Tag Archives: thomas

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Risen Christ

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 10-minute message. Or watch the video on Facebook here (the message starts 27 minutes into the video).

Jesus meets his disciples in their rooms twice after his resurrection, according to John 20:19-32: first on the night of Easter Sunday and again a week later – this evening, the second Sunday of Easter. The first time Thomas was not there, and the second time, Jesus speaks directly to Thomas. In both accounts, there are three points of overlap:

  1. Jesus appears in the midst or among the disciples (vv 19 & 26).
  2. He greets them with the words “Peace be with you!” (or Shalom aleichem, in Hebrew) (vv 19 & 26, and indeed a third time in v 21).
  3. He shows them the wounds or marks in his hands and side (vv 20 & 27). With Thomas, he not only shows his hands and side, but also invites Thomas to put his finger or hand into Jesus’ hand or side.

What is the meaning of these three actions, which are repeated almost exactly on these consecutive Sunday nights?

Jesus appears in the midst of or among the disciples. Literally, Jesus appears in the middle of them. This is the most appropriate place for Jesus be – in the middle: in the middle of ourselves, in the middle of our family, in the middle of our church and in the middle of our community. In our church, we usually read the Gospel from the middle of the church and all those attending will turn to face the centre. This is to help us feel the presence of Christ in the centre of everything we do. In our church today we also baptised five children, and after the baptism we give each child or family a candle, with the words , “Christ, our light”. This to symbolises Christ as the light in the centre of our personal and collective lives, in the church and in the world. Our lives revolve around the risen Christ.

Shalom aleichem. Three times Jesus greets the disciples with these words. Often when Jesus meets with people, and when angels meet with people, they use the words “Don’t be afraid”, for example when Gabriel appears to Mary at the annunciation (Luke 1:30). Jesus’ words here (“Peace be with you”) are not another way of saying “Don’t be afraid”. The word Shalom or peace means far more than the absence of conflict. Rather, it means the presence of wholeness, completeness, balance, order, goodness, rightness. It is a rich words that speak of the fullness of life, as ordered by God. Through Jesus incarnation, life, ministry, death and resurrection, God has brought about peace with humanity, peace between God and us, order and wholeness. We might not always feel or experience this wholeness – life is often fractured and difficult – but the potential for shalom is there and made possible by the risen Christ.

Jesus showed his hands and his side. We don’t under what kind of body Jesus was raised with. In some ways, it seems like an ordinary body, and in other ways it seems more like a spiritual body. But whatever it was, the marks of his crucifixion are still visible, so much so that Thomas is invited to put his finger into the holes in Jesus’ hands and his hand into the hole in Jesus’ side. These are clear evidence that this is indeed Jesus who hung on the cross. His is whole and restored, but also marked by his sacrifice for humanity. Jesus is quite willing, in both appearances, to provide evidence to his disciples for who he is. He provides evidence that he is the risen Christ.

We live on this side of Christ’s earthly life. He is the risen and resurrected Christ, who invites us to join him in the resurrection life – a life that is more than just an ordinary human life, a life centred on and lit by Christ, a life of peace and wholeness, and a life that celebrates everything Jesus did for the salvation of humankind. We are a resurrection people. In our church today, we celebrated this with baptisms, a sign of dying to self and rising again in the new life of Christ. We share with Christ in his risen life.

Featured image from https://www.jesuits.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/easter-original.jpg

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Seeking Jesus

Click here to listen to the audio of this 11-minute message. Or watch the YouTube video below. Or read the summary text thereafter.

The story of Thomas’ encounter with the risen Jesus in John 20:24-29 is one of my favourites and Thomas is the disciple with whom I identity the most. Thomas is unfairly labelled a doubter. He did not doubt Jesus. He doubted his friends – the other disciples. He wanted to see and experience Jesus first hand. He was unwilling to take on a second-hand faith. He wanted to know Jesus for himself. And so Jesus appears to him and invites him to see and touch his hands and the hole in his side.

