It’s the Sunday that Thomas gets a lot of bad press. He lives down through history as “Doubting Thomas”. I don’t think he deserved it. Thomas, like so many of us, just wanted to touch Jesus.
Some years back, I was invited to listen to a CD called Love + Anger, a production of Wild Goose Worship Group, from the Iona Community. One of the worship songs had a chorus which went like this:
I need to know that God is real
I need to know that Christ can feel
the need to touch and love and heal
the world including me
That's something that Jesus' followers most definitely needed as they gathered in this Sunday's gospel. They were gathered secretly, behind locked doors, "for fear of the Judeans."
So the question on the minds of Jesus' followers, in the dark and confusing days immediately following Jesus' execution at the hands of Roman soldiers and the instigation of the Judean authorities, was probably not so much "will we be next?" but, "how long do you think we can last?"
However, someone was missing in that group – Thomas. He was not there when Jesus appeared. He did not see Jesus. He did not experience Jesus breathing on them and he did not receive the commission which Jesus gave the others.
We know that Thomas wanted to touch Jesus…..(I want to touch Jesus), but that does not mean that Thomas was less faithful. It is possible to see this in a different way.
Thomas was the disciple who wanted to touch Jesus. But he was also the disciple who was not locked away in fear. When he finally experienced the presence of Jesus, perhaps the biggest mistake he made was in thinking that the body he wanted and needed to touch, the body of the risen Christ, was the body that had been nailed to the cross. But, perhaps it's not like that at all.
If Thomas was out in the world, he was in precisely the place Jesus wanted him to be. If Thomas was out in the world, he didn't need to hear Jesus' commission to the others “to go out into the world and forgive as Jesus forgives”, because he was already following it.
So let the gospel come alive
in actions plain to see
in imitation of the one
whose love extends to me
I need to know that God is real
I need to know that Christ can feel
the need to touch and love and heal
the world including me
Thanks be to God!
Pastor Beryl