The Spiritual, The Material, and Jesus
Every year, right after Easter, we have the reading that is
often called, “Doubting Thomas”. For
whatever reason Thomas missed the first appearance of Jesus in the locked room,
and only a week later did he get his wish – to see and touch Jesus and even put
his hand’s in Jesus’ side where the spear had pierced him. Thomas confesses his faith, “My Lord, and my
God!” and Jesus commends him for seeing and believing, but even more those who
do not see and yet believe.
You’ve maybe heard some treatment of this text which sort of
downplays the importance of seeing – and suggests that all we need is the
word! And there’s some truth to
that. But a closer look at today’s
reading shows that Jesus is concerned about both the seeing and the hearing,
both the spirit and the material. For he
is the Savior of all people and the Savior of the whole person.
Bear with me today as I get a little bit more into the weeds
of philosophy than we usually do. We
have two errors to avoid when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus: materialism and spiritualism. Both have a long pedigree and both lead us
away from the fullness of Christ’s work for us.
What do I mean by these?
Well, Thomas, it seems, was somewhat of a materialist. He disregarded the word of the disciples, and
doubted the miracle of the resurrection.
All that mattered to him, at least, at first, was what he could see and
touch. The material world. He needed concrete proof, firsthand
experience, he needed something physical and real.
We have a hymn, a more recently written hymn in our hymnal,
that expresses this well: “These Things Did Thomas Count as Real”:
These things did Thomas count as real: The warmth of blood, the chill of steel, the
grain of wood, the heft of stone, the last frail twitch of flesh and bone.
The vision of his skeptic mind was keen enough to make
him blind to any unexpected act too large for his small world of fact.
His reasoned certainties denied that one could live when
one had ded, until his fingers read like braille the markings of the spear and
nail.
May we, O God, by grace believe and thus the risen Christ
receive, whose raw imprinted palms reached out and beckoned Thomas from his
doubt.
This skeptical posture of Thomas is really quite similar to
many today who doubt or disbelieve the resurrection. Mainstream science has largely hitched its
wagon to a materialistic worldview that also considers only what is physical,
real, provable, and most importantly- doesn’t need God. Science has to do with observation and
evidence, hypothesis and theory, testing and proving. The very word “science” comes from the word
for “knowledge”, and the great temptation of the scientist is to overestimate
his own knowledge, and the ability of humans to know and learn all things that
can be known.
And many Christians fall prey to this modern version of
materialistic skepticism, at least in part.
Many, for example, deny the bible’s teaching of creation in favor of a
Darwinistic evolution. They simply can’t
take God at his word that he created everything from nothing by his word. It’s the same foolishness of Thomas that
doubts the truth of God on any subject matter, which idolizes reason and senses
over and against divine revelation.
Somewhat in reaction to materialism, we have, today, a
growing movement of spiritualism.
Reaching all the way back to the philosopher Plato, this is an elevation
of the spiritual over and over against the material world. For Plato the idea of a thing is far better
than any example of the thing itself.
For Plato, the body isn’t nearly so important as the spirit. This leads to a denial of the physical
blessings of God, the blessings of creation.
We see examples of this influence today in the New Age
Movement, in all manner of people who declare themselves, “Spiritual but not
religious”, and even in the Christian church where the spiritual aspect of life
pushes out almost entirely the theology of the body. But We confess a God who is the creator of
heaven and earth, and that the stuff, the physical stuff of creation is
good. That the body that he has given me
is just as much a part of who I am as the soul or spirit. And Jesus died for the whole person and saves
the whole person, not just the spirit.
We see this neo-platonic influence, sadly, in many Christian
funeral services, when the preacher may wax eloquently about the promise that
our loved ones are with the Lord, that they rest in peace, and that their
spirit is in heaven with Jesus. But they
neglect to preach the resurrection of the body, that is the resurrection of OUR
bodies on the last day. That’s our final
and ultimate hope as believers, to share in a resurrection like his.
Sin always twists the truth, and so we have a constant need
to return to the touchstone of God’s word to correct and set us straight.
Notice how Jesus regards both the physical and the spiritual
in this text:
He breathes on his disciples. A very physical action, something they can
feel. But as he does so, he bestows on
them the Holy Spirit. A presence just as
real, but not something to be seen or felt.
What charge does he give them, but the authority to forgive
sins! Here is certainly a spiritual
matter – for sins aren’t things that you can typically touch and see. The corruption of our nature is a darkness to
us that we cannot fully comprehend, but can only confess. And yet, sin does bring with it a very real
and tangible consequence – the wages of sin – is death.
Jesus has forgiven our sins, in the water of baptism, in the
word of absolution, in the sacrament of the altar – thus taking away the sting
of death. And though we still die, like
Jesus, death will not be the last word on us.
Christ will return in glory and raise his faithful dead, to a very real,
very material, very physical body once more.
But now, body and soul will be glorified and incorruptible, just as
Christ’s resurrected body is glorified and incorruptible. “We will be like him for we shall see him as
he is.”
Take note, Jesus showed his disciples – he appeared to his
disciples – he even made Thomas stick his finger in the wounds. He doesn’t despise the material evidence, but
gave “many convincing proofs” that he was alive. Those early disciples were eyewitnesses of
the resurrection, and Paul tells us that once Jesus even appeared to a group of
over 500 of them at the same time! If
seeing and touching and physical proof meant nothing – why would he bother?
And yet, still he knows that not all who believe in him will
have had such an occasion. Like you and
me. We rely on the word of the apostles,
the testimony of the church, the teachings of scripture that have been handed
down to us. And Jesus says we are even
more blessed for such.
Only in Jesus, then, do we see the right and proper tension,
the true and eternal realities of both things spiritual and things
material. In him, we have it all. He is the transcendent God who becomes human
in time and space for his people. He is
the Lord of Life who gives up his life to redeem his people. He is the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation
of the world, but also in bloody sweat on a Roman cross on a certain hill named
Golgotha, on a certain date in human history.
What is left for us but, like Thomas, to stop doubting and
believe! Believe in all of God’s
word. Believe in Jesus who lives. And believe especially in his word,
proclaimed through his pastors, that your sins forgiven on earth are forgiven
in heaven. And confess, like Thomas, my
Lord and my God, Jesus Christ, who lives and grants me daily breath, who lives
and I shall conquer death.
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