Listening to Thomas
Text: John 20:19-29
I have always felt that Thomas has never really gotten a fair shake. For years we have used him as an example of how we should not doubt, but how we should simply believe stuff at face value, without asking questions. In Sunday school I was always one who asked all kinds of questions, much to the chagrin of my church school teachers. Not so much that they felt that I shouldn’t ask questions, but it was the kind of thing that if it wasn’t in the lesson plan, they’d be out of their depth. Sometimes the story of Thomas was brought up, because Thomas was put in such a bad light that nobody wanted to be a “doubting Thomas.”
Unfortunately, that branding has really kept us from learning anything from the story other than “Shut up and believe what we tell you.” We’ve gotten to the point that we have come to believe doubt is a sin. To put it simply, it seems as though there is no room for doubt within the church. And sadly, I have heard it said that if you are a person of faith, then there is no need to doubt. In their minds, to doubt is wrong. So like I said, Thomas gets a bad rap…
Yet by taking the story in only that way misses a lot of the subtleties that come out of it, plus the not-so-minor fact that Thomas has the privilege of point out to us who Jesus really is.
The story of Thomas always comes up on the second Sunday of Easter. In part, because of how it is presented in John’s gospel. As it is told in John, on that first Easter Sunday, the disciples are gathered together on the first day of the week –a Sunday- when Jesus appears amongst them. Thomas isn’t there, and so the drama unfolds one week later, again, on the first day of the week, when the disciples are gathered together. There’s something about the drama of remembering this story that happens “one week later” on the Sunday that is one week after Easter Sunday.
Yet John is such a masterful storyteller, that there is a whole layer that we miss. When the disciples are gathered together on the first day of the week, for early Christians listening to this they would immediately relate it to their own experience of worship. Literal, physical, or not, as Christians we gather together on Sunday to worship God and have an encounter with the risen Christ. The same is true two thousand years later…
As the story goes, Thomas isn’t there, so when the other disciples tell him, “we have seen the Lord!” He’s understandably skeptical. “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.”
Thomas is portrayed in the gospel of John as one who asks questions… It’s not just in this passage alone… In earlier in the gospel, the questions he asks sets up the famous response from Jesus… “I am the way, the truth, the life.” Think about it, if Thomas never asked any questions how would we know any different? How would we learn something about God’s relation to us in Jesus? His questions lead towards revealing something more about who Jesus is, and expanding our understanding of God. Without his doubt and skepticism we would not have these opportunities to learn. We would be much worse off for it.
As much as Thomas is branded as a doubter, it’s not a fair label. Amongst the disciples he was probably one of the most loyal. In the first of the three places he is quoted in the Gospel of John, when they head towards the home of Lazarus, he expresses a willingness to go with Jesus, even if it means the powers-that-be might catch and kill them. If anything, Thomas was not afraid to die… after all, he wasn’t there on that first day of the week huddled in fear. Why? Because he wasn’t afraid to be out on the street… when everybody else was! Thomas was brave and loyal… but those are two qualities that are often completely overshadowed by this thing called doubt.
At no point is Thomas ever excluded or shut out because of his skepticism… despite how it sounds in English, Jesus does not even really reprimanded for not believing what the other disciples told him. Jesus simply says to him that his conditions are met, that he can believe… but that it’s not necessary for everyone to have the same personal experience that Thomas did.
I’m not sure how many of you received your copy of the Presbyterian Record this week, but in it there was an article profiling a theologian by the name of Douglas John Hall. He now teaches at McGill University, of which our own Presbyterian College is a part. Usually articles about theologians inspire glazed eyes and conjure up images of long, boring lectures… but not this one. When asked about his own journey of faith, he talks about his encounter with the writings of the 16th century reformer Martin Luther… the one whose challenges to the church were the match that lit the tinderbox of the Reformation. For Hall, Luther helped him see that “one can be a Christian and a doubter, a skeptic, a questioner of all sorts of pretensions to finality.” In fact, in terms of the church’s history, we are at our absolute best when we make room for this, because it gives us the room to grow and learn something new about our faith.
