In the liturgy, Easter day lasts a week,
– the octave of Easter –
coming to an end today.
And what a rich gospel passage we have to finish our Easter day.
The gospel writer, John, is explicit:
he writes about ‘signs’.
He wrote about the particular ‘signs’ he did
so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God,
and that believing this you may have life through his name.
‘Signs’ are indicators, pointers.
When I go to the petrol station
I go to a pump with the sign ‘unleaded petrol’.
That sign communicates about an underlying reality,
– the unleaded petrol –
it tells me something about it and guides me to it.
The gospel writer has, surely,
spent years speaking to others about Jesus
and reflecting on Jesus, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
He knows that he can do no more than let signs do their work.
Some limit John’s ‘signs’ to certain miracles,
ones that point to deep truths about Jesus,
for example, the cure of the man born blind.
That narrow ‘miracle’ interpretation of ‘sign’ is surely not enough.
John’s gospel is full of other signs, other pointers.
One of these is the wound in Jesus’ side,
mentioned three times in today’s reading.
The surface interpretation is that the wound is mentioned
as testimony of Jesus’ physical resurrection –
and that it is the opportunity to explore the wound
which provokes Thomas’ ‘My Lord and My God’.
But there is more to it than that.
We had John’s account of the passion on Good Friday.
Then we heard:
Jesus said ‘It is accomplished’
and bowing his head he gave up his Spirit
and then, a little later,
One of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance;
and immediately there came out blood and water.
It is traditional to connect Jesus’ wounded side
with the account of creation in the second chapter of Genesis.
There, while Adam is in a deep sleep,
a companion, a bride,
is formed for him, from his side.
Adam, on awakening, exclaims:
This at last is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh.
On the Cross,
Jesus breathes out his Spirit and enters his deep sleep, his death –
the Spirit breathed out is shared with his followers.
Though Baptism and the Eucharist,
through water and blood,
his followers become his companion and bride –
flesh from his flesh.
The historical moment,
when blood and water flow from the wounded side,
is a sign,
alerting us to, and pointing us towards,
a deeper, continuing reality.
The disciples gather in the evening of the first Easter Sunday.
Jesus breathes his life into them.
They receive his Spirit,
They are flesh from his flesh and bone from his bone.
They have life through him.
They are sent, as Jesus was sent.
They now share his mission.
The wound in Jesus side is a sign of all this.
They turn from disciples, those who follow,
into apostles, those who are sent.
At first, Thomas rejects their experience –
he doesn’t ‘get it’ –
but the others do not exclude him.
Thomas is there the following Sunday and,
in contemplating the wound in Jesus’ side,
the wound that signals participation in a new creation,
Thomas grasps who Jesus really is.
‘My Lord and My God’.
Thomas expresses faith in Jesus.
He acknowledges his divinity openly and fully.
His conclusion,
his expression of faith and trust,
goes beyond, way beyond, what he sees.
In this moment,
Thomas gets some inkling of the truth about God:
about God’s ‘passionate desire’ to share in our lives –
so that we may share in the life of God.
In that moment he becomes a true apostle:
sharing in the life of God is sharing in the mission of Jesus.
Each Sunday,
we can contemplate the wound in Jesus’ side,
a sign that we are flesh of his flesh,
and respond with trusting faith,
and renewed commitment to sharing in Jesus’ mission,
commitment to living the Good News of God’s new creation.