Second Sunday of Easter

Second Sunday of Easter (C)

April 27, 2025

Text: John 20:19-31

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!  He is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!

            I confess it.  I have this deep longing to see Jesus.  With these eyes.  To touch Him.  To hear His Voice in these waxy, stopped up ears.  To talk to Him.  To have a give and take.  Questions answered.  Concerns addressed.  And to know, from His own mouth, that all I’ve believed, all to which I’ve dedicated my life… that it’s true.  That all that is wrong, will be, and is being, righted.  That the End will be everything He’s promised.  That it’s worth it to endure all this… the devil, the world, my own stinking sack of sinful flesh and bones.  I confess it.  I’d like to see Him.  To meet Him.  And maybe then I’d never doubt again.  Maybe then I’d have no trouble holding fast.  Maybe.  Maybe. 

            So I have some sympathy for St. Thomas.  Thomas is my middle name, after all.  “Doubting Thomas,” we call him, virtue-signaling our own self-righteousness.  Well, don’t we want the same thing?  Okay, maybe not to poke around in the wounds.  That’s a bit much.  Though, certainly, to see them.  And… yes, to handle His crucified, now risen body.  Be taken up into His embrace.  Satisfy the five senses, that it really is true: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  And to know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that that is the answer to everything.

            Thomas wanted that.  And he got it!  He wasn’t with the disciples that first Easter evening when Jesus appeared in their midst and showed them the wounds.  And when they told Thomas, he didn’t believe their testimony.  He insisted on seeing for himself, and touching, poking, inserting his digits in the nail holes.  Only then would he believe. 

            My, how things changed when the Lord came again, eight days later (as we are gathered, here today, eight days later), and this time Thomas was among them.  Jesus gives Thomas the invitation.  “Go head.  Put your finger here in my hands.  Stick your hand into my side.”  We don’t know if Thomas does it.  But we do know that all that doubting business is out the window.  In utter astonishment, he confesses: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28; ESV).  What a wonderful, high, orthodox Christology, by the way.  Thomas knew, “This Man standing before me, with visible, mortal wounds, yet risen and living… this Man is my God!”  What makes the difference between the man who doubted just moments before, and the man who now makes this confession?  You know what I think it is?  The wounds, yes.  And this: The words!  The creative and performative Words Jesus speaks, and it is so.  What are they?  “Do not disbelieve, but believe” (v. 27).  And he does.  “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3).  And there is light.

            And here is the point.  The important thing for Thomas, and therefore for us, is not the seeing.  We Lutherans know better than that.  Seeing is not believing.  Two things transformed doubting Thomas into believing and confessing theologian Thomas.  The presentation of the wounds.  And the Word of the Lord that makes things so.  Well, we have that.  Right here and now.  Jesus is speaking His creative Word of Life to us at this very moment.  And then He’s going to give us His body… the body with the holes in it, that was nailed to the cross.  And His blood… the blood poured out from the holes and the riven side.  The Word and the wounds.  We’ve got ‘em.  He gives ‘em.  Hidden in the mouth of a preacher and under bread and wine.  And, this is counterintuitive, but it is actually better for us that Jesus does it this way, than just suddenly appearing to us face to face.  He could do that.  He is here, after all.  Bodily.  But He doesn’t.  Why might that be?

            If you were sitting at home one evening in your favorite chair, pondering… maybe a glass of wine… quiet… solitude… thinking over the questions you have, the concerns you’d like Jesus to address, the answers to your doubts… and suddenly, wam, there is Jesus, in your living room, visibly…  Well, first of all, it’d probably scare you to death.  Remember (and we know this particularly from Luke), when the risen Jesus appeared to the Apostles, their first reaction was generally mortal fear.  That is why Jesus had to speak His Word of Peace: “Peace be with you” (John 20:19, 26).  But then, let’s say you have your conversation.  And it’s wonderful.  It’s everything you’ve dreamed of.  And you go to bed with a peace unlike you’ve ever felt before, and you sleep like a baby.  And then you wake up, and…  Did that really happen?  Was it a dream?  Was it that glass of wine?  Am I crazy?

            Signs and wonders have a shelf life.  I think this is what St. Peter means, when he’s reminiscing about seeing the Transfiguration on the holy mountain, and he says, essentially, “that was wonderful.  But now, understand, we have something more sure.”  And what is that?  “the prophetic word… to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19).  You can know, very easily, what really happened, as opposed to what you dreamt, when you read it in the Word.  When you hear it proclaimed.  The Word is the vehicle the Lord has given, by which we can know with certainty what is really true.  And it is a powerful Word, the breath of the risen Lord, imparting His Holy Spirit… Jesus “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22).  And the result is living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ: “these [things] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (v. 31).  These things are written, that you may confess with St. Thomas, that “this Man, with the mortal wounds, yet risen and living, is my Lord and my God!”  “Do not disbelieve, but believe.”  In fact, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (v. 29).  Who believe on account of the disciples’ testimony.  Who believe on account of the Words.

            The Word and the Wounds.  Scripture, Preaching, and Sacrament.  It is the encounter you are longing for.  Oh, I know, you still want a local and visible presence, not just an aural and sacramental one.  I get it.  That will come.  Eternally.  In the End.  But in the meantime, here He is.  Jesus Christ.  Your Lord and your God.  And you can talk to Him about all the things that trouble you and cause you to doubt.  In fact, you should.  We call that prayer.  And if you don’t have the words, and don’t know what to say, just peruse the Psalms.  You’ll find the words there.  And just sing a few of the hymns in your hymn book.  They will help you.  And know that, though you cannot see Him, He is there.  Listening.  And if you want to hear His voice, just open up to the Gospel and read. 

            Let’s not forget our dear sister, St. Ellie Warmbier, who laid down in her bed one night, propped up on her side, and opened up the Scriptures.  She wanted to hear her Savior’s voice.  She began to read.  The Words impressed themselves on her mind.  The Words of Jesus, her Lord and her God.  And she was listening.  And then she looked up to see Him there.  And hear Him with her own ears.  And that is the position the nurse found her in the next morning. 

            That is how it will be with you.  All at once, you will see Him face to face.  Not as in a daydream or a fairy tale, but really, tangibly, bodily.  Heaven is more real than anything you’ve ever experienced in this life.  You’ll see Him.  Risen, but with the wounds.  And you’ll hear Him.  The voice you’ve always known since He made you His own.  And touch Him.  The body you’ve embraced at the altar, Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day.  And He will console you, and wipe away your tears.

            And then, at just the right moment, He will raise your body from death.  And He’ll raise St. Thomas, and St. Ellie.  And together, we’ll cry to Him, “My Lord and my God.”  Because the Lord will have taken away all our doubts.  And believing… well, it’s not simply that we will… we do… we have life in His Name.  Alleluia!  Christ is risen!  He is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.