It seems Thomas does not in fact touch Jesus, but immediately experiences a surge of faith and cries out, “My Lord and my God!” In effect, he falls on his face and covers his eyes because he knows that he is in the presence of God the Son.

This reminds me of the story of Job, who was a man blessed by God, a man who had everything. For whatever reason, he then loses everything. He goes into a kind of ‘lockdown’, where he loses his possessions, his family, his health, his well-being, his freedom. Two of his friends join him in his despair and provide comfort for a few days and then engage in a lengthy debate with him to persuade him that his faith must be insufficient. God would not punish a righteous man – he must have done something wrong. But Job persists that he is righteous and wants to meet with God to present his case.

And then in Job 38, God appears and over the course of four chapters presents his credentials to Job, much as Jesus presented his credentials (the holes in his hands and side) to Thomas. God meets Job in his unhappiness and questioning.

In Job 42:1-6, Job’s response to encountering God is to throw himself down and cover his eyes – “I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes”. But before that he proclaims his faith: “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you!” Job had had a second-hand faith – what he had heard from others or from the scriptures. But now, God had appeared to him in person, and his eyes had not see him. And recognises that he is in the presence of God the Father.

God eagerly desires to engage you in your faith, as he does me in mine. And God also eagerly desires to engage you in your doubt, as he does me in mine. God is not turned away by uncertainty, by questions, by doubt or by the need for ‘evidence’. Instead, God turns towards us and engages us. Let us continue to seek Jesus, for this is exactly what he wants from us: Seek him and you shall find him.

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Featured image: ‘Thomas Sees Jesus Wounds’ by Gloria Ssali, https://fineartamerica.com/featured/thomas-sees-jesus-wounds-gloria-ssali.html

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A Community of Faith Seeking Christ

Click here to listen to this 24-minute message.

Today, being the first Sunday after Easter, we have the classic reading from John 20 about Thomas, the one who wanted first-hand evidence that Jesus had, in fact, risen from the dead. Thomas is my favourite New Testament character – I identify fully with his pattern of doubt seeking faith.

But John 20:30-31 lets us know that John’s Gospel is written, primarily, to introduce unbelievers to the Gospel message: “these have been written that you might believe”. So, Thomas is less an example of doubtful-faith for Christians, as he is an example of a faith-seeking non-Christian.

In light of this I help my congregation to re-read this passage from that perspective, and particularly to consider what this passage tells us about being a community of faith that creates a receptive space for those who are not Christians. I make three points:

  1. Not everyone who comes to our church is a Christian, let alone an Anglican Christian. This means we need to to make our services more seeker-friendly.
  2. People living in our area today are modern, questioning, skeptical, not impressed with authority and open to a plurality of truths. This means we need to be accommodating, open to various views, comfortable with difficult questions, comfortable with not having answers to those questions and comfortable with multiple answers to those questions.
  3. People are, nevertheless, looking for answers. This means we need to have thought carefully and deeply about some of the important questions of our time.

I remind my congregation that we are an Anglican church. Part of what that means is that we have a generous orthodoxy. We are like a large tree with expansive branches that provide shade for many people. Within the Anglican communion are charismatics, evangelicals, fundamentalists, social gospelists, liberals and sacramentalists (Anglo-Catholics). It is not that we Anglicans don’t know what we believe; it is rather that we are humble in our belief, acknowledging that we might be wrong, and thus open to others believing differently.

I suggest that this Anglican stance may be because, while we believe that truth (doctrine) is important, we believe that relationship is a bit more important. Thomas’ statement of faith (My Lord and my God) was not prompted by the evidence he got from Jesus, but by his encounter with the person of the risen Christ. It was his relationship with Jesus that stimulated his faith. And so it should be for us.

So, we we’re aiming to be a church that learns from Thomas. We aim to be a community of faith that creates safe relational space for others to seek and find Christ.