Message by John Brierly McCall, D. Min.
[Last Sunday – on Easter – we looked at the way Mark tells about the empty tomb in his original account. And we saw how later editors and authors added to that early record. John, the latest and most poetic of the Gospels, has five separate accounts of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. Today’s lesson is the third of these five.]
John 20:19‑31 (Common English Bible)
It seems Thomas was a practical, logical, nuts-and-bolts kind of guy. He’d stood at the cross and absorbed the gruesome truth of the crucifixion. That was real. He saw it with his own eyes. So, 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 channeling 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 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. Ah – inward, concrete, logical, wanting closure. If you’re familiar with the Myers/Briggs test, I think we’re talking about an I-S-T-J here.
I remember a student in high school chemistry whom we all teased because he asked so many questions. When the teacher said, “now, do you all understand?” We all knew what would happen next, and rolled our eyes as Duane said “no,” and the teacher explained it one more time. Duane wasn’t slow, quite the opposite. He just took the class more seriously than the rest of us. So we teased him, but we also came to appreciate him. Duane’s just wouldn’t say he understood when he wasn’t sure. His need for the extra ounce of proof benefited us all when it was test time.
Doubt is a curious companion. I’ve had the privilege of sitting with many of you over the years, hearing the places of spiritual discomfort, praying with you for the deepening awareness of God’s leading in your lives. I’ve heard the anxieties and the questions about what it all means. “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 overwhelmed by the doubts that their faith never really recovers. But more often we live through such pain and come to a place of deeper trust.
We may agree that doubt is not an enemy in our religious quest. Theologian Paul Tillich wrote that faith is not the opposite of doubt; it’s doubt overcome. So Thomas didn’t bite his tongue or stifle his questions. He engaged them. After first running away he returned and, as such, he speaks for those who remain open to possibilities even when not convinced.
Once he was persuaded, his doubt became faith and nothing could hold him back. True, 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.” In my experience, God often can sometimes work greater wonders in a restless and searching agnostic than in a self‑satisfied Christian who stops reflecting on what it all means.
Maybe we’re like Thomas, the disciple who almost missed Easter because his first impulse was to run and hide. Then he found his way back. Maybe we wonder if God will be impatient with us when we struggle. But in strange and wonderful ways, if we need convincing, God will convince; if we need persuading, Jesus will persuade.
Sometimes doubt is born of laziness. Sometimes we’re tempted to disengage, to disbelieve everything rather than to believe something substantial. But honest doubt means working with what you believe and what you experience and trying to find a way to put them together.
Sounds like a lot of relationships, doesn’t it? How many couples find at the outset that trust is hard and then realize that old wounds and mistakes have made them assume that the other will fall short?
Like Thomas, they may say: “I think I’ll be able to believe IF you meet my standard of proof.” That’s when Jesus looked at Thomas and spoke the tenth Beatitude.
You’ll remember the first nine came near the beginning of his ministry when Jesus offered encouragement to his new disciples. Matthew and Luke record them somewhat differently but the essence is something like this: “Blessed are you when you know your need for God, when you mourn, when you are meek, when you hunger for righteousness, when you’re merciful, when you’re pure in heart; blessed are you when you’re a peacemaker, when you’re persecuted for what’s right, and when you’re reviled falsely because of your faith.”
Jesus gave nine specific examples of how his followers would find blessing in what the world cursed. Now here, at the very end, Jesus gives the last Beatitude: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Eugene Peterson, in The Message translation, says: “Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.” Jesus was addressing Thomas but was also speaking to us and to every future generation.
Scholars tell us the Gospel of John was written at a crucial time in the life of the early Church, some 55 to 75 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection – the last of the four Gospels. There was great reverence in the early church toward the original disciples who had actually been there. So as they died, or were scattered during the persecutions, and new believers came to lead the church, there was conflict about the relative faith of those who had not seen, but who still believed.
Would the church survive based on the testimony passed from one generation to the next? When all the eyewitnesses were gone, what would persuade the doubters? Both good questions. And there were good answers. First, was the testimony of the witnesses. 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 that makes us vital and alive.
We can’t be the church unless we move past the doubt and move on toward faith. If Easter makes a difference in the lives of those who have not seen, yet who believe, we will show evidence in the ways we live. There will be the gift of peace, offered by Christ to all his followers. There will be a deeper sense of purpose — a vision toward which we grow together. Christ’s Easter people live with a deeper trust.
Trust doesn’t come in response to words. It develops from caring and respecting relationships that never give us reason not to trust. To be the church today means that every one of us lives as one redeemed when we gather as the community.
Sometimes we’re very much like the disciples in that upper room, behind closed doors, who were gathered in fear and regret. They didn’t trust anyone and you can bet they didn’t dream about the future. Fear and terror gripped them. They believed the best years were behind them. Ahead of them was only disappointment and frustration. They didn’t much count on God’s ability to work in human lives, either. God had had every opportunity to make the story end differently.
But as they came together to share their grief and sorrow they felt the Presence. Though Jesus had been torn away from them, they felt him there. And Thomas, who missed the first appearance, now was offered the proof he needed.
Like the disciples, we may be rooted in the past and unable to welcome 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 into reality. 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 some labeled him 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.
Tradition says that Thomas was anything but lukewarm after he experienced the Risen Christ. He wrote his own Gospel that the early church tried to hide because it shows us a warm and human Jesus in a different light from the other four Gospels. He became an apostle to the orient, bringing Christianity to India and beyond.
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 missed Easter finally found it. And we can too.
But first we have to come out from behind closed doors and listen for the tenth Beatitude: “Blessed are you who have not seen, yet who believe.”