Skip to main content

Thomas Feels Abandoned Too

‘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 20.19-31 (https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)
The situation that the disciples find themselves in is strikingly similar to our own. They’re gathered behind locked doors because they’re afraid. But they’re not alone. Suddenly they realise Jesus has come to be with them. He breathes his Spirit on them and offers them the gift of peace. ‘Do not worry about tomorrow,’ he seems to say, ‘For tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’ (Matt 6.34) And as Paul was later to say, ‘If God is on our side, who is against us?’* (Romans 8.31) Kevin Mayhew put it well when he wrote, ‘Peace, perfect peace, is the gift of Christ our Lord.’
But Thomas missed out on this encounter with Jesus and in consequence his nickname has been forever changed from ‘Thomas the Twin’ to ‘Doubting Thomas’. Yet his reaction isn’t unreasonable. Thomas is feeling bereft and abandoned. He’s in that stage of grief which is marked by anger at being left behind by the one we loved and trusted, and this mirrors Jesus’ own sense of abandonment on the cross. Thomas says he  won’t believe until he can actually ‘thrust’* his hand into Jesus’ wounds.
And that’s not just a gory detail in a graphic piece of storytelling. Jesus’ wounds are the crux of the matter. William Shakespeare reminds us that ‘Jesus’ wounds’ were something English people often thought about at one time. So much so that the expression had the same common currency when he wrote his plays as ‘Jesus wept’ has today. But we’ve airbrushed them out of the Easter story - until now.
Thomas is saying that he’ll only believe he’s not been abandoned when he knows that the same Jesus who himself felt abandoned on the cross is with him now. And, eight days later, Jesus suddenly comes alongside him and urges him to ‘bring your hand here and thrust it into my side.’*
Thomas’s story seems to have been the original ending to the Gospel. Later, another episode was added to it, but this ending reminds us that the purpose of the Gospels is that, like Thomas, we might ‘come to believe in Jesus’.
*Translation from The New Testament Freshly Translated by Nicholas King

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his ...
14 comments
Read more

Giotto’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds

John 1.10-18 In the week before Christmas the BBC broadcast a modern version of The Nativity which attempted to retell the story with as much psychological realism as possible. So, for instance, viewers saw how Mary, and Joseph especially, struggled with their feelings. But telling the story of Jesus with psychological realism is not a new idea. It has a long tradition going back seven hundred years to the time of the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. This nativity scene was painted in a church in Padua in about 1305. Much imitated it is one of the first attempts at psychological realism in Christian art. And what a wonderful first attempt it is - a work of genius, in fact! Whereas previously Mary and the Baby Jesus had been depicted facing outwards, or looking at their visitors, with beatific expressions fixed on their faces, Giotto dares to show them staring intently into one another’s eyes, bonding like any mother and newborn baby. Joseph, in contrast, is not looking on with quiet a...
1 comment
Read more

Overcoming separation

1 Peter 1.3-9, John 20.19-31 This year our eldest son will turn 40, but back in the day - when he was five or six perhaps - he was a master at delaying bedtime. Just as we were trying to tuck him into bed he would come up with a range of intriguing and important questions which he felt we wouldn't be able to resist.  For instance one of his questions that I remember is, ‘Where is God?’ When we counteted with something like, ‘God is everywhere,’ he was ready with his next question, ‘If God is everywhere, why can't we see him?’  It's a good question, and it takes us straight to the heart of today's lectionary readings. That was exactly the question which Thomas posed to the other disciples about the risen Jesus on the First Easter Day, and which the writer of the First letter of Peter addresses too. At Meriden we have been using a Lent liturgy which was written by the awarding winning poet and children's author Jan Dean. In her spare time she’s also a Church of Englan...
Post a Comment
Read more