‘Doubting’ Thomas

Scriptures: I Peter 1:3-9, John 20:19-29

Do any of you have a nickname? Maybe something you’ve carried around with you since childhood or teenage years? Nicknames can be rather daunting things, and so many times – given the cruelty that some children like to inflict upon others – they reflect something negative that happened to us or some aspect of our physical appearance we aren’t particularly happy about. A child fumbles a ball in a schoolyard baseball game and for long after is known as “Butterfingers.” The smallest kid in the neighborhood is tagged “Pee-wee” and the name sticks. The roughest kid in town is known as “Bruiser,” at least by those afraid of him. Few people get to choose their nicknames, and it’s likely that not too many people are happy with how they are named and known in this way. Oh, it may be different for sports heroes, who get tagged with a name that reflects their deeds of derring-do, like “Hammerin” Hank Aaron. Chris Berman of ESPN loves to attach flamboyant names whenever he talks about what a player has done that day. When I was in Junior High School my nickname was “Mr. Peepers” – those of you with long memories will recall that TV show from the early ‘50s. The title character was played by Wally Cox, and I was scrawny and had big glasses so was something of a look-alike for him. I didn’t much care for that moniker, but fortunately I grew out of it after a few years.

The disciple known as Thomas has never grown out of the name that was plastered on him ever since Biblical times. In the sermon title I put quotation marks around “Doubting”, because even though that’s the way we have come to know him, I think he’s gotten something of a bad rap. Thomas was actually a disciple who showed great loyalty and bravery. When Jesus announced that he was going back to Judea, even though people there had previously tried to stone him, Thomas is the first to say, “Let us go with him.” He was ready to stand by Jesus in the face of danger. Thomas is said to have brought Christianity eastward as far even as India. The Mar Thoma church, with which I had some dealings when I was with the National Council of Churches, is a present-day testament to how far-flung Thomas’ influence went. Although it began in India there are many Mar Thoma congregations in the US today. If you Google the name you’ll find congregations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.

So, perhaps the first thing we should have to say about this disciple is to point to his loyalty and steadfastness as one disciple who would not only stand beside his Lord (to skip forward to the end of our passage from John, Thomas makes his confession: “My Lord and my God!”), but also he would be one who would carry out Jesus’ mission to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…,” as Matthew reports Jesus’ last words to them.

The second thing to say about Thomas is that this first-century man certainly reflects our modern, science-based, fact-dependent sensibility. He was far ahead of his time. “’Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and put my hand in his side, I will not believe.’” We can hear ourselves saying these words, can’t we? “Prove it to me.” “I’m from Missouri – show me.” “Just the facts, maam.” (Sorry, never could do a decent Jack Webb imitation.) Ever since philosopher David Hume posited in the 18^th century that the only way we can truly know anything is through our senses (the philosophy known as empiricism), saying famously: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions,” modern people have sought knowledge through rationality and skepticism and utility. Hume even challenged the argument that God could be known from design in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). Thomas would certainly have loved the philosophy of David Hume.

But there’s a third thing to note about this encounter with the resurrected Christ in John’s gospel. Thomas wasn’t present when Jesus first appears to other disciples behind locked doors. The text doesn’t tell us where he was. It’s interesting to speculate that possibly he was less frightened than the others and so didn’t feel the need to hide behind a locked door – but that would only be speculation. As Gordon Timbers notes, “We have no information about what else might have been said or about tone or inflection in the voices, but we can consider that in asking to see the nail marks and the wound, Thomas was no more disbelieving than the other disciples had been in hearing the women tell of their experience at the empty tomb. The other disciples had heard Mary Magdalene’s account of meeting the risen Christ, but her story hadn’t convinced them. They were still hiding in fear behind locked doors.

“If we look at this story with fresh eyes, we may see something quite wonderful in the interaction between Jesus and Thomas. It is a great reassurance to us with our own questions and hesitations that Jesus does not rebuke Thomas when he asks to see the nail marks and the wound. Thomas is expressing a heartfelt need, and Jesus graciously responds to that need. Jesus’ first words spoken in this second appearance to his disciples are the same words spoken earlier to this group of shaken and fearful men: ‘Peace be with you.’ Not words of accusation or condemnation, but words of blessing and benediction.”

