Feast of Saint Thomas, Apostle
It’s so easy to think that Thomas was disappointing to Jesus as a disciple. He doubted. He wanted some proof that this figure before him was really the resurrected Christ. We can imagine . . . I should only speak for myself . . . I want to imagine that I would not have been like Thomas. I would have believed. I would not have needed to put my finger in Jesus’ side. Like I said, that’s what I want to believe about myself. Whether or not it would be true is another matter.
To be a person of faith is, by necessity, to be a person of doubt. If we knew—that is, if we had knowledge of the risen Christ in the way, say, a scientist has knowledge of what she has grown in a petri dish—we wouldn’t need faith. Where there is knowledge no faith is needed.
So, does that mean that we have not seen?
A little over a decade ago, I was moving toward divorce while teaching at a Christian college (about 1,000 students) in a small Ohio town (about 3,000 people). Divorce was not something people knew much about at that school or in that town or in the church I attended. It was just something people didn’t do. Long story short, I found myself quite isolated. I finished out the academic year teaching at that school with nearly all of my colleagues confident that they knew the many details of my fault in a failed marriage.
One day, when I was feeling very much alone there, the students in my research seminar (there were eight of them, if memory serves) walked into my classroom and just started confessing stuff. I was thinking it was time to begin class, but they insisted on talking about how they had broken this and that rule at the school. They talked about how they felt about breaking those rules and how they were treated by the people at the school who were charged with making sure everyone followed the rules.
It was one of the most amazing works of grace I have ever experienced. They told me without ever being explicit that they loved and cared for me as a sinner. As they were also sinners. They were angels in a very dark time in my life. They let me know that we were all members of the household of God, despite our failures, transgressions, sins.
Now and again angels appear in our lives and show us the resurrected Christ in the form of God’s grace. Have we not seen?
Perhaps we have not seen as Thomas got to see. And yet, through the lens of our faith we can say that we have seen. And having seen, we can be angels to others. We can show others through our own acts of grace that the resurrected Christ is right here right now. Praise God!
- Sue Trollinger