The story of “doubting Thomas” 1 is a memorable mythic narrative that images our spiritual lives in a powerful and even surprising way.

According to John the evangelist, late in the day of his resurrection Jesus appears to some disciples who have gathered together. He shows them the wounds in his hands and side, and so they recognize him: “then the disciples were made joyful when they perceived the Lord.” 2

Their need for a sign to connect the apparition with the Jesus they’d known reminds me of Luke’s story of disciples who walk and speak with the risen Christ on the Emmaus road but fail to recognize him until he breaks bread as Jesus had done. I’m reminded, too, that, according to John, Christ had earlier appeared to Mary Magdalene, who also talked with him but “perceived not that it is Jesus” until he called her by name. 3 The cosmic Christ, while not simply identical with him, is recognized by a manifest continuity with the Jesus of history. 4 That’s an important message for us today. But there’s more to come.

Having been recognized as Jesus, Christ gives peace to the disciples, extends to them the commission he had himself received from the Father, and breathes the Spirit of God into them. The obvious parallel is to God’s breathing of life into the newly-created human race in the Genesis creation story: 5 by breathing his spiritual life into them, we may understand, Jesus the Christ re-creates the disciples in the image of God, which is himself. 6 Receiving the Spirit of holiness, they are reborn in Christ, as innocent now as the newly-created Adam. (As a result, they bear the responsibility of judging the morality of the world. 7 ) Jesus then departs.

One of their number, “Thomas, called Didymus,” 8 is absent during that time. When he returns later, the others excitedly tell him, “We have seen the Lord!” Presumably, they tell him that they recognized Christ when shown the wounds. But Thomas cannot believe them. He replies, in effect, that “Unless I can put my finger in the place of the nail in his hand, and unless I can push my own hand into the wound in his side, I can’t believe this story.”

About a week later, when Thomas is with the group, Jesus appears among them again. After again imparting peace, he shows his wounds to Thomas and invites him to touch them.

“Bring here your finger and touch my hands; bring here your hand and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless, but faithful.” And Thomas says to him, “My Lord and my God!” 9

As had the others, Thomas recognizes Christ — and his divine character — by the wounds.

The evangelist next has Christ draw the lesson that we should have faith (or be faithful) even when we cannot have direct experience of him. That’s an interesting conclusion, but I don’t want to follow the author there today; I want to ponder the astonishing teaching that the risen Christ bears open wounds.

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written [Gen. 2:7; see note 5, below], “The first human Adam became a living soul”; the final Adam [i.e., Christ] is life-giving spirit. 10

The body which the disciples encounter is, then, a manifestation of the spiritual body of Christ, the “life-giving spirit” of God. It is divine and therefore perfect. And that which is perfect is complete, whole. Yet the perfect body of Christ, the spiritual body into which the disciples — and, according to our tradition, we — are incorporated in the Spirit, 11 bears open wounds. Moreover, they are the wounds suffered by the historical Jesus as a result of his proclamation and praxis of the Kingdom of God, of a new world, created and sustained by self-sacrificing love, of mutual support, justice, and peace.

What might this mean for our spiritual lives? I can only begin an answer to that question.

In the story of Thomas we see that the spiritual body of the cosmic Christ is eternally wounded for the sake of the other. And because the body of Christ is the body of the faithful — that is, the body of those of us who trust in love and who live in fidelity to its leadings — those wounds are ours. In the well-known “kenotic hymn” of Philippians 2, Paul says that Jesus Christ was lifted up, exalted above all because, rather than grasp at the divinity that was his, he emptied himself and became a fully human servant to divine love, “even unto death on the cross.” Again, there is an evident parallel to Genesis, in which “the first human, Adam” sinned against love in attempting to seize divinity. When we give up our Adamic pursuit of self-aggrandizement, surrendering instead to the leading of love, we are wounded by the plight and for the sake of the poor and the oppressed. And in being so wounded, we are lifted up into the spiritual body of Christ, the body of those who live in the spirit in which Jesus lived.