M. Scott Peck, in an essay on faith in his book The Road Less Travelled, writes: “We can only begin to know reality by travelling through the darkness of doubt. You cannot have genuine confidence without first having doubt. Perhaps the greatest sin of our sinful Christian Church has been its tendency through the ages to discourage doubt. I apologize on behalf of my miraculous yet crippled church to those who have suffered as a result of this sin....For how can we find answers if we do not ask questions? Like anything, doubt can be carried to sick and destructive extremes. But in ordinary amounts, like that shown by Thomas, it should be one of the Christian virtues.”[1]
And then Peck adds something that should be etched above the door of every room where confirmation and adult membership classes meet: “The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.”[2]
For me, that is extremely reassuring. So many of us are used to thinking of Thomas as “the doubter” and thinking of doubt as sin, that we miss the fact that Jesus does not reprimand him for his doubts. On the contrary, Jesus takes seriously what Thomas has said he needs to enable him to believe, and offers him just what he needed. Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt any longer, but believe.” (John 20:27).
And then Thomas answers him... and what does he say?
“My Lord and my God!”
It is the one statement made about Jesus in the entire gospel of John that isn’t debated. It’s less a discussion than it is a moment of revelation. Thomas’ skepticism has come through to a moment of clarity where he is able to proclaim something that nobody else is able to make. He gets it. He comprehends what has happened in a way maybe even more profound than those around him. Yet he would not have had that same profoundly deep revelation if he hadn’t walked through his own doubts to this point.
The problem is, we don’t know exactly when we will have that moment of clarity after having traveled through our own doubts. For Thomas it came when he encountered the living Christ with the community gathered together on the first day of the week. For most of us, it’s not going to be that obvious… maybe what we need to do is to not be afraid of asking questions… but at the same time not be afraid to open our eyes and see Jesus right in our own midst. I take it with a great deal of comfort, that in spite of whatever doubts we might have, God still loves us… and maybe that’s the good news that we can take away from this today.
Amen.
[1]M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled. Simon and Schuster, 1978. Page 193, alt.
[2]Ibid.
I have always felt that Thomas has never really gotten a fair shake. For years we have used him as an example of how we should not doubt, but how we should simply believe stuff at face value, without asking questions. In Sunday school I was always one who asked all kinds of questions, much to the chagrin of my church school teachers. Not so much that they felt that I shouldn’t ask questions, but it was the kind of thing that if it wasn’t in the lesson plan, they’d be out of their depth. Sometimes the story of Thomas was brought up, because Thomas was put in such a bad light that nobody wanted to be a “doubting Thomas.”
Unfortunately, that branding has really kept us from learning anything from the story other than “Shut up and believe what we tell you.” We’ve gotten to the point that we have come to believe doubt is a sin. To put it simply, it seems as though there is no room for doubt within the church. And sadly, I have heard it said that if you are a person of faith, then there is no need to doubt. In their minds, to doubt is wrong. So like I said, Thomas gets a bad rap…
Yet by taking the story in only that way misses a lot of the subtleties that come out of it, plus the not-so-minor fact that Thomas has the privilege of point out to us who Jesus really is.
The story of Thomas always comes up on the second Sunday of Easter. In part, because of how it is presented in John’s gospel. As it is told in John, on that first Easter Sunday, the disciples are gathered together on the first day of the week –a Sunday- when Jesus appears amongst them. Thomas isn’t there, and so the drama unfolds one week later, again, on the first day of the week, when the disciples are gathered together. There’s something about the drama of remembering this story that happens “one week later” on the Sunday that is one week after Easter Sunday.
Yet John is such a masterful storyteller, that there is a whole layer that we miss. When the disciples are gathered together on the first day of the week, for early Christians listening to this they would immediately relate it to their own experience of worship. Literal, physical, or not, as Christians we gather together on Sunday to worship God and have an encounter with the risen Christ. The same is true two thousand years later…
As the story goes, Thomas isn’t there, so when the other disciples tell him, “we have seen the Lord!” He’s understandably skeptical. “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.”
