Dear friends in Christ,
Happy Easter! I hope your Easter season has begun with raucous joy. I don’t think it’s possible to have too much Easter joy.
This Sunday, we hear the story of St. Thomas the Apostle asking to see Jesus’ wounds. Sometimes we pejoratively call him Doubting Thomas, but I wish we’d call him Courageous Thomas or Good Question Thomas. After all, he had the courage to ask what others surely wondered.
It’s clear from the scriptures that those around Jesus had trouble making sense of the new reality in which Jesus was raised from the dead. And who can blame them? If I saw someone dead and buried and then ran into them on the street a couple days later, I’d question my sanity! Even though Jesus had been saying he would be raised on the third day, perhaps Jesus’s disciples quite understandably had trouble getting that idea into their minds.
To St. Thomas’s great credit, he moved from doubt to belief. Jesus did not condemn him, but rather showed him signs. And belief followed quickly: “My Lord and my God!”
If we ponder Easter for more than a few seconds, we might also find ourselves doubting. Can this really have happened? Did our Father raise his Son to new life? Are sin and evil really vanquished? If we doubt, we could follow St. Thomas’s example and ask questions. We might ask fellow members of the church, or we might go to God in prayer. And when we receive assurance that grace and mercy have triumphed, let us be quick to proclaim this glad news.
Easter is not for the faint of heart. It’s OK to admit that. But let us not stay in a place of murky doubt. For God has triumphed, and our world surely needs to hear this message.
Yours faithfully,
Scott Gunn
Executive Director
More from our ministry:
Read Scott’s Easter meditations in ebook format: Kindle | Apple Books
Celebrate the whole season of Easter at 50days.org
Explore St. Thomas’s story in the Gospel of John: A Journey with John
Meet Jesus in the scriptures each day: Forward Day by Day