Still Wounded, Still Risen

 

The strangeness of Easter Evening gives me hope that even with all our scars God is still resurrecting us.

Acts 5:27-32

Psalm 118:14-29

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

 

©2025 The Rev. Seth Olson

This sermon was preached on the Second Sunday of Easter at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles, Hoover, AL. A video of the message may be found here. 

 

Holy God, may my words be your words and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same. 

 

In today’s Gospel lesson, it’s the evening of the very first Easter day, and the disciples are hiding behind locked doors. They’ve heard the rumors from Mary. Some have seen the empty tomb. But they’re not shouting alleluias or organizing a celebratory, Paschal potluck just yet.

 

They are afraid. The world remains dangerous. Jesus may be risen, but Rome is still in charge. The pain is fresh. The wounds of crucifixion aren’t just his—they are theirs as well.

 

And then, Jesus shows up. He doesn’t knock. He doesn’t scold. He doesn’t wait for them to muster up more faith or get it together.

 

He just… comes. Through locked doors. Through fear. Through confusion. And what does he say? 

 

“Peace be with you.” We love to exchange the peace of Christ at Holy Apostles—it’s long, luxurious, and extensive enough to greet lots of neighbors, but this peace of Christ from today’s Gospel account is on another level of magnitude. 

 

Soon after sharing peace, Jesus does something even stranger. And, if we weren’t so used to hearing this story, every year on the Second Sunday of Easter, this detail would startle us: Jesus shows them his hands and his side. He doesn’t hide the wounds. He doesn’t erase the evidence. He leads with his scars.

 

It’s the wounded Jesus who brings peace. It’s the scarred Savior who breathes new life. And I wonder—if this is what resurrection looks like for Jesus, might it look this way for us too?

 

Because here’s the truth we often miss in our pastel-hued, chocolate-covered, alleluia-infused Easter celebrations: Resurrection doesn’t mean pretending the pain never happened. It simply means that the pain does NOT get the final word.

 

We get another glimpse of this in our reading from Revelation, where from the Island of Patmos, John writes to seven struggling churches. You may recall, John is not writing from a mountaintop retreat, he’s having an often-misinterpreted heavenly vision while being banished for his beliefs. He’s writing in exile, as he endures isolation on this isle, all because he believed in Christ. And yet, from these mystical margins, he gives us this breathtaking proclamation from God:

 

“I am the Alpha and the Omega… who is and who was and who is to come.”

 

In other words:
God was not just in the beginning.
God is not just waiting until the end.
God is right here in the middle with us.

 

Right here in the mess. In the wounds. In the doubts. In the uncertain future.

 

Right here in the lives of people like Thomas, who need to touch the pain in order to believe the promise.

 

Right here in communities like ours, who are trying to figure out what it means to be resurrection people in a Good Friday world. Which may lead us to wonder, where does faith meet practice? Because being a resurrection person doesn’t mean pretending everything’s fine or turning away from grief, fear, or burnout. 

 

In the world of behavioral health, there’s a concept called post-traumatic growth. It’s the idea that while trauma can shake us, it also can open us. That we don’t just bounce back—we bounce forward. With deeper empathy. With clearer priorities. With renewed purpose.

 

Now, this doesn’t happen instantly, and it is in no way guaranteed. But when people reflect, stay connected in community, and let themselves be transformed—not by the trauma itself, but by their response to it—growth becomes possible. As strange as it sounds, our woundings have the power to bless us with new gifts, skills, and perspectives. 

 

Sounds a lot like Easter, doesn’t it?

 

Jesus didn’t rise with a brand-new body. He rose with wounds still visible. And yet, something in him—and in those around him—had changed. We, too, are invited to be people of growth. Not by avoiding our pain, but by abiding in the One who still shows up in the middle of it.

 

The question for us, my beloved, Holy Apostles, is: where do we go from here? Or perhaps, where do we grow from here?

 

Easter is not a one-day celebration. It’s a 50 day season—and more than that, it’s a way of life.

 

But it’s a strange way of life. Because it asks us to trust a God who still bears wounds. The Resurrection invites us to grow—even when we’re afraid. It calls us to serve—even when we feel unqualified. It beckons us to believe—not in certainty, but in God’s presence, for the One who was and is to come… is with us now.

