On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear
Though it is not the Judeans that we fear our Church today still often resembles this image of an inchoate body hiding behind locked doors, oppressed by evening darkness. Two inseparable things were necessary to bring the early Church from fear to boldness and confidence. The first was an encounter with the risen Lord himself. The second was the gift of the Spirit.
Jesus came and stood in their midst
We will find that simply gathering and reenacting the repetition of routine is not enough to give us the powerful and victorious lives Jesus promised to us. Only an encounter with him has the ability to do so, for the life he gives is the gift of the Spirit, and only he himself can give it.
and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
By giving them his peace he was giving them with it a victory over the world (see John 16:33), for his peace had already survived the worst that sin and death could throw at him. His word of shalom was no merely idle wish. He was not simply sending good thoughts out into the void. Rather, he was bestowing the gift of the Holy Spirit, among whose fruits were first listed love, joy, and peace (see Galatians 5:22-23). Seeing Jesus again already gave their hearts the gift of joy, filled them brimful with joy again just as he had promised (see John 16:22). It was a durable, Spirit-filled joy that was given not a result of circumstances in the world aligning in just the right way, but rather given as a characteristic of life of the risen Jesus himself shared with us, the very joy he himself had in his victory, the "joyful shout of victory in the tents of the just" as today's Psalm has it.
Jesus made explicit that he was giving them the Spirit as a gift and that it was a gift mediated through the instrumentality of his human nature. The Spirit was not a plan b chosen because of the unfortunate fact of his crucifixion and death. It was precisely at the cross that the font of the living water of the Spirit was unsealed. It was now only here, through a Jesus who himself still bore the wounds of that cross that the Spirit would be given.
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
The Church was in a sense the new Eve taken from the side of Christ, the new Adam, when his side was pierced on the cross. Here, new life was breathed into the body of a new creation just as God first breathed the ruah, or Spirit, into Adam at the beginning of the old creation. But Adam had squandered the spiritual aspect of that gift, and retained the physical manifestation only until death claimed him. This new breath of life was, like the fruits of the Spirit, more durable than death. The thing that had finally forced Adam to surrender his breath to death was accounted for in the new gift. Sin would no longer hold dominion over humanity, and eternal death need no longer be our destiny, for the solution was a gift built in to the very structure of the new world inaugurated by the resurrection.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But he said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
We are often like Thomas when we hear others tell us of things that sound too good or too fanciful to be true, when we hear but do not feel the shouts of victory in the tents of the just. We, like him, have been scarred by the very real tragedies that surround us in our fallen world. As for him, nothing but the very wounds of Jesus himself will be able to offer sufficient answer for the problem of suffering. In spite of whatever pain we might feel, whatever absence we of Jesus we might perceive, we should not remain absent when the body of Christ gathers together as Thomas did during the earlier appearance of Jesus. For though the mode of the revelation of Jesus to us is different than that which was given for Thomas it still meant to happen in the context of his people gathered "on the Lord's day". It can be a difficult decision to make to come together with the group, when all of this resurrection joy seems to belong to others but not us. But it only in the gathering, Jesus himself present in word and Sacrament, that we can have the encounter ourselves that Thomas had.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
This encounter of Thomas was, in some sense, the same encounter John had when he worshipped in the Spirit on the Lord's day, resulting in the same belief in the divinity of Jesus himself. John said his purpose in writing his Gospel was to make that same revelation available by faith to future generations, including our own. John demonstrated that the supernatural reality of the resurrection need not be lessened for we who have not seen, provided we accept the invitation to believe.
He touched me with his right hand and said, “Do not be afraid.
I am the first and the last, the one who lives.
Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever.
I hold the keys to death and the netherworld.
Do we feel as though we wished ourselves be among those who were able to see and believe rather than being, we might say, forced, to depend on our faith. It is not meant to be a punishment, but a privilege. For when the vision of sight must fade in this world. But faith, hope, and love remain, and allow us to remain faithful, hopeful, and loving, connected to the Jesus who ascended and is yet ever present to his Church. Let us pray that our Church may move from the locked rooms in which we confined ourselves before encountering the risen Lord and out onto the streets of our world, with all of the power and the confidence about which we read in Acts. May we not be afraid to show forth our own wounds, even as we demonstrate the still greater power of the resurrection.
Thus they even carried the sick out into the streets
and laid them on cots and mats
so that when Peter came by,
at least his shadow might fall on one or another of them.
A large number of people from the towns
in the vicinity of Jerusalem also gathered,
bringing the sick and those disturbed by unclean spirits,
and they were all cured.
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