Easter 2A (John 20:19-31)

​I have always appreciated Thomas for his doubt. Because of his refusal to believe without seeing, there is room in our tradition for honest questioning—for that sacred hesitation between loss and faith. But Thomas offers us something beyond permission to doubt. He also shows us how to recognize Jesus.

Thomas remembers Jesus’s wounded body. The marks of the nails, the pierced side—these must be present, or this cannot be the same Lord. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands,” he says, “and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” And Jesus answers not with condemnation, but invitation: “Put your finger here. Reach out your hand.” The wounds are not erased in the resurrection. They remain—healed, yet still visible. They are what make the risen Christ recognizable as the one who suffered and died for us.

We are about to conclude our ministry at St. Agnes’. We carry with us 130 years of memory—of joy and sorrow, of laughter and prayer, of baptisms and farewells, of ordinary Sundays and extraordinary ones, when bread was broken and hope renewed. For more than a century, this parish has been a mark of grace in this community, a place where Christ’s presence has taken flesh in us. With this ending, we are wounded. There is no other honest word for it.

Yet this wound is not a mark of failure or of simple loss. It, too, can become a sign—a mark of belonging to the body of Christ. In our grief, we are drawn into the mystery of the risen Lord whose wounds did not disappear but were transfigured. Our wound has been taken up into his. It is not undone by resurrection; it is held within it.

And this is what Thomas teaches us: the wounds are how we know him. They distinguish the risen Christ from every idealized image of triumph. They are memory made flesh, faith made tangible. And so it may be with us. In bearing our own wound faithfully—neither denying it nor being consumed by it—we become part of what makes Christ’s body recognizable in the world. We are marked, yes, but in being marked, we bear witness.

In time, this wound will heal into tenderness—a holy scar reminding us that love was real here, that God once walked among us in this place. The doors may close, but the story continues in the hands and hearts of all who have been touched by this community. Christ still breathes peace into our fear and says again, “Do not doubt, but believe.”


The temple bell stops-
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.

Basho (1644-94)
(translated by Robert Bly)