Touch and see

Continuing my reflections on the Incarnation...

I was struck on Sunday to recall the story of Thomas at the end of John's Gospel and the nature of his declaration of faith, "My Lord and my God!"

Thomas' statement of belief, the first of its kind in the Gospels, reads as an almost immediate response to Jesus' appearance amongst the disciples and his invitation to Thomas to touch and see that his wounds are real. Thomas is the first person to declare that Jesus is God, and although this is partly a response to Jesus' resurrection and new life, it is significant to find it following a demonstration not of Godly power, but of human life.

Jesus invites Thomas to touch him and affirm his reality, his bodily life, his humanity - still showing the marks of pain and death. In this short interaction we find an illustration of some of the magic and the paradox of the incarnation. Thomas recognises Jesus divinity, not in spite of his humanity but through it. Jesus wants Thomas to know that he is real, that he has bodily life, and is not just a spirit. But in this very human demonstration, Thomas suddenly sees the fullness of who Jesus is, Lord and God.