 

So maybe our job this Easter season isn’t to have the answers. Maybe our job is to breathe deeply of the Spirit Jesus gives us. To be honest about our wounds and the wounds of the world. To show up behind locked doors and whisper peace. To walk with each other into a future we can’t see but believe is held by God.

 

Because, friends, Christ is still wounded… but he is also still risen. And so are we.

Amen.

 

 

The Dark Before the Dawn

What does the shortest day of the year have to do with St. Thomas?

Nine hours and fifty minutes, that is how much daylight we experienced today. If you would like to get a little bit more specific the sun rose at 6:50:59 AM this morning and set at 4:41:12 PM about fifty minutes before this evening’s service began. Of course, if you long for many daylight hours tomorrow is not your day. December 21st features almost a minute less light than today with the sun rising 30 seconds later and the sun setting 30 seconds earlier. Tomorrow, as you probably already know, is the shortest day of the year. It is also the day that the Church sets aside to celebrate Thomas, the twin, one of the twelve disciples—and we have moved that feast to this evening. We could pass over this connection between Thomas and the shortest day of the year quickly thinking it coincidence, but if we look at the life of this saint we will realize the connection with darkness is anything but coincidental.

A few weeks ago Evan preached on Sunday morning that the Christmas Season was not celebrated for about three hundred years after Jesus’ time on earth. In fact, it took a decree from the Roman Emperor to get the Nativity cycle started, and this was at least in part to subsume the pagan holiday of Saturnalia—in addition to recognizing that the Feast of the Annunciation was nine months earlier. But simply placing the day of Christmas around the same time as a raucous festival like Saturnalia would not woo those pagans to Christianity. So how did the Church wrestle away the hearts of those wild ones long ago?

At this time of the year you may notice that we celebrate a lot of big-time occasions in the church! Of course, there are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Epiphany, but we also have St. Stephen’s Day on the 26th, St. John the Evangelist’s Day on the 27th, Holy Innocents on the 28th, and Holy Name on January 1st. And, tonight we celebrate the Eve of St. Thomas’ Day. Why so much celebrating? I believe those Christians wanted to lure over even the pagans into not only a day of celebrating, but a whole festive season. While all these feast days may not be major ones, they all point to what it means to be a follower of the Incarnate God. “Alright, alright,” you say, “But, why start with Thomas on the 21st?” Well, it’s as obvious as the difference between night and day you see.

The shortest day of the year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, means it is the darkest day of the year and who better to teach us about moving through the dark than the disciple of doubt St. Thomas? Thomas was not with the other disciples on the day of Resurrection. Where was he? Well, he was out. Perhaps this meant he was more scared than the rest, but that appears illogical, as the most afraid would have presumably been the most hidden. He could have been going to comfort others, helping the poor, or trying to figure out where Jesus was if he was not in the tomb. When he came back he discovered that the others had been visited by the Risen Lord, he wanted what they received—an encounter with Jesus. Thomas’ desire to see God often gets framed as doubt, but I’m not so sure I would classify it as such.

St. Thomas’ witness of the gospel stretches far beyond being an excuse for us to question God. For the rest of the disciples Jesus’ Resurrection was made real on the Easter evening, but Thomas sat dwelling in the darkness of Good Friday for another week before Christ’s light dispelled the gloom. We may very well celebrate this saint’s day on the darkest day because he was the one who had to wait so long for his vision of Resurrection. This is so helpful for us at this time of year.

I am not sure about you, but at this time of year I notice more the absence of those who have previously been so meaningful in my life. Thomas noticed Jesus’ absence, and longed to see him again. He yearned for the light to come into not just any darkness, but his darkness. We yearn for this too. For many this is a cheerful time, but for those who miss their loved ones around the dining room table or the Christmas tree Thomas gives us hope. Christ Jesus responds to Thomas’ frustrations and yearnings with an appearance that points to the truth that darkness will not be forever. Christ’s light will shine in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome his light.

On these shortest days of the year, when the light seems absent, and the dark appears heavy I invite you to wait with Thomas. The darkest moments are tough. We want so badly to rush out of them; however, in the deepest gloom we have the greatest opportunity to practice that belief in the light and our trust in God’s faithfulness to us. Into the darkness comes the light. May we sit still and wait and watch with Thomas who wanted to see the light coming, returning to this world.

