The other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he replied, “Unless I see the wounds from the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the wounds from the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will never believe it!”
Thomas and others remind us that we can have expectations—but even if they are fulfilled exactly as we hoped, there will always be so much more.
Expectations weave themselves into our future. It’s not wrong to have expectations; rather a nod to how creative we are as human beings. We dream our futures in color. The discipline is in learning how not to let our disrupted expectations become disillusionment.
Jesus’s incarnation culminates in a lot of disruption in expectations for everyone. A typically quiet Bethlehem has to deal with shepherds and paparazzi. Zealot disciples get a different type of overthrow of the government. Task-driven disciples are handed new lists to follow. Male disciples get reminders that image-bearing includes women. Pharisees get to reconsider grace. Everyone has expectations for death. And yes, Thomas – called doubter by others’ expectations – gets his expectations fulfilled, and so much more.
It would be easy to criticize Thomas’s expectations or the people of his time without the broader context of remembering that they were a people in anticipation. And not simply anticipation, but one of expectation while also in perpetual oppression, this time under the thumb of Rome. The present circumstances do not happen without the past molding us. Moreover, it is hard to be overly critical of Thomas when God the Son gives Thomas exactly what he asked for. Thomas asks in the same reflective way John looks back in his epistle: to see with their eyes and to touch with their hands. Sometimes we will get to see exactly what we expect, but when we do it will mean so much more than what we expected it to mean.
Jesus fulfills Thomas’s expectation in time, arriving some eight days later (John 20:26) and revealing to him that even when Jesus grants what you want the implications are much broader than you could have imagined. It is Jesus showing up after dying on a cross that demonstrates that everything he said about coming to save all of creation was true. It is the risen Savior in glory who demonstrates that a perfect Savior can have holes in his hands and side and still be perfect. It is the perfect Son of God, present in our expectations, who pushes us to see that there is so much more beyond the “unless I see the…” type of mentality we try to live.
Oh, Thomas…those weren’t just his wounds you touched.
Those aren’t his holes you touch alone.
They are ours.
Ours.
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