On Not Seeing Yet Believing: today’s By the Way column in the Medicine Hat News

Bright Week is what the Orthodox Church calls the week after Easter. This week is Bright Week for us. What a lovely name! Last weekend the Risen Jesus beamed himself through a locked door to stand among his fearful disciples, showed them his wounds and they “rejoiced” (John 20.19-20). No kidding! Can you imagine? Talk about supernatural and radical rearrangement of paradigms! But Thomas missed it. When the other disciples told him about Jesus’ visit, he didn’t believe them and said he wouldn’t believe unless he got to see Jesus himself and touch his wounds (John 20.24-25). 

A week later Jesus beamed his Risen self through a locked door again so Thomas could see him and touch his wounds. Thomas then made one of the most important defining statements in the Bible about who Jesus really is when he said, “My Lord and my God! (John 20.28). Seeing must be believing. 

You might think that story and that statement by one who is probably the most famous doubter in history would have settled everything. Everyone would have been convinced and believed from then on. Highways, byways, cities, towns and villages would all empty into the Churches at least every Sunday morning to celebrate and to bear witness to God’s defining, eternal life giving and loving act: the Resurrection from the dead of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 

But that’s not the way things turned out. During the original Bright Week not only was there astonishment, rejoicing, great joy, burning hearts, minds opened to the Scriptures, heart-felt worship and the receiving of the Holy Spirit, but there was also bribery, doubt, fear, disbelief, weeping, and people weren’t able to recognize Jesus (Mt 28, Mk 16, Lk 24, Jn 20-21). All of which continues to this day.

“Have you believed because you have seen me?” Jesus asked Thomas. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe (John 20.29). That’s most of us who have come to believe today; people who have not seen like Thomas did and yet who have struggled to faith through adversities, temptations and the sin that clings so closely. After all, “Those who believe they believe in God,” wrote Spanish Basque author and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, “but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainly, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.” 

Coming to believe in all the fullness and resurrection glory of God in Jesus Christ is worth the effort. May your blessings be bright, indeed!

Gene+