-- Doubting Thomas, by Caravaggio
If the events of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection would have happened today, then in the few weeks afterwards I (along with other mental health professionals) would have looked upon the poor disciples as showing signs of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
Think about it. It’s easy to understand the horror of their experience of seeing their Master led away to Crucifixion, but things were already getting rough before then. In the few months before, Jesus changed the tone of His teachings. He was getting more and more critical of the Temple and the Synagogue, as it was becoming clear that the mainstream Jewish religion was rejecting Him outright. At the same time, He was getting His disciples used to the fact that when He entered Jerusalem, He was entering into the Passion which would end up on Golgotha.
Already, the disciples were getting traumatized: they followed Christ from the royal procession of the King on Palm Sunday, through one fearful event after another in Holy Week, and finally the crisis of the arrest in Gethsemane.
This week-long travail came to a head, I think, at the singular point of the weeping of Peter. When Peter realized what he had done -- denying the friendship and love of his Master, not just once but three times -- he broke down completely. This denial is one of the few events that is recorded in all four Gospels. The fact that he wept is recorded in the three “Synoptic” Gospels: Matthew 26.75, Mark 14.72, and Luke 22.62. I would like to think that John did not include this fact because of his filial love for Peter.
This weeping is important, because it is unprecedented. Never before in the history of literature and story-telling was the weeping of a commoner recorded. Greek tragedy is chock full of heroes and villains weeping, but they were all aristocrats. The German (and very anti-Christian) philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche accused Christ and the Church of ruining civilization precisely by paying attention to non-aristocrats, and taking note of the weeping of common fishermen like Peter.
Of course, all the disciples had been weeping -- not just the Apostles, but all who had followed the Lord and had loved Him … and had failed Him.
The only ones who had not failed Him were the Mother of God, and the women who stayed, faithfully, around her at the foot of the Cross. But they, too, were weeping.
This weeping, the growing anxiety during Holy Week, and the horror on Golgotha -- these are all understandable traumas.
But we should consider that the Resurrection was itself traumatic to these same disciples, the same ones who were weeping.
It was unthinkable, totally, that the abyss between life and death could be crossed. We need to take that “unthinkability” seriously, because it plays into the difficulty that Thomas (and really all the disciples) experienced.
Some might say that they should have remembered the cases of Enoch and Elijah, who did not die, according to the Old Testament (Genesis 5.24 and 2 Kings/4 Kingdoms 2.11). Then there was Moses, who died alone on the top of Pisgah on Mount Nebo, and no one knew where his body was buried (Deuteronomy 34.5-6) -- it was known, mystically, that the Archangel Michael himself “disputed with the devil about the body of Moses” (Jude 1.9).
And most importantly, some might say that the Lord Himself prepared the disciples for His death and His resurrection. Right after the Transfiguration -- which Peter, James, and John must have thought was the end of the story, the arrival at victory -- Jesus began telling them that He would suffer, but He would rise from the dead (Matthew 17.9 and Mark 9.9).
I have heard this said -- that the disciples came up short in faith by not believing beforehand that Jesus would rise again after three days. So the idea is this: the disciples were told multiple times that their Lord would rise again. Add to this that the Old Testament had a few examples of people not dying. Why, then, did the disciples worry so much? Hadn’t they heard Jesus Himself say, on at least seven occasions, that things would be okay?
But that is just the problem. Things can’t be “okay” if Death -- that is, all of Death -- is the Death on Good Friday, Death on the Golgotha Cross.
That death was so big, so total, that being assured by Jesus that He would rise again was, for them, a psychological impossibility. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. Think of Peter’s tears.
And before we start thinking that we would have done better, even with the advantage of being able to look back from our “happily ever after” perspective, the fact remains that we are stuck in the same position, pre-Crucifixion, that the disciples were stuck in:
In our heart of hearts, when we’re dead honest in the ghost hour at three in the morning, we are no better. We know Death as the End, and humanly speaking in the dread dark of the night of the Fall, we are too familiar with the hard, despairing view of the Abyss that no one’s ever crossed … and made it back.
So it comes as no surprise that when Someone Did Come Back, that it was news too good to be true ... that the One Who Came Back was hidden from view, a view that was conditioned by and habituated to Death, the psychological Tyrant of all humanity … humanity from Adam, through all the savages of cave dwellers to primitive craftsmen and farmers, to the first cities in Sumer and the Indus Valley and the Nile and the Han Dynasty in China and the Olmec culture of Mesoamerica and the Anangu aborginal groups of ancient Australia.
We are all, unavoidably and whether we’d like or not, faced with the full granite despairing face of Death -- the full psychic dread and horror -- convinced and persuaded, that Death is the very end … that’s just how our human nature responds to the Fall.
And that is how we, as persons, respond to the Death of Someone we love. Love is meant to be forever. That is how the Holy Trinity wrote Love into the warp and weave of all Creation.
So Death is a horrible, unnatural break of human love. Love was never meant to be broken. It is unimaginable that Love could survive, or come back from, that brokenness.
So it should be no surprise that poor Thomas, who was left out of the blessed reunion of the Risen Christ with ten of the twelve Apostles on the evening of Pascha, couldn’t bring himself to accept the news. Let us not be too hard on Thomas, who is called “Doubting Thomas” unjustly. Judging by the behavior of all the disciples (and we should include ourselves), all disciples were “doubting.”
When the ten Apostles, who had met the Risen Christ in the Upper Room at 4 pm on Pascha, told Thomas of their unbelievable news, Thomas said something that was completely honest and human: “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in His side, I will not believe” (John 20.25).
Thomas’ honesty is amazing. He did not rush to believe something that, quite honestly, was unbelievable in human experience and history. But neither did he reject his friends’ report out of hand. He simply stated that he, too, needed the personal experience, the actual sight, hearing, and touch of the Risen Christ, the return of his Friend from across the abyss of Death.
The Gospel story of the Lord’s personal reunion with Thomas melts the heart. After so much pain, so much horror, so much heartbreak, Jesus takes His disciple’s hand, and has him touch the scar from the spear in His Side, and the scar from the nails in His Hand.
Why is this so critically important? It is not just to leave more evidence so that you and I can “sign onto” the Resurrection -- because it isn’t just by reading the text that we believe. Thomas (and the rest of the disciples) had to know beyond a shadow of the doubt that the Resurrected Christ, though very much changed into the glorified resurrected body, is still the same Jesus they came to know. Jesus was now on His way to ascending into the heavenly glory of Divinity, so He could not longer be contained by the world, nor was He accessible to human familiarity.
But the Risen Christ of the Resurrection is the same Jesus of the three-year Gospel ministry, the same Good Shepherd and Friend Who called the disciples out of the fishing boats, the fields, the tax collecting tables -- out of the darkness of sin and the fear of death into the Light of Love.
In Jesus, Love descended into the Abyss of Death, the total brokenness and horror, and that same Jesus came back.
Only God could do that. And that is why Thomas, who did not doubt, knelt down and said, before any other disciple -- and, for that matter, before any other human being -- “My Lord and my God!” (John 20.28).
Jesus said, then, “Have you believed because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20.29).
That is you, and that is me. We believe, because Thomas and all the other disciples, took their belief and ran with it, all throughout the world. And throughout history. They all preached words that were written into the Gospels.
But it was their words, their belief, that calls us to believe in the Resurrection, and thus to know Jesus as “My Lord and my God.” It is not just the printed words in the Bible, but hearing and acting in the Holy Tradition handed down by the Apostles that we can receive the bright news of the Upper Room …
… that what was once unbelievable, that the news seemingly too good to be true, is believable indeed, and truly Good News.
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