The events of the past three days had been totally overwhelming, beginning with that awful Friday when Jesus was nailed up there to die. And die he did and was dead and buried, and there was no time even to mourn before his poor tortured body was laid in the tomb. And they huddled together through that silent Sabbath when he was dead and gone from them and they were utterly alone. They had been left with nothing; the most precious thing they had known had been taken from them by death.
But then there were the strange reports from those who had been to tomb when the Sabbath was past, that his body was not there. At first it was grief all over again. Not only had he had been taken away from them in life; now he had been taken away from them in death. But those who were there returned to the others with their grief transformed. Somehow, he was not gone, not taken away. Somehow he had come back. Mary Magdalene had seen him, had talked with him, had been commissioned by him to announce the new reality of his living. It was overwhelming, more than they could take in. It was unbelievable.
But before they could figure out what had really happened, there were more practical matters. What were they going to do next? Where could they go? Would the authorities be looking for them, to kill them they way they had killed Jesus? Where could they go? He was the one who had had the words of eternal life. Without him, there was nowhere to go (cf John 6:68). So, they hid behind locked doors, in a room thick with the smell of fear, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to believe.
And he came. He came and he stood among them and he spoke to them, "Peace be with you". They saw his hands and his side, the wounded body that the tomb could not contain. And he said it again, "Peace be with you", and he said it not so much as a wish or a promise, but as a command, a statement of present reality.
"But Thomas (who was called the Twin) . . . was not with them when Jesus came" (John 20:24). And he just couldn't see it; what they were telling him was unbelievable. Thomas -- honest, truthful Thomas -- confessed what he knew: "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." (John 20:25b) You can't blame him, can you? It was overwhelming, this tale they were telling him, more than he could take in. It was unbelievable.
"I will not believe," he said, but this was not the stubborn denial of a hard heart. It was the cry of a broken heart. Because Thomas had believed; he had followed Jesus all those months, those years, from the beginning. He had even been willing to die with him, when Jesus insisted on going to his dead friend Lazarus, and it had seemed to the disciples that this was like walking into a sure and certain death. (John 11:16) And Thomas had been willing to keep on following, even when he had no idea where the path was leading. At that last supper with Jesus, Thomas had tried to find out where to go next. Jesus had given them a promise: ". . . I will come again and will take you to myself," he said, "so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going." Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" And Jesus had replied, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." (John 14:3-6a) Thomas had not understood it then, and he did not understand it now. He just couldn't see it.
But for all his unbelief, for all his anguish at not having been there when it would have mattered most, Thomas stuck with the rest of them. He couldn't believe what they believed, he hadn't seen what they saw, but neither did he quite reject it. Even in his unbelief, he was faithful.
And a week later, Jesus came again and stood among them and said the same words, to all of them, although he might have been speaking especially for Thomas when he said it this time: "Peace be with you." And he offered his hands to Thomas and his wounded body and he invited Thomas to touch him and believe. And in that broken body, Thomas knew, he saw, he believed: "My Lord and my God!"
In that broken body before him, Thomas's own brokenness began to be healed. His broken heart was mended, his shattered belief was made whole again. It was Isaiah's prophecy fulfilled in the body of the risen Lord: "Upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises -- his wounds -- we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5b).
The peace that the Lord brought to the disciples and to Thomas after that first Easter was healing and wholeness and blessing. This shalom was offered not in the absence of pain and suffering but through it. Jesus was telling them about a peace that was to be grasped by touching his wounds. And he held out the reality of that peace to them in those ruined hands.
I don't know exactly what Thomas saw that day in Jerusalem. It is a mystery to me. But I know that there is blessing for those of us who were not there, who did not see. It is a blessing to us from the Lord, himself: "Blessed are those who have not seen [me]," he says, "and yet have come to believe." (John 20:29)
And it is true that we have not seen what those disciples saw, the body of Jesus, but we have seen the Body of Christ. We have seen the Body of Christ, bearing its wounds into the world. We have seen the wounded Body, alive and present. We have seen the hands, full of pain and suffering, reaching out in mercy and peace and love.
They are the Lord's hands and they are our hands. Because Christ has no hands on earth but ours, no feet but ours, no Body but ours. We are the Body of Christ, scarred and wounded, marked by our sorrows and our pain. We have been so hurt that it seems we must be dying, and yet we are alive. We have been beaten down so that it seems we cannot survive, and yet we are not destroyed. We have been sorrowful, but even in the midst of our deepest sadness, there is always a clear, thin stream of rejoicing. And just when it seems that we have been left with nothing, that the most precious thing we knew has been taken from us, then we find that we possess everything (cf 2 Corinthians 6:9-10).
Somehow it is in touching our own woundedness that we touch the Lord, that we know, that we believe. We are Easter people, children of resurrection. It is in the presence of woundedness -- our own and our Lord's -- that we begin to be healed, that we see who he really is.
We are Thomas' twin, so like him, identical to him in our need to know, our longing for assurance, our hunger for certainty. And the risen Lord speaks to us just as he did to Thomas: "Touch my hands," he says, "See how I have been wounded and you will understand your own wounds. See how I am alive and you will understand your own life. Take my hand and believe."
Dear friends, I declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life (1 John 1:1): The Lord is risen; he is risen indeed. Our Lord and our God.
Peace be with you.
Martha Highsmith April 6, 1997