Then Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” John 20:27.
After the George Floyd murder on May 26, 2020 in Minneapolis, widespread protests gripped the nation. Tim Waltz was governor of Minnesota at the time, and he appointed Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s district attorney to direct the prosecution. In the closing remarks of Ellison, he asked the jury to “believe your eyes.”
That piece of advice to the jury has returned to my mind on several occasion, but none so much as when I think about the early disciples and what they had to do in order to process and embrace what happened to Jesus their Messiah. I think Jesus may have been saying to them, post resurrection, “believe your eyes,” and he carefully laid out for them the sensual, tactile reasons for faith.
Today is not the end of Easter. We do not mark off April 20 with a big X and say, “Now on to the next thing.” Living as disciples of Jesus, we say, “Today is a road, paved by Jesus, and he invites us to take it up as well.” We do this because we believe in the real hands and side and feet of Jesus that walked bodily out of the tomb.
We believe, not because we have seen the actual body of Jesus, but because we have seen the unbelievable changes wrought in those who followed him out of the Jerusalem tomb to the uttermost parts of the world. Often suffering great trials and pain. In that we “believe our eyes” and live accordingly.