I won't be using the following monologue that I wrote a few years ago when looking at this story elsewhere, but I was surprised to find that I hadn't previously posted it here. So here it is... It picks up some of what I am saying today but also builds on my assertion last week that the greatest proof 9f the "resurrection" is not some finely reasoned argument in a sermon, but radically changed, hope-filled lives, be they Mary, Thomas, you or me..
I wasn’t there… I just needed time to myself. I couldn’t face being cooped up in a room with the rest of then after the women had come back that morning babbling about the tomb being empty… None of us believed them, and I just had to put some distance between us before I said or did something I would regret… Yes we all thought it was dangerous being seen around Jerusalem at the time, but I’d been ready to follow Jesus to my death before, when we thought he was going to get lynched going back into Judea to heal Lazarus… But he didn’t die… at least not then… And it was more than a healing… he raised Lazarus from the dead… I suppose a bit of a dry run for what was to come later…
He had warned us about his death… and had also talked about rising from the dead before… but none of us believed him literally… we thought it was another of his parables… When he started talking about going ahead of us and preparing a place for us, I did take him literally and asked him where he was going so we could know the way, and he started talking about him being the way and stuff… I didn’t understand… I don’t think any of us did… Maybe I’m just a bit more honest about it… But the rest of the guys make fun of me at times for being a bit slow… Because I’m a twin then sometimes suggest that my I got the beauty and my brother got the brains, and that there wasn’t much of either to go round…
So when the women said he wasn’t in the tomb, I didn’t think he had risen, I thought his body had been stolen… We all doubted them… thought they were talking nonsense…
But when I came back that night and everyone was saying that they had met Jesus… that he had risen… I was torn… I didn’t know whether it was some sort of sick joke they had cooked up to make fun of me… or whether it was true… I hoped it was true… But how could it be… people don’t rise from the dead… apart from people like Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead… but Jesus was dead… Wasn’t he? Who had raised him?
I lost my temper with them and said “Unless I see the holes in his hands where the nails were hammered in… Unless I put my finger where the nails were, and thrust my hand into his side, where the spear was thrust, I will not believe a word of this.’
And that’s where we left it… The others left me alone for the rest of that week… except every now and then someone else would come and say about having met Jesus somewhere only for one of the others to say not to bother me because I wouldn’t believe them, making snide comments about me being “Doubting Didymus” – Didymus means twin… It’s the sort of nickname that sticks… and it was wearing me down… I was genuinely thinking of packing up and heading for home, except if it was dangerous around Jerusalem, wandering the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and beyond on your own was downright lethal… Jesus told a story about that once…
But the following week, on the evening after the Sabbath we were all together again, with the doors locked and bolted, when suddenly there was Jesus in the middle of us… And he came straight to me, as if he had heard what I had said the previous week and reached out his hands to me and said:
“Thomas put your finger here in the wounds in my hands. Reach out and put your hand into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
What could I say except “My Lord and my God!” as I fell at his feet…
Of course I believed… I didn’t understand, but I believed… I especially didn’t understand why he had given me special treatment… There are lots of others who understandably want proof of what we claim to have seen…
But I suppose that just means that we who have had such experiences must convince as many people as we can… If you want proof, I’m the proof… I’ve changed… Oh I still like answers to my questions and want everything clear cut… But I’m not a “Doubting Didymus”… I’m a believing Thomas… Believe me…
Selah
Comments