Easter 2C sermon

I have to admit that I am quite squeamish about today's gospel reading. There are numerous artisic renderings of the scene when Thomas encounters the Risen Christ, and I really have trouble spending much time with those also. There's the famous Caravaggio painting, where Thomas sticks his finger in the slit that is the wound in Jesus's side while the other disciples gather around looking, and there's even a banner that hangs on the belltower of St. Andrew's Cathedral that shows Thomas coming toward Jesus's wounded side with an outstretched finger (which one of my friends has dubbed the "Tickle me Jesus banner." )

So I thought about why this image makes me uncomfortable, and I think it is the same type of squeamishness that makes my stomach do a flip-flop when my daughter tells me how she ripped her loose tooth out at the lunch table in the cafeteria earlier this week. I don't really want to think about anybody probing anybody else's wounds, no matter how worthy the cause.

But I also think about my discomfort in the face of what this story has to offer us which is this. The Risen Christ is recognized by his disciples because of his wounds. The resurrection has not miraculously removed his hurt, his betrayal, his suffering. Even though he has defeated death, he still maintains its scars. When the Resurrected Christ first visits the disciples all together, he offers them his wounds as evidence of who he is.

Here's another way of saying it, that our bishop said at the ECW closing eucharist today. "When we give oursleves to God, we don't just offer our best; we offer God our all, our everything."

That includes our joy and our gifts and our hope and our new life, and it also includes our wounds and our scars, our suffering and our sorrow.

And notice what happens when Jesus has offered Thomas his wounds? Thomas replies with not only recongnition but with a statement of faith: "My Lord and my God!" It is the climax in the Gospel of John, and Thomas becomes the apostle who articulates the new faith, the good news after the resurrection.

But what happens to us when we offer God our all? Ernest Hemmingway has a line in one of his books that says, "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places." As Christians, we believe that it is only through giving our all to God, offering to God all ourselves even our wounds as Christ did (to God and to his disciples), then God takes us and makes us a new creation, resurrected and remade and strong at our broken places.

In that way we become both believers and witnesses to the resurrection in our own lives and those who walk this way with us, and we become evangelists of the good news of God's salvation in our words and even more importantly in our very being.