John 20:19-31

¹⁹ 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.” ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

²⁴ But Thomas (who was called the Twin^[c]), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ 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.”

²⁶ 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.” ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸ Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹ 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.”

³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹ But these are written so that you may come to believe^[d] that Jesus is the Messiah,^[e] the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Well, another Easter has come and gone, and I must admit I miss it already; I’m a big fan of Easter. After forty days of the bizarre mix of preparing for the events of the Passion and settling into life here, I kinda wish it would have lasted a little longer. I really love everything about Easter – the food, the music, the colour, the emotional ride, the readings and the hymns that make Easter worship so meaningful. But now, it’s over. For those who were able to spend with their families and friends, it’s a long wait til the next holiday. For those who relished the long weekend, it’s back to the grind of work or school. And for those, like myself, who were involved in, shall we say, a large number of special activities in Lent, Holy Week and Easter, it’s time to settle back into a more regular schedule.

To put it simply: it’s time to get back to normal; it’s time to get back to work. Lent and Easter were a lovely break from the norm, a nice change of pace, but it’s time to get back to reality. And that can be hard; the old routine is so…well, routine; and normalcy, reality, can be so crushingly unavoidable.

At times, this comes from so many angles and catches us unawares. For some, reality swoops in with unemployment or illness. For others it sneaks in by running across photos of happy memories in the seemingly distant past. For others still, reality confronts them even as they leave the Easter celebration we were just reminiscing about and return home only to look across a tense dining table, absent of joy, and realize that their family looks nothing like the happy-snap they try to envision for themselves most of the year.

These confrontations with normalcy are so hard to take because they seem to destroy the hopes and dreams on which we rely. They remind us that there is an end – to dreams, to relationships, to life itself – an end over which we have very little control, and under which we may feel like prisoners to a cruel and oppressive conqueror.

It is just this encounter with reality which today’s Gospel reading describes. The apostle Thomas, in my opinion, has always gotten a bad rep. We know him as The Doubter, Doubting Thomas. I’d like to suggest that this passage is not primarily about doubt; rather, it is about reality.

Thomas is first and foremost a realist. For instance, in John 14, when Jesus says mysteriously, “I go to prepare a place for you; You know the way to the place where I am going,” it is Thomas the pragmatist who replies truthfully, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going; how can we know then the way?”. In Chapter 11, when Jesus speaks of going back to Judea, Thomas knows that for Jesus to return to Jerusalem is to go to his death. Thomas was no fool. He counted the costs before making a decision. Nevertheless, it is he who bravely urges the others to follow Jesus: “Let us also go also, that we may die with him”.

In this light, Thomas’ reaction to the news of the risen Christ should not be surprising. He had been hardened and tempered by his experience in the world. He was, above all else, a realist. And for Thomas reality had come as never before just days earlier in the form of a cross, when his master and friend had been crucified; when he had fled and deserted Jesus; when he realized that the hopes and expectations of the last three years were as dead as his beloved Lord.

Thomas had lost his Lord; he had witnessed the crucifixion of his savior! But he had survived that ordeal. Perhaps, while the other disciples were hiding in the upper room at Christ’s first appearance, Thomas was out, preparing to move on, to get on with the work of rebuilding his shattered life. No wonder, then, that when his friends share their joyous news, “We have seen the Lord,” he reacts skeptically.

It is as if a cancer patient, finally reconciled to his fate, is told of a new miracle cure.  Nothing is worse than getting cut again by one’s broken dreams, and Thomas has bled enough. So he demands proof: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Oddly, Thomas never does place his hands in his Lord’s wounds, even though Jesus invites him to. Though most likely filled with fear and anger and shame that comes from knowing that he not only doubted but also deserted his friend, when Thomas is confronted by the risen Lord, when he is greeted by the forgiveness and grace embodied in the words “Peace be with you,” *click* he instantly believes and makes the great confession of John’s gospel: “My Lord and my God!”

In a heartbeat Thomas knows that he is in the presence of God, has been saved and redeemed by that God, and that he will never be the same again. This story, then, is not about Thomas’ doubt at all; rather, it is about an encounter with the grace of God which has come down from heaven and been embodied in Jesus Christ.

