Both Hands

John 20:19-31

Every single year on the Sunday after Easter we hear this story of Jesus coming to the disciples after the resurrection, not just once, but twice. All this repetition suggests that somebody thought the story is pretty important.

And over the years of repetition, the church has paid particular attention to the role of Thomas in this story:

Thomas, who missed the first evening when Jesus burst in on his frightened disciples – passed right through the doors that fear had locked – and bestowed peace and power on them.

Thomas, who demands to see and touch, to feel the reality of resurrection, the assurance that this isn’t a mass hallucination or a trick.

Thomas, who sees and then exclaims out loud what no one else has said yet: “This is God.”

I think we’ve come to focus on Thomas because soon as Thomas declares his proven, all-encompassing faith that Jesus is not only the resurrected Lord, but the God of all creation, John tells us that Jesus says, “You believe because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”

That has become, in some circles, a sort of reprimand. It’s used to say that if you want to see and touch and feel, if you want to prove or experience God’s truth, your faith isn’t as strong as those who believe without seeing. And that’s troubled many of us, including me, who have moments or ages of uncertainty or doubt. Many of us experience that desire to see and touch more of God than just the story, so that we feel able to truly believe. (So that we can believe in our own belief.)

But I am convinced that John meant it exactly the other way around. Not that we are wrong if we want to touch, but that if we can’t touch and see, our faith can and will still be as strong as those who do get to experience miracles on their skin and fingertips.

That became important very early in the life of the church, when new converts who weren’t there for resurrection needed assurance that even though we never met Jesus ourselves, even though we didn’t put our fingers in the nail holes, our relationship with the resurrected Jesus is just as real as Peter’s, as Mary’s. Just as important a relationship with Jesus as Thomas’s ever was.

“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”

That’s not a condemnation of those who want more. 

It’s assurance for those of us who don’t have more.

That’s particularly important, I suspect, in these days when you and I not only have to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection without any chance to see and touch and feel it for ourselves, but when we also have to essentially take our church on faith, too.

We can’t see and touch and feel our church community, gathered around us to share joy and sorrow. We can’t see each other at coffee hour, can’t touch each other’s hands to share God’s peace. We can’t feel that community we belong to in our bodies.

I have to take you on faith, when I come and preach in an empty church. I cannot see you now; I have to believe in you with me, without those assurances and clues that say we are together, that we are real.

When Jesus comes back to prove resurrection to Thomas, it’s also to tell the coming generations of disciples that we are just as real as the first disciples.

That our faith is just as true, as holy, as blessed, when we can’t lay claim to personal experience.  Jesus insists on that because it is hard to trust our own faith when the tangible clues are missing. Not just in this strange and separated time, but in more normal days.

I have many friends who talk about Jesus as if Jesus sits down for conversations with them all the time. And, well, I don’t have that “personal relationship” experience. I’m not close to Jesus like Thomas, or Peter, or Mary.

Instead, for much of my life, I’ve depended on the clues of the gathered church, on the rituals and songs of our worship services, the words of The Book of Common Prayer, rhythms of the church seasons, to be the proof of my faith.

And that wasn’t enough the summer I served as a hospital chaplain during seminary. I was alone in the rooms of strangers: no liturgical calendar, no beautiful church, no shared trust in the prayer book. Other chaplain interns told me they felt the presence of Jesus there; even some of the patients I was supposed to be comforting would tell me about their personal experience of Jesus. Not me. Jesus wasn’t “leading” me anywhere. I felt absolutely unqualifed, inadequate, to be a spiritual resource there and then.

But I prayed then, because I was supposed to.

I prayed to a God I could not see, touch, or feel, for things I wasn’t sure about. And John tells me that Jesus said, into exactly that situation: Blessed are those who have not seen.

Slowly and uncertainly, mostly in hindsight, I began to understand that praying when you can’t feel the presence of God – or even feel your longing for God – is just as faith-full as praying to a Jesus you can touch and feel.

Showing up for church with a pocketful of uncertainty and absence is just as faith-full as feeling the presence of Jesus in your car’s passenger seat. Praying prayers that are sometimes “just words” over and over is just as blessed as preaching in the power of the Spirit.

Preaching to empty pews; watching church online in your pajamas; lacking that touch-and-feel proof of connection, is just as blessed, just as much the community of faith, as praying in unison and tasting the bread and wine.

The prayer for spiritual communion we’ll be praying in this season asks Jesus to come into our hearts when we cannot touch and feel and taste the wafer and wine that usually assure us of God’s presence in our hearts and bodies.

Thomas’ story tells us that Jesus will, that Jesus does, come through the locked doors of anxiety and absence to be fully present with us when we call out for God.

Thomas’s story also tells us that when we have to take even that spiritual presence on trust – when we don’t feel like it’s real – our faith is just as full.

This story reminds me of a kind of game I played as a child.

I have a treat in one of my hands: pick right or left, and if you’re correct, you’ll get the treat.

(It was a great way to tease a sibling who had run out of Halloween candy before I had.)

But when John tells this story today, Jesus has a blessing in both hands.

In one hand, when, like Thomas, we throw our heart and trust into the expectation that Jesus will show up, the blessing is that Jesus does, right through locked doors or any other barriers (though maybe not at the time we might have chosen).
And, in the other hand, when we don’t feel that presence, when we don’t even expect to feel it, the blessing is that our faith is equally real and holy and ready to grow.

Jesus always offers us a blessing in both hands.
And we can receive with both hands, too.

We can let ourselves long for the opportunity to touch and feel the presence of God, and know that God will respond.

And we can let ourselves pray and act in faith that doesn’t always feel real, knowing that that emptiness is also full of God’s blessing.

Pick both hands, my friends.

Jesus does!