Seeing Things | Touch the Wound

Thomas gets a bad reputation for doubting, but maybe he was just honest — and maybe that honesty is exactly what brought him back into the room. This week we explore how naming what's broken, rather than hiding it, is often the very thing that opens us to belonging.

 

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TRANSCRIPT:

"Touching the Wound: Waking Up to Belonging"

Open: Poor Thomas

Starting with a little rehab here…

Thomas has been getting a bad reputation for about two thousand years. Doubting Thomas. We've turned his name into an insult— something you call someone who won't take your word for it. Someone who needs proof. Someone who's being difficult.

But here's what I want to suggest today: Thomas wasn't being difficult. Thomas was being honest. And that honesty — that refusal to pretend he was okay when he wasn't, to perform belief he didn't have — might be exactly what brought him back into the room.

The Story: Thomas (John 20:19–29)

(Set the scene)

It's the evening of the day of resurrection. The disciples are huddled behind locked doors — afraid, bewildered, not sure what to do next. Jesus appears, shows them his hands and his side, breathes peace on them, and sends them out. It's an extraordinary moment.

And Thomas isn't there.

We don't know why. The text doesn't say. Maybe he needed air, or to put his feet on grass. Maybe grief just does that — sends us off alone sometimes.

The others find him and say: we have seen Jesus. And Thomas says — and here the Greek is vivid and visceral, not politely skeptical: unless I put my finger into the wounds in his hands, unless I thrust my hand into his side — I don’t buy it.

Not a mild maybe. A raw demand, dripping with grief. Show me the wound. Don't tell me it's okay. Show me. My most recent– and now maybe permanent– memory of this person is intimately tied to his death…

A week later, Jesus appears again. And the first thing he does is turn to Thomas and say: here. Put your finger here. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.

He doesn't scold Thomas. He doesn't say why couldn't you just trust the others? He shows him exactly what Thomas asked to see.

And Thomas says: my Lord and my God.

The most complete confession of faith in the entire Gospel of John — spoken by the one who has  been labeled “the doubter,” as if that’s a bad thing.

What Thomas Actually Did

I want to slow down and look at what Thomas really did here, because I think we've been reading it wrong.

Thomas did not hide his doubt. He did not perform belief he didn't have. He did not sit in the back of the room and smile and nod and go through the motions.

He said the true thing. The hard thing. The thing that probably felt embarrassing and exposed and maybe even a little dangerous to say in a room full of people who claimed they'd already seen.

I need to touch the wound to believe it.

That is not a failure of faith. That is an act of extraordinary courage — the courage of honesty. And because he said the true thing, because he named what was real for him, he got to be there when Jesus showed up again. He was in the room.

What if the doubt wasn't the obstacle to belonging? What if naming the doubt was the very thing that kept him connected?

Mr. Rogers and the Mentionable

Fred Rogers understood something about this — and he spent his whole career trying to teach it to children, and really, to the rest of us.

His full version of the famous line is this: "Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone."

Not just: if you can say it, you can handle it. But: anything human can be said. And saying it is how we stop being alone in it.

Rogers was actually an ordained pastor who believed deeply that the most spiritual thing you could do was tell the truth about how you were actually doing. That naming the wound — whatever it was — was the beginning of healing, not the end of dignity. 

And he didn't just preach this. He demonstrated it. In 1969, Rogers testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communications. Nixon wanted to cut public broadcasting funding in half. Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island was chairing the committee — impatient, skeptical, running behind schedule. He told Rogers he had six minutes and that he'd already read his statement, so Rogers could skip it.

And Rogers — gentle, calm, completely unintimidated — said he'd like to share some of it anyway. And for six minutes, he talked about what his show tried to do: help children name their feelings. Anger. Sadness. Fear. The hard stuff. He even recited, quietly, the words to a song from the show about what to do with the mad that you feel.

(video clip here)

An abrupt, impatient senator… not entirely closed, but not exactly open either… moved not by argument, not by data, but by someone willing to speak honestly and vulnerably about what actually matters to human beings. 

What Rogers did in that hearing room is what Thomas did in that locked room. He named the real thing. And the room changed.

The Wound Doesn’t Disappear

Here's where I want to push into something important, because there's a version of this story that is too easy.

The easy version says: Thomas doubted, Jesus showed up, Thomas believed, everything was fine. Transformation as erasure. The wound healed. Clean ending.

But look at the text again. Jesus shows Thomas the wounds — and the wounds are still there. His body still carries them. Resurrection doesn't erase the harm. It transforms it into something that can be touched, named, even — in the tradition — venerated.

Theologian Shelly Rambo, writing in the feminist and womanist tradition, argues that the wounds of Jesus speak directly to present-day wounds that persist — the wounds of racism, of trauma, of systemic harm — and that theological claim about resurrection must resist what she calls the covering over and erasing of wounds. Pretending the harm didn't happen is not renewal. Resurrection… revival… new life… is the insistence that the wound doesn't have the last word in our lives — while still honoring that the wound is real. It hurts.

This matters enormously for us. For people in this room who carry wounds — personal, communal, historical — that some well-meaning religious community has told you to get over, move on from, stop bringing up: that is not what this story is about.

Jesus doesn't say to Thomas: you should have believed without seeing. He says: here. Touch it.

The wound is the door, not the obstacle.

What This Looks Like Here

So what does this mean for a community like Fabric?

A lot of us came here — or are here exploring — because some other room didn't have space for real questions. Real skepticism or doubts. Real wounds from what religion has done, or what life has done, or what systems have done to us and the people we love. 

And what this story says is: that honesty isn't what keeps you out of the room. It's what makes it possible to be in the room in any real way.

When you say I don't know if I believe any of this — you're doing what Thomas did.

When you say I'm not okay and I'm not going to pretend I am — you're doing what Thomas did.

When you say I need to see the wound before I can trust the story — you are in good company. Ancient company.

And the invitation this community wants to extend is not: clean yourself up and then come in. It's: come in as you are. Bring the doubt. Bring the wound. There's room.

Closing Practice

Fred Rogers said that the people we trust with the important talk help us know we are not alone. Thomas needed to touch the wound before he could actually become present to the seemingly impossible thing that was happening in their shared life. Both of them are pointing to the same thing: naming what is real is how we find our way back into connection.

So this week, one practice. Just one… Name something true — to yourself, or to one person you trust — that you've been carrying quietly. It doesn't have to be dramatic. It doesn't have to be resolved. It just has to be honest. This is hard for me. I don't know what I believe about this. I'm more tired than I'm letting on. I miss someone. I'm angry, and I haven't said it.

Name it. Say the mentionable, human thing. And notice what shifts — even a little — when the wound gets to be in the room. You don't have to have this figured out to belong here. Bring the doubt. Bring the wound. There's room.

May it be so.