April 11, Easter 2B (Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-31)

Twenty-five miles northeast of Mosul, Iraq, the Mar Mattai monastery is built into the side of a rugged mountain. Inside this fourth-century complex, a reliquary contains the alleged index finger of the apostle Thomas. Thanks to this week’s Gospel reading, this is arguably the most celebrated index finger in the world. Though John’s Gospel never says Thomas actually thrusts his finger into Jesus’ wounds, that narrative omission hasn’t kept artists over the centuries from vividly depicting it.

Basilicas in Rome (Holy Cross in Jerusalem) and Ortona, Italy (St. Thomas the Apostle) also claim to have Thomas’s full index finger, which, if true, would have given him plenty of fingers with which to pick olives in his day. The authenticity of each of these index fingers is of course disputed. Absent Thomas’s DNA, they could never truly be verified. But such is the strangeness of all exercises in proof.

There may be no such thing as proof outside very particular realms like mathematics and logic, where there are self-contained systems of propositions. In science, nature, and human relations we have empirical evidence that can be evaluated. But proof, prove, and proven are the wrong words to use when talking about theories that can be challenged. How can human equality or human rights be empirically provable? If faith, by definition, can be rejected, how can there be absolute proof of its existence? If I tell my wife that I love her, how can I actually prove that truth? I could go and buy her a nice necklace, or take out the garbage more regularly, or say “I love you” more frequently. But those are expressions of love, not proof of love.