Thomas Gets a Bad Rap
Thomas didn't doubt any more or less than the others
It took a week for Jesus to appear before Thomas and show him “the mark of the nails.” A week is a long time to wait for anything, especially if you are waiting in fear.
Thomas does not need to put his finger in Jesus’ hand. The peace of Christ was enough.
Thomas gets a bad rap from this encounter. Let’s not forget that the other disciples had a very similar response to Mary but instead of asking for proof, they ran and hid.
Prior to receiving the peace of the risen Christ the disciples did not know what to do. The peace of the Lord extended by Christ to the disciples is different from the half-hearted handshake we offer as we try to figure out how long we have before the next part of the service begins. I say that tongue-in-cheek because there’s an order to our lives that will be interrupted when we receive the peace of Christ, that is the say when Jesus is standing before you, with the scars of Good Friday, business as usual is no longer an option. Receiving the presence of Christ is not a movement within the routine of a worship service, it is a life changing interaction.
In the book Meditations of the Heart by Rev. Howard Thurman, author, theologian, pastor, and civil rights leader writes:
“There is something compelling and exhilarating about the glad surprise. The emphasis upon glad. There are surprises that are shocking, startling, frightening, and bewildering. But the glad surprise is something different from all of these. It carries with it the element of elation, life, of something over and beyond the surprise itself.”
“There is a deeper meaning in the concept of the glad surprise. This meaning has to do with the very ground and foundation of hope about the nature of life itself… It is as if a man stumbling in the darkness, having lost his way, find that the spot at which he falls is the foot of a stairway that leads from darkness into light. Such is the glad surprise.”
Rev. Thurman is describing exactly how the disciples felt when the cloud of fear was lifted in the presence of Christ. After receiving the peace of the Lord, the peace that can only come from the risen Christ, the glad surprise of Easter was able to commence.
It was not until the glad surprise of Easter was recognized that the disciples could proceed, moving from locked rooms to living a life that was not a life that could be live as Rev. Thurman puts it a life that, “cannot ultimately be conquered by death, that there is no road that is at last swallowed up in an ultimate darkness.”
The fear that clouded Easter for the disciples is lifted by the glad surprise of the resurrection.
It is difficult for us today to realize the glad surprise of the resurrection. It is easier to put our Easter best back into the closet for another year because in the evening of Easter Jesus did not appear to us behind the locked doors of our homes.
For us today we find the glad surprise of the resurrection in the words of those who witnessed the resurrection. Out the glad surprise of Easter their witness begins the rising . Their witness, rising out of the peace of Christ, changes the way we go about the day-to-day life of not only the church but in their witness the cloud of fear that comes with dying to ourselves is gone and our rising into a new life that is only in the light of the empty tomb begins.
So well said . Thank you.
OOOoh you should do the MBTIs on all the disciples! And Paul! and everyone!!! Has someone written this book? Or article. Come ON, that is a good idea.