Thomas is portrayed in the gospel of John as one who asks questions… It’s not just in this passage alone… In earlier in the gospel, the questions he asks sets up the famous response from Jesus… “I am the way, the truth, the life.” Think about it, if Thomas never asked any questions how would we know any different? How would we learn something about God’s relation to us in Jesus? His questions lead towards revealing something more about who Jesus is, and expanding our understanding of God. Without his doubt and skepticism we would not have these opportunities to learn. We would be much worse off for it.
As much as Thomas is branded as a doubter, it’s not a fair label. Amongst the disciples he was probably one of the most loyal. In the first of the three places he is quoted in the Gospel of John, when they head towards the home of Lazarus, he expresses a willingness to go with Jesus, even if it means the powers-that-be might catch and kill them. If anything, Thomas was not afraid to die… after all, he wasn’t there on that first day of the week huddled in fear. Why? Because he wasn’t afraid to be out on the street… when everybody else was! Thomas was brave and loyal… but those are two qualities that are often completely overshadowed by this thing called doubt.
At no point is Thomas ever excluded or shut out because of his skepticism… despite how it sounds in English, Jesus does not even really reprimanded for not believing what the other disciples told him. Jesus simply says to him that his conditions are met, that he can believe… but that it’s not necessary for everyone to have the same personal experience that Thomas did.
I’m not sure how many of you received your copy of the Presbyterian Record this week, but in it there was an article profiling a theologian by the name of Douglas John Hall. He now teaches at McGill University, of which our own Presbyterian College is a part. Usually articles about theologians inspire glazed eyes and conjure up images of long, boring lectures… but not this one. When asked about his own journey of faith, he talks about his encounter with the writings of the 16th century reformer Martin Luther… the one whose challenges to the church were the match that lit the tinderbox of the Reformation. For Hall, Luther helped him see that “one can be a Christian and a doubter, a skeptic, a questioner of all sorts of pretensions to finality.” In fact, in terms of the church’s history, we are at our absolute best when we make room for this, because it gives us the room to grow and learn something new about our faith.
M. Scott Peck, in an essay on faith in his book The Road Less Travelled, writes: “We can only begin to know reality by travelling through the darkness of doubt. You cannot have genuine confidence without first having doubt. Perhaps the greatest sin of our sinful Christian Church has been its tendency through the ages to discourage doubt. I apologize on behalf of my miraculous yet crippled church to those who have suffered as a result of this sin....For how can we find answers if we do not ask questions? Like anything, doubt can be carried to sick and destructive extremes. But in ordinary amounts, like that shown by Thomas, it should be one of the Christian virtues.”[1]
And then Peck adds something that should be etched above the door of every room where confirmation and adult membership classes meet: “The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.”[2]
For me, that is extremely reassuring. So many of us are used to thinking of Thomas as “the doubter” and thinking of doubt as sin, that we miss the fact that Jesus does not reprimand him for his doubts. On the contrary, Jesus takes seriously what Thomas has said he needs to enable him to believe, and offers him just what he needed. Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt any longer, but believe.” (John 20:27).
And then Thomas answers him... and what does he say?
“My Lord and my God!”
It is the one statement made about Jesus in the entire gospel of John that isn’t debated. It’s less a discussion than it is a moment of revelation. Thomas’ skepticism has come through to a moment of clarity where he is able to proclaim something that nobody else is able to make. He gets it. He comprehends what has happened in a way maybe even more profound than those around him. Yet he would not have had that same profoundly deep revelation if he hadn’t walked through his own doubts to this point.
The problem is, we don’t know exactly when we will have that moment of clarity after having traveled through our own doubts. For Thomas it came when he encountered the living Christ with the community gathered together on the first day of the week. For most of us, it’s not going to be that obvious… maybe what we need to do is to not be afraid of asking questions… but at the same time not be afraid to open our eyes and see Jesus right in our own midst. I take it with a great deal of comfort, that in spite of whatever doubts we might have, God still loves us… and maybe that’s the good news that we can take away from this today.
Amen.
[1]M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled. Simon and Schuster, 1978. Page 193, alt.
[2]Ibid.
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