“He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” (Acts 2:31b-23)
Road into the Valley — Moonrise, Edward Steichen (1879-1973)
It’s too good to be true. How often have we found ourselves saying those words, or something like them – when have we been told good news, and not been sure whether to trust it? Today, Thomas has heard but not seen, has been told but has not witnessed, that the impossible has happened – that all those mysterious things Jesus said about the temple being rebuilt in three days, and the Son of Man rising again, and where I am going you cannot follow – Jesus meant it. For once, he wasn’t just talking in parables. He was the temple, and he was rebuilt. Everything the Romans did to him has fallen away. His disciples, after watching his final hours, have been hiding, afraid – and now Jesus is among them, and it is really and truly him. In the midst of days which were dark and terrifying and lonely, the brightest light shone, the most beautiful dawn.
Like Thomas, we all seek certainty, especially when things seem dark and terrifying. Early this week, just days after the most hopeful and joyful day in our church year, we waited to find out if our country would attack and destroy an entire civilization. Where was the risen Christ in that day of uncertainty? Where was the hope of resurrection?
Over and over, we seek to understand, to see clearly, to be certain of things – all of us, from the most powerful to the least.
“What is truth?” asks Pontius Pilate in the Gospel of John, when Jesus stood in front of him, an accused man, and Pilate was trying to convince Jesus to speak up for himself, and the crowds to let him go.
“I believe – help my unbelief!” says the father of the possessed boy in the Gospel of Mark, who brings his son to Jesus to be healed, and Jesus sends away the demons and the boy is healed.
And this morning – “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,” says Thomas in the Gospel of John, in the dark and uncertain days following Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion.
It’s not surprising that Thomas struggled. We’re right there with him. When our day-to-day lives are an unpredictable mess – we would like to see clearly, to be sure. And even in the season of Easter – a season that is 50 days long, 10 days longer than Lent! – it’s hard to shift from contemplation to celebration – to give ourselves freedom to believe what seems too good to be true – to feel joyful about this impossible, astounding news that Jesus overcame death, stepped out of the tomb, returned to the living, to his friends and family. Today and in next week’s Gospel, it’s beautiful, and not completely surprising, that Jesus returns to his disciples, makes himself known in the breaking of the bread – in sharing meals with them.
It is in the ordinariness of life that resurrection breaks through, that good news steps into the room, even through locked doors.
Thomas tells his friends, I cannot believe until I see Jesus with my own eyes, until I touch his hands and side. And a week after the resurrection, after his friends and fellow disciples have seen Jesus for the first time, Jesus appears again. And he holds out his hands and shows Thomas his side – he gives Thomas what he needs to believe, to be assured – Jesus meets Thomas in the midst of his uncertainty, his questioning, his doubt – Thomas’ insistence on proof.
“My Lord and my God!” Thomas speaks aloud the faith of his friends, and our faith – face to face with Jesus, he is finally able to receive the good news of the resurrection. Sitting at the table with Jesus, he is finally able to let go of the grief that he has walked through in the week following Easter. “Do not doubt, but believe,” Jesus tells Thomas, and Thomas believes. “My Lord and my God!” – I believe you are alive, I believe you are my friend standing here, somehow back from the grave, I believe you are the Messiah.
And Jesus says another thing, words that are not really for Thomas and the other disciples gathered there – he speaks another beatitude – “Blessed,” he says, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Here, Jesus’s words are for his disciples to hear and record, but they are words directed at those who will come after. His words are for us, 2,000 years in the future. Blessed are we who do not see him, who were not standing in a locked room and touching the wounds in Jesus’ hands – Jesus is acknowledging that certainty is difficult, especially when the world is so uncertain, that belief, that faith in a risen Christ, is challenging when we are centuries removed from him, when we read and hear the stories, but have not lived them in the flesh. We walk by faith, not by sight, as Paul tells the church in Corinth.
How do we find resurrection without seeing? How do we walk by faith? We carry the stories, we tell them over and over, as we do our family stories, for they are our family stories. We look for Christ’s face in everyone around us – we look for God’s love in the world – we receive the good news, and then we share the good news, in thought, word and deed, by loving the world that Jesus loves, and by being his hands and feet in it. Look around – we see resurrection in the dogwood trees that bloom again, and the healing that happens after illness or after estrangement. We see resurrection every time we pass the peace and then return to the table for Eucharist, thanksgiving, sharing the body of Christ.
Thomas’s doubt was not a fault or a weakness, and Jesus, loving him, met him where he needed to be, just as he meets us where we need to be, and shows us himself through our present world.
A few days ago the New York Times published an essay by P.G. Sittenfeld[1], a Cincinnatti politician who was convicted of public corruption and now is a prisoner in Ashland Satellite Prison Camp in Kentucky. Sittenfeld discovered that resurrection happened for him after he was incarcerated.
Sittenfeld writes: “I chose a new and different life, realizing that what I most wanted to do, as well as what Jesus modeled — being of service to others, loving my neighbor, offering a hand to those in need — doesn’t require a public office or any recognition at all.
“When you’re focused on filling your cup with accolades and accomplishments, it’s harder to pour yourself out in service to others. The part of me that cared a lot about winning and rising — and about doing so quickly — had to die so I could fully inhabit the part of me that cared most about serving.”
And, Sittenfeld writes: “To believe that resurrection occurs everywhere, we can also just listen to one another.” As he hears the stories of his fellow inmates – stories of healing from addiction, of discovering humility and peace, of repairing broken marriages, of finding peace, of returning to the world having experienced transformation.
“Resurrection is real,” writes Sittenfeld, “and it is all around us. Imprisonment, defeat and death might get their say, but they do not get the last word.”
Resurrection is real. We see and know it around us, in every place, every day.
Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/05/opinion/easter-sunday-resurrection.html
