A week after Easter, the question of whether Jesus’ resurrection was a hoax, a fake, a ruse remained unresolved for many, probably most, people.
Remember that a guard had been posted at Jesus’ tomb by Pontius Pilate because the chief priests had convinced Pilate that Jesus’ disciples might try to fake a resurrection. Those details are spelled out by Saint Matthew in his version of the resurrection story, which included the report of the guards who “told the chief priests everything that had happened.”
Let’s review what Saint Matthew said had happened on that Easter morning, while the guard were still at their posts by the tomb. “Suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.” This is the report the guards had to give to the chief priests: of a mighty angel who rolled back the stone from the tomb and sat there. It was not an easy report for them to make. It was also not an easy report for the chief priests to hear. Crucially, it does not include actual information about the body of Jesus - whether he was risen, or his body had been carried away.
I think we should take the chief priests seriously. And we can safely assume that they were sincere in their suspicion that any resurrection of Jesus would have to be a fake. Their faith and their adherence to their religion was not casual. And they had not believed Jesus: period. They were quite sure that he could not be the Son of God, the Messiah, the King of the Jews, or any other title anyone wanted to bestow upon him. He could be one thing and one thing only, as far as they were concerned at this point: a fake. And his followers were misguided or delusional, or both. St. Matthew is the only one of the evangelists who provides those details of the report of the guard, but I think he is reliable.
It’s one thing that the religious authorities of the temple decided that Jesus was a fake and that his disciples must be misguided or delusional; but it’s another thing altogether for one of those very disciples to reach the same conclusions: one of his inner circle, one of the Twelve. And that story is the story that St. John tells in his account of the resurrection.
Of course, St. John knew of the skepticism of the chief priests. He traced their animosity toward Jesus back to the raising of Lazarus. But it wasn’t, strictly speaking, the miracle of Lazarus’s resuscitation that the council of the chief priests and Pharisees objected to. Their worry was even more profound. They were deeply concerned that Jesus’ charismatic leadership would provide the context for disaster. “If we let him go on like this,” they said to one another, “everyone will believe in him…” And here comes their real fear: “… everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” The Sanhedrin (the council) believed that Jesus may well have been the undoing of the faith of their fathers, the upending of the law that upheld the covenant, passed down from Abraham, generation to generation. What they had seen and heard of Jesus led them to believe that he was contemptuous of the law (as they read it), and even of the temple. (He was contemptuous toward neither, but that’s another sermon.). Their perspective had not prepared them for a prophet like Jesus, let alone a messiah like him. And they were convinced that he could unravel and destroy everything that was good, and just, and holy. After all, just look at the contempt he seemed to them to have for the Sabbath! They were wrong about that too, but they were set in their ways; religious people often are. And they were not wrong about the Romans, who, a couple of generations later, would, indeed, take just such an opportunity to tear down the temple, and massacre Jews. Their fears were not unfounded.
And so, regardless of what they had seen or heard about Lazarus, they were convinced that Jesus was a fake, and a dangerous one at that! And any attempt to suggest that he had risen from the dead would also have to be fake and dangerous for people who adhered to the ancient covenant and the law of Moses, but who happened to be misguided or delusional. But, whereas St. Matthew tells us how the chief priests were skeptical after the resurrection and skeptical about the resurrection, St. John tells us that their deep concern arose before the resurrection, even before Jesus got to Jerusalem.
No, for St. John, it’s not the chief priests and the Pharisees who brought the suspicion of the resurrection-as-fake into the discussion. Rather, it was one of Jesus’ own closest followers - it was Thomas, Thomas who not long ago was prepared to go and die with Jesus - it was him who raised the suggestion that maybe the resurrection was a fake.
We call him “Doubting Thomas,” and maybe he was, in fact, plagued by doubt. But maybe he also harbored a sneaking suspicion that this resurrection stuff had all been an elaborate hoax. Maybe he wouldn’t put it past Peter and John and the others to let their devotion to Jesus and their disappointment at his death get the better of them and come up with some scheme. Maybe he wondered if they actually had stolen the body as some kind of desperate measure to keep the movement going. And maybe Thomas saw what the effect on his faith of such a deception would be - the faith he had shared with Jesus, and the faith he shared with all of those to whom Jesus had come. The effect of such a deception could be devastating, once it was found out.