The fact of the matter is that Thomas simply wasn’t there – and so once again this makes him very like us. We were not there when the resurrected one makes his appearance. We don’t – and can’t – have the direct testimony of our own senses. The proof that is needed for a resurrection appearance can never be ours.

Or can it? Depends on what we mean by “proof”. David Hume’s philosophy, though tremendously influential on later thinkers like Kant, William James, and the logical positivists, never completely over-rode all others paths to knowledge. There is an echo in 19^th and 20^thcentury responses to Hume in Jesus’ words, “’Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’” Knowledge – the fact that we absolutely know something to be so – comes from our hearts as well as our heads. Despite Hume’s dictum, reason and passions go together – one does not enslave the other.

I want to switch now to the Biblical character in our other lectionary text for today. The author of the letters that we have in our New Testament as I Peter and II Peter was not the disciple himself but a follower writing long after the events being described and testified to. Nevertheless, even if this is a follower of Peter, it is one who has caught his ardor and his character as he speaks to the exiles of the Dispersion. And what a change there is being reflected here! The naïve Peter who wanted to build tabernacles when he saw Jesus transfigured, the fearful Peter who denied that he even knew Jesus, the flummoxed Peter who didn’t understand that Jesus was to rise from the dead – all these give way to a transformed Peter who can make one of the most powerful affirmations of faith in the New Testament – one that he makes to those who, like us, were not there to put our fingers into the mark of the nails or our hands into his side: “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

“The outcome of your faith…..” All of the scientific substantiation, all of the empirical evidence (seeing with our eyes, feeling with our hands), all of the rigorous reason lead to an outcome which has at its base a confession: “My Lord and my God!” This is the faith that Peter’s follower is testifying to on behalf of all of those – all of us – who have “not seen and yet have come to believe.” Here at the end of the Easter season is yet another Beatitude: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Both Thomas and Peter are Biblical characters who point us to the absolute necessity of doubt if the outcome of our faith is to have any vibrancy to it at all. Just blind adherence isn’t enough. It is the probing, wondering, uncertain seeker who may have misgivings but keeps struggling even in the midst of that doubt who is able to achieve the heights of that “indescribable and glorious joy” Peter’s follower is talking about. One of my favorite authors, Madeleine L’Engle was once asked, “Do you believe in God without any doubts?” She replied, “I believe in God with all my doubts.” Theologian Paul Tillich puts it like this: “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.”

Do you see why I think Thomas got such a bum rap by having that moniker of ‘doubting’ Thomas hung on him? I picture Jesus, when Thomas says that he has to see his wounds and feel his side, with a huge smile on his face, welcoming this disciple with his questions and concerns and not wanting simply to take the testimony of others. Thomas’ doubts and then his confession, “My Lord and my God!”, must both have given Jesus such pleasure in this loyal disciple. Indeed, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that Thomas might even have been the “beloved disciple” in the gospel of John, whom we talked about last week.

What is often missed in recounting the story of Thomas is his lack of fear. Unlike the other disciples, he didn’t feel the need to go behind locked doors out of fear that those who had put Jesus to death would also be out looking for those who followed him. Like Thomas, we, too, do not have to be afraid. And especially we don’t have to be afraid of our doubts. Let them come. Let them be magnified. Faith is strong enough to revel in all of our doubts.

Kate Huey in a commentary on our passage sums it up this way:

“Whatever doubts churn in our minds, whatever sins trouble our consciences, whatever pain and worry bind us up, whatever walls we have put up or doors we have locked securely, God comes to us and says, ‘Peace be with you.’ Whatever hunger and need we feel deep in our souls, God calls us to the table, feeds us well, and sends us out into the world to be justice and peace, salt and light, hope for the world. We can do it, if we keep our eyes open, our minds limber, and our hearts soft and willing to love.”

“God calls us to the table…..” This table. The table of bread and wine on which we receive that peace which Jesus has promised to the disciples. When we eat and drink we know, deep down in our guts, that the living Christ is alive in us, through the Spirit whom he has left with us. No, we weren’t there to see and touch, to find empirical proof. But we are here, and the love we experience at this table is all that we need to go out into all the world with our doubts and questions and concerns – but without fear. For Christ is risen indeed and goes before you. The Spirit of the living Christ empowers you. The grace of God gives you hope beyond measure.

 

Amen.

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
May 1, 2011