Homily outline: Thomas the Toucher

• Rehabilitating Thomas
  • Thomas is famously labeled “the doubter,” a limiting and demeaning classification that overlooks important modeling for faith
  • Earlier in Gospel when Jesus decides to go into dangerous Bethany, Thomas the brave who insists the disciples go along even if it means dying with Jesus (11:16)
  • When Jesus is giving his last supper discourse, Thomas the irrepressible confesses honestly that he does not know where Jesus is going (14:5)
  • Today’s gospel reveals Thomas the unscamable who wants to witness the risen Christ himself
  • Barbara Brown Taylor exploits this aspect of Thomas in her homily on this passage (Home by Another Way 1999, p. 114):
  • “Thomas is a stand-n for all of us who want to see something for ourselves before we decided whether or not it is true”
  • Furthermore, he does so through one of the most intimate and forms of human communication: touch
• The vital power of touch
  • When thinking of important communication modes, we may think of speech, digital images, sounds of music
  • touch is the first sense that babies develop in the womb, touch receptors developing on their face by week 8 of pregnancy https://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/fetal-development/fetal-touch/
  • Touch is essential for the health of newborns; studies show that well-nourished, safely sheltered infants without touch are likely to experience developmental problems and even die https://www.evergreenpsychotherapycenter.com/importance-touch/
  • Touch starvation or “skin hunger” occurs with adults
  • Without enough physical touch we can become stressed, anxious, or depressed https://www.webmd.com/balance/touch-starvation
  • This was a widespread phenomenon during COVID-19 when grandparents ached to touch their grandkids, and family members longed to touch sick and dying loved ones https://www.une.edu.au/connect/news/2021/03/touch-hunger-causes-new-form-of-suffering-under-covid-19
  • Touch is important for the wellbeing of adults
  • Frequent hugs can lower blood pressure
  • aid combatting depression
  • even help NBA players play better when they performed bonding gestures like high-fives, back-slapping and chest-bumps https://www.hcf.com.au/health-agenda/body-mind/mental-health/benefit-human-touch
  • Helen Keller (d. 1968) was a celebrated author, disability rights advocate whose primary sense for making her way into the world was touch
  • Less well known was Laura Brigman who lost the use of even more senses than Keller [Keller could smell and taste] yet became the first deaf-blind person to receive a full education https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/11/a-woman-who-lost-the-ability-to-smell-taste-see-and-hear-as-a-child-was-the-first-deaf-blind-person-to-be-fully-educated/
• The tactile Savior, our tactile worship
  • Jesus was fully human; like every other human being, his skin was the largest organ in his body
  • He deployed the sense of touch often and in striking ways,
  • Multiple times he touched the blind in healing them (e.g., Mark 8:22-26)
  • He touched the bier of the widow’s son before he raised her [Luke 7:14)
  • He touched the leper to heal him (Matt 8:3)
  • He touched the servant of the high priest and healed his severed ear (Luke 22:51)
  • He touched his disciples when they were crouched in fear after the transfiguration (Matt 17:7)
  • As he was also touched in the hope of grace and healing (e.g., Mark 3:10)
  • In the same way our fully embodied worship is filled with acts of touch
  • Laying hands on the elect for initiation and ordination
  • Chrismating babies and confirmandi
  • Signing baptized with ashes
  • Embracing each other in the sign of peace
• Gospel implications
  • Psychologist Dacher Keltner notes, we live in a touch deprived world
  • We would rather stand apart, maybe look out of curiosity, but are cautious of getting to close, with hand sanitizer on the ready
  • Thomas challenges any stand-offish form of Christian discipleship
  • The world is wounded as was the Christ
  • His willingness to touch the wounds, to get up close and personal with pain, even crucifixion, prompts us to do the same
  • Our families, our neighbors, the stranger, the marginalized are skin-hungry for the compassionate Christ
  • As we were touched by hand and water and chrism in baptism, so we are missioned to reach out to others.