Well, we know how that all worked out, don’t we? Thomas come to believe in the truth of the resurrection! Peter was speaking for all of the apostles, including Thomas, when he said, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” (Acts 2:32). And the testimony of the Twelve changed the world. And for a long, long time the church could say, with St. Peter, “Although you have not seen him, you love him,” and that was that. Happy Easter!
Notice, however, the interesting way that Peter formulates his statement: “Although you have not seen him, you love him.”
I have to wonder if Peter is addressing that same old suspicion that maybe the story of Jesus’ resurrection is a fake, a hoax, a ruse. Clearly it is on his mind that those fledgling, early Christians are being asked to believe in someone whom they have not seen in the flesh - the resurrected Jesus. This is the Thomas Problem: how are they to believe in what they have not seen? But Peter delays the question of belief to consider something else first. He does not address the Thomas problem right off the bat and tell them, “Although you have not seen him, you have believed in him.” No, he starts somewhere else altogether. “Although you have not seen him, you love him.”
“Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy!” If you move the comma that was put there by editors, I think I like this statement even more: “even though you do not see him, now you believe in him and rejoice.” Now you believe in him; now that you love him.
In this formulation of faith, belief does not actually rely on what you have seen with your own eyes. In this formulation of faith, belief relies on love: “although you have not seen him, you love him… and even though you do not see him, now [that you love him] you believe in him and rejoice.”
It does not take much convincing for anyone who has ever been in love to get them to admit that you can love someone you cannot see. Love survives long separation over time and distance. Love endures sweet and sorrowful partings. Love persists long after death has taken lovers apart from one another. This was not news to the first Christians, who we can assume knew something about love. They did not need an apostle to tell them they that could love someone whom they had lost and could no longer see. Enough of them knew this truth firsthand, and those who didn’t had heard the stories about such love, from grandparents and aunties and uncles: that love never ends, and that you can love someone long past the time that you can no longer see them in the flesh.
Different though our lives may be all these centuries later, is it possible that our faith might depend on so simple a shared concept, that you can love someone long past the time you can see them in the flesh? Is it possible that we became so fixated for a while on the Thomas Problem (now that you have seen, you believe) that we missed the original Peter Principle: although you have not seen him, you love him? I know it seems as if I may be looking for a workaround for Jesus’ clear admonition to Thomas; but I am not sure it’s that simple. I think the possibility that our faith has to be first founded on love is entirely congruent with Jesus’ own teaching.
And I know that we live in a world in which many people assume that those of us who put our faith in the risen Lord Jesus are either misguided or delusional, and probably both. And in such a world, I am not sure you get very far if you only hear Jesus say “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” I’m not sure there really is any counter-argument to the possibility that Christians in the twenty-first century are misguided or delusional that doesn’t begin with love. You can’t just make a few quips about artificial intelligence and assume that you have dispensed with the question of whether or not the resurrection is for real.
As far as I’m concerned, there are plenty of misguided and delusional people calling themselves Christians, and touting their beliefs. What makes me wonder about them is what happened to their love?
Thomas loved Jesus, of that we need have little doubt. It wasn’t his failure to love Jesus that got in the way of believing. What he lost sight of was the possibility that he could rely on that love to be a marker for the truth that Jesus really was risen from the dead.
And if the risen Jesus is going to be known by the world in our own day and age, then I suppose that the very same thing must be true for us: love will be the surest marker for the truth that Jesus really is risen from the dead. And if we have a gospel to proclaim on this day that we remember old Doubting Thomas, maybe we need to hear it through Peter first: Although you have not seen him, you love him.
Having learned to love Jesus - which is to say that we have learned to love all that Jesus does in the world, and especially to love Jesus in the ways we encounter him in other people - having learned to love Jesus, even though we do not see him, now we believe in him and rejoice!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
16 April 2023
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia
