Touch Me
“Those whose faith is not passive, but engages reality, will receive…blessing in the harmony of belief and experience.”
- Frank Wilczek, A Beautiful Question
“I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.”
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
Caravaggio’s Incredulity of St Thomas beautifully exemplifies the encounter between Thomas and the resurrected Jesus. Thomas wants to see and touch the wounds of Christ. Why would he want to do that? It would seem that he does not trust the report. His experience and his faith are at odds with one another. How will these two be reconciled?
In John 20, when Jesus comes to Thomas, He invites him to touch the wounds. Then Jesus exhorts him to stop apistos and, instead, pistos. Apistos in Greek is incredulity, lack of trust, lack of belief. Jesus then encourages him to trust. Trust what? Trust that Jesus lives despite the wounds, signifying that He is the Son of God, the Messiah. The Kingdom has come! All things are being made new.
Jesus knew what Thomas needed to reconcile his experience with the call to trust. Thomas needed to touch Him. He needed to experience the wounded but living Jesus. Jesus could have condemned him. He did not. Instead he offered Thomas what he needed. Jesus invited him to probe His woundedness. He told others not to touch Him because He had not ascended. Yet, He invited the touch of one who needed the touch, like the lepers who needed to be made whole, but desperately needed to be touched as well.
Thomas was rewarded with discovery. He discovered that reality does indeed conform to his deepest hopes. However, others will believe without seeing. In order to believe they must hear. In A Beautiful Question, Frank Wilczek describes seeing as a “space sense” and hearing as a “time sense.” Thomas occupied the space of Jesus’s wounds, reconciling faith and experience. For the rest of us, the vibrations of air emanating from that moment occupy time, activate the mechanism of hearing in our ear and stimulate our auditory cortex. We are called to shema. What we hear shapes how love and live. It is a form of experience that invites us to look at reality (and religion) anew.
In this vignette, we must not miss the desire of Thomas to know. He did not outright refuse belief. He just required more. From the buried life, a risen Christ enters and the dance resumes. Jesus coming to him. Jesus calling him. In Touch Me, Stanley Kunitz writes of decay and time passing, looking back, and needing the touch of his beloved to remind him who he is, “though summer is late, my heart.” This touching is a from of remembrance- of the one we love and whose we are.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.
The preface to Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories is written by Hillel Halkin. He describes Tevye as a “God-arguer.” He likens Tevye to Job , who argues and wrestles with his friends and with God. What they say does not conform to his experience of reality. How will this be reconciled? Tevye appeals to the Maker. Let Him answer. He receives no answer, not from God and not from friends. Yet he argues. He will “not take nothing as an answer.” Job does receive an answer from God. He speaks to Job from a whirlwind. But, as Halkin writes, “had you or I been present in that whilrlwind, would we have heard anything but wind?” Like Thomas, Job was probing God and receptive when He entered. God says touch here, notice this, see that.. awaken your senses. I am ready to supply evidence. All is made new; death has given way to life.
Scripture even questions God. Habakkuk is a book of accusations against God. God accepts the lack of trust, the incredulity, and responds. Like Jesus, He says touch here, notice this. Let me remind you who I am and who you are. Summer is late, but still we dance.
Just as Jesus exposed his wounds to Thomas, who needed to see them and yet see Him as whole and living, so too we live the resurrection when we invite those searching for evidence of Jesus into our wounds. Yes, I have been mistreated, abused, wronged,…but I am full of resurrection power and life. And this is available to you. Touch me, let me remind you of who you are.
