"The Morning After" given April 8

We have no idea where Thomas the Twin was, or why he wasn't with the rest of them that first Easter morning. Maybe he'd already given up at that point. Maybe he was off some place by himself, sitting on a park bench, trying to sort it all out. What exactly had he just given three of the best years of his life to accomplish? What had it all meant? Who had this Jesus been?

Or maybe Thomas was simply wondering what to do next. Stick around Jerusalem? Go back to Galilee? Or maybe Thomas just happened to be the guy elected to make the run for coffee and sandwiches that particular morning.

It doesn't really matter. The point of the story is that Thomas was not there. He had not seen with his own eyes whatever it was that had gotten the rest of them so excited.

Why did Thomas doubt them? Maybe he didn't have enough imagination. Or maybe he had too much imagination and could come up with a dozen things it might have been other than a resurrected Jesus. Mass hypnosis, a common delusion based on wish fulfillment, fantasy, illusion, a spy in disguise, a ghost-- who knew what it might have been.

Maybe Thomas thought they'd all been dreaming or that they were all drunk. Maybe he thought that their desire to have Jesus back among them and their fears at being left alone had made them see Him--a mirage--as a hungry man will see imaginary bread or a thirsty woman in the desert will see the illusion of water.

I'm sure they told Thomas about the fish that Jesus ate. No doubt he laughed at their fish story. He was not about to believe, to risk such deep disappointment and despair again, merely on the evidence of a missing piece of fried fish.

One thing was for sure. Hard-headed, practical Thomas, Thomas the realist, Thomas the pessimist was not about to believe again, not about to risk any more of his time and his life and his heart solely on the unsupported words of somebody else-- or on the basis of a half-eaten piece of fish.

He would believe-- Thomas told them loudly-- when he touched the nail holes, put his hand in the wound from the spear, saw the scars on the Master's hands and feet-- and not one second before.

A week later, John's Gospel tells us that they once again all together in the Upper Room. Only this time, Thomas was there. Again the Risen Lord appeared among them, greeting them, passing His peace. And this time, Thomas the twin got his wish. Every eye must have been on Thomas as he rose and approached the familiar figure before them.

"Please sir, may I see your hands? Please sir, may I see your feet? Please sir, may I see your side?"

And Thomas saw the hands. And he saw the feet. And he saw the side. And he saw the wounds. And he saw the scars.

And at that point, not even hard-headed Thomas the Twin could hold out no longer. He had no questions left-- no doubts, no desire to do anything now. Except to fall to his knees and exclaim, "My Lord and my God."

Under the circumstances, that was enough.

Then it was Jesus's turn to ask a question.

"Have you believed because you've seen me Thomas? Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe." Thus Jesus gave yet another Beatitude--a ninth, or possibly tenth Beatitude depending on how you count. In any case, it was a Beatitude for the billions who would come after Thomas in the generations yet to be born--a Beatitude for you, a Beatitude for me, a final Beatitude

Church tradition tells us that Thomas left that Upper Room a believer. The story is that he left that room and walked to India, where he brought the Gospel to uncounted peoples and established churches that still exist today--claiming Thomas the Apostle as their founder.

But before Thomas could leave that room, he had to touch the wounds. And no doubt for the rest of his life, that was a cherished moment, central to Thomas's faith. But for those who came in that first generation immediately after the Apostles-- for those of us who have come in every generation since, the question remains. How are we to believe? What's the basis for our faith?

It was easy for the Twelve. They saw Him. They stood in that room and beheld those ruined hands. They heard that beloved voice they knew so very well.

And even though Jesus said that there was a greater blessing in store for those who would come after and believe without seeing, who among us wouldn't trade the promise of that greater blessing to have been physically there beside Thomas-- to have seen that face, to have touched those wounds, to have Jesus take our hands in His and call us by name?

Surely to have been in that room would give us a faith to move mountains, a faith as sure as 2 plus 2 equals 4, a faith that would let us believe in God and Jesus with the same unquestioning certainty that we believe in sunrises and sunsets, a faith that could carry us to India on foot.

The problem for us of course, is that we don't have Jesus here with us-- at least not in the physical sense. We don't even have Jesus here with us in whatever sense it was in which Thomas beheld Him. Jesus is invisible to us.

