2 Easter Year A – 3 April 2005

John 20:19-31

Rhonda Lee

“Who You Gonna Believe?”

It’s the second Sunday of Easter, and so the story of the apostles’ encounter with the risen Christ continues. Last week, our Gospel reading ended with Mary Magdalene announcing to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord” and passing on the news that Jesus was ascending to God the Father. Either the disciples didn’t believe her, or they didn’t understand what Jesus’ resurrection meant, because today’s Gospel tells us that in the “evening on that day” the disciples were huddled together in a house with the doors locked, for fear that they would be the next ones nailed to the cross. Jesus appears to them – it seems that the locked doors weren’t a problem for him in his resurrected state – shows them his wounds, and gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit. He also gives them a lot of authority: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you...If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” That statement is one basis for the authority of bishops and priests to absolve – or not absolve – people of our sins, and so Jesus’ words are relevant not only for the first disciples, but also for us today.

Did I say that the disciples were in the house, and that Jesus gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit? I should have said that all the disciples except Thomas were there. Where he was, we don’t know, but John tells us that Thomas showed up sometime later. The disciples tell him everything they’ve seen and heard, but he’s skeptical. He wants to see and feel Jesus’ wounds for himself before he will believe. His skepticism, of course, is why Thomas is known as “Doubting Thomas” to this day.

I have to confess that I’ve always felt that Thomas got a bad rap. One mistake, and suddenly he’s not Thomas the Twin anymore – that’s his nickname in the Gospels so far. Now he’s Doubting Thomas. I’m not even convinced that Thomas made a mistake. He just asked to see the same evidence that the others had already gotten. Furthermore, when Jesus does appear to Thomas and invites him to touch his wounds, Thomas immediately confesses his faith in the resurrected Christ. He cries out, “My Lord and my God!” He gets it.

Here’s another confession. I’ve often felt that Thomas’ mistake – if he made one – was not that he doubted Jesus, but rather that he questioned the Church, what the other disciples told him. Let’s consider the evidence and see what kind of person – and what kind of disciple – Thomas was.

Thomas is one of the twelve disciples listed in every Gospel, but he is a major character only in the Gospel according to John. He appears in that Gospel in some important places. We meet him in John 11, when Jesus returns to Bethany to raise his friend Lazarus from the dead even though some of the religious leaders in that town just recently tried to stone him to death. When Jesus says he’s going back to Bethany after that, the other disciples basically think he’s crazy. They say, “Rabbi, the people were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” But Thomas has a different reaction. He says to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” So the first time we meet Thomas in John’s Gospel, he is willing to follow Jesus even to his death.

So Thomas could be faithful. John also tells us that he wasn’t one to keep his mouth shut when he didn’t understand what was going on. In John 14, Jesus gives a long speech at dinner with his disciples on the night of his arrest. That speech is often called Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse,” and it is a very long good-bye. Jesus tries to explain to the disciples what is about to happen to him and what it means. He doesn’t want them to worry. He tells them that in his Father’s house there are many dwelling places, that he’s going ahead of the disciples to prepare a place for them, and so on, and then he tells them, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” At that point Thomas apparently can’t take it any longer and interrupts Jesus to say, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” He is willing to admit his ignorance, to play straight man to Jesus, and he sets up Jesus to make one of his most important statements about himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

So let’s sum up what we know about Thomas as we approach that scene where he demands to see the risen Jesus and to feel his wounds for himself. He was willing – at least at one time – to follow Jesus to the death, and he wasn’t afraid to speak up when he didn’t understand what people – even his Lord – were talking about. So it seems that he did have faith – or at least some loyalty – and he was also prone to question. Oh, and we know one more thing about him: he wasn’t huddled in the house with the rest of the disciples when the risen Christ first appeared to them.

Where was he? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he had had a falling-out with the rest of the group and couldn’t stand to be cooped up with them. Maybe he was hiding somewhere else because he thought it was best for Jesus’ followers to stay scattered. Or maybe he was out preaching the gospel that Jesus had lived. Maybe he refused to allow the fact that his Master and Teacher had been executed to keep him from testifying to what Jesus had done during his lifetime. The fact that Thomas was absent when Jesus first returned doesn’t necessarily make him a hero, but it doesn’t necessarily make him a coward or a slacker either. When he said that he needed to see proof of Jesus’ resurrection, he could have been expressing a lack of faith and hope in Jesus, or he could have been expressing a lack of faith and hope in his fellow disciples. Maybe he was so disappointed in his friends that he simply refused to take anything they said on faith. After all, Peter alone had denied Jesus three times before dawn on Good Friday. Thomas’ conversation with the rest of the disciples makes me think of one of Richard Pryor’s old comedy routines from the 1970s. Pryor would joke about how his girlfriend would find him in a situation that was...difficult to explain away, and he would say to her, “Baby! Who you gonna believe: me, or your own lyin’ eyes?” Maybe Thomas had more faith in his own lyin’ eyes than in the word of Peter and the other disciples.

Of course, Jesus doesn’t let Thomas off the hook. As much as Jesus loves us, he always challenges us. Jesus appears again while Thomas and the other disciples are arguing, and tells Thomas to put his finger in the wounds left by the nails and the Roman soldier’s spear. And that’s when Thomas makes his confession of faith: “My Lord and my God!” In that moment, he gets it. And Jesus says to him “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” When we ask, “Who you gonna believe?” Jesus answers us: believe me. Even if you fall away sometimes, even when people might ask you what the “evidence” for your beliefs is, even when you’re not getting along very well with your sisters and brothers in faith – believe me, the resurrected One. When you lose your way, remember that I am the way, and follow me. And Thomas did believe. Tradition tells us that he founded the Church of India. He stayed within the community of the Church and he was eventually martyred, like the other apostles, for spreading the faith. In the end, he did follow Jesus and die with him.

I invite you to think of two things when you think of Thomas. First: Faith and doubt are not opposites. Utter despair or absolute certainty may be the opposite of faith, but doubt is not. Doubt can be a sign that our God-given minds and hearts are working, wondering if we’re on the right track, if we really are believing and behaving the way God wants us to. Second: Faith is individual and communal. You and I each have to believe and live our faith as individual persons and as members of the larger Church. When we get off track, the community may show us a better path, and when we think the community might be headed in the wrong direction, it’s our responsibility to speak up. Both questioning, and speaking and acting in faith, are part of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Thomas took his doubts and his renewed faith far from home to be part of a new church. Two thousand years later, with God’s help, we can use our own doubts and faith to renew our own church.

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