THE HESITATION OF THOMAS

THE HESITATION OF THOMAS

Thomas is an interesting character in the gospel. He seems so impulsive and speaks his mind spontaneously. As the Americans say, ‘what you see is what you get.’ When a threat hangs over the plan of going to visit Lazarus Thomas says, ‘Let’s all go and die with him (Jesus)!’ We admire such enthusiasm and like it when we find it in ourselves.

But the trouble is it didn’t go very deep. When the crunch came all of them, including Thomas, fled and left Jesus alone.  And when the news came that he had risen from the dead and been seen by several people, Thomas was having none of it.

Then the moment comes when Jesus gently chides him and says, ‘put your finger here and see my hands and my side.’ Thomas is overwhelmed by this and has a profound moment of belief and understanding. Our eyes turn to Jesus and we note the gentle way he rebuilds his friends. They were all scattered, physically and mentally, and now he gathers them into a new community. They felt a new unity so strongly that they started to share everything they had.

We pause for a moment to wonder if we, in our time and in our politics, could also have this new moment? Is it possible for us to put our finger into the suffering wounds of people today, to touch the pain of people who are struggling? The first person we want to ‘touch’ is ourselves. One of the key people in the Easter story was Peter who had touched his own miserable, as he sensed it, weakness and denied ever knowing Jesus. He went down into the pit of his own personal psyche and there he met the eyes of Jesus, who ‘turned and looked at him.’ This moment sparked something new in Peter and we next hear of him ‘standing up’ and announced the good news to the people without fear.

Today there are many people who have done this. They stop and allow the pain others suffer to enter into them. Dorothy Day, who died not so long ago, was one such. She was touched by homeless people in New York and their misery during the Great Depression.  She opened a house of welcome for some of the worst victims and over the years her work spread. She used to write about the condition of the workers and went to prison several times for protesting about the immorality of developing nuclear weapons when there was so much poverty and inequality in the world.

She put her finger into the wounds of Jesus.

12 April 2015                         Easter Sunday 2 B

Acts 4:32-35                           1 John 5:1-6                            John 20:19-31