Sabbath Devotional :: Twinned

“*Alleluia (O filii et filiae)*” – Easter from Kings 2018

I loved the emphasis on Palm Sunday and Holy Week in General Conference this year. Easter is too much to take in on a single Sunday! In most liturgical calendars, the anticipation of the resurrection begins many weeks before Easter (at the start of Lent) and the celebration of Easter continues until Pentecost, so this Sunday is the Third Sunday of Easter.

The stories of Jesus’s appearances to his friends after the resurrection are some of my very favorites. Mary in the garden, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and Doubting Thomas.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the slightly hard-hearted child of a physicist should be a bit of a skeptic, and deeply sympathetic to Thomas’s preference for empirical evidence. But I think there are reasons for everyone to appreciate Thomas.

We are most familiar with Thomas’s appearance in John 20:

But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, 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, I will not believe.

But this is not the first place we meet Thomas in the Gospels. In John 11, when Jesus announces that Lazarus has died and declares that he will go to Bethany to “wake” him, Thomas responds immediately, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (The JST clarifies that the disciples were afraid Jesus would be put to death if he went).

Thomas, called Didymus — the twin — loves and doubts; he is ready to lay down his life for his Lord, yet resists the vulnerability of hope. Jesus understands this, and makes a point of giving Thomas the certainty he needs to open to love.

Throughout the weeks of the Easter season, Jesus seeks out his friends -—calling Mary’s name, surprising the disciples with a huge catch of fish and breakfast on the shore. He knows that his human friends are all twinned, pulled in opposite directions by love and fear like Thomas, full of faith and lost in grief like Mary, seeking and bewildered like those on the road to Emmaus, eager and unprepared like Peter jumping out of the boat to run through the water to Christ on the beach. And yet he yearns for them, longs to make himself known to them, to walk and talk and weep with them. He offers his blessing to Thomas and to all of us who find our way to belief despite, or perhaps because of our twinned nature:

And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.