“Nicknames” by Brian Flanagan, Fiat Ventures
Second Sunday of Easter
Have you ever had a nickname? I used to work at a summer camp where almost all the guys on the staff had a nickname. One guy we called Blue, since he was wearing a blue t-shirt his first day on the staff. Another guy we called Milton, since someone thought he looked like Milton from the movie Office Space. I still call those guys Blue and Milton and can barely remember their real names!
Then there were some guys with more unfortunate nicknames, like Heights who got his name from getting stuck on the roof of a building and being too scared to climb down the ladder (admittedly that was an awful nickname, and I don’t call him that anymore).
This week’s Gospel deals with another unfortunate nickname – Doubting Thomas. Poor Thomas. He wasn’t any more doubting than the other guys were before Jesus appeared in their midst and ate and drank with them. But because they saw Jesus before he did, he’s the one stuck with the nickname.
All of them doubted at first. When Mary Magdalene burst in proclaiming that the stone was rolled away and that the tomb was empty, they thought she was going crazy from the stress and grief of Jesus’ death. Their doubts weren’t overcome until they saw the Risen Jesus.
And harder for us, we have to take their word for it since we haven’t seen with our own eyes. I think for most of us though, this isn’t even what we doubt most. We can believe that Jesus rose from the dead and that the stone was rolled away, but we doubt that he can do that for us.
We all have different “stones” that keep us in our “tombs” and hold us back from God, whether it’s a particular sin or some lie about ourselves we’ve bought into, and we doubt that God can roll them away. Or if he can, maybe he can roll it away just enough that we can squeeze past the stone if we really suck in.
But Jesus didn’t have to suck in. I like to think that the stone wasn’t rolled away for Jesus, but when he rose in the tomb on Easter Sunday, the stone was launched from the entrance of the tomb like a canon, because of how ridiculous it felt about trying to keep Jesus in there. Or maybe it was shattered into a million pieces, so much so that the Apostles couldn’t even find it. The victory of Jesus’ Resurrection was so complete and total that the stone didn’t have a chance of holding him back.
And we have that same power of the Resurrection in our lives. So go ahead; take a minute and think about whatever the “stone” is that’s holding you back from God right now. And pray. Pray that Jesus would roll the stone away completely. Easter is about more than chocolate rabbits and jelly beans, it’s about the stone being rolled away so nothing can hold you back from God. As he said to Thomas, Jesus says to us, “Do not be unbelieving, but believe!”