The Incredible Credulity of the Resurrection
A Sermon by Seminarian Paddy Cavanaugh on the Second Sunday of Easter, Year A, April 16, 2023.
Acts 2:14a,22-32 (Peter testifies to the resurrection): 1 Peter 1:3-9 (Peter exhorts faith in the resurrection: John 20: 19-31 (The incredulity of Thomas)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Alleluia, Christ is risen.
[The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia]
I’m still not tired of hearing that. Christ is risen my friends, the tomb is empty! I believe this Eastertide that Christ, having died and been buried, rose from the dead on the third day. Not just in spirit, not as an allegory, and not just in the hearts of his disciples. But I believe that Christ Jesus truly rose from the dead, body and all. Christ is truly risen. Alleluia.
Now, if you’re still not entirely sure about this resurrection business, or aren’t sure that you fully understand what exactly it means, that’s okay, today is the Sunday for you. And I’ll add that the very fact that you are here is a testament to your faith, or desire to grapple with faith, even if that faith seems utterly incredulous at times. Our Gospel lesson today is all about understanding the incredulity of faith in the resurrection. It’s about Saint Thomas, the doubter, who even as he saw our Lord’s risen body, still needed confirmation that what he saw was real. And thank God for sweet Thomas! Because I happen to believe that his doubt, his incredulity, affirms the credibility of our faith today, and I’ll tell you why. But first, I have to confess to something.
Do I know with verifiable certainty that Christ is risen? No, I do not.
I was not there. The only people who I believe know definitively that Christ has risen, body and all, are the women at the tomb, the disciples who saw the risen Christ, and the departed saints in glory who are with Him now. But I believe it. I believe He has risen, and that through His risen life we are saved.
Let’s think about this for a moment, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It’s incredulous. And it’s a scandalous belief that defies all logic and reason. It was scandalous for the disciples then, and it’s sometimes scandalous for us now, to believe that Christ is actually risen.
But let me tell you something friends, knowing is not a requisite for believing. In fact, knowing something usually makes belief unnecessary. For instance, I know that we are all here at St. George’s right now. I know it’s the second Sunday of Easter in the year of our Lord 2023. I know that some of you are wondering where this sermon is going because I see it on your faces. You see, we don’t need to believe in these categories of things, because we already know them to be true. These things are simply facts that are perceptible, and therefore credible to us, because our senses, our physical experience confirms to us that they are true – not just believable, but true.
To suggest otherwise, to propose that something which is completely unverifiable, something which defies our sensory experience and the laws of nature is frankly, incredible. Incredible in the literal sense of the word, meaning not credible. Incredulous. It would be incredible to suggest that this altar linen is not white. Because we see that it is. It would be incredible to suggest that this choir does not belt out beautiful hymns, because we have heard them do so. Do you see where I’m going with this? It would be incredible to suggest that Christ is risen, because, well, it completely defies all that we know to be true about how the world works.
This is where we find that wonderful disciple Thomas, who is known for his incredulity about what happened after that first Easter. The Gospel tells us that Jesus, whose body Thomas saw crucified and buried just days ago, suddenly walk through the door saying “Peace be with you” (John 20:26). Peace be with you?! Jesus, really? Jesus, knowing that Thomas was feeling anything but peaceful in that moment of shock and disbelief, he offered him the wounds in his hands and in his side so that Thomas’s body could confirm the real presence of Jesus’s body, and be at peace. Jesus used Thomas’s doubt to show him – and us – that the incredible is indeed credible and true.
You see, it’s the doubt which then enables faith, for Thomas and for us who “though we do not see him now, believe in him,” as Peter writes to hopeful disciples who want to believe but are not entirely convinced (1 Pet. 1:8). But how does Thomas’s doubt enable our faith? Doesn’t the fact that the earliest disciples themselves were unsure of the resurrection cast doubt on our own belief in the resurrection two millennia later? I actually think it does the opposite, and here’s why.
You see, we often have this misperception as people in the modern world, with the benefit of modern science, that people in the ancient world somehow didn’t understand how things worked. But they really did, they knew the essential things as well as we do. They knew that dead people didn’t miraculously come back to life. They understood nature. C.S. Lewis once quipped that the reason Joseph was initially incredulous about Mary’s pregnancy and the virgin birth wasn’t because he didn’t know the biological realities of life, but because he did. And here, Thomas shares those same doubts at the other end of Jesus’s life. Everything in his experience up until this point had told him that there was no way that Jesus could suddenly be alive again. These things just don’t happen, and he needed hard, touchable proof in his own hands to confirm what he saw, because, Thomas knew that sight can be deceiving.
After what must have been an excruciating and disorienting few days in the wake of Jesus’s horrible death, the disciples were likely sleep deprived, scared, and questioning everything they thought to be true. Thomas did not trust his own eyes in this moment and needed extra sensory confirmation that what was before him was indeed true. And the Gospel said that once he had felt our Lord’s body with his, Thomas believed and exclaimed “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Beyond belief, I believe that Thomas knew in that moment that Jesus was the risen Lord Himself. Jesus was the crucified and risen God. His doubt had enabled his faith.
Peter and John had a similar experience of doubt-affirming faith. When they heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus had risen, they did not immediately believe it, but ran to the tomb to see that it was empty for themselves. They saw it, and they knew. (John 20:1-8)
And friends, I believe this doubt of the disciples is one of the principle things that makes our faith in Christ’s resurrection credible and worthy of our belief. If the disciples had all unanimously agreed that Christ had risen beyond a shadow of a doubt, then I would be incredulous of the resurrection.
Had the disciples, including St. Thomas, after witnessing Jesus’s resurrection not all gone to their graves as martyrs in a manner similar to Jesus, then I would be incredulous of the resurrection. If the resurrection had not truly happened, it would be far easier, more rational of them, to simply return to their lives before they had met Jesus, sad and embarrassed, yet safe and alive.
But no, something in that first Easter left them utterly convinced that this faith was worth dedicating, and giving, their entire lives to – dedicating their lives to carrying the faith to all the doubtful for generations and generations to come, because their doubt had been overcome by something real. By the reality of the resurrection.
And the reality of their conviction is enough to enable my faith for today. I do not need to know to believe. Thomas’s doubt helps me to believe in something that is utterly incredible – the true miracle of God’s resurrected life.
And what does all this mean for us? What does it mean to believe in the resurrection? I’ll tell you in the words of Serbian Orthodox theologian Justin Popović, who writes that the resurrection means that we are condemned to life. He says:
“People condemned God to death; with his resurrection God condemned them to immortality. For striking Him, God returned embraces; for insults, blessings; for death, immortality. Never did men show more hate to God than when they crucified him; and God never showed His love towards people more than when He was resurrected. Mankind wanted to make God dead, but God, with His resurrection, made people alive. The crucified God resurrected on the third day and thereby killed death! There is no more death. Immortality is surrounding man and his entire world.” [pause]
I think I should start to end now because there’s no way I can top something as beautiful and incredible as that. But I will say that though we may still be impacted by the residual effects of sin and death in this world, death is only like a burnt out star whose last bitter rays will finally cease to reach us on the last day. At a cosmic level we have assurance in the resurrection that death has no sting, no power over us, and life has been liberated by the empty tomb of Christ Jesus.
The doubt of the apostles affirms this. So you of great faith, and you of great doubt, join me in saying once more:
Alleluia, Christ is risen.
[The Lord is risen, indeed] Amen.