Our scripture today consists of two distinct narratives joined together. In each of these two sections today, Jesus comes through locked doors at the first of the week and offers the same greeting. It is almost parallel to the actual resurrection narrative being played out here again week after week. The only thing different is Thomas.
Thomas always gets a bum rap. Everyone know who he is, even people who aren’t sure where he comes in the bible. Even people who don’t have bibles know what a doubting Thomas is. The phrase itself appears in dictionaries – TWICE – once under d and once under t. Webster’s coins the phrase “a habitually doubtful person.” That might be taking the statement a little too far. Habitually? I’m no sure that we can call the disciple Thomas that. He plays a large roll in the fourth gospel, flowing closely behind Peter and the Beloved disciple. He steps forward and is willing to face death with Jesus on the road to Bethany and Lazarus’ tomb. It is he who questions Jesus about the road that will be traveled so that he may follow him more closely. Thomas, the doubting Thomas, utters on e of the most profound faith statements in all the Fourth Gospel – MY LORD AND MY GOD. There seems to be no doubt there.
Imagine yourself in Thomas’ shoes. You’ve had a pretty rough week. Your close friend, a man you've followed all over Palestine, the man you believed to be the messiah, was arrested, brutally beaten, and crucified. leave your friends just for a moment, go to grieve on your own, and when you come back they have fantastic, unbelievable stories to share. Jesus can’t be alive, you watched him die. You think maybe they’re delirious, maybe they’ve lost it. The stress has finally gotten to them. There is no way, you say. It can’t be true. I will not believe unless I can stick my fingers into the wounds.
Thomas learned something that day that it is wise for us all to hear. Sometimes it seems that the fastest way to ensure that God does something is to declare, loudly, that you will NOT do something. I believe that God takes great pleasure in watching us eat our words – I’m not going to be a pastor. We’ll never leave this town, we’re too happy here. God if you get me out of this mess I promise I will go to church every Sunday. And so, here Jesus appears, almost one upping Thomas, offering to let him do exactly what he needed to believe.
By his name, it is obvious that Poor ole Thomas has become the scapegoat for the church that sometimes says that doubt is wrong; or that it is somehow less that faithful to need a sign, or a touch, or a vision, or a personal encounter. We get the impression that we are not allowed to ask the hard questions without being labeled a cynic or a skeptic. Since when are questions bad? Since when is it wrong to ask God to clarify something? Since when is it wrong to admit that we don’t understand everything, that we are unsure of things. We should spend more time reading the accounts of Job or Lamentations or the Psalms. They are filled with uncertainties, complaints, and questions of God. Even Jesus cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Thomas is just one in a long line of faithful people who have raised their voices to ask the hard yet faithful questions.
Jesus is not depreciating Thomas because of his doubt, but rather speaks almost an aside, as if to the audience, anticipating generations (like ours) which have not had Thomas’ privilege. Oh, to be able to see those wounds ourselves. To place our hands in them. I think it would sure clear up a whole lot of things for many people, including myself. Yet we have come to believe through faith alone, faith and the testimony of the chorus of witnesses that precede us. This passage leads directly to us - to the community that is more removed from the situation than that of the disciples crowded into a room those fateful mornings. Moreover, we are assured that we are in no way lesser in our belief because we have come to faith by words rather than by sight.
Faith essentially lies in conversation. Faith is when we are willing to embrace the doubts, ask the questions, and face the answers. I heard an interview with Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister last week on her just published book "Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia for All That Is with the Archbishop of Cantebury, Rowan Williams. She was asked why there was a chapter in the book about doubt - why doubt deserved an alleluia. She answered - "Oh, doubt is a wonderful thing, and it's what people fear most and what people castigate themselves about most. Doubt is that moment in the faith life when we put down everybody else's answers and begin to find our own." Doubt as a moment in the life of faith - because faith believes in something that is beyond our ability to comprehend, but faith is not afraid to try.
I think that this story is a testimony to the difficulty of faith – how hard it is to believe. Faith takes work, because it puts us in uncomfortable places and begs us to ask tough questions. It says that it’s ok to for us to ask questions of God. There is nothing cut and dried about the Christian faith. It cannot be reduced to a set of rules, where everything fits, where everything makes sense, where all we have to do is to connect the dots. Faith is complex, and many times throughout our lives it is a genuine struggle. If it were simple it would not be by definition faith!
Make no mistake about it, this is a story of doubt but it is also a story of God’s ability to change that doubt into faith – not erase the doubt, but overcome it with an irresistible encounter with the impossible. Faith is that crazy thing that allows us to believe when everything else says “impossible”. The Theologian Paul Tillich says that faith is comprised of ultimate courage - courage to ask the questions and to continue forward without concrete answers. Faith is the crazy thing that allows us to believe when everything else says 'impossible'. This story is important because when we can see the possible through our own cloudy, disbelieving eyes, we suddenly can see an entire world of possibility far beyond what skepticism would allow. God has overcome the grace, and now God even overcomes these things that lead to our death – things like disbelief, fear, hatred and narrowness.
I don’t really think Thomas was such a bad person. In fact, he was no different from the other disciples; he was just a week late! The other disciples needed a personal encounter with the risen Jesus JUST AS MUCH AS THOMAS DID. When Jesus walked into that room for the first time, I’m sure all the disciples reacted with fear and disbelief similar to Thomas’.
I’m also willing to be that we have all been Doubting Thomases at some point in our lives. Yet it is into our doubting and searching hearts where Christ breaks in a reveals himself to us. We have been given a vision of God’s sacrificial love in the person of Jesus. And we are touched by God throughout our lives, who breaks through and breathes lives into our faithless and doubting hearts, causing us to cry like Thomas “My Lord and My God”.
Amen.
