Ways of Knowing - Simeon Bruce
Glory be to the one, holy, and undivided Trinity. Amen.
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“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week…”
Our Gospel reading today picks right back up where our Easter Gospel last week left off. This is the same day that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early in the morning, and Jesus wasn’t there. She tells Peter and John, who run to see it, but then go home. Mary stays. And to borrow a phrase from New Testament scholar Marcus Borg, she meets Jesus again for the first time.
Christ is risen! Alleluia!
And Mary goes and tells the disciples, in accordance with Jesus’ command.
So that’s where we left it at the end of last week’s episode: the dramatic cliffhanger, he’s alive! And Mary, for one, knows it. But what’s next? After she breathlessly relates the truth to the disciples, do they immediately rejoice and begin to proclaim the Gospel?!
Not…quite. Although our reading today is typically interpreted as being about “doubting Thomas”, I think the text points to at least the possibility that this story is about “the doubting disciples”. Mary tells them Jesus is alive, and they hear “his body is missing, and the temple authorities are probably gonna blame you. You better keep out of sight or you’re next.”
They throw the bolts, cover the windows, and decide to hunker down. They’re not going anywhere. So Jesus comes to them. He meets them where they’re at: in their fear, not after they’ve overcome it. Right where they are, cowering in the dark and whispering in terror every time a new shadow passes the opening beneath the door.
Do you think any of them fainted when all of a sudden there was someone new in the middle of the room calling out, “Peace be with you”? Probably not very peaceful at first.
So he repeats himself: “peace be with you”; and fear could only turn to joy as they realize: it’s him. It’s really him. And according to some Christian traditions, Jesus then performs the first ordinations in the history of the Church, breathing upon the disciples and imparting to them the Holy Spirit and authority.
Side note: this, coincidentally, is where our concept of apostolic succession comes from. If you’ve ever heard that term but aren’t sure what it is, it’s the idea that all ordinations, in an unbroken line, trace back to the authority given to these apostles by Jesus. For us in the Anglican communion, it is considered essential to a valid ordination. So there’s your church fact for the day. Back to the moment we were in…
Somehow after this, the text does not make it clear, Jesus leaves. (Maybe he disappeared the same way he had appeared? We just don’t know.)
Then Thomas, who had been hiding out somewhere else, hears from the other disciples, “We have seen the Lord.”
And his response is, “Horsehockey. Show me the receipts.”
“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."
Like the other disciples doubted Mary, Thomas doubts them. The news of the resurrection is just too incredible, too mysterious, too overwhelming.
And again. Jesus meets Thomas in his doubt. Apparently no respecter of walls or doors post-resurrection, Jesus appears among the disciples, saying “Peace be with you.”
And he says to Thomas, go ahead. Put your hand in the marks of the nails. Feel my side where I was pierced. Just as fear gave way to joy, now doubt gives way to trust: “My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaims.
It strikes me at this point that Thomas is very much a saint for our day, in several ways.
First of all, if you struggle to believe in the veracity of Christ’s resurrection, take comfort! So did every single one of the apostles, especially Thomas, and they had the benefit of having seen Jesus’ ministry and many of his miracles firsthand. Christ doesn’t need you to overcome those doubts. Christ loves you and is already meeting you exactly where you are. And as one clever soul put it: “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith. If it were, faith would be certainty.”
This gets at the very nature of faith and belief. What does it mean to believe? The greek word here is pisteuō, which does roughly translate to “believe” in the sense of “believe to be true”; but we have reduced it, in our post-enlightenment age, to only that one of its two meanings. It also means “to entrust oneself to an entity in complete confidence”. In other words, believing in God is not simply giving rational assent to the philosophical proposition that there is, in fact, a God. It also means trusting God. I think that is what Jesus is getting at when he says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Blessed are those who trust God. To be able to do that is indeed a blessing: it is a gift from God, not something we can force ourselves into by brute strength of will. If you struggle with doubt, take comfort.
This whole episode revolves around one question: “how do we know what we know?” While a full overview of the field of epistemology is certainly beyond the time available in a single homily, I think the following observation simply must be made: we live in a time when many people deeply believe that the only way we can ever really know anything is with empirical proof. This is an age of Thomas’ remark: “Unless I see, I will not believe." We’re all from Missouri, the “show me” state. It makes sense. To use an analogy from the Wizard of Oz (or from “Wicked”, if you’re more familiar with the recent musical): we’re given to understand that through science, on some level, we’ve peeked behind the curtain and found out that the wizard was just a sad man from Kansas all along. Maybe, there is no magic. Maybe, there never was. If this is you, I would ask you to consider: how do you know what love is? Has compassion been bottled and tested to see what new molecules it produces when combined with other elements? Science is one way that we know things, and yes, a very powerful one that has radically changed our understanding of the world we live in. But it is not the only way we can know things, and it can’t tell us everything there is to know. Science has gotten very good at answering the question, “how?”. It has not, as far as I’m aware, yet been able to tell us why we are here. Or who we truly are. For those questions, we need other ways of knowing. We need to be able to know things through experience, trust, awe, culture, and many other ways of knowing. If you struggle with doubt, take comfort. There are many ways of knowing things.
Wherever you are in your journey of faith, Jesus is already meeting you there, saying:
“Peace be with you.” Amen.