As a result, many of us-- most of us, I suspect-- have to cope with our doubts now and then. Very few of us could possibly have the rock-solid certainty that Thomas knew after he left that room. We have to rely on the witness of the Bible. We have to believe without seeing. You and I can believe-- must believe, ultimately, only on the basis of our own internal experience of the Risen Christ in our lives.

That isn't always so easy. In times of loss, in times of loneliness, in times of fear and anger, in those terrible wilderness times of despair, sitting on that park bench trying to sort it out-- it's oh so easy, for our doubts to come to the surface. None of us can manage a consistently firm faith, every single day of our lives, year in, year out, in good times and in bad. Some of us wander lost in the wilderness for years, decades even-- like Moses and the Hebrew children. Some of us-- and I suspect we mainliners are often guilty of this-- get stuck on that park bench with Thomas, and we never get up.

Thomas, during that first Easter week is all of us. We want to believe. We want a sign. We desperately seek assurance that this Christianity is more than just a clever fraud, or a two thousand year old mass delusion. We want to know that we have staked our lives on Eternal Truth, rather than human imagination. We pray, we beg God to prove to us that there is a rhyme and reason to Creation, that our very existence is more than an accident, or worse, a cosmic joke.

I remember more than a few years ago, there was a Country & Western song. It was one of those Country songs that you're never quite sure are sincere, or a put-on. Whichever it was, that song spoke to a deep and profound hunger in all of us. "I'd like to see Jesus on the Midnight Special. I'd like to see the Wolfman bring Him on."

I never did watch that program too much myself. But that particular show is one I wouldn't want to miss! Can you imagine Jesus appearing on Steven Colbert ? But if He did, would even that be enough? Would even seeing Jesus on late-night TV do the trick for us?

If the Gospel accounts-- if the story of Thomas has any point it is simply this-- merely seeing Jesus is no guarantee of belief. Pilate saw Him. Herod saw Him. Caiphas and Annas the High Priests saw Him. Judas saw Him. Thomas saw Him. The Twelve and the women saw Him and listened to Him teach and followed Him for three years-- and none of them necessarily came to believe simply because they’d seen him.

Several years ago an international team of scientists, consisting of Christians, Jews, Moslems, and non-believers, set about to prove or disprove the story behind the famous Shroud of Turin-- the mysteriously imprinted cloth that some believe was the burial cloth of Jesus.

The TV news magazine 20/20 featured an interview with one of the scientists, an Air Force colonel who was a specialist in laser technology. He openly admitted that he began the project not only as a non-Christian, but as a person who was openly anti-religious.

I relished this opportunity, he said, to debunk what I considered a childish myth. The interviewer asked him: Now that you have spent four years on this project what is your response. He said:

"After four years on this project, I now fall upon my knees and worship a resurrected Christ."

And here’s the irony of it all. The official results of their findings were inconclusive. They could neither prove nor disprove that this was the burial cloth of Jesus

All the laser technology, all the historical inquiry, all the quests for the historical Jesus, all the literary detective work in the world can't prove Christianity to be real or bunk. For you and for me--for all those who have come after Thomas and the rest of the Apostles, there is no proof-- only faith-- faith in what we cannot see. Under the circumstances, that can be enough-- it has to be enough.

But faith can only come through hearing the Word. Certainty can only come to us through being in His Presence at His Table. Belief can only be born in us through opening ourselves to His forgiving grace as it touches our lives. That Blessed Assurance we sing about can only come through acts of love on behalf of others, through prayer, through service, through His redeeming Love as we experience it in our hearts.

As we read in the First Letter of John,

"The victory that defeats this world is our faith. For who is victor

over the world but those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God?"

Like Moses and the Hebrew children, you and I need the Divine Presence to lead us out of the wilderness of doubt and despair. We’ve got to realize that’s where we are stuck-- that we’re lost. We’ve got to yearn with all our hearts to find our way home.

Like Thomas, you and I need to get off the park bench and find our way to the community gathered together in the Upper Room. Once we’re there, we need to do more than simply behold Jesus in order to believe.

We've got to accept Him, welcome Him, handle Him, touch His wounds and bring our own wounds to Him. We need to encounter Jesus totally. We need a relationship.

When you and I at last accept and grasp His whole person in our lives, then our own vision becomes complete and we can believe without seeing. And real understanding, and mature faith is finally born within us. And we know that greater blessing Jesus promised in His Last Beatitude, as we fall to our knees before Him, like Thomas, offering our whole lives and, exclaiming,

"My Lord and my God!"