2 Easter Year C 4/27/2025
Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 118:14-29; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Probably the most heartwarming tradition in college football happens at the University of Iowa.
The Stead Family Children’s Hospital sits next to Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium, and the hospital’s top floor has floor-to-ceiling windows offering a great view of the field.
On game days, sick children and their families fill the floor to watch the action below, and at the end of the first quarter, coaches, athletes, and thousands of fans turn to the hospital and wave.
For those few moments, the children’s eyes light up.
It’s powerful to see the athletes, with a packed stadium and thousands more watching on TV, pause and show they care.
I love this college football tradition as it is an act of mercy…
Kindness driven by a heart of mercy.
It is a display of power reaching out to those who are weak…
to those who are suffering.
Mercy can be such a beautiful thing.
Mercy is also one of the most profound and perpetual attributes of God in the Bible.
We see it throughout the scriptures…
We see God’s mercy when he freed the Israelites from the suffering of slavery under the Pharoah of Egypt.
We see God’s mercy with renewing the Mosaic Covenant even though the Israelites worshipped the golden calf.
You see the mercy of God in his raising up of prophets to declare the way of God to the people.
You see the mercy of God in the continual forgiveness of the Israelites throughout the Old Testament even though the people of God fell away repeatedly.
Of course, the ultimate act of God’s mercy is in sending the Messiah to redeem the world.
There are so many examples of the mercy of God in the Holy Scriptures.
We also recognize the consistent mercy of God in our theology…
In our prayers from our Prayer Book…
One example is in the Prayer of Humble Access…
In this prayer we say:
We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord,
Trusting in our own righteousness,
But in thy manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.
But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.
(BCP, 337).
Mercy is in the nature of God…
It’s who he is and what he does in his relationship with his creation.
He extends mercy.
We see God’s mercy in the person of Jesus Christ in our Gospel reading today.
The second Sunday of Eastertide is always dedicated to the disciple named Thomas.
Often referred to as “Doubting Thomas”
An unfortunate nickname that has stuck with him through the centuries.
He was actually a bold disciple…
Full of faith…
Preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in the first century as far away as India… where he most likely died proclaiming the good news of Jesus.
In our Gospel, he was bold too…
However, bold in his disbelief… in his doubt.
He wasn’t sure that Jesus rose from the grave.
He declared to his peers:
Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands,
and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side,
I will not believe.
It was a week later that Jesus appeared before them all.
And Jesus said to Thomas, directly:
Put your finger here and see my hands.
Reach out your hand and put it in my side.
Do not doubt but believe.
Thomas responded with the statement of belief:
My Lord and my God!
In this whole narrative, we see Jesus full of mercy.
First, Jesus responds to Thomas’ doubt with Mercy.
He does not chide or scold.
There is no scorn in the voice of Jesus here.
If some of us were in Jesus shoes, we would have let Thomas have it:
Oh yeah? You think I didn’t rise from the dead, huh?
Well look at me…
I’m really here…
You should have believed me?
Why didn’t you believe what I said?
You call yourself a follower?
But Jesus doesn’t do that.
He simply offers the proof that Thomas wanted.
He met Thomas right where he was at…
In his doubts…
In his unbelief.
Jesus, in his mercy, answers Thomas’ prayer.
Jesus also responds in mercy with the scars of his body.
Jesus had the wounds in his hands where the nails were hammered.
The wound on his side where the spear was stabbed.
It’s interesting that Jesus resurrected body bore the scars of the torture of his death.
St. Augustine pondered this as well.
Back in the fifth century, the Bishop wrote:
Now we may ask: could not the Lord have risen with a body from which all marks of wounds had been erased?
No doubt he could have;
but he knew his disciples bore within their hearts a wound so deep that the only way to cure it was to retain the scars of his own wounds in his body. [1]
The great father of the church understood the scars on Jesus resurrected body to be an act of mercy for the disciples.
It certainly was in the case of Thomas.
It was the proof Thomas needed.
And in the mercy of Jesus, he answers Thomas’ prayer.
God is a God full of mercy.
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning…
Said the prophet Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations (3.22-23)
God responds in mercy…
Even though he knows our struggles and doubts.
For he became human in order to bring us healing.
All of us are well aware that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the one physician capable of bringing us eternal healing and salvation.
We know, too, that it was in order to accomplish this that he took upon himself the weakness of our human nature,
otherwise that weakness would have remained with us for ever.
He equipped himself with a human body liable to death,
so that in and through that body he might conquer death itself.
And though, as the apostle tells us, it was his human weakness that made it possible for him to be crucified,
it was his divine power that enabled him to return to life.[2]
He came to heal us in his mercy.
As St. Peter writes:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
According to his great mercy,
he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
(1 Peter 1.3)
Jesus in his mercy heals our brokenness.
In the cross he forgives our sins.
By his blood we are freed from the guilt and shame of our sins.
By way of his resurrection, we have the hope of eternal life with him.
By his grace he gives us salvation.
Jesus shows us the way of mercy.
The speech of mercy.
The posture of mercy.
The walk of mercy.
What a faithful God we have…
A promise of mercy that is so amazing…
It is overwhelming.
I want to close with a simple prayer…
If you don’t know it…
I want to teach it to you.
It’s a very short prayer that I learned from an Episcopal Priest named, Winn Collier (a colleague of mine).
It goes like this:
Heavenly Father, teach me to love as You love.
That’s it.
The more we understand and experience…
God the Father’s loving mercy toward us…
It should become more and more natural to show that mercy toward each other.
Heavenly Father, teach me to love as You love.
Teach me to show mercy, just as you showed mercy to your disciple, Thomas.
And there’s grace and mercy when we fail to live up to the prayer.
Because God is a God of mercy.
So, let’s pray that prayer…
throughout the day…
throughout the weeks ahead…
in all the comings and goings of life…
in our interactions with others…
Even our interactions with others on social media…
In our car rides…
In our families…
with all that the news, that the day brings…
in all the good times and difficult times of life…
Holding on to the promise of God – his mercy toward us.
May we respond in this life with that same mercy.
Heavenly Father, teach me to love as You love.
Amen.
[1] Quoting St. Augustine of Hippo in Journey with the Fathers: Commentaries on the Sunday Gospels Year C (New York: New York City Press, 1994), 51.
[2] Quoting St. Augustine of Hippo in Journey with the Fathers: Commentaries on the Sunday Gospels Year C (New York: New York City Press, 1994), 50.
