From Doubt Comes Glory

Viv Stapleton - Director of Christian Foundations

On the Sunday just gone the focus is death to life. Sorrow to joy. Is it just me, or did the transition feel more pertinent this year? Was it harder to grasp or more relevant and real? Harder to celebrate in isolation or more memorable, if not meaningful?

Personally, yes, I believe the tomb is empty. Christ is risen, death has been defeated, our sins are forgiven, and love wins. I believe all of this and I celebrated it with my church small group over a Zoom meeting. Yet today we have a completely new historical moment or lens through which to view this pivotal moment of our faith.

Perhaps like me, you have wondered how we press into the resurrection at a time when death and suffering in a variety of forms appears to be in charge? Who can process a tragedy of this magnitude? I wonder where and how the cornerstone of our faith should apply in this moment? As we start a new moment in education with the roll out of distance learning across the College for the first time in Donvale’s history? This is just one of multiple firsts in each of our lives. I wonder what new perspective, question or insight you might have of the resurrection this year?

Thankfully, these ponderings predate COVID-19 by centuries; we’re hardly the first people to wonder. In fact, the first Sunday after Easter has always been a point in the year when we take a good, hard look at God’s post-resurrection world, and think, ‘Now what?’

Or, if we’re really honest, ‘So what?’

To answer this ‘so what’, I seem to always find inspiration from the story of the disciple Thomas encountering the open wounds of the risen Jesus:

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.  So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” 

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”  Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”   Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

 John 20: 24-29

Perhaps it’s a whole range of things that I find rather grounding, not least of which is comfort, fascination and a continual stream of new revelations just when you think you’ve seen every facet of this jewel from scripture.

A mere seven days after we shout, ‘Alleluia!’ and sing songs of jubilation for ‘Christ the Lord is Risen Today!’ these scriptures invite us to struggle alongside ‘Doubting Thomas.’ I’m invited to say the ‘heretical’ thing I feel deep inside: ‘Unless I see him for myself, I won’t believe.’ I’m invited to feel wary, sceptical, and even a little envious. Envious of those who find faith easier to sustain than I do. Envious of those who have experienced Jesus more dramatically than I have. Envious of those who, for whatever reason, don’t feel a deep disconnection between the truth of the resurrection, and the ongoing reality of death in the world.

There’s a great deal to love about Thomas’s encounter with Jesus, but what I love most is that Jesus appears to his sceptical disciple in a body that is scarred and wounded. A body that openly bears its traumatic history. It’s a body that doesn’t hide its suffering, its sorrow, its brokenness. What Jesus carries are not old wounds. They are wounds so raw that the doubting disciple places his fingers inside of them. Perhaps Jesus flinches when Thomas touches him, but to me, the flinch signals real life, lived at a level we can comprehend. It signals real engagement. Real presence. Real pain. It speaks the very words I long to hear, "I am with you. I am with you where it hurts. I don't float thousands of socially isolated, sanitised hands above reality. Even after death, I dwell in the heart of things. Not two arms lengths away … right in your midst. Exactly where you are."

This gospel account of Jesus’s wounded body reminds me that some hurts are for keeps. Some markers of pain, loss, trauma, and even horror leave traces that no amount of devotion or spiritual earnestness will take away. Some wounds remain, even after resurrection and that's okay. It's okay to celebrate Jesus's rising and simultaneously grieve our catastrophic losses at the same time. It's okay to hear other people's uplifting faith stories and say, ‘I'm happy for you, but my heart is still broken.’ It's okay to ache for more of Jesus, and to hold our ache in tension with the joys of Easter. 

This year, more than ever, I cherish the wounds in Jesus’s post-resurrection life. After this Easter Sunday, even though we are a resurrection people, we are still hurting. The world is still wounded. Regardless of where on the planet we live, we are still anticipating grief on a scale most of us have never experienced before. This year especially, Jesus’s scarred body speaks with great power, tenderness, mercy, and truth.

The other aspect of the post-resurrection Gospel story I cherish is Thomas’s own faith journey. I know that he often gets a bad rap in many a sermon. His reluctance to accept the testimony of his fellow disciples, his insistence on physical proof, his late arrival to faith can all be described as spiritual flaws. As signs of weak faith.

But I’m a loyal fan of Thomas. I’m grateful for his honest scepticism, his brave doubt, his slow, logical conversion. He reminds me that the resurrection story is hard. Hard to accept, hard to internalise and hard to apply to our lives; especially when our lives are marked by pain, loss, uncertainty in such strange times. I’m guessing I’m not the first person to struggle with it, and I won’t be the last. 

When I look at Thomas, I see a man who yearns for a living encounter with God. A man who can’t settle for someone else’s experience of resurrection but stays around in the hope of having his own. A man who dares to confess uncertainty in the midst of those who are certain. A man who recognises his Lord in woundedness, not glory.