A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, August 1, 2010
John 20:19-31
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 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.” 26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then 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.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
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“Doubting Thomas” will be his name forever, though more accurately he was “the twin” the English equivalent of his name in Aramaic. In my mind his most important qualities were his loyalty and his honest questions. If Thomas and his doubts were not so evident in the Gospel record I suspect many of us would find it a little tougher to wrestle with the faith. We might walk away feeling unworthy and unwelcome.
Thomas was a practical, logical, nuts-and-bolts kind of guy. He’s mentioned in every Gospel and included in the all the lists of Apostles; he’d stood at the foot of the cross and had absorbed the gruesome truth of the crucifixion. Then he’d run away to be alone.
When some other disciples claimed they’d seen the risen Lord Thomas wasn’t easily persuaded. He wasn’t ready for a leap of faith. He wanted proof.
Woody Allen might have been thinking of this doubting Thomas when he said: “if God would only give me some clear sign like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank!”
Thomas was a detail-oriented thinker who wouldn’t believe it if he couldn’t see it. When he needed to make sense out of the confusion he went off by himself. Inward, concrete, logical, wanting closure: if you’re familiar with the Myers/Briggs test, I think we’re talking about an ISTJ here! Most importantly, Thomas refused to say he understood when he didn’t.
Alfred Lord Tennyson once said: “there is more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds.” It’s just as true that there’s more faith in one who tests this and who considers that before believing, than there is in one who glibly repeats all the right phrases.
In my experience, God can work more persuasively in a restless and searching doubter than a self satisfied Christian who seeks safety in absolutes.
Maybe we’re a little afraid to confess that we’re like Thomas. We might imagine that God gets impatient with doubters, or those who come more slowly to faith. But in strange and wonderful ways, if we need convincing, God will con¬vince; if we need persuading, Christ will persuade.
I’ve had the privilege of sitting with many of you over the years, hearing the places of doubt and discomfort, praying with you for the deepening awareness of God’s leading in your lives. I’ve heard the questions about what it all means. And I’ve had my share.
“How can there be a God when so much seems so broken?” “How can we say that God is loving when such terrible things happen in the world?” Some are so over¬whelmed by the doubts that their faith never really recovers.
But most of us live through such hard times and come to a place of deeper trust. That’s what Thomas did. Tradition says that after the resurrection Thomas made his way to the East and carried the Gospel to Persia (modern day Iraq) and then to India.
Paul Tillich has written that faith is not the opposite of doubt. It is doubt overcome. Once Thomas was persuaded his doubt became faith, and nothing could hold him back. He demanded a high standard of proof, but when he was convinced that Jesus was raised he fell to his knees crying “my Lord and my God.” When Thomas asked for proof, Jesus came to him. When Thomas fell to his knees Jesus replied: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Jesus was talking to Thomas, but was also speaking to every future generation.
You may know the Gospel of John was written at a crucial time in the life of the early Church. Scholars place it between 90 and 110 AD, some 55 to 75 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. There was great reverence in the early church toward the original disciples who had actually been there. So as they were killed, or scat¬tered during the persecutions, and new believers came to lead the church, there was debate over the faith of those who had not seen, but who still believed.
Could the church survive based on the testimony passed from each genera¬tion to the next? When all the eyewitnesses were gone, what would persuade the doubters? Two things: one was the testimony of those who had gone before. The other was the embrace of the Holy Spirit … in the present tense.
The same is true today. It’s all we have, and it’s quite enough: the testimony of our ancestors in the faith, and the presence of the Holy Spirit.
We can’t be the church until we confess our doubts and truly open our hearts to the Spirit’s response. To be the church today means that every one of us lives as one redeemed when we gather as the community and that we minister to each other so all of us can minister in the world.
Like the disciples, we may be rooted in the past and unable to imagine where God will lead us in the future. Like Thomas, we may not be prepared to believe on the basis of what someone else tells us. He firmly insisted, “seeing is believing.” Christ gave another perspective. St. Augustine said it: “faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of faith is to see what we have believed.”
When we believe fervently enough we can make the dreams come true. Desmond Tutu, the bishop from South Africa once said: “When we dream alone it is just a dream. But when we dream together it’s the beginning of reality.” When we throw open the closed doors then, by the grace of God, vision can lead us to a new place. It was true for the disciple who almost missed Easter and it’s true for us.
History and theologians haven’t been particularly kind to Thomas. Since he was clearly a doubter he was long labeled a weaker disciple. It’s easy to frown at his reluctance to believe. But the skeptic, once persuaded, becomes the faithful disciple. The doubter, once convinced, becomes the teacher.
Thomas had his standards of proof: what it would take to move him from doubt to faith. But once persuaded he became a powerful apostle for Christ. The man who walked away from Easter found the courage to return, bringing his questions and fears, and there – in the embrace of his community – he found abundant life.
We can too.