April 16, 2023
Second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, April 16, 2023 – Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
So, who’s in the upper room? At one point in the story, the gospel writer, John, says, “… the twelve.” That was a designation for those apostles who were singled out from the disciples in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. There’s a list of twelve of them in each gospel. However, in John’s gospel, that list does not appear, and their names do not appear any place in the story. In John’s gospel, there are other people who hang around with Jesus in addition to Peter and James and John and Thomas. But all of them are referred to only as disciples. So, in one place in this story, the writer says, “… the twelve.” In all the other places he says, “… the disciples were gathered all in one place.” So, is it just the twelve, or rather, the eleven - because one of them now is dead; Judas is gone. Is it the so-called “twelve,” or is it somebody else? And why is Thomas not there? Thomas is always listed as one of “the twelve.” And so, if “the twelve” were in the upper room, then Thomas had to be there. But he’s not.
We have to understand that the writer of St. John’s gospel is a consummate storyteller. He creates dramas around the things he knows about Jesus and the crucifixion and the resurrection from the other three gospels. But he tells his own stories for a deliberate purpose. Because, for the rest of the church’s life, from the day of resurrection on, all followers of Christ were called disciples. So, who’s in the upper room?
We could just as well be there, according to St. John, as anybody else. And when John tells the story of Jesus’ appearance, he places it in such a way that a whole bunch of other things are being said at the same time. What is the first thing that Jesus does when He appears in the upper room? He says, “Peace be with you.” In the Eastern world, still today, “Shalom,” “Shalom aleichem,” and “Salaam” are ordinary greetings, one person to another. Jesus is saying hello.
And, after that, He says it again, and He follows it up with something remarkable. “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.” If you’re happy to see me, it’s because you remember what I said and did. And now I am sending you to do what I said and did. What things did the Father send Jesus to do? He sent Him to teach, to heal, to make whole, to make new, to forgive, to complete, to bring joy. Those are the things that all disciples are sent to do.
And then He does the strangest thing, He breathes on them. That’s remarkable because it recalls two other times when God breathed. In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, it begins with the words, “The earth was waste, and void and darkness brooded over the abyss. And God said. He breathed out a word, and order came from the chaos. In the second chapter of the Book of Genesis, God is busy making clay animals, and turning them into real animals. And then the writer of the second chapter says, “God breathed into the lifeless form of Adam the breath of life. And Adam became a living being.
So, in this upper room, with only maybe eleven people in attendance, or maybe some nameless crowd, like you and me, Jesus is recreating the world. The world that was destroyed by death. He’s recreating. And how is He recreating it? He’s saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If YOU forgive sins, then they’re forgiven.” It’s your job to remove from the world the darkness of sin.
So, Thomas is not there for this big show. How could he not be there? Where could he possibly have been if they were locked in the upper room for fear of the Jews, were could Thomas possibly have been? This is a literary device. All of a sudden, John tells us that Thomas is not there. Why? So, he can tell us something else about the coming of Christ. And we’ll get to that in just a moment, but first we have to look at the adjective “doubting.” Poor Thomas. For two thousand years he’s been known as “Doubting Thomas.” You know, the name just stuck. And he’s supposed to be representative of everybody who’s sort of skeptical. But, if you listen to what Thomas says, doubting is not the right adjective. He says, “Unless I do this and I do that, I will not believe. “
Those are the words of an angry man. Thomas is furious. What’s he mad about? He’s angry because Jesus came when he wasn’t there. “How dare Jesus do that to me, when I hung out with Him for three years and went through so much stuff with Him. And then He does this without me? And he’s angry at the other ten, who are one-upping him. “Ha, ha. We saw Jesus; you did not.” And most of all, he’s angry at himself. “How could I have been such a fool as to have absented myself from the pivotal moment in all of history.” And that makes Thomas what? It makes him bitter. He’s a bitter man. He’s lost his contact with his community over this issue. He’s bitter. He feels left out and cast aside. And that makes Thomas what? Sad. He is grieving over the loss of relationship, and over the loss of an encounter with God.
By doing that, John has placed us in the story. Because all of us, before we live very long, get angry about something or somebody. All of us, before we’ve lived very long, feel bitter about opportunities that passed us by, relationships that didn’t work out, and things that have gone wrong in our society. And all of us have known sadness at the loss of somebody or something. And so, Thomas represents all of us. And all of us need what happened to his friends when he wasn’t there.
So, Jesus appears, and He starts all over again as though nothing had happened, by saying, “Peace be with you.” And then He does the most remarkable thing. He says, “Put your hand here and see.” That’s an amazingly human expression. How many times has somebody shown something to you that was broken? A toy, maybe. Or a torn garment. And what do you say? “Give it to me and let me see.” “Put it here and let me see.” Feeling is not seeing. But we do it all the time. We say, “Gimme that and let me see.” Jesus’ remark is so incredibly human that we all can identify it. He says the same kinds of things we all say when we want to look closely at something, or we want to fix something or something else like that. It totally humanizes Jesus in that moment.
And then, what Jesus does for Thomas is the last thing that everybody needed in order to deal with the resurrection. He has to talk about moving from seeing to believing. All of us, in our anger and our grief and our bitterness, need a couple of things. We need to be told to be at peace. We need to be told that we are empowered. And sent. It’s a two-sided coin. We’re given something we didn’t know we had. We’re empowered. But then we’re commissioned. It’s something we have to do. And what it is that we’re empowered to do and have to do is the thing that breaks open anger and bitterness and grief. It’s the power to forgive.
Be at peace. Receive the Spirit. Forgive. And believe.