This week, we’re again in John’s Gospel, and this should come as no surprise. The Sundays after Easter are those Sundays were, if you will, “the lectionary does not apply”: Each year, we have the same readings. The second Sunday after Easter is the Sunday of “Doubting Thomas”, and the story of Thomas is only narrated in John’s Gospel.
Now I think that although we probably have heard the story many times, this is also a story that we can enjoy. We talked about Mary Magdalene last week, and we notice how much easier it can be for us to relate to her grief and bewilderment on the morning after Jesus’s burial, whereas it can be much more difficult to connect to the immediate faith of some of the disciples. That’s for this reason too that we like Thomas: we can stand in his shoes when he honestly expresses his doubts concerning Jesus’s resurrection. We’ve been there as well.
So let’s talk about that a little bit. It’s indeed important that in John’s Gospel there is room for people who have difficulties believing. It’s not only about the hard hearted and the narrow minded, Pharisees, Sadducees, religious leaders and so on (John calls them “the Jews” but we need to remember, they were all Jews, believers and non believers, Jesus, the disciples and most of the crowds). In John’s Gospel it’s not only bad or at least hostile people who have a hard time believing in Jesus. It’s also about generous, self sacrificing and loving people like Mary Magdalene (The Gospel mentions that she supported Jesus with her own resources and followed him to the cross, and yet it was hard for her to acknowledge the Resurrection). As for Thomas, we know a little bit about his character because of other passages in John’s, and we see that he was a man of courage and integrity. For example, he was the first one to be ready to walk with Jesus to Jerusalem although he knew great danger was awaiting there. It’s in John 11:16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’
Another thing that can be of interest as well, is that we see that Thomas also manifested a genuine desire to understand Jesus’s teaching, he was not just piously bowing his head and responding Amen to whatever Jesus had to say. Thomas asked questions. It’s in John 14: 4-5 [Jesus said] And you know the way to the place where I am going.’Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ I think it is important because it shows that Thomas took things seriously. I was recently talking to a friend who is a school teacher and she told me that she loved it when her students ask questions (I told her it’s the same for me, I love it when people at church ask questions!). Of course, there is a way of constantly asking questions that can be annoying or provocative, but most of the time when people ask questions, it means they care about what we say and do. I am sure you’ve have this experience too, whatever your job or occupation.
So there is much to love about Thomas. He was a caring disciple and a truth seeker. He wanted to make sure he got it, and that he got it right and it wasn’t only for intellectual reasons, he wanted to make sure he didn’t lose sight of a Jesus he cared about. He wanted, and that’s what he clearly expresses in his request today, not a ghost, or a narrative that made him feel better, he wanted the real deal. And this is as much about intellectual honesty as it is about trust and love.
So this is important for us to hear again this message every year after Easter, because of course we need to anchor our faith in the faith of the church but our faith also needs to be rooted in our personal experience and in our personal experience with the risen Christ. It can be so easy to say Amen to whatever we are told or to just repeat what we have heard before, using the same grammar and the same words, the same ideas and the same images, commonplaces we all agree on. But if we are talking about the living Christ, he has to come alive for us. He has to become real to us. Not a story and not a theory, not a vague hope, not a ghost, not the Jesus of our fathers and mothers, nor the Jesus of our teachers and priests. We need to have a relationship with the Jesus that showed up for us, as Jesus showed up for Thomas in our story today.
And I think this is often what we forget about Thomas’ story. This is often what we forget about Thomas’ story: We call him the doubter but we forget that all the point of the doubt is about coming to believe. John is very clear about that in his Gospel, it is actually the whole purpose of his Gospel. In our passage today it reads: 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. The whole story of Thomas is that he went from doubt to faith, not being comfortable enough with doubts to remain a skeptical all his life, yet comfortable enough with his doubts so he may seek for the real thing and then come to believe. And this is what Jesus asks him to do, right? Jesus says: Do not doubt, but believe. So we may like it that Thomas is a doubter, because it can help us accept that we too have our own doubts, but the whole point, of course, is not about getting stuck in our doubts, it’s about coming to believe. And we see how wonderfully this happens for Thomas. I read some commentaries about how, indeed, we keep on calling him the doubter, when we might as well call him the believer, or the confessor: My Lord and My God he exclaims when he sees Jesus. He is the first one of the disciples to acknowledge Jesus’s divinity. Now this is really huge. He wasn’t a doubter that became a little more convinced. He was a doubter who was able to experience Jesus’s Resurrection beyond the simple recognition of the miracle, Thomas came to understand the profound meaning of the miracle of the Resurrection. And to me it says again something about his doubts, or rather about his way of questioning. He didn’t question for the pure sake of questioning, to keep on postponing faith,as some skeptical people do, when they always have a reason to doubt, when asking questions is like a game to them, rather Thomas questioned very seriously, so he could truly believe, so his faith wouldn‘t be superficial but assured and strong.
From all of those observations, I have two questions today, one for us, personally, and one for the church:
– First of all: How do we deal with our own doubts? Do we shove them away and just go with the flow, contenting ourselves with superficial beliefs, being an echo chamber of what we’ve heard at church, or are we willing to engage with the living Christ, asking him to show up for us, to respond to us and to fortify our faith? Do we trust Jesus enough to do that? Do we ever ask him questions about the things we don’t understand and are we willing to go look for answers? Faith is not just present or absent in us, it is a virtuous circle of back and forth like in any relationships. The Bible asks us to love God with all our heart and strength and also with all our mind. How is our mind involved in the love we have for Christ?
– What kind of witnesses are we? Jesus showed up for his disciples (=students, followers) and gave them the Holy Spirit so they may become Apostles (=sent ones). Are we trustworthy in our mission, have we wrestled enough with our faith so our testimony is real or, again, do we just repeat what we have heard? And then, if we want to share our faith, are we willing to make room among us for those who doubt and do we take their questions seriously, are we willing to engage in conversation with them? We often have the temptation to identify with Thomas in this passage of the Gospel, but maybe we also need to be able to discern the Thomases in our midst, the ones who doubt but have a real spiritual thirst and important questions. The skeptical ones of today maybe the church leaders of tomorrow, they may end up championing our own faith. Far from dismissing or judging Thomas, The Apostles invited him again so he could have this experience with Christ. Do we have this openness when we are surrounded by people who seem to resist the Christian message, or don’t look that interested? Do we have enough faith in them and in Christ’s power to enter our hearts, to give them a place at the table?