Now, it’s important to note that at his encounter with the Risen Christ, Thomas’ doubt is swept away–but not his realism. Thomas’ confession is just as much a part of his pragmatism, his ability to deal with reality, as was his demand for proof. For it is not Thomas’ realism that has been changed, you see, but reality itself. When he is confronted by God’s grace in the Risen Christ, Thomas is confronted by a whole new reality.

Who here has read or seen Les Miserables? Do you hear the people sing? I confess, I adore the musical and the movie adaptation, but I strongly urge you to read the book by Victor Hugo. If you are unaware of this great work, it is a story set in 19^th Century France, at the time leading up to the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris. At the beginning of the story, Hugo describes the moral disintegration of Jean Valjean, a labourer who was sentenced to five years hard labour for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family.  The effects of his time in prison, which is stretched from five to nineteen years, have, as Hugo describes, withered his soul.

Once released, Valjean’s descent continues, as no one will give him work or even sell him food or shelter because of his criminal record. Hopeless and exhausted, he stumbles into the house of an old bishop, who greets him courteously and treats him as an honored guest.

Valjean, the hardened realist, is confused by his host’s generosity and, unwilling to believe and unable to accept the genuineness of such treatment, he steals the silver plates from the bishop’s cupboard and flees into the night. The next day the police arrive at the bishop’s house with the captured criminal and the silver. Valjean, naturally, is utterly crestfallen at the sure prospect of returning to prison.

Confronted by the man who returned his generosity with treachery, however, the bishop astonishes both the thief and his arresters: “I’m glad to see you,” he says. “But I gave you the candlesticks, too, which are silver like the rest and would bring two hundred francs. Why didn’t you take them along with your cutlery?”

As Hugo narrates, at the bishop’s astounding words, “Jean Valjean opened his eyes and looked at the bishop with an expression no human tongue could describe.”

Forced to release their captive at the bishop’s insistence, the police depart and the bishop hands Valjean the candlesticks, holding him just a moment longer before sending him freely on his way with this blessing: “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts…and I give it to God.”

In the very next scene, Hugo describes Valjean’s lengthy and pathetic weeping as he views the depths to which he has sunk and begins to comprehend the whole new world of forgiveness and grace into which he has been ushered. In that moment, Jean Valjean dies…and is reborn, and much of the rest of this long and turbulent novel is the story of the new reality which Valjean both lives and gives as a result of his encounter with transforming grace.

“Peace be with you,” Christ says to the skeptical, frightened Thomas. “My friend,” the bishop calls the hardened, unrepentant Valjean. Grace, mercy, comes in so many forms–in the unexpected apology of a friend, the undeserved forgiveness of a sibling, the all too often unnoticed tenderness and fidelity of a spouse–but when it comes it leaves the both the recipient and the giver transformed, for they have been joined, even at times unwittingly, to the mercy of God in Christ Jesus.

But though such mercy always transforms, it does not replace the reality of this world. For in his encounter with grace, Jean Valjean, as with Thomas, is confronted not with opposition to his realism, but with a new reality altogether. Neither leaves his world for a new reality. Valjean is still in oppressive and chaotic Paris, facing persecution and death. Thomas is still in Palestine, facing the same opposition which led to the death of his Lord. We too, are still in our ever-changing, ever-diversifying, terrorism-ridden, poverty-ridden, capitalism-ridden world.

But there is something different, something new. For what both Thomas and Valjean gain–what we gain!–is not an escape from the world, not a break from reality, but a sense, a conviction, that God’s grace, God’s new kingdom, has already intruded into and transformed the kingdom of this world, so that nothing, not work, not studies, not relationships, not even life and death will ever be the same again.

This is what Easter means–that we are forever transformed people. That is why we don’t celebrate this Sunday as a Sunday in or after Easter, the way we would the 2nd Sunday in Lent or the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost. Rather, we call this day and the next five Sundays, a Sunday of Easter to remind us that Easter isn’t just a day, it’s every day. Easter isn’t just a celebration, it’s life.

Easter is knowing that because we have been joined by Baptism to the Risen One, Jesus the Christ, we participate in his new reality and are, indeed, new creatures. Therefore, it is we, and not the oppressive realities of this life, who are, as Paul writes, in everything “more than conquerors through the One who loved us”.

For Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! And nothing will ever be the same again. Thanks be to God. Amen.