Saint Thomas: Through the Doubt

The song "Doubting Thomas" appears on Nickel Creek's 2005 Album Why Should the Fire Die?

Today we celebrate Saint Thomas one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. Thomas, at least in the English speaking world, has earned a conflicted moniker “Doubting Thomas.” We heard an example of his “doubting” in today’s Gospel lesson. Thomas, absent when Jesus first appeared after the Resurrection, questioned the preposterous story from the other disciples that Jesus had been risen. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). I have in the past heaped on criticism of the wavering disciple, but I am less sure today that Thomas’ doubt is problematic.

As we remember Thomas this week we would do well to see through the typical understanding that he was merely a hesitant follower of Jesus. According to Church lore he died (on December 21st) while serving as an evangelist in India, not peaceably in a hospital bed, but instead Thomas was martyred. We might say that from the moment Thomas saw the wounds of the risen Christ his life shifted; however, I believe that the questioning of this disciple served him and serves us well. Thomas, especially at this time of year, helps as a guide for those of us who possess questions; we can wonder about the stories of Angels’ proclamations, Mary’s pregnancy, and God’s Incarnation with this disciple as our model.

Doubt though, is like a double-edged sword. One edge cuts through an oversimplified version of the mystery that is our transcendent and immanent God; the other side cuts us off from believing with a childlike faith. Of course, with all the far-fetched aspects of the Nativity narrative sometimes a little bit of humor helps to lighten the seriousness of our Faith. Recently I saw a Christmas card that did precisely this. Two women were talking on the cover of the card. One woman said to the other, “A virgin birth, I can believe in that, but three wise men, I’ve never even met one wise man let alone three.” Laughter has the potential to unlock some of our stuffiness around serious questions, and allowing ourselves to laugh about how serious we become certainly helps. And yet, doubt we never voice can stiffen our hearts, cloud our minds, and choke our souls not just when it comes to God’s story, but also our own story.

The holiday season is not cheerful for all. Family struggles become apparent. The absence of lost loved ones shows painfully clear. We might ask, “Why is there such darkness at a time when we celebrate the greatest light coming into the world?” Even the best of us can struggle with keeping our focus on the illumination of the incarnation in the seemingly dark shroud of unasked doubts. My kneejerk reaction when facing these questions is to shove them down, so that I never voice my concerns. However the theologian Paul Tillich reminds us of something that Saint Thomas knew well, “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.” This Christmas season if and when doubts arise, do not lock them away, for that is when we become stagnant followers. Instead, allow the wanderings and the wonderings within to strengthen faith shining a new light on those areas of uncertainty.

In our Episcopal Tradition we have a wealth of wonderful worship resources including a book called Holy Women, Holy Men. This book tells the stories of saints from past and present. The scholars who describe Saint Thomas remind us that “The expression ‘Doubting Thomas’… is not entirely fair to Thomas. He did not refuse belief: he wanted to believe, but did not dare, without further evidence. Because of his goodwill Jesus gave him a sign, though Jesus had refused a sign to the Pharisees. His Lord’s rebuke was well deserved: ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’ (John 20:29). The sign did not create faith; it merely released the faith which was in Thomas already.”   Thomas believed. He had given up his life to follow Jesus, and yet, his doubts had locked up his faith.

The band Nickel Creek wrote a beautiful song entitled, “Doubting Thomas.” Through the progression of the song part of the chorus changes from “I took a promise/But I do not feel safe/” to “I can’t keep my promises/Cause I don’t know what’s safe” to finally “I’m a doubting Thomas/I’ll take your promise/Though I know nothing’s safe/Oh me of little faith.” A mature faith allows for doubt, but this doubt is not an element that locks faith away, but rather opens up our wonder and awe of the Divine. To believe means being risky, unsafe, and vulnerable. This is so difficult.

To follow Jesus requires us to seek Christ through the doubt that obscures and somehow strengthens our faith. Through the doubt we find ourselves at the moment when Jesus shows his hands and his side to Thomas, we too are greeted by the Risen Christ. We, like the disciple, fall before Jesus recognizing He is Risen. We too are called to respond to God’s presence by sharing the Good News with those whom we meet. Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one important element of faith that invites us to wonder and wander with God. In this season of the unbelievable I invite you to be like Thomas, I invite you to seek the presence of Christ here in your midst, and I invite you to recognize the Risen Christ as your Lord and your God. Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.