Doubting Thomas
Psalm 118:14-29
Revelations 1:4-8
John 20: 19-31
The story of doubting Thomas relayed in John’s gospel has never held much meaning for me. Jesus shows up after his death in a small room where 10 of the remaining 11 apostles are hiding. He greets them, saying, “Peace be with you,” and he shows them the nail marks in his hands and the sword’s wound in his side in order to prove that it is truly him. (In contrast, Mary Magdalene believed as soon as she heard the risen Christ call her by name). Later, when Thomas shows up, he refuses to believe that the disciples actually saw Jesus. Jesus has to come back and show Thomas his side and hands all over again. For some reason, Thomas is singled out as especially doubtful, even though, according to this account, Jesus had to show his wounds to the other disciples as well before they believed they were truly seeing their great teacher.
It is not the idea that a man could come back from the dead that seems troubling to me. People who left this life have come back to me in dreams or, on a few occasions, during my waking hours. Sometimes they come back just to be present, to sit on the sofa as if to remind me, I am still here. At other times, they speak to me, and their words are often a mixture of words I’d heard them say in life and words that have meaning for my own life now. However, I never doubted who they were. They never looked different to me than they had when they were alive, though sometimes they were surrounded by or infused with light. So I can’t really understand why Jesus didn’t look like himself in these stories, or why the wounds would be the sign that finally convinces his disciples of his identity. These details are simply outside my experience.
But today I thought of this story as a kind of metaphor about how to mourn. As I hiked the prairie as attentively as possible on this first warm day after a long, snowy, cold spell, I thought that perhaps the story is supposed to teach us that our losses are never fixed or unchanging. We want to recognize the loss for what it is, for what it will mean to us, to literally put our fingers in the wounds that signify what we lost and how we lost it. However, we must understand that we will carry our losses for the rest of our lives. At each stage, their shape and sound and feel and scent will change. Sometimes they will be light as a small milk-pod hanging delicately on a branch; at other times they will shout out like a duck just shot by a hunter and fall to the ground, feathers soft and limp. Sometimes they will feed us; sometimes we must go hungry in order to feed them. Sometimes they will be in sync with their surroundings, like prairie grass in a fierce wind. At other times, they will be mown down, pushed into the soft soil by our own heels.
Our losses are a part of us; they are us. They are a part of our geography; they are our geography. When viewed in this way, losses teach us how to live. They teach us how to understand love, or rather, that love cannot be understood. They teach us that much of our lives are out of our control, but that we can be present to each feeling that emerges or re-emerges during our lifetime.
The story seems also to be about the fact that losses are not about a single moment in time, not about the wounds themselves. We sometimes hunger to touch our own wounds or the wounds of others right after a loss, thinking that unless we do, we are not truly present in our own lives or in others’ lives. But it is not at the moment of our wounding when we understand the most, but rather, later, when we are walking a prairie path on a warm, spring day.
And it is rarely in the moment of wounding that our friends most need us. I am learning through my close friendships that I am often more needed on an otherwise quiet, peaceful day than on the day a loss was first experienced; sometimes it is on days like this one, when the snow is finally almost-melted and we’ve thrown off our jackets for the first time, that losses come out of the deepest parts of ourselves and need to be shared with others.
The story also shows us that everyone experiences losses in different ways, and that the process of integrating a loss into one’s life varies from person to person. Mary Magdalene was comforted by the sound of her own name. Thomas needed to see the wounds, to know for sure that the body still held the remnants of a public murder. And the loss itself will take many forms—demanding at times to be fed (this happens later in the story), sometimes revealing the gory details, sometimes arriving as a light-infused angel with a message of hope. But all those who lost a teacher or friend in Jesus knew they had to find some way to continue to make his life meaningful through their actions. We are called to do the same, and through our actions, we show our faith.
Revelations 1:4-8
John 20: 19-31
The story of doubting Thomas relayed in John’s gospel has never held much meaning for me. Jesus shows up after his death in a small room where 10 of the remaining 11 apostles are hiding. He greets them, saying, “Peace be with you,” and he shows them the nail marks in his hands and the sword’s wound in his side in order to prove that it is truly him. (In contrast, Mary Magdalene believed as soon as she heard the risen Christ call her by name). Later, when Thomas shows up, he refuses to believe that the disciples actually saw Jesus. Jesus has to come back and show Thomas his side and hands all over again. For some reason, Thomas is singled out as especially doubtful, even though, according to this account, Jesus had to show his wounds to the other disciples as well before they believed they were truly seeing their great teacher.
It is not the idea that a man could come back from the dead that seems troubling to me. People who left this life have come back to me in dreams or, on a few occasions, during my waking hours. Sometimes they come back just to be present, to sit on the sofa as if to remind me, I am still here. At other times, they speak to me, and their words are often a mixture of words I’d heard them say in life and words that have meaning for my own life now. However, I never doubted who they were. They never looked different to me than they had when they were alive, though sometimes they were surrounded by or infused with light. So I can’t really understand why Jesus didn’t look like himself in these stories, or why the wounds would be the sign that finally convinces his disciples of his identity. These details are simply outside my experience.
But today I thought of this story as a kind of metaphor about how to mourn. As I hiked the prairie as attentively as possible on this first warm day after a long, snowy, cold spell, I thought that perhaps the story is supposed to teach us that our losses are never fixed or unchanging. We want to recognize the loss for what it is, for what it will mean to us, to literally put our fingers in the wounds that signify what we lost and how we lost it. However, we must understand that we will carry our losses for the rest of our lives. At each stage, their shape and sound and feel and scent will change. Sometimes they will be light as a small milk-pod hanging delicately on a branch; at other times they will shout out like a duck just shot by a hunter and fall to the ground, feathers soft and limp. Sometimes they will feed us; sometimes we must go hungry in order to feed them. Sometimes they will be in sync with their surroundings, like prairie grass in a fierce wind. At other times, they will be mown down, pushed into the soft soil by our own heels.
Our losses are a part of us; they are us. They are a part of our geography; they are our geography. When viewed in this way, losses teach us how to live. They teach us how to understand love, or rather, that love cannot be understood. They teach us that much of our lives are out of our control, but that we can be present to each feeling that emerges or re-emerges during our lifetime.
The story seems also to be about the fact that losses are not about a single moment in time, not about the wounds themselves. We sometimes hunger to touch our own wounds or the wounds of others right after a loss, thinking that unless we do, we are not truly present in our own lives or in others’ lives. But it is not at the moment of our wounding when we understand the most, but rather, later, when we are walking a prairie path on a warm, spring day.
And it is rarely in the moment of wounding that our friends most need us. I am learning through my close friendships that I am often more needed on an otherwise quiet, peaceful day than on the day a loss was first experienced; sometimes it is on days like this one, when the snow is finally almost-melted and we’ve thrown off our jackets for the first time, that losses come out of the deepest parts of ourselves and need to be shared with others.
The story also shows us that everyone experiences losses in different ways, and that the process of integrating a loss into one’s life varies from person to person. Mary Magdalene was comforted by the sound of her own name. Thomas needed to see the wounds, to know for sure that the body still held the remnants of a public murder. And the loss itself will take many forms—demanding at times to be fed (this happens later in the story), sometimes revealing the gory details, sometimes arriving as a light-infused angel with a message of hope. But all those who lost a teacher or friend in Jesus knew they had to find some way to continue to make his life meaningful through their actions. We are called to do the same, and through our actions, we show our faith.
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