First Sunday After Easter - A Reflection

Jesus’ Appearance to Apostle Thomas.
St. John. 20:19-29.
I imagine that for centuries this has been the text assigned for the Sunday after Easter. This is fitting because it reports an event that happened a week after the resurrection.
If I were to mention the names of certain disciples to you and ask you to write down the first word that comes into your mind, it is unlikely you would come up with the same words. If I were to mention the name of Judas many of you would write down the word "betray" but not all of you. If I were to mention Simon Peter, some of you would write down the word "faith," but not all of you. If I were to mention the names of James and John, some of you would write down the phrase "Sons of Thunder," but not all of you. But when I mention the word Thomas, there is little question about the word most everyone would write down. It would be the word doubt. Indeed, so closely have we associated Thomas with this word, that we have coined a phrase to describe him: “Doubting Thomas.”You may be interested to know that in the first three gospels we are told absolutely nothing at all about Thomas. It is in John’s Gospel that he emerges as a distinct personality, but even then there are only 155 words about him. There is not a lot about this disciple in the Bible but there is more than one description.When Jesus turned his face toward Jerusalem the disciples thought that it would be certain death for all of them.

Surprisingly, it was Thomas who said: Then let us go so that we may die with him. It was a courageous statement, yet we don’t remember him for that. We also fail to point out that in this story of Thomas’ doubt we have the one place in the all the Gospels where the Divinity of Christ is bluntly and unequivocally stated. It is interesting, is it not, that the story that gives Thomas his infamous nickname, is the same story that has Thomas making an earth shattering confession of faith? Look at his confession, “My Lord, and my God.” Not teacher. Not Lord. Not Messiah. But God! It is the only place where Jesus is called God without qualification of any kind. It is uttered with conviction as if Thomas was simply recognizing a fact, just as 2 + 2 = 4, and the sun is in the sky. You are my Lord and my God! These are certainly not the words of a doubter. Let me come to the Gospel Portion.

In the Gospel of John, this encounter with the disciples is the second resurrection appearance. The first resurrection appearance was to Mary Magdalene; the second was to the disciples (first without Thomas on Easter Sunday evening and then with Thomas a week later); the third will be to the seven disciples on the Sea of Tiberias (Lake Galilee.) The Apostle John was counting those resurrection appearances. In John 21:14, we hear “This was the third time that Jesus was revealed to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.”

The Easter season is a time of joy and also a time of sending forth, of responsibility for Christians. Everything changes when Jesus arrives.

1.Fear Ends up in Rejoice-“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,” On that Sunday evening, the disciples were sequestered in a house and the doors of that house were locked because of their fear of the Jews/Pharisees/chief priests who had planned, plotted and pushed through the execution of Jesus. None of the disciples had yet seen the Risen Christ. None of the disciples had seen, touched, felt or connected with the Risen Christ. The disciples had only heard the story of what Mary Magdalene had seen. They themselves had not had a “first hand encounter” with the Christ of glory.
Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. It was then, when their minds were satisfied that he Jesus was not a ghost/spirit, the disciples rejoiced because they knew that they were seeing their Lord.

His sudden appearing in the midst of them when they were full of doubts concerning him, full of fears concerning themselves, could not but put them into some disorder and consternation, the noise of which waves he stills with this word, Peace be unto you.

The Good News of the gospel is clear. When we least expect him, and when we most need him, Jesus just appears.
2. An Inclusive Community can experience the peace of the Risen Christ.. "Peace" of the kingdom is not primarily a personal, inner tranquility, but the way people and all creation and God will relate to each another -- a harmonious existence. The disciples never given up anybody as worthless but they included everybody irrespective of their attitudes and words towards Jesus at the time of crucifixion and after. This portion clearly says their attitude towards Thomas, who never believed the words of other disciples.


"The other disciples kept telling him, 'We have seen the Lord'." Thomas refused to believe them. "We have seen the Lord!" "I don't believe you." "We are telling you the truth, we have seen the Lord!" "I still don't believe you." It wasn't just God's word he wasn't believing, but the word and experience of his friends. How do they keep a harmonious, peaceful relationship with a non-trusting friend?
It would be nice if they had told us how they did that so that we could apply it in our parishes!
Whatever they did, they didn't kick Thomas out of the fellowship. In spite of the failures of the disciples, they continued to come together as a group. Eventually he had his own experience with the risen Jesus. In the meantime, how did the disciples remain at peace with one another with such a major difference in experiences and beliefs -- and being at odds with most of the world outside their doors? I wish I knew.
It is important to notice that Thomas has separated himself from the disciples and therefore, in his solitude, missed the resurrection appearance. I think that john is suggesting to us that Christ appears most often within the community of believers that we call the church, and when we separate ourselves from the church we take a chance on missing his unique presence.

3.Faith is not really about what we believe, but what difference it makes in our lives that we believe. The risen Lord gives the disciples the necessary strength to carry out their mission. Jesus opens the doors which fear had closed. He brings them peace, but that does not mean rest. After finding the disciples, forgiving them and restoring peace to their souls, Jesus gave them the Holy Spirit and the ministry of grace. He said, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained." Here, Jesus is entrusting us with his own ministry of forgiveness.
But peace is the prerequisite to go out to do the ministry of the Jesus. In The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective, the author, Pinchas Lapide, is a Jewish NT scholar. He is not a Christian; yet he believes that God raised Jesus from the dead.

For him, the proof of the physical resurrection lies in the changed lives of the disciples. I quote from the book:When this scared, frightened band of the apostles which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation.
Jesus’ followers place everything at the service of others. They enter into a communion which affects every dimension of human existence. In Acts 4:32, we read “every thing they owned was held in common”. In this way, they communicates “ the resurrection of the Lord Jesus”. Such a love eliminates needs within the community.

Like the disciples, we try to hide when we’re ashamed. We keep our hearts locked up tightly because we know the truth about ourselves, and the truth is that we are not what we want to be, or even what we pretend to be.

Faith in Jesus means that we have been born of God, and it transforms us into conquerors of death because we believe in the risen Lord. Now we have to make the resurrection of the risen Lord believable through our own signs of life towards others. The love of God and the love of God’s children are inseparable. This is what the first community did by putting every thing they owned in common so that no one would be in need. In our own situation, we must decide what it means to give signs of life.