I sometimes
forget that Jesus’ resurrection is inevitable because the person of Jesus with
a human nature is intimately one with God the Father and the Spirit. At no time did the Father have any other plan
for Jesus with his human nature, body and soul, except his return to being one
with God in that unimaginable realm where God lives.
And this risen Jesus also, as he promised, sent
the Spirit to the men and women who had followed him. As clear as it was that Jesus died, Jesus is
alive. That conviction came even to St.
Paul who had persecuted the early Christians and who had never even met Jesus. Paul, himself, tells of a personal experience
with Jesus. We have in Paul’s very own
writings in First Corinthians his own first person testimonies that he has seen
the risen Lord. I quote: “Did I not see Jesus the Lord?” And elsewhere after speaking of the risen
Lord’s appearance to the disciples he writes: “in the end he appeared even to
me.” That experience convinced him that
Jesus lived. The power of his encounter
with the risen Lord is evident in his stunning transformation from a persecutor
of Christians to an apostle.
All the other early Christian reports of
experiences of the risen Jesus are written by third parties in the four gospels
(Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). These third parties are members of a community
of believers in Jesus’ resurrection. And
oddly none of these third parties explicitly testifies to their own personal
experience of the Risen Lord in the way that Paul testifies about his, however
brief his testimony. At least Matthew
of the four gospel writers must have seen the risen Lord. He writes about himself in that gospel but
oddly not a single word about his personal experience of the risen Lord.
Certainly all the third party accounts of the risen
Lord are genuine expressions of the faith and hope of the witnesses of the
resurrection and their communities. But
I so wish we had some other first person versions of a vision of the risen Lord
similar to Paul’s. Take Peter, for example. There is some doubt that the apostle Peter
is the writer of the Second Epistle of Peter.
But if he is, he in this Epistle describes himself as a personal witness
of the Transfiguration. But he writes
not a single personal word about his experience as a witness of Jesus’
resurrection. How instructive in his Epistle
would be Peter’s first person account, of what he himself saw, for example,
when Jesus made that second appearance to the disciples and there responded to
welcome Thomas.
And how instructive would be Thomas’ own first
person report about his encounter with the Risen Christ. I
would like to hear Thomas tell it. He
might have answered my questions! Why, Thomas, did you raise the stakes so
high? “I won’t believe,” the third
person account so reads, “unless I can put my hand into the wound in his side.”
Yes, I would like him to answer my
questions. What kind of sorrow moved you
to make this extreme demand about the wound?
Why did you doubt your own friends’ testimony? Were you angry because Jesus appeared to them
and not to you? But did you not expect
that Jesus might appear again? Is that
why you returned to the group? And then
after Jesus encouraged you to touch him, were you afraid? I wish that we had some personal
supplements to the testimony in the four gospels. How about, for example, Thomas giving us a
Ted Talk?
As the whole story is recorded, however, by
John, surely, the story clearly records the faith of Thomas and of John and of
the whole early community. They came to
understand that God’s exaltation of Jesus in some way restored an integral
physical presence after the suffering and humiliating death on the cross. His wounds on his resurrected body become the
sign of that consolation. His wounds become
badges of honor. His wounds encourage
all of us who suffer in our humanity. We imagine this and remember the words
that Jesus had spoken during his life:
Blessed are those who mourn…blessed are those who suffer
persecution…Blessed are the merciful…
But let me address my disappointment that we have no first person accounts, not from Peter, not from Thomas, not from Matthew. And, excuse me, not from John, either. There is more doubt than certitude that the writer of John’s gospel is the same person who is described in that gospel as entering the empty tomb with Peter and as seeing and believing. Is this John the evangelist?
And not from Mary
Magdalen. In John’s gospel we have a
third person account of her in the cemetery garden thinking Jesus was the
gardener. And an account of the two guys
on the road to Emmaus. They like Mary
seem to be quoted exactly. But they and
she and the other women do not record their own experience of the risen Lord.
But let’s be clear: the principal appearances of Jesus are with
groups of his disciples where they recognize him. They hear then about his personal love for
them and his instructions for the future.
And I think that is the point. We are not being called simply to follow
Mary Magdalen or the women, or Thomas, or Peter or John or the men on the way
to Emmaus. We are called today by the
risen Jesus to membership in the community of men and women disciples to whom
he returned in resurrection. Jesus
commissions them together to preach the mystery of his enduring love shown in
his risen self. The community’s faith in
Jesus transcends the faith of all others.
So yes, admire those individuals to whom Jesus appeared. The gospels call us to believe them, yes, but calls us more so to faith in the community. The New Testament is the story of the first Christian community of believers called by Jesus Christ and he calls us now to be one with them. Jesus saves us in a community.
And, of course, Paul had to give
first person testimony. He himself had to write “I have seen the Lord.” He was not like the members of that first
community whose testimony was credible in the third person.
