Unless. Thomas says to him, “Unless I see the nail marks in your hands and put my finger into the nail marks, and unless I see the wound on your side and put my hand into there, I will not believe.” He says to the Lord, “Unless” and the Lord does that. He says, Thomas, if that’s what you need to believe, look, at the marks on my hands. Put your fingers there and see the wound on my side. Place your hand in my side. And Thomas believes. And yet the Lord says, “Blessed are those who have not seen but believe.” We hear the very end of the Gospel of John here, and he says, “All these things that happened, all these Resurrection accounts are written here from people that witnessed the Resurrection so that we may believe.”
I think sometimes we do the same thing as Thomas, and we say to God, “Unless you do this in my life, I’m not really going to believe in you. Unless I experience you in this way, I’m not going to believe it.” But we hear that Jesus breathed upon the apostles in the upper room and he gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit. He said, “Just as you have seen me, and the Father has sent me, so now I send you.” What does he send them out in the world to do? To forgive sins. He gives them the power, and in the Sacrament of Confession he says, “Whatever you unbind will be unbound and whatever you loose will be loosened.”
Now, 2000 years later, Jesus then had suffered, died, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and then sent the Holy Spirit unto the church. That’s Pentecost. And now, after that, we experience him in a different way, but he’s no longer just one person on the earth. Now that he’s breathed his Holy Spirit into the apostles, the disciples, Jesus is all over the earth. He actually gives us some ‘unless’ statements. I’m just going to read a few of these from the Gospel of John. He says, “Unless you experience this you don’t have me within you, you don’t live the Resurrection.” These are the things that he’s saying to us who have not been there to experience in the way that the apostles did. In John 6:44 he says, “No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.” Jesus is saying, unless this happens, you are here today because the father has drawn you here. He’s working in your life. Something has brought you to be with him. Jesus said to them, “Amen, Amen I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you do not have life within you.” That’s a pretty big ‘unless.’ And notice he’s not saying unless you receive me symbolically. He’s saying, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life within you.” We get to do that. When do we do that? The Eucharist. When we come here today, and we eat his flesh, and we drink his blood. Sometimes people will say about Mass, “I’m just not getting anything out of it,” or “I don’t feel fed.” I’m like, “He’s giving you his very body and blood!”
John 12:24: “Amen, Amen I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies it produces much fruit.” Jesus is telling us that unless we die to sin, unless we unite our suffering to him, we will not bear life. Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet,” and Jesus answered him and said, “Unless I wash your feet you will have no inheritance with me.” What sacrament is the foot washing? Baptism, yes. Unless we experience baptism, we will not have life with him. We have experienced that.
Finally, in John 15:4 he says, “Remain in me as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so can you unless you remain in me.” ‘Unless’ we remain on the vine. If we ever find ourselves separated from the vine, what sacrament restores us to the vine? Yes, Confession, Reconciliation. We are reconciled to the Lord. Jesus is telling us, really, what the ‘unless’ should be. He’s giving us this wonderful way to experience and live this resurrected life. What’s different about us than the apostles at that time, is that the way we primarily experience him now is through the sacraments. We get to experience him in an even more profound way than the disciples did, through the sacraments that we share. If we’re saying to God, “Unless you do this in my life I will not believe,” I would just humbly change that a little bit to, “Lord, help my unbelief. I don’t really believe in the Eucharist. Help me believe. If I feel like I’m coming to Mass and I don’t feel better, I don’t experience you, help me to experience you. If I don’t understand the Sacrament of Confession, help me realize that grace.” These are the ways that we experience belief.
Today, as we come together inside the church doors here, Jesus appeared to the disciples when they were together. That’s why it’s so important that we come together Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, so that he can feed us. So that we can experience him deeply in our lives. And, so that we, too, do not have to be unbelievers. We can truly believe changing from Thomas’ ‘unless’ to realizing Jesus’ ‘Unless.’
