April 24, 2022: Thinking Thomas

John 20:19-31

Rev. Rhonda Blevins

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.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 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.”

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.” 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.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 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.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 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.

______

To be fair, let’s remember that Thomas wasn’t there. He wasn’t there on that first Easter Sunday—the day Mary Magdalene and Peter and John saw an empty tomb—the day that Mary claimed to have seen the risen Lord. He wasn’t in the room later that evening with the other disciples when Jesus appeared among them—when he showed them his wounded hands and side—when he offered them his peace and breathed upon them. Thomas wasn’t there. So all he had by way of experiencing the risen Christ was the testimony of his friends who told him what they saw, heard and experienced. And tell me this: why did none of the guys in the room have the presence of mind to pull out a phone and shoot video?

To be fair, let’s remember that we weren’t there either. We were not first-hand witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection. We didn’t see the empty tomb, we didn’t see the angels, we didn’t hear Jesus call our name in the Garden. And because the disciples blew it, there aren’t even any videos on YouTube to corroborate their stories. So all we have is testimony from ancient friends who wrote down what they saw, heard and experienced.

How could Thomas know the resurrection was real, given that he wasn’t there to see it? How can we know that the resurrection was real, given that we weren’t there to see it?

I’m not so different than Thomas. Maybe you aren’t either. Is it possible for resurrection to be real if it can’t be proven as fact? If it won’t hold up to the rigors of the scientific method? Can something be true if it can’t be proven as fact? These are legitimate questions.

Maybe Thomas has been misbranded. Maybe “Doubting Thomas” was simply “Thinking Thomas.”

These things did Thomas count as real: the warmth of blood, the chill of steel,
The grain of wood, the heft of stone, the last frail twitch of flesh and bone.[1]

Upon hearing his friends tell him that Jesus had risen from the dead, Thomas told them in no uncertain terms: “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.” These are the words of a skeptic, of one wizened to the ways of the world, of one who will not fall victim to “fake news.”

But Thomas couldn’t check out this unbelievable claim on Snopes.com. With such an outrageous claim, how could Thomas believe? How could any thinking person believe?

And this, dear friends, is the question of the ages. There are those who think believers are naïve simpletons. And that’s OK. We need not feel threatened. Because we know that there are those who are blind to the truth because they limit their vision to mere fact.

Mythology expert, Joseph Campbell, suggests that myth can be truer than fact: “Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”

Let’s explore this a bit more. Myths, you see, get at our values and beliefs. Myths represent concepts and ideas through of symbol and metaphor. Myths are instructive—they teach us something about ourselves. Myths can hold persuasive power when mere fact cannot.

But there are people who have a difficult time grasping this truth beyond truth. Here me say, there’s no judgment from me. Contemporary culture, perhaps since the Industrial Age, has placed a premium on fact and logic and reason. Where would we be without these attributes? But as the societal pendulum swung toward the scientific method, we “threw the baby out with the bathwater” so to speak. We lost our appetite for the intangible like values, ideals, meaning, beauty—best represented not by fact, but by myth.

There’s nothing wrong with a healthy skepticism. In fact, it’s important for us to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism in a world where it’s sometimes difficult to know who we can trust or what we can believe. But if we limit our field of vision to fact alone, we miss out on meaning and beauty and mystery.

Maybe that’s why Jesus said, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

And though I totally get where “Thinking Thomas” is coming from, it’s sad to think that he missed out on a week’s worth of pure joy because he so limited his field of vision to fact.

The vision of his skeptic mind was keen enough to make him blind
To any unexpected act too large for his small world of fact.[2]

So one week after Jesus’ resurrection—one week after Jesus appeared to Mary in the Garden—one week after Jesus visited the disciples as they were hiding out behind locked doors—one week after Thomas told his friends he would not, could not believe without seeing with his own eyes and touching with his own hands . . . Jesus appeared again. This time, Thomas was there.

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 but believe.” 

And if we can listen, not with our ears but with our hearts, we can hear Jesus saying the same thing to us: “Do not doubt but believe.”

One of my favorite stories of Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel of Mark is about a man who came to Jesus with his son, desperate for his son to be healed. When Jesus told the father he must believe, the father cried out, in perfect, vulnerable honesty: “I believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)

And isn’t that where most of us find ourselves? Believing, unbelieving, in the same day, even in the same moment? And immediately after the father’s confession of belief mixed with doubt, Jesus healed the boy.

Our faith need not be perfect in order for God’s perfect grace to be ours.

His reasoned certainties denied that one could live when one had died,
Until his fingers read like braille the marking of the spear and nail.[3]

How vulnerable. The invitation Jesus offered to Thomas to touch his most sensitive, perhaps even raw, hands. How intimate. The invitation of a grown man for another man to touch his side.

We don’t know if Thomas accepted Jesus’ invitation to touch him—the Bible doesn’t give us that detail. But we do know that when Thomas experienced the risen Lord firsthand, he was changed. From “Thinking Thomas” to “Transformed Thomas.”

We don’t know much of what became of Thomas after that. One Christian tradition holds that Thomas became a missionary to modern day Iran. Another tradition has Thomas serving as a missionary to India. This story goes that Thomas performed miracles and converted many people to the faith earning for Thomas the ire of the monarch. Thomas died a martyr—his sides pierced—just like the one who, years before, said: “Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Today there are over four million “Thomas Christians”—Indian Christians—one of the oldest Christian traditions that traces its lineage to a transformed Thomas.

Can we be transformed, like Thomas, without a firsthand experience of the risen Lord? Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

It’s grace. “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

So if you have a measure of faith, whether you consider your faith large or small, whether your faith feels more past tense than present, even if your faith looks more like doubt than belief—any measure of faith you have is a gift of the Holy Spirit. And because it is pure gift, let us not think ourselves better than others. No. Because let’s face it: we believe, may God help our unbelief.

May we, O God, by grace believe and thus the risen Christ receive,

Whose raw, imprinted palms reached out and beckoned Thomas from his doubt.[4]

These Things Did Thomas Count as Real

Text by Thomas H. Troeger

These things did Thomas count as real: the warmth of blood, the chill of steel,

The grain of wood, the heft of stone, the last frail twitch of flesh and bone.

The vision of his skeptic mind was keen enough to make him blind

To any unexpected act too large for his small world of fact.

His reasoned certainties denied that one could live when one had died,

Until his fingers read like braille the marking of the spear and nail.

May we, O God, by grace believe and thus the risen Christ receive,

Whose raw, imprinted palms reached out and beckoned Thomas from his doubt

[1] The first verse of Thomas H. Troeger’s hymn text “These Things Did Thomas Count as Real.”

[2] The second verse of Thomas H. Troeger’s hymn text “These Things Did Thomas Count as Real.”

[3] The third verse of Thomas H. Troeger’s hymn text “These Things Did Thomas Count as Real.”

[4] The fourth verse of Thomas H. Troeger’s hymn text “These Things Did Thomas Count as Real.”