On my bookshelf is a book by N.T. Wright, the leading Anglican scholar on the New Testament today. That book is called The Resurrection of the Son of God. For 700 plus pages, Bishop Wright painstakingly argues, against all plausibility, that the most reasonable explanation for everything that happened in Jerusalem in the days after Jesus's death is that He rose from the dead and appeared to His disciples. I'm sure that for many modern people, 7,000 pages wouldn't be enough to persuade them that Jesus's Resurrection actually happened. I am more than happy to commend Wright's book to anyone for their summer beach reading. His detailed argument certainly has its place in the debate between believers and skeptics. But ultimately, The Resurrection is not an argument to be won, a proposition to be believed, nor a doctrine to be defended. I don't mean to say that it isn't any of these things. I would not be here if I didn't trust that Jesus Christ was physically raised from the dead. But how many of us have gotten ourselves out of bed on a beautiful weekend morning just to win a debate? To believe in the risen Christ is to trust Him. To trust Him is to move away from whatever theory, ideology or philosophy that we have devised to manufacture our own purpose. To trust Him is to decide that only in the Resurrection will we find meaning and purpose in our life.
Does this mean that we accept the Resurrection blindly with no proof other than how we feel? No. The Gospel accounts of the Resurrection inspire many questions for which we reasonably seek answers. What is resurrection? What was the resurrected Jesus like? On the one hand, he seems to have none of the limitations of a physical body. You never see him coming from anywhere. He just appears, seemingly out of thin air. Other times, he's right in front of people, and they have no idea that it's him; until in a flash they recognize him, and poof, he disappears again. That's not like any physical body we've seen. So maybe the disciples just projected all of their inward grief, and hope, into some hallucinations. That's one way people have found to get around the Resurrection of the Body. But the Gospels won't allow us that neat psychological explanation. This Jesus who appears in locked rooms out of nowhere, and disappears just as instantly as he appeared, also eats fish. You can feel the breath blowing from his lungs. He invites witnesses to stick their fingers into his open wounds. You can't get more physical than that.
N.T. Wright has coined the word, "transphysical" to describe the body of the risen Jesus. It remains physical, something you can touch, but somehow transformed, no longer bound by the rules of space and motion of this physical world. In this world, everything must move from one place to another. And when you are in the place to which you moved, you are no longer in the place you were unless you move back. But that physical law didn't apply to the risen Jesus. But that didn't make him any less physical, any less tangible, and any less present. We who call ourselves Christians are suggesting that something happened about 2,000 years ago, that had never happened before, and has not happened since. We are suggesting something so radical, so seemingly impossible, and so untrustworthy, that either we should be laughed off as lunatics, or else everything we call "normal" must be laughed away as ludicrous. Over the next two Sundays, I hope that we can grasp what it means for each of us to live in this new transphysical world of Resurrection.
At the center of today's Gospel stands Thomas, who stands for the skeptic, the scientist, the historian who needs the evidence before he can place his trust in anyone's claims. Thomas is probably the one who most needed to be in that room on that first Sunday. He needs the proof. No we believers might say, how silly to ask for proof of resurrection. Except that resurrection is a transphysical process. And that which is physical is usually something that can be proven, or disproven, by observation. What if the Jewish leaders had opened Jesus's tomb, only to find a corpse wrapped in the same bloodied burial cloths? Would we even know who Jesus was? Would we be here on a Sunday morning?
That we are here is evidence that after Jesus was crucified, his tomb was found to be empty. The question that must be answered by believers and skeptics alike is: Where was he? We are here because his disciples testified to his Resurrection as the explanation for the empty tomb. And enough people were convinced by that testimony to hand it down to their children, and so one and so on. Is the empty tomb, and the disciples' witness, by itself proof that Jesus rose from the dead? No; but it does mean that those who testified to what they saw that first Easter morning cannot be immediately dismissed as lunatics.
Still, what they testify to is outlandish to say the least. Thomas has spent three years with these people following Jesus. If he thought they all were crazy before this, presumably he would have left them earlier. They are his best friends. Thomas knows they're not crazy. But he sure knows how crazy they sound. A man who is dead, dead, dead. And suddenly he just appears in this room. A dead man whose breath you can feel. It is not possible, and I will not believe it until I have the only proof that counts, a body that I can touch. And so, one week later, to the day, Thomas sees exactly what his friends saw: a body that just appears in an instant with no idea where it came from. And what a body it is. Go ahead Thomas. Reach out with your finger, and look at my hands. Reach out with your hand and put it into my side, if that is what you need to believe in me. But don't doubt me, Thomas. Trust me that I have rewritten the laws of the physical world. Trust me that the cycle of life and death has been broken. Trust me that you were not made to die, but to be resurrected.
One of the best known depictions of this Biblical scene comes from the Renaissance painter Caravaggio. In it, you see two of the disciples seizing Thomas's right hand and forcing his finger into Jesus's open wound. But look closely at the scripture. Does the author of the Gospel say that Thomas took up Jesus's invitation? No. Without that physical examination, Thomas could still have convinced himself that he was hallucinating. To touch the wounded body would have been the surest proof that He who was crucified and who died, was alive again. But Thomas no longer insists on the physical proof. He chooses to trust. He now trusts that this man who has conquered death can only be, "my Lord and my God."
Neither he nor his fellow disciples know all the laws of this new transphysical world into which they are following Jesus. Two millennia later, we're still figuring out those rules. If we who have not seen but believed are still trying to figure out those rules, it really shouldn't come as a surprise that there are those who doubt today. Remember that Doubting Thomas's friends kept faith with him. And Jesus came to make room for Doubting Thomas. So we can certainly make room for the doubters today. Jesus Christ doesn't need us to win an argument about His Resurrection. He just needs us to keep the doors unlocked and open to all honest seekers of the truth. But if Jesus rose from the dead and lives, today and forever, then it doesn't matter how long ago it happened. Resurrection happened then and it happens whenever someone chooses to trust Him. What are the rules of this new transphysical creation in which we live? Come back next Sunday, and hopefully we'll learn or re-learn a few of them. In the meantime and for all time, blessed are we who have not seen the wounded side, and still have placed our trust in the reality of Him who is risen.
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