• Acts of the Apostles 2: 14a, 22-32

As the Acts of the Apostles demonstrates, the proclamation– that Jesus, whose execution was public knowledge, but had been raised from the dead by God– saturated the self-identity of the early church.  Familiar phrases from the ancient psalms had new meanings due to their experience/memory of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

• Psalm 16

The psalmist gives thanks for the presence of God in her life.  When her conscience had kept her up at night, she was overjoyed by God’s palpable presence.

• I Peter 1: 3-9

This letter attributed to Peter is an indication of both the effectiveness  of the Roman Empire to detect and suppress any unauthorized religion and, at the same time, a testimony to the rapid rise in public awareness of the early church in the decades after the execution and resurrection of Jesus.  This letter of encouragement to the believers under the threat of Roman persecution was especially meaningful to those who had not seen Jesus but still believe.

• John 20: 19-31

At this point in John’s narrative, the disciples of Jesus know only of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the Risen Lord, whom she had originally first mistaken for the gardner or groundskeeper at the tomb where he had been buried.  On the same evening they had heard her news that morning, the disciples are huddled behind closed doors “for fear of the Jews.”  Without fanfare, John writes simply, “Jesus came and stood among them….”  Echoing the promise and invitation to “peace” made the last time they were all together, (at supper on Thursday evening; 16: 21-22), Jesus says: “Peace be among you.”  He offers his body, in particular his hands and side, to his disciples for inspection and they “rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”  He again announces “peace” and then commissions them: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  He “breathes” on them with the words: “receive the Holy Spirit.”  John’s narrative abruptly jumps forward a week to the following Sunday, when the disciples are again “in the house.”  Thomas, who had been absent the prior Sunday, insists that unless he sees and touches the wounds left by the nails in Jesus’ hands and can put his hand in the wound in Jesus’ side left by the spear, he will not believe.  Jesus appears again with the same promise of “peace.”  He invites Thomas to touch the wounds in his body and to “believe.”   Thomas blurts out:  “My Lord and my God.”  John’s narrative continues with two crucial sayings with great importance for the future.  First, Jesus now offers a specific blessing for a particular group of people: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  Secondly, John pointedly writes that Jesus “did many other signs” that he did not write about, but the ones he did write about “are written so that you might come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” and that this “believing” will bring you “life in his name.”

In Aspects of the Novel, the novelist E.M. Foster offers an observation that preachers could benefit from keeping in mind continually, but especially during the Great Fifty Days of Easter.  He described most sermons as “hot denunciations or advice– so that in the end you cannot remember whether or not you ought or ought not not have a body, and you are only sure you are futile.”  (p. 143)  

Preaching can/ought to be bold announcement of God’s activity in human affairs and specific individuals (with bodies!) and specific, major changes that coild follow.  The claim of the church is that God became an actual human body in a specific time and place with a unique personality.  Big changes resulted.  In the scriptures, this bold announcement does not weaken after his death, it actually takes on a heightened insistence.  After he was raised, the scriptures emphasize, Jesus ate, drank and talked with his followers, just as he had done before.  On the evening of the Sunday one week after Jesus was raised, he insisted Thomas touch his body, groping the wounds as freely as he wished.  We can easily  imagine that on these occasions when the Risen Lord was reunited with his followers, they laughed, recalled shared memories and Jesus renewed the promises of “peace” he had made before he was executed.  

The scriptures make another bold announcement with profound implications: the church becomes the continuing embodiment of Christ in the world.  In the intimacy of shared meals, Jesus passed to his followers the responsibility/privilege/opportunity to become his body in the world.  He assured them that they would have the appropriate abilities because the gift of the Holy Spirit would empower them– “receive the Holy Spirit.”   Jesus took the occasion of Thomas’ need for independent, tactile experience with the body of the Risen Christ to bless all those in the future who would come to know and believe.  John’s narrative is quite clear: the physical presence of the raised Jesus personally transfers/relays God’s work in the world to those who experienced him as well as all those who in the future will believe.  Equally blessed/empowered are those who believe then or now!

Jacques Derrida was deeply impressed by the work of Jean-Luc Nancy on “touching.”  Derrida’s last book published just before his death was titled On Touching– Jean-Luc Nancy, in which he discusses the importance of “touching” in all the gospel narratives.  Derrida writes:

“Not only is Jesus touching, being the Toucher, he is also the Touched one, and not only in the first sense… (that is, touched in his heart by heartfelt, merciful compassion): he is there as well for the touching; he can and must be touched.  This is the condition for salvation– so as to be safe and sound, accede to immunity, touching the Toucher.”  “It is not the touch that is saving, then, but the faith that this touch signifies and attests.”  (p. 101)

In the graphic scene painted by John,  Thomas touches the scars left by the nails in the hands of Jesus and then pokes around in the wound left by the sword that had been thrust into his side and declares: “My Lord and my God,”  delivering the shortest, most unequivocal declaration of faith by anyone in John’s gospel.  We are just as eligible now as was Thomas to “signify and attest.”   We, in our turn, become the embodiment of God’s work in the world.  Because we have “touched”  and “been touched” we can now “touch” others in God’s name.  That is our privilege and our responsibility.