[Sermon for St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona, Thomas Sunday (Easter II, Dominica in Albis), April 16, 2023]
✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.
Blessed. More modern translations, such as our own Prayer Book psalter,[1] render this word as happy or fortunate. We have also heard favoured in some renditions of the Angelic greeting to the Mother of God. Honoured is another meaning that crops up. It is one of those words that sit uneasily on our tongues, misused, or at least watered down or misdirected, and definitely misunderstood. This reflects a wee bit of a problem in how we teach language and how we use language. Many of us remember hearing about synonyms in school, and we were encouraged to dig up synonyms so we could vary our writing to keep our teachers from falling asleep (with varying degrees of success) in the evening as they graded our tests and assignments. The problem with that approach, however, is to miss connotative and denotative associations with a particular word. Every word comes with baggage, a long history of use where colloquial meaning is a pale shadow of what it once was. If you want a real-life example, just watch the reaction when you say sawbones or leech instead of doctor or physician or the pandaemonium when you mix a bunch of MD’s with PhD’s and ask for a doctor.
Our Gospels were handed down to us in Greek, Greek used by people whose first language was Aramaic and whose liturgical language was Classical Hebrew, the latter two being related languages and definitely NOT related to Greek. These people were trying to hand over the Aramaic word בְּרִיךְ (berík), or בָּרוּךְ (barúch) in Hebrew, using the Greek word μακάριος (makários), which we tried to render in English using blessed. Linguistically it is a hot mess, and when Our Lord today in the Gospel we just read said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,”[2] do we mean happy, as modern translators would have us do, hallowed or made holy or blood-consecrated, which is the actual root meaning of the English word we are using,[3]honoured or exalted or made great, which are the connotations carried in Classical and Hellenistic Greek,[4] or Divinely favoured as is meant by the Semitic languages?[5]
We need to remember that the Israelites, God’s chosen people, were in relationship with God through covenant, a solemn agreement that made contract law look like pinky-swearing. For the people of the Covenant, God is blessed in that He is due our worship and obedience as our Creator and everything else that comes along with just Who and What God is, whereas we are blessed in that we submit in praise, thanksgiving, and obedience to Him. The writers of our Gospel accounts mean blessed is that honour, that exaltation which God bestows on those who are faithful, regardless of the circumstances they are in. The rest of it is window dressing brought on by centuries of translations of the account into languages that did not have the right word with the precise meaning that the Semitic words contained.
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”[6] Our Lord said this to St. Thomas, but not to put St. Thomas down. Consider, if you will, that St. Thomas, indeed all the disciples, had recently been traumatized in a way no other disciple would be again. They had their teacher, their friend, their Lord cruelly and horribly ripped away from them, so they all received personal appearances from the Lord not only to cement their witness but to assist in healing their injured psyches. The statement was not just to address St. Thomas’ doubts, but all the disciples’ doubts. They all had expressed some degree of disbelief when confronted with the news of the Resurrection; just ask St. Mary Magdalene! St. Thomas was not unique; he was just a more dramatic example. You see, the disciples all got to see the risen Lord, they all got to interact with Him again within the material cosmos. They truly were blessed in this regard, their covenant with God strengthened, and Divine favour restored. The message was delivered to all the disciples in that room because they were to be the ones to carry the news of the Resurrection to those who would not get a chance to see Jesus walk among them. These people had seen Him before His passion, they needed to see Him after His resurrection so that our faith might be strengthened by their witness.
Belief is the key to the blessedness that belongs to those partaking in the covenant which God had renewed in Our Lord’s Death and Resurrection. Make no mistake, this is a covenant, a formal relationship that governs every facet of our lives. The disciples who had seen the risen Lord believed because they saw, and in so believing received covenant favour with God despite their well-documented shortcomings. Anyone else from that time on, St. Paul notwithstanding, achieves the same covenant favour due to their own belief even though they have not seen or touched the risen Lord. The disciples received a special gift to strengthen their witness. It is because of their witness that we believe and thus participate in the renewed covenant.
So what is that blessedness? Prosperity preachers would have us believe that material possessions and an easy life is the lot of the true believer, which is laughable when one considers the tough lives and even tougher deaths the Apostles experienced. Claims that the life of a believer is unabatingly happy fail when we consider that the Holy Apostle Paul confessed to the Corinthian Church that he was in a bit of a bad place when on a trip through Asia Minor,[7] never mind the experience of Christians over two thousand years in this Vale of Tears. Instead, St. Peter tells us flat out this favour is,
“…A new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from th
e dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”[8]
This favour is the “salvation of our souls,”[9] an eternity united with God, made possible by the Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, an honoured eternity when we enter into that renewed covenant, sealed by the destruction of our old enemy and slave-master, Sin, Death, and Corruption. This belief, this faith, this trust that is our part in the covenant with God is not a doorway to riches and an easier life. No, we will still have, as St. Peter wrote, “various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire.”[10] It is not an easy life but a life, despite this suffering that may ensue, full of “an indescribable and glorious joy.”[11]
Joy. Not exactly the same as happiness. Joy is independent of happiness. Joy is the state of assurance that all will be well, to steal a line from Mo. Julian of Norwich, assurance that we can still be positive no matter how bad we feel, that we can uplift our souls through our tears when the negative presses all around, because Jesus is raised from the dead and in Him we shall share in His Resurrection. All who believe in Him, who trust in Him, have this joy, have this hope; those who work and suffer and weep living the Way because they trust Him who rose from the dead, even though they have not seen Him personally, have this honour.
Favoured are the poor in spirit, favoured are those who mourn, favoured are the meek, favoured are those who yearn for righteousness, favoured are the merciful, favoured are the pure in heart, favoured are the peacemakers, favoured are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, favoured are those reviled because of the Lord,[12] and now favoured are those who have faith in the risen Lord even though they have not seen Him.
That is today’s message. Not that St. Thomas was not blessed because he had to see the risen Jesus to believe, but that we are blessed because we believe St. Thomas’ testimony. Not that God will make our lives here in this age easy but that He has freed us from Sin and Death. Not that only those who have seen the risen Jesus will share in the eternal covenant, but those who have not seen Him but still have faith and believe. That is the transformational message today, that all who believe and trust in the risen Lord will have life eternal through him.[13]
Dear Family in Christ, I have a small exercise for us. Our Paschal greeting in the West is a bit wordy. I prefer the Eastern greeting, pithier and more visceral while essentially the same: When one says, or shouts, “Christ is risen!” any believer within earshot answers in the same vein, “Indeed, He is risen!” This cry of belief has been the witness of those who have not seen, echoed in the face of the Adversary for now thousands of years. Please say it with me today. Let the rafters ring with your response!
Christ is risen!
Indeed He is risen!
Christ is risen!
Indeed He is risen!
Christ is risen!
Indeed He is risen!
Blessed are we who have not seen, and yet have believed.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.
[1] Cf. Ps. 1.1, “The Psalter,” The Book of Common Prayer, Church Publishing Company (New York, 1979). [2] Jn. 20.29b [3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/blessed [4] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%BA%CE%AC%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%BF%CF%82 [5] https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/barukh [6] Jn. 20.29b [7] 2 Cor. 1.8 [8] 1 Pet. 3b-5 [9] 1 Pet. 3.9 [10] 1 Pet. 6b-7 [11] 1 Pet. 3.8 [12] Adapted from Mt. 5.1-11 [13] Jn. 3.16