“Then [Jesus] said to Thomas, ‘Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.’”
Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable” (1 Cor 15:14-19, NKJV).
“If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile…” says the Apostle, and we might add: “If Christ is not risen [bodily, our] faith is futile.” Against the cultural and philosophical backdrop of Greek Platonism, the Church—in her “earthy,” Jewish heritage, in her filial devotion to the ’ādāmāh which was her forefather’s prima materia—[the Church] proclaims boldly, “Christ is risen from the dead,” and furthermore, “Christ is risen bodily from the dead.” Whereas Plato said through the mouthpiece of Socrates, in his Phaidōn, “The body is the prison of the soul,” and elsewhere in Gorgias, τὸ μὲν σῶμά ἐστιν ἡμῖν σῆμα, “The body is the tomb of the soul,” in stark contrast, our own philosophers—faithful, Christian philosophers—such as St. Justin Martyr, say,
“I know that he [Christ] was possessed of a body not only in his being born and crucified, but I also know he was so after his resurrection, and I believe that he is so now” (On the Resurrection, Fragment 9).
“The body is the prison of the soul” vs. “I know that he was possessed of a body… and I know that He was so after his resurrection.” Against all Platonic, Gnostic, and Manichean heresy, the Church has always asserted faithfully: “Christ is risen bodily! And we with him will be raised bodily!”
It is with this in mind, brethren, that the Orthodox Church remembers and interprets the events catalogued in today’s Gospel reading, the reading of the account of “doubting Thomas.”
“Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ So he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.’ And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, ‘Peace to you!’ Then He said to Thomas, ‘Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.’ And Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ (John 20:24-28).
“Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, … and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” It is true: St. Thomas doubted the testimony of his fellow apostles. Should he have believed them? Perhaps. To what degree do any of us believe the testimony of another without warrant? The Eastern Church, in her Tradition—specifically, her hymnography—does not remember Thomas’ doubt with disdain. Rather, the Church interprets Thomas’ doubt as an opportunity for the True Faith to be confirmed. Let me say that again: The … Church, in her Tradition… does not remember Thomas’ doubt with disdain. Rather, the Church interprets Thomas’ doubt as an opportunity for the True Faith to be confirmed.
Do you remember what I said just moments ago about the Hellenic cultural milieu that the earliest Christians would have been contending against? “Christ is risen from the dead!” To us, it sounds like the miracle of miracles! But to the Greeks, it would have sounded outright foolish, stupid (cf. 1 Cor 1:23). All the more, we confess: Christ does not transcend physical existence through his death. No, no! In Christian theology, Christ redefines death as the gateway to new life, experienced as much physically as spiritually! In Christian theology, the soul is redeemed and the body is redeemed. In Christian theology, the hope of the resurrection is not spiritual escapism but an incarnate glory. Hear what the Apostle in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians says concerning this very thing:
“For we know that if our earthly house, this tent [our body], is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven [the resurrected body], if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor 5:1-4).
“Not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed… .” The orthodox Christian belief in the resurrection is grounded in the reality of the risen Lord. Our eschatological anthropology reflects the first-hand experiences of the Apostles in the six weeks following the day of the resurrection of our Lord. Christian theology is not philosophy. Christian theology is apostolic phenomenology remembered and celebrated by the Church, and communicated to us, over the span of two millennia. In layman’s terms: we do not believe in the physical resurrection of the dead because it fits so nicely into a philosophical ideology. But, we believe in the resurrection of the dead because there was once a disciple named Thomas who reached out his finger and stuck it into Christ’s nail-pierced hand; who reached out his own hand and stuck it into Christ’s wounded side. “This man, my Lord and my Teacher,” thought Thomas, “I saw him hanging upon the tree. I saw him die. I saw the tomb in which his lifeless body was laid. … And now, he stands before me. … ‘Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, … and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.’ I said this. Now, I see his hands and his side. Now, I believe.”
Do you understand, brethren? The belief of St. Thomas was both rational and experiential. He did not see Christ rise from the dead. And he was not with Christ when he—that is, Christ—first appeared to the disciples. But now, Christ stands before him, very much alive, covered in battle scars; wounds that would have killed a man, wounds that did kill a man. But… he is alive. What else can Thomas conclude? What else can Thomas say but “My Lord and my God!”
As I said earlier, the Church does not remember Thomas’ doubt with disdain. But on account of Thomas’ doubt, the Church collective was given another opportunity for edification in the faith—the True Faith!—a belief in the bodily resurrection of the Son of God. In fact, just last evening, we heard the beautiful stichera of Great Vespers on the eve of Antipascha testify:
“The Disciples were assembled on the eighth day,
and the Savior appeared to them.
He gave them peace and said to Thomas:
“Come, O Apostle! Feel My hands, which were pierced by the nails!”
O most wonderful doubt of Thomas!
It brought the hearts of the faithful to knowledge.//
And with fear he cried: “My Lord and my God, glory to Thee!” (at the “Lord, I call,” Tone 1, bold mine).
“O most glorious wonder!
Doubt bore certain faith!
Thomas said: “Unless I see, I shall not believe!”
By touching His side, he blessed the incarnate Son of God, Who had suffered in the flesh,
and he proclaimed the resurrected God,//
crying out with joy: “My Lord and my God, glory to Thee!” (at the Aposticha, Tone 4, bold mine)
“O most wonderful doubt of Thomas!” and “Doubt bore certain faith.” You see, brethren, the Church is so charitable St. Thomas. Why? Because she knows: some things must be experienced to be believed. Yes, our Lord says, “… Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John, 20:29), but nowhere does our Lord say, “Blessed are those who have believed without good reason.” The history of the Orthodox Church, brethren, is a history of personal sanctification; it is a history of “saint-making.” It is a history of incarnational theology, of incarnational dogma, of incarnational ethics. The Church is the body of Christ, here for the world to touch, to hear in the preaching of the gospel, to see… and to believe.
We post on our websites, our Orthodox social media accounts; we print on our evangelical tracts, “Come and see!” and in doing so, we give credence to the—dare I say—“evangelical doubt” of St. Thomas. Put another way, we confirm the necessity of an incarnational faith; a faith that can be touched; an incarnational and sacramental encounter with the risen Lord. “Come and see!” we say, that is, “Come and see and hear and touch and experience and believe in the Lord who was born, suffered, crucified, buried, resurrected, ascended, and is coming again in glory for your salvation.” Our Paschal hope, brethren, is not in a theological-philosophical system which posits the possibility of life after death. Our hope is in the God-Man, Jesus Christ our Lord, who died, and three days later appeared to his disciples in the flesh, who said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at my hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing” (John 20:27).
Through the prayers of our holy fathers and mothers, O Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen. Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen! x3