Second Sunday of Easter; 24 April 2022; Easter 2C (RCL); Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31.
This passage in John is home to one of the most egregious mistranslations in the New Testament. In almost every translation, Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not doubt, but believe.” There is almost no way to construe the Greek to mean this. What the Greek says is μὴ γίνου ἂπιστος ἀλλὰ πιστός. A literal translation would be, Do not be untrustworthy, but trustworthy. Or, you could even translate as untrusty and trusty. And Thomas doesn’t doubt; he refuses to believe.
When Thomas does touch Jesus’ wounds, he cries out, “My Lord and my God.” The emperor Domitian, around the year 95, (consistent with when John’s Gospel took its final form) was insisting on being addressed as dominus et deus — Lord and God. Thomas, a representative of gnostic Christians (if there ever were such things), is made by John to insist on graphic enfleshment, and gives to Jesus the title insisted on by Domitian. The gnostics, by claiming that Jesus was never really enfleshed, and therefore didn’t really die on the cross, could cross their fingers behind their backs, and call Domitian Lord and God, and thereby escape persecution. Thomas will have none of it. A Christian community (a body) without wounds is not the Body of the resurrected Jesus. The resurrection is not a spiritual escape from the world of matter and enfleshment, but a transformation of the body, wounds and all.
Clearly, such a stance had ramifications for Christians faced with Roman persecution, but it still has ramifications for us. Jesus sent the disciples just as the Father had sent him, and breathed on them the Spirit, and gave them authority to forgive or retain sins. Too often, we want to forgive sin by pretending nothing bad ever happened, and things can go back to the way they were before the sin. Thomas will have none of it. In order to forgive win, we have to face the damage done, and see it transformed into a resurrected wound.
The Body of our nation will never be healed until we can touch the wounds of our racist past. Until we do, like Thomas, we will be untrustworthy. We will continue to see black bodies pay the price for our sins. There are ramifications at a personal level — betrayed trust can never be restored until the damage done is acknowledged, until the wounds are touched.
The collect speaks of a ministry of reconciliation, and the passage in Revelation speaks of Jesus having freed us from our sins by his blood, to make us a kingdom of priests to serve his God and Father. Our eucharistic offering presents to God the broken body and shed blood of Jesus. If these have no reference to our common life, the sacrifice of the eucharist is meaningless. Our sacrifice is united with his, in order that we might serve the cause of reconciliation for the whole world. Thomas insists that we cannot pretend things are other than they are, wounds and all.