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March 30, 2008
Scripture: John 20: 19-31
Sermon: "That You May Believe"

We modern day disciples should probably be glad we missed the cut to appear as Bible characters. It’s a raw deal to have your life, your work, and all your spiritual struggles boiled down to two or three very short quotations and one or two unflattering anecdotes—and in often mistranslated Greek, too. Where there was at one time a full and complex human being exists centuries later a stereotype and a proverb—Peter the hothead, John the beloved, Judas the traitor, and Doubting Thomas.

That’s who Thomas is for us—the one who didn’t believe. The one who had to get special tutoring from Jesus before he caught on. The one we shouldn’t be like—because it is better to believe without seeing than to require proof.

It’s rare to find any gospel stories that make a disciple look good. They are the prefiguring of generations of Christians and so they are perpetually confused, short-sighted, and selfish. Thomas is no different from the rest the disciples in being unflatteringly portrayed in scripture, but the main reason he sticks in our heads is because of his memorable post-Easter encounter with Jesus toward the end of the gospel of John.

John is the only gospel in which Thomas has a speaking part. In the other gospels and in Acts he is listed among the disciples, but only in John is he mentioned specifically. It is in John that we learn he was called ‘The Twin,’ whatever that means, and he appears three times in the story. In chapter 11 when Jesus tells the disciples he intends to wake a sleeping man named Lazarus, despite that journey putting him a little closer to his enemies, it is Thomas who says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” And in chapter fourteen when Jesus tells the disciples they will one day come to a house with many rooms Thomas asks, “How can we know the way?” We remember how that issue was dealt with: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Church legend says that after the events of the gospel Thomas made his way to India as a missionary. He is the patron saint of architects and is also invoked against blindness. In art is usually pictured with either a t-square or a spear, the weapon of his martyrdom.

But obviously that isn’t what first comes to mind when we think of Thomas. What we remember is this:

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

The first thing to keep in mind when dealing with this text is that Thomas is only the last in a long line of post-resurrection disbelief. Mary Magdalene was crying in the garden because she believed Jesus’ body had been stolen. Jesus appears and calls her by name, and she races back to the disciples saying, “I have seen the Lord!” We can infer from the opening scene of today’s text—a fearful group meeting behind closed doors—that Mary’s news was received with some skepticism.
But suddenly there is an extra person in the room: “Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”

Who knows what Thomas was doing when this happened, but it should be noted that he is not asking for anything other than what the other disciples have already received. If Thomas is the only one who still does not believe, Thomas is also the only one who still has not encountered the risen Christ. The words he hears from the other disciples—We have seen the Lord—are the same ones they had not believed from Mary. Thomas is not doing anything that hasn’t been done before. By the time Jesus appears again, a week has gone by and Thomas has still not experienced Easter. What a week it must have been.

But Jesus does come again—he does not leave Thomas alone in his unbelief. This is too important a task to be left undone. Again the disciples are gathered behind closed doors, and again there is suddenly Jesus. Only this time his attention is more focused: “He 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.’” The text doesn’t tell us whether Thomas actually touches Jesus, but his exclamation is the most powerful statement of Jesus’ identity in the entire gospel: “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus’ reply is the reason Thomas has long been blamed for his unbelief: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” But this statement should not be interpreted as Jesus scolding Thomas. Rather, this is the gospel author speaking directly to the Christians of a later generation on what faith is really all about.
Gospels never lose sight of who their audiences are, and we know that the gospels in general were written as a response to one problem: the death of the original disciples. Suddenly there was a shortage of those who were actually there, and there needed to be a way to continue to tell the story. For John’s original audience, this text was not a statement that their faith was superior to the faith of the first generation of Christians. It was the opposite: it was a reassurance that faith was even possible for those who had never seen Jesus for themselves. How could they be authentic Christians with true, strong faith when they had never experienced the life of Jesus as anything but a story? The author known as John wants readers to know that faith does not have prerequisites. No matter how long it has been since the time of Jesus, faith is still available to everyone.

Faith is available, but John is not a gospel that would have us believe faith comes easily. Fred Craddock writes that in John faith is not a decision made once but a decision made over and over again in every situation of life. It is significant that the last person converted in John is one of the disciples—someone who had probably come to faith a few times already. After his encounter with Jesus, did Thomas never doubt again? We can’t say. If we had lived in the time of Jesus, and seen him for ourselves, would our faith be stronger than it is now? Maybe. Maybe not.

We are definitely in the group that believes without having seen, but we have all seen something. We have never seen the wounds in Jesus’ hands, and we weren’t there when Lazarus was raised, or when Nicodemus came by night, or when the man at the pool of Bethesda picked up his mat and walked away. We’ve heard tell of it, but we didn’t see it. What we have seen are our own miracles—we have our own stories of healing and moments of insight, and those serve as our evidence of the things not seen. What has brought us to faith are our own resurrections—the times when pain and grief, illness and anger, despair and bitterness have caused our souls to die within us—until there in our inner darkness a spark has ignited, and against all odds we have lived again.
We have faith because the gospel story is also our story—because we see God at work in our world and our time and we know that what God has done is the same as what God will do. And we know that this is too good a thing to keep to ourselves, so we run to our families, friends, neighbors, coworkers, we send money to faraway missionaries, we put ads in the newspaper and maintain our websites, and we say, ‘We have seen the Lord!’

And then we wonder why all these people don’t jump up and look for the nearest body of immersion-depth water.

It’s because it’s never enough to hear; everyone needs something to see. We who would share the good news don’t need only something to say, we need something to show. The Christians who come after us will be more of those who believe without having seen Jesus but, like us, they will not believe unless they see something.

Do we honestly expect people to believe in the good news of Jesus Christ and the coming kingdom of God if they have never encountered mercy or kindness, if they have never been loved, if they have never been freed from their oppression, guided toward a brighter future, protected from harm? Do we expect to make Christians out of those who have never seen Christians?

What do we have to show for our faith? We can point to our local outreach work, and our social justice initiatives, and the Week of Compassion, and everything we do to make the world a better place. Those are all good things, but the most compelling evidence we have to offer is ourselves.
Jesus calls us to force our way into all the dark places of the world where people live in fear and doubt. Once we’re in, all we have to do is stretch out our hands.

And we say, look at us. We have our wounds—we have been lost in the darkness, and we have screamed under the weight of pains internal and external. We ought to be long gone; we ought to be dust and ashes by now, but we are not. We are still here. We are still more inclined to love and hope than hate and bitterness. We are trying again. And we are real people full of flaws and complexities—we are not ghosts or illusions, we are not stereotypes or platitudes or over-simplifications, but neither are we what we were before. We are the walking wounded, and we are the walking resurrected.

The Easter story continues—it is still news, because there are still people who have heard but not believed, who seek and haven’t yet seen. Faith is still both difficult and possible. We who have seen still have work to do. There are more miracles to come.

Let us pray.

God of the resurrection, may we share our faith with all the confidence and joy that Easter has given us. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Amanda Hatafield, Student Associate

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