"Touch and see," Jesus responds to Thomas.

"Touch and see."

"My Lord and my God!" Thomas gasps.

I imagine him dropping to his knees in stunned reverence at what he experiences: "My Lord and my God!"

It is a realization – deep, profound, breath-taking, commanding one’s entire being – that can come about only through experience.

It is this experience – this experience many times over – upon which the early church was built.

Yet most of us don’t focus on Thomas’ astounding recognition of Jesus.

Most of us, when we think of Thomas, think of him disparagingly, as one lacking in faith.

"Doubting Thomas," we say, pejoratively, a kind of object lesson in belief.

Yet consider the passage:

Why, I ask myself, wasn’t Thomas in that upper room, cowering behind closed doors with everyone else on the evening of that Easter day when Jesus first appeared to the disciples?

We don’t know.

But our response is interesting.

Thomas wasn’t there.

He lost out.

And this morning, when Thomas asks to experience nothing more than what the disciples had experienced the week before – the marks in Jesus’ hands and his side – we react to him negatively, as though he were a lesser disciple – one who didn’t quite measure up.

"Doubting Thomas."

What is it about doubt that makes us so uncomfortable? As though our faith is somehow diminished if we ask questions? As if we are somehow inadequate if we can’t provide the "right" answer? If we don’t know?...

I would venture to guess that God is less threatened by doubt than God’s church has often been!

That being said – old habits die hard, and I’ve even heard people ask, "What am I supposed to believe?" as though faith were a test, with a "pass/fail" involved.

And yet, "supposed to believe" never really belongs to us; the "Faith of our Fathers" – and Mothers! – remains just that – the faith of our fathers and mothers – until we appropriate it as our own.

Touch and see.

Our doubt is one way we appropriate faith.

Tolstoy points out that certain questions are put to human beings not so much to get an answer to them as to spend a lifetime wrestling with them.

There is something about the wrestling which is a means of engaging the Divine; it is a means of moving from what we know – or have been told – is true, to the experience of Truth.

Doubt motivates that wrestling: it encourages us to "touch and see."

Doubt comes out of a longing to know; we do not find ourselves doubting because we are indifferent or complacent.

We doubt because we wish to deepen our understanding in a way that only experience can. Thomas didn’t want to see the marks in Jesus’ hands and side because he didn’t care; he cared passionately. He undoubtedly saw the transformation in the disciples who HAD experienced Jesus, and thought:

"I want what they’ve got!"

He didn’t just want to hear about it; he wanted to own that experience himself!

And Jesus responds to Thomas’ request, not with the scorn which accompanies our modern-day pejorative "Doubting Thomas," but with compassion: "Here – touch and see…"

Here, touch and see…

Jesus shows him his wounds, and Thomas responds, "My Lord and my God!"

"I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you…" Job tells us.

But now my eye sees you.

Show me!

Not as a challenge, but a plea: Help my eye to see you!

I’ve heard from the others; I want to know for myself!

I think we’ve all been in that "Thomas-place," where there is a dissonance between what we are hearing and what we have experienced. We have all heard the "Good News" of Jesus – but we also know that outside the walls of this sanctuary there are wars and violence; economic insecurity; poverty, pain, squalor, and death – in the Middle East, in the streets of our cities, perhaps within the walls of our homes… We can get lost in the pain of our world, and begin to doubt the reality of the God we have known by the hearing of the ear.

Where is justice?!

Why do I feel trapped? Worried? Stressed? Despairing? Frightened?

Where is the hope of the resurrection? Where is God?

Easter feels irrelevant – sitting around discussing the incomprehensible events of Easter and the resurrection somehow doesn’t touch the reality of what we are living...

We want to know – not the facts; not some syllogistic logic taking us from point A to Point B – but know here, in our hearts…

We long for a transformation from despair to hope, and all the information in the world won’t do it.

We want to experience the risen Lord, here, with us, and all that that presence means.

We yearn to drop to our knees in reverence, like Thomas, and say,

"My Lord, and my God!"

Thomas asked.

"Touch and see," Jesus responded.

"Touch and see."

I think the greater lesson we have to learn from Thomas is not his doubt, but his willingness to touch and see.

Thomas’ experience of the risen Christ came when he reached out to touch the wounds and the broken places in Jesus’ body.

I think of the many broken places in the body of Christ today, in our world, our lives – the wounds which offer themselves for us to touch.

And I hear the words of Jesus saying, "Touch and see."

"Touch and see."

Don’t turn your head away. You cannot know me by removing yourself from the pain of this world, or from the isolated safety of your gated communities and your middle-class lives; or the protection of your investments or the fullness of your calendars and your commitments.

Reach out.

Here I am. In this messy, broken world which is my body.

Come. Know me.

Touch and see.

For there is something about bringing our broken and hurting selves into contact with the wounds of another that does transform despair into hope, and allow us to see with our eyes what we have heard with our ears.

When we touch and see, we, too, know the presence of Jesus, here in our midst, that we might say, "My Lord, and my God!"

Amen.