Where Was Thomas?

In the Gospel for Sunday [John 20:19-31], we read that the disciples were gathered in a locked and shuttered room on the evening of the resurrection. But Thomas wasn’t with them. This isn’t the big news, though. Jesus appears to them and, in John’s Gospel, this is when they receive the Holy Spirit. And John, or later copyists, record him giving them the power to forgive—or not forgive—sin. But where was Thomas?

The women had come to them earlier that day and told them that Jesus was risen. Was Thomas with them when that happened? Had the two men who were heading toward Emmaus [see next week’s Gospel] made it back yet to Jerusalem? Is that why the disciples were gathered? But where is Thomas?

I don’t know, of course, but there is a lesson for us here. If we’re not careful, we’ll let ourselves be elsewhere when the risen Lord appears. We can be sitting in church, presumably to worship, but have our minds wander very far a field and we’ll miss Jesus when he arrives in the Word or Sacrament. We may be so busy with work that we don’t see Jesus in the blooming of the tulip poplars or azaleas. We may be so intent at home on a TV game or program that we don’t notice the risen Lord who might have joined us at the dinner table had we been there instead of eating off a TV tray.

I’d like to believe Thomas was out doing something that had ultimate significance that first day of the week. But if he’s like most of us, he wasn’t. He was tending to business. Maybe trying to figure out how to get started back up in the trade he’d abandoned to follow Jesus. Let’s give him some credit, though. Maybe he was back at the tomb trying to make sense of what happened. Wherever he was, he didn’t stay there. A week later he’s present with his friends when Jesus comes primarily to speak to him. And he’s changed. Forever.

We can come back too.

Peace,

Jerry+