Sermon for the Feast of St. Thomas
“My Lord and my God”
The cycle of the Saints’ Day celebrations illumine the seasons of the Church year. Andrew heralds the Advent and inaugurates the tradition of Christian discipleship of bringing others to Christ, in his case, initially Simon Peter. Other figures, too, such as John the Baptist and Mary, belong to the theological landscape of Advent, the one preparing the way by repentance, the other as the chosen vessel of Christ’s Incarnation. What, then, about Thomas, the Saint of the Advent, too, it seems? His feast day falls so close to the winter solstice, the darkest day and longest night, and so close to Christ’s nativity. Two things, perhaps. His feast marks the intensity of the inwardness of the Advent of Christ and grounds Advent and Christmas in the mysteries of the crucifixion and the resurrection without which they have no meaning.
The Epistle reading from Ephesians not only recalls the apostolic foundation of the Church but also our Christian vocation through that foundation to be “an habitation of God through the Spirit,” even as Christ is the Divine Word who dwelt among us, Mary being the “habitaculum dei,” the little habitation of God for us, as the Fathers put it. But it is the Gospel that especially arrests our attention. It is the story of so-called “doubting Thomas,” the Thomas who was not with the other disciples on the evening of the Resurrection when Christ appeared to them “behind closed doors,” the Thomas who hearing about Christ’s appearing said he would not believe “except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side.” Not just seeing as believing, it seems, but touching is required as well.
The story already anticipates and belongs to the refutation of what will be the earliest heresy known as docetism. The distinction between spirit and matter, between God and the world, between God and man is held absolutely and in a dualist manner. Spirit is good, and matter is evil and in its various gnostic forms, salvation is about the liberation of spirit from matter in which it is trapped. There is, in other words, no redemption of the natural world, no redemption of our humanity, only a “beam me up, Scotty” kind of Star Trek view of salvation which denies the integrity of the material world empirically speaking. From such a view, the Incarnation of God is impossible and an affront to the Divine nature. Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection can only be a kind of play, a mere seeming; in short, a sham. And, by extension, the virgin birth must be false. Contrary to the wonderful words of the Te Deum, God would have abhorred the Virgin’s womb!
