Kirkepiscatoid

Ok, with Lent/Easter over, maybe I can find a little more time to blog. This week, the sermon was one of the Easter season classics--"Doubting Thomas".

Actually, I have decided Thomas wasn't so much of a doubter after all. He was just a guy who needed a little empirical evidence with his belief.

I always think of that story in terms of what I know about Jewish law and custom. It would have been TOTALLY uncool to touch a dead body, b/c then you’d be unclean for seven days. So for Thomas to even give it a go, he had to have at least SOME belief. So he gets a bad rap about being a doubter. No self respecting orthodox Jew would go poking on a dead body for kicks. And, I think we lose part of the power of the story by not thinking about it in terms of the whole “uncleanliness” thing. To even TOUCH the resurrected Christ took real faith, because who wants to be unclean for 7 days? Then tack on the fact that you are not supposed to disturb the internal organs of dead bodies in the Orthodox tradition. That is a lot of uncleanliness to risk.

Based on that, I'm convinced Thomas thought he was looking at a living person. Perhaps his doubt was that it was Jesus on the cross, or that Jesus had ever died to begin with. But I don't think he, for one minute, thought he was looking at anything other than a living person.

I have to laugh, though, b/c one of the things I have wanted to know for a long time (and is on my list of “thing’s I just HAVE to ask when I get to the place where light perpetual shines on me) was just WHAT Thomas felt when he stuck his hand in there that made him go, “My Lord and my God!” Of course, I suppose most people in that story imagine him just kind of poking his finger in there and I imagine him stuffing it in up to the elbow! But just WHAT did he feel? Nothing? Jesus’ spleen? Something grabbing his hand in there? Someday, I just gotta find out!