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Read John 20:19–29
Thomas speaks for all of us
doubters, realists, pessimists,
those who want to believe but are afraid,
those looking for a reason not to believe,
when 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.”
Don’t we all long for such assurances,
hard evidence, something we can hold in our hands
literally or otherwise, some tactile offering of flesh and sinew
we can prod and poke and say this is the Lord
we had lost but who is now restored to us.
We need not fear being abandoned, left to drift rudderless
in the wake of a Presence whose sail has gone over the horizon
and out of sight forever. The crushing Absence
that has reigned since the moment of the rocks’ splitting,
the curtain’s tearing, the hanged man’s cry of anguish
and the fearsome silence that followed
has filled again, color and light seeping in like paint
in a slow crawl from edge to center,
even if only for a moment.
Even should the Absence return, Thomas may,
in this encounter, no matter how brief,
with Presence restored
touch and feel and hear and see and smell
and testify for all of us, crying in exuberant wonder
only charred on the edges by doubt and misgiving,
“My Lord and my God!”
The doubts are real, do not doubt.
It is a given that the misgivings are genuine.
But Grace interrupts them both, and even before
the invitation to touch the scars and explore the wounds
pronounces a benediction for all of us Thomases
then and now and world without end:
“Peace be with you.”
Amen.
Grace and peace,
bob
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