From the Lectionary for 7 April 2024 (Easter 2B)

John 20:19-29 (NRSV Updated Edition)

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “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.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

~

"This Sunday we look at a text which happened later that day and a week later in which also the note is of fear. The disciples find themselves in a room that is locked for fear of the Jews, that's the fear of the religious and political authorities of the time. One of the things I really like about this fantastic passage is that it's not a quick celebration. I don't know whether you're anything like me, but I'm a very slow reactor to things. And there is something, if you like, about happy Easter liturgies on Easter Sunday that I find very difficult to cope with because it's suggesting that it's possible to do a quick turnaround from having been sad and lost and baffled by the events of Good Friday to suddenly being happy and everything being okay. And I can't do that myself and I'm very glad to say that the Gospel text suggests that that wasn't really what happened either.

"So one of the first things I want to bring out about both last week's and this week's Gospel texts is how they presuppose that it takes time to sink into what is happening. And that seems to me to be so important I even noticed that in today's Gospel we get two mentions of the room in which the disciples are found a week apart. The first time it says locked for fear of the Jews and the second time it just says: locked. In other words, a week later there's still an element of fear things haven't been sorted out magically and I think that it's tremendously important for our understanding of the Resurrection and the presence of the Risen One in our lives that we recognize and be grateful for that - the slowness, the difficulty, the oddness of what's going on.

"So first of all, our Lord appears, ... Jesus came and stood among them and said: “Peace be with you.” So that's the first thing: they are riled in one way or another and peace is going to be necessary for them to be able to get anything of what is going on. “After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.” In other words, he identifies himself as the one who is crucified and risen. In the Apocalypse [Revelation] of St John, this is the vision which is described as a Lamb standing as one slain. It is a vision which to us is simply baffling: you can't be both alive and dead, and yet here is the one standing as one slain. But he's clearly alive, he's clearly a dynamic and protagonistic presence amongst them.

"[...] And then he says this: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This I think takes us way, way back. It suggests that the one coming into their midst is not one who has just turned up, as it were, as we might turn up to a friend's house in the midst of a party and surprise them. The suggestion is: “As the Father has sent me so I send you. I am coming into your midst from a very very far away place. I don't mean physically far away, I don't even mean chronologically far away. I mean, the place from which I'm coming to you is nowhere within your expectations. And I am going to be making you the bearers, the vanguards, the ones who are taking forward this coming in from a very very far away, very very distant, very very different place. You are going to be becoming something quite different from what you could possibly have imagined. It's going to be utterly remarkable. And this is an important thing: who you are going to become now, you are going to be the ones who are going to control this.”

"Because when he'd said this, that the Father sent me, so he breathed into them. Breathed on them, breathed into them - the same verb in Greek, it's the same verb as in Genesis where the Lord breathes into Adam. So here is the act of Recreation, it's that far back that is being brought into them now. Now what creation is and has always really been about is being brought to life in their midst through them.

"He says to them: “Receive Holy Spirit; if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Again this is the Creator Spirit, the protagonist, the one that had hovered over the waters in the beginning coming into their midst, and now coming into them, which is to say, into us, to turn us into the protagonists of creation. And the radicality of this, it's very difficult to grasp because effectively he's saying: “Let go of any notion of outside God, rescuer God, deus ex machina God. From now on God the creator, the full force of the creation is going to be available to you, in you and amongst you. And in as far as you take the ride, in as far as you allow yourselves to be swept up in this, it'll be opened up. And in as far as you don't, it won't. Your ability to forgive each other is going to be the same thing as your ability to open up creation for each other and to be opened up for each other. In other words, this whole exercise has been an extraordinary entrusting by God of Godself and God's project into your hands. And it's going to take you on journeys, it's going to take you into forms of becoming that you could not possibly imagine. And yet, that is what I have been doing for you, that's what I've been doing in your midst.”

"And then we have this wonderful memory of Thomas who is called the Twin, one of the twelve who was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We've seen the Lord.” 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.” In other words, reasonably enough, he's stuck in the identity that he was, he needs a push, he needs a boost. What they have told him is about seeing someone. They can't yet communicate what this means. So he's reasonably gone off. He's in the emotional equivalent of a locked place.

"A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them, although the doors were shut - the same verb [locked] as before. Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you,” so the same making himself known through the presence of peace. Then he takes Thomas exactly at where he was in his stuckness. And this is if you like the affection of our Lord, ... he reaches him where he is and starts to move him on. But he also gives Thomas the task by making Thomas mirror him by putting his hands in his wounds, standing close up to him and becoming his mirror. He says, “Okay you're going to become me and you've been able to believe because you've seen me, but blessed are those who have not seen and have yet come to believe.

"And this, if you like, is the element that I want to bring out. This is, if you like, the slow train running beneath all this, is that the risen Lord coming into our midst as a friendly gesture, as a peaceful appearance. But what is really going on is the possibility of God having floated Godself into our midst, by faith, enabling us actually to become convinced of his presence, and able therefore, without anyone with whom we're in rivalry, of starting to have all our stuckness - our being locked in frightened places - changed, altered from within, so that we are no longer run by fear, by loss, by stuckness, and are actually able to start to move each other into the new creation.

"This for me is part of what John does by giving us Pentecost on the same day as the Resurrection. He's showing how the fullness of what the Lord gives is this extraordinary act of gentle opening up of creation which takes us at exactly where we are: frightened, lost, stuck, not heroic, not successful. In the Catholic liturgy, this Sunday is called Mercy Sunday, the Divine Mercy. And it seems to me that there is something here about, if you like, the power and the strength of what Jesus is breathing into us. The power and the strength of it is the kind of mercy that undoes our need to be successful, our need to win, that sets us very very gently free to start to be able to bear witness to it.

"And being able to bear witness to it doesn't look like suddenly becoming heroic and suddenly becoming successful. It looks like becoming alive in the midst of failure, and not a success, and not being heroic, and yet knowing we are loved. That the one who has come into our midst didn't do it to turn us into superheroes, that the one coming into our midst did it to show us that we are loved, that it is weak, fallible, not particularly heroic strugglers, people who need to be set free from our fears of freezing, our sense of loss - that all of that is what very slowly the Risen One is producing in our midst, floating us, if you like, off the seabed which we've got stuck on, and enabling us to be bearers of life."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Second Sunday of Easter, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vad8tc86PM)

[For extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter2b/]