John 20: 19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told 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 in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach our your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

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In this morning's Gospel reading we find Jesus' disciples frightened, cowering behind locked doors - John tells us "for fear of the Jews". I find those particular words rather unsettling. Like much of the language used in the Fourth Gospel it seems to have racist overtones. A portion of the sting that comes from such language can be somewhat diminished if we remember that these references to the Jews were written by Jews, aimed at a particular segment of the Jewish population, and was typical language for insiders to use when attacking other insiders. However, the bite is still there and it's not as if the disciples had nothing to fear. This band of Christ followers was clearly in danger of upsetting the status quo. The Roman occupiers of Judea had granted the Jewish community the privilege of practicing their own religion as long as proper respect was shown to Rome. The presence of Jesus, with his talk about the Kingdom of God and the Son of Man, had threatened to disrupt this fragile tolerance. The Jews, understandably, did not wish to attract Roman attention. Likewise, the Christian community some 60 years later, when the Gospel of John was written, wanted to operate under the Roman radar as well. The writer of the Fourth Gospel could hardly lash out at the Roman occupiers for crucifying Christ, so he settled on a safer target - the Jews, the Pharisees in particular, those high priests chosen by the Romans to oversee Jewish religious activity.

It's a fairly natural tendency, when we are afraid, to find a target at which to lash out. The problem is this: fear blinds us. What it is that we are really afraid of often remains hidden from us. Unable, or unwilling to face our real fears, we attack a convenient target. It might have been politically expedient for John to claim that the disciples were hidden behind locked doors because they feared the Jews, but Jesus' sudden appearance in the room, as the risen Lord, may be telling us something very different. Jesus walked through locked doors and offered his disciples peace, a peace that could transcend fear and allow the disciples' eyes to be opened to the significance of the wounds he showed them.

The Gospel of John is known as the most spiritual, the most mystical, of the four Gospels. In John there are certainly strong spiritual elements and long theological discourses, rather than the familiar parables we find in the synoptic Gospels -Matthew, Mark, and Luke - but at least in this passage, we find a very strong reliance on a message of the here and now, a groundedness in the physical world of the present. The popular conception of Thomas the Twin, the disciple in the passage that was not present at Jesus' initial appearance to the frightened disciples and who needed to see the "mark of the nails in Jesus hands" and "put his hand in the wound in Jesus' side" is that of doubting Thomas - the disciple that could not believe in the risen Lord without evidence. Somehow, Thomas' reliance on hard physical evidence seems to make him less worthy or maybe not as "blessed" as those "who have not seen and yet have come to believe". First off, it seems wrong to single out Thomas. He was only asking for the same evidence of Christ's resurrection that the other disciples had received in his absence. But more than that, Is God really asking us to believe without seeing? Perhaps we are only being asked to see what is in front of our eyes.

A recurrent theme in the Gospel of John is the movement from darkness to light, a depiction of the awakening, the enlightenment that comes through an acceptance of who Christ is. We can think of this enlightenment in spiritual terms, or as indicated in this passage, we think of it simply as opening our eyes to the reality that surrounds us. We are not asked here to believe without seeing, but to awaken, to see, and then believe. Yet, as with the huddled disciples, our fear also prevents us from seeing the truth.

I, for one, am reluctant to give Thomas a hard time for his insistence on seeing before he was willing to believe. We have all been blinded by fear. Perhaps not the kind of fear for physical safety that the disciples must have felt behind those locked doors, but the kind of fear that most of us face daily. Fear of the unknown, fear of the loss of the kind of life we are familiar with (even if that life has proven to be most unsatisfactory), a fear that things are going to change. A number of years ago I was spending a few days on retreat at a Benedictine Monastery just north of Pecos, New Mexico. Within a short time I developed a friendship with Bro. Patrick, a rather hobbit-like English monk, who upon learning that I was Episcopalian, spent a great deal of time railing against Henry VIII and the sacking of the monasteries in the 16th century - as if I, as an Episcopalian, was personally responsible. Yet, one evening, sitting on the veranda, looking out over the magnificent Sangre de Christo range, Bro. Patrick said, "You ought to be an Anglican priest". I dismissed Bro. Patrick's comment, just as I had not allowed myself to believe in the reality of my calling for a very long time. That evening, I heard a knock on the door to my room. Bro. Patrick entered and said, "I have something for you". He then directed me to stand in front of the mirror. As I faced the mirror, Patrick walked up behind me and wrapped a clerical collar around my neck - compelling me, in the most literal way he could think of, to see myself as a priest. Bro. Patrick, in his wisdom, recognized that I was a Thomas. This portly English monk understood that, "Unless I could 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 would not believe."

Apparently, thankfully, God can work with those of us who must see before we believe. This business of blind faith doesn't seem to be required of Christians. But...where God's patience must wear thin is with those of us who see and still fail to believe. A few years ago my daughter Lillian and I joined with parishioners from several Episcopal churches in Austin, Texas to feed the homeless and hungry that collect on Sunday afternoon at a shelter known as Trinity House. After preparing the sausage wraps and fruit and lemonade, most of the volunteers gathered around the edges of the worship service that was being held prior to the meal. As Lillian and I stood on the fringes of this crowd of hungry, tired, troubled people, she leaned over to me and said, "Dad, shouldn't we be sitting with them"? I smiled and answered, "Of course honey, of course we should." And so we moved to our chairs and found a place, sandwiched between a old man who smelled of cheap whisky and stale urine and a smiling, toothless, drooling woman, who sang "Amazing Grace" at the top of her lungs. Lillian saw that we weren't called to Trinity House just to serve sausage wraps, but to be with the wounded. Later I noticed that Lillian had left her post at the drink station and was going from table to table serving lemonade and chatting with our guests. Treating them with the dignity they deserved and seldom received - everyone of them a Christ ...and everyone of us a Thomas. As a child she could see what we adults had missed, we weren't at the soup kitchen merely to feed the hungry, we were there to see and touch the wounds of Christ. And that is not the kind of task that can be accomplished by keeping your distance from the wounded.

Jesus gives Thomas a mild rebuke for requiring evidence of his wounds, but he is still accepted into the kingdom. What if Thomas had seen and touched the wounds and still not believed? What if he were presented clear evidence of the wounds afflicted on Christ and still doubted. What if Thomas was so attached to a life without Christ that even when offered hard physical evidence, he continued to disbelieve? We are not asked to believe the incredible. We are asked to open our eyes to the wounds, to touch the wounds - the woundedness of our brothers and sisters, and to the woundedness of our planet Earth. We are asked to see the many scars on our world: global warming, vast forests stripped of vegetation, the streams and lakes of northwest Arkansas threatened by too much impervious cover and the runoff from poultry and pork production. When we see Ozark hillsides ravaged in the name of development, how can we not notice the wounds?

We are asked to open our eyes to the obvious truths: To the increased concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few. To the truth that the war on terror has only resulted in more war and more terror. To injustice, to poverty. Some who read the Bible very literally speak as if God asks us to believe the irrational. God is really only asking us to believe in what he has shown us, revealed to us.

Earlier in John, we find Jesus saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." Christ offers an enlightenment that comes through walking from darkness into light. Not an acceptance based on blind faith, but knowledge that comes through a living out of our discipleship. We follow Christ by walking in the light of day, not blinded by rigid adherence to an ideology, by the comforts of an affluent life style, or by the easy answers of fundamentalism.

We don't have to believe in magic to accept the love of Christ. Christ only asks that we see and touch his wounds.