Sunday Homily - April 19, 2020 - Doubt and Physical Evidence

Jesus Appears to St. Thomas Icon

Second Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:14a, 22-32

Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

I.

What is your evidence for your belief?

Anyone who has written a term paper,
 defended a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation,
  studied in the areas of the sciences,
   especially the natural sciences,
    have run across this very important question:
     what is your evidence for what you argue?

Evidence,
 at its most simplest terms,
  is someone or something that furnishes factual proof of something
   Basically,
    it is the facts that bear out a conclusion of truth.
     [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evidence]

We operate this way all the time,
 and for good reason.

Maybe you are a parent,
 and you hear, from the kitchen area,
  the opening of the fridge,
   and you know that your spouse is outside.
    But you know who is inside?
     Your child that you told about 5 minutes ago
      that they are not allowed to have that juice they asked for.

Evidence:
                 1) Fridge door clearly opened, as I heard it.
                 2) Spouse is outside, as I can see them in the garden.
                 3) The only other person in the house are my children.
                 4) Casper the Friendly Ghost doesn't live at my house (to my knowledge)
 Hypothesis) One of my children is attempting to abscond with the juice from the fridge.

And then,
 of course,
  we go and test our hypothesis
   by going into the kitchen
    and seeing if that was in fact what was going on!
     I'll let you fill in what conclusions you personally make
      of the parent thought experiment above!

But we operate this way for a good reason:
 we try to make sense of the truth of the world.
  And, ultimately, we operate this way
   to both care and protect ourselves and each other.

Think of other,
 far more important examples than this one.

We see people getting sick at an alarming rate,
 and we immediately suspect something is terribly wrong.
  We begin scientific study,
    gathering our evidence,
     discovering a virus that seems to be causing the sickness,
      and diagnosing the sick person with a viral infection from this strange virus
       that we have termed COVID-19.
       
Thank goodness that we have people
 who are dedicated to evidence finding in our medical communities!

But our life in faith with Jesus Christ
 also operates in some way on evidence and conclusions.
  Evidence of God's presence,
   evidence of a changed life,
    so on and so forth.

And no one in the Bible
 is more fully known for needing hard proof of something
  than St. Thomas the Apostle
   commonly known as "doubting Thomas."

II.

Now,
 I have to admit,
  I'm not a huge fan of calling St. Thomas
   "Doubting Thomas."
    Because I think that dismisses Thomas's legitimate questions
     found within the biblical text itself.
      It reduces Thomas to simply a "doubter"
       someone whose faith is "lesser" because he didn't believe in the resurrection
        right off the bat.

Rather,
 let's think more closely about Thomas
  in the context of the passage from St. John's Gospel this morning.

We, of course,
 have the appearance of Jesus Christ to his disciples,
  even in spite of the doors being locked.

These scared disciples
 are locked up tight because they have seen what happened to Jesus.
  And guess what?
   If they will do that to their teacher,
    they know that it could easily happen to them if they are discovered.

But Jesus comes to them anyway.

And as evidence of his bodily resurrection,
 he shows them the evidence of his death:
  His hands that were pierced by nails,
   and his side pierced by the spear.

The disciples get the evidence of the resurrection!
 They see the physical nail markings,
   the physical spear piercing,
    that no longer carry death in them,
     but rather became the scars that bring life everlasting.

And the disciples rejoice,
 they tell it out,
  "We have seen the Lord!"

But, of course,
 Thomas wasn't there with them.

Now, many holy speculations have been made as to what Thomas was up to.

Some may say that Thomas abandoned the disciples
 and went back to his old life.
  Others say that Thomas was actually the bravest of the disciples,
   because he was not afraid to go outside and live in public after Jesus's crucifixion.
    But, the fact of the matter is, friends,
     we don't really know for sure what Thomas was up to.
      We just know he wasn't there.

And the fact that he wasn't there
 brings up a really important point for him:
  the other disciples are absolutely beside themselves
   because they claim to have seen Jesus.

But Thomas is a man who likes evidence!
 He says,
  "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."
     [John 20:25]

Thomas isn't just going to go along with the disciples.
 After all, what if they had just hallucinated,
  what if they just were overcome with grief and imagined it,
   what if they wanted so hard to believe that they only thought they saw Jesus?
   
Maybe Thomas believed the disciples just felt like Jesus was still spiritually present with them,
 and that lifted their spirits to believe in a resurrection
  that of course didn't necessarily need the empty tomb or a physical body
   to be true.
    Except, to a guy like Thomas that needs hard evidence,
     this non-real resurrection would be ludicrous
      and would be a lie dressed up as the truth.

But, then, just as Jesus in his bodily resurrection found the disciples the first time,
 Jesus also comes back for Thomas.

And the greatest thing about it is that Jesus doesn't lay into Thomas for not believing!
 He simply says,
  "Okay, Thomas, you wanted physical evidence.
   Here is my physical body, it is really me!
    Put your finger here in the nail marks,
     put your hand here on my pierced side."

And Thomas receives the very thing he needed to believe:
 Jesus's giving of evidence about himself.

But of course, we and Thomas also need the admonishment
 that Jesus gives at the end as well.
  "Blessed are those who have not seen,
   and yet have come to believe."
    [John 20:29]

III.

We, as 21st century Americans in the U.S.
 are so used to demanding evidence for things
  that Thomas's demand makes a lot of sense to us.
   It makes sense to me, at least!

But the amazing thing is that Jesus Christ
 gives Thomas what he asked to receive:
  putting his finger in the nail marks,
   and his hand into the side of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So also, friends,
 we have been given the joy of the resurrection hope
  that is not without evidence of this universe-changing act of God.

We have the eyewitness testimony of the disciples,
 the reliability of the Holy Scriptures,
  the Great Tradition of the Church attesting to the continued appearance of Jesus Christ
   and the continued salvation of the world
    through Jesus coming to us again and again and again.

We who have been baptized into Christ's Body, the Church,
 have received the real grace of Jesus to continually grow in relationship with him
  through the grace of His Sacraments.

We are mysteriously drawn to him
 through the love He has manifested in the Church throughout the ages.

And we are constantly being found by him,
 even in our locked doors,
  fearful and afraid of what the outside world may do to us.

You who have doubts this morning in the resurrection,
 you are in good company!
  Perhaps in the spirit of this Scripture,
   you need to ask Jesus directly for evidence.
    Because, apparently, Jesus is willing to give it if you ask!

For us who have not seen and yet have believed,
 continue in that joyful proclamation of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ
  that continues to change and save countless souls for the sake of God's love for us.

And do so knowing that Jesus Christ will still come and find us,
 even in the midst of our doubt.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.