I would like to play fast-and-loose with this text from John, this familiar scene from the fourth Gospel. The point s very clear in that the entire episode is set up and probably created in order to lead people to this climactic statement: "Blessed are those who have not seen and have come to believe". That is what this is all about. However, because this is kind of misleading, I would like to add a comment to this statement. If we take this story at face value, what did Thomas see? Did he simply see a dead body up and about? If this is all that he saw, then what did he believe? Did he solely believe that God could resurrect dead bodies? If this is the primary importance of this event, then it really is not worth very much. It is mildly interesting, but it is certainly not very transformative. Rather, as is emphasized in the Gospel of John in which John underlines various levels of faith and talks about superficial and trivial faith as opposed to transformative faith - the essence of believing in the risen Jesus lies in believing that Jesus' way of living one's human existence is the most meaningful way to live one's existence. Thus, this quasi-magical or carnival sort of faith which subscribes to the belief that "this man with holes in his body is walking around", is far from the real point.

What I would like to talk about today is something that is implicit in the readings: the risen Jesus does have holes in his body.

I am sure that by the time this story came to its final form (the end of the first century) there was no question that the members of this Jesus movement had begun to suffer persecution, both from their fellow Jews and the Romans. Recall that Jesus' death was basically a political execution. The Romans were not about to have anybody running around declaring themself King of the Jews. Hence, the fact of suffering for following this form of life was probably already in place. Or more accurately, the consequences of following Jesus, of following out one's faith that God has raised this Jew from the dead, probably entailed suffering. We even see this reflected in this passage from the Book of Revelation, which is also written to encourage people who are under the gun for being part of the Jesus movement.

To believe that the risen Jesus still has holes in his wrists and chest is crucial because it is so easy (and historically, Christians have done this) to say, "Jesus has been raised from the dead. We are washed in the blood of the lamb. We are all home-free". This is repeated consistently throughout Christian history. Now let me suggest a different way of approaching this. Would the world today be any different if Jesus had not lived? This is a question that puzzles me. My sense is that there would only be a marginal difference. For example, if we single out our century which is coming to a close, more people have been murdered by other human beings in this century than in any other in the history of the world. This is a simple fact, whether we are talking about Pol Pot (God rest him), Stalin, Mao, or Hitler, etc. The one thing that our century, more than any other, has produced is dead bodies. And so, one may really wonder where the Christian enterprise lies. I think that this death toll is partly due to the fact that we forget that the risen Jesus has holes; that the resurrection does not just mean that we are all home-free and can therefore slip through life unscathed. For instance, we understand very well that the church as an institution has not listened to this. The recent statement on the Jews is simply the most recent example of the evasion of responsibility on the part of the official church. It is endless. We could go on; the former archbishop of Halifax, and we could go through bishops and priests involved in pederasty over the past ten years in the Roman church - - we have claimed that the children whom they have abused are to blame. What is going on in these cases? To be precise, these individuals have failed to take responsibility for their lives, both individually and as an institution. I think that this is a key element because if we say that "Jesus is raised and therefore my sins are washed away," then we really do not have to take responsibility for ourselves.

Various Christian bodies do this differently. For example, the Baptists, who read the Gospel of John very carefully, will say that "we are now living in the light". So, when people like Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart fall, it just knocks out the pins out from beneath everybody, because this is not supposed to happen. This is not supposed to occur because they are confirmed in grace and they walk in "the light". We Romans have a different way of doing this in that we say "we may all be sinners but the Church is indefectible; the Church is hanging on and doing the right thing". Well, the fact is that it is not. In other words, what is going on throughout the Christian enterprise is our failure to say, "Here I stand in the shadow of the crucified Jesus and I am going to replicate in myself his life and career in my own time and place," . As Paul says, "I will bear in my body the marks of the suffering of Christ". To believe in the Resurrection is to believe essentially that this is where we are, this is where our interests as human beings lie. It is to take absolute responsibility for living as if we really did all belong with each other, especially the most profoundly forgotten, whether in the past or the present. Clearly, this is the point at which the Cross intervenes. You can only rightly understand all kinds of troubling issues, for example, abortion and sexual ethics, only if the ultimate issue for us as believers in Jesus, is the question: do we all belong together or not? And to the extent that we do, we are going to have to, again, as Paul says, "bear each others' burdens".

Moreover, the very capacity that it takes to do this, as Paul will always say, "is itself, if you really want it, the proof of the power of the Resurrection", beaten-up, but not out!" If you get a chance, read the Second Letter to the Corinthians in which Paul goes through so many catastrophes and yet he says, "I am still here and thriving!".

Finally, all this puts the skids to a lot of our calculations about how rational life should be, how calculable life should be. Those of us who make our living running our mouths, and we hope, with our brains attached to our mouths, have a very hard time dealing with this. For example, this is examination time, we are reading essays and everybody is getting nervous and worrying about "the answers". We are faced with the eternal question: is this going to be on the examination? Well, is the "exam of life" based on knowing all of the answers? No. We do not have to know any answers because life is not calculable. If there are answers they are hidden, as Paul again will say, "with Christ, in God". This is really important because we think we live in a rational universe. But whose rationality?

Thank God we have solved some of our problems. We know about penicillin and nuclear energy, however, we do not know about life. To pretend that we do is to evade what life is all about. God knows about life, God has us, and God is free to love as God will love. Our great problem, of course, is that we already think we know what love is all about: how love works, what love is, how love plays out.

So, the risen Jesus has holes, and unless we avoid making the great disconnection between the risen Jesus and the holes we are going to fake it, and God knows we Christians have a long history of faking it. Thus, it is terribly important that we look at this as carefully and seriously as possible. The risen Jesus has holes and this is the only real risen Jesus.