Jesus and Thomas painted by a Christian group in Cameroon. www.jesusmafa.com |
April 12, 2015
John 20:19-31
19When
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.” 20After he said
this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when
they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this,
he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If
you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of
any, they are retained.”
24But
Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when
Jesus came. 25So 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.”
26A
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.” 27Then 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.” 28Thomas
answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you
believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet
have come to believe.”
30Now Jesus did many other
signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But
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.
Sermon: “Trusting
Thomas”
Late have
I loved thee, beauty so ancient and so fresh.
Late have
I loved thee.
Behold,
you were within and I was outside,
and I was
seeking you there.
I,
deformed, was pursuing you in the beautifully
formed
things that you made.
You were
with me, but I was not with you.
Those
things held me far away from you,
things
that would not exist if they were not in you.
You
called and clamored and shattered my deafness;
you
flashed and gleamed and banished my blindness;
you were
fragrant and I drew in breath and now pant for you.
I tasted
and now I hunger and thirst for you;
you
touched me and I have been set ablaze
with
longing for your peace.
This confession of Augustine,
the 4th century Christian theologian, sounds to me like it could
have been written by Thomas.
Thomas, the one who needed
proof.
Thomas, the one who needed to
see, to touch.
Thomas, the one who missed
the resurrection party the first time.
Thomas, the one whom Jesus
returned for, inviting him to see,
to touch.
Thomas, who has been labeled
the “doubter”, but who might better be called the rationalist, the scientist, or
the skeptic wanting evidence.
We’ve always been afraid of
doubts in the church, which is perhaps why Thomas has been kept at arms-length.
We label him “doubter” and
distance ourselves from him for a very simple reason: he reminds us too much of
ourselves. We, too, want to place our
hands in the wounds of Jesus and know he is alive. Or, perhaps more honestly, we want Jesus to
place his hands in our wounds, to
know we are still alive.
We can talk about faith and
hope and peace and love, but if they are not embodied, given real
flesh-and-blood, the words fall empty. Perhaps
this is why Christ-followers so cling to the incarnation – God with us. We don’t need an idea. We don’t even need a dream. We need proof.
We are Thomas.
But let’s look at this Thomas
character again. Who was Tom, really?
Like Augustine’s words, Tom
might have loved late. But when he did
love, it was all-consuming. When his
beloved friend Lazarus died, the other disciples told Jesus to not go to see
his body. Those who locked themselves
away in a room for fear of the Jews after the resurrection were often driven by
fear. Jesus would have to go near to
those who called him an enemy to see Lazarus’ body. They urged him to stay away from Jerusalem,
to play it safe.
Not so with Tom. He cried out, “Let us go also, that we may
die with him!”
He loved late, but he loved
completely. Jesus listened to Tom, and
they went to Jerusalem, where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. New life followed after Tom’s powerful words
of honesty.
And then later, when Jesus
told his disciples, “Let not your hearts
be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many
rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place
for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will
take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where
I am going.” Tom, the rationalist,
needed more information.
“But, we don’t know where
you’re going! We don’t know the way!” he
cried. Once again, new life followed
after Tom’s powerful words of honesty. Do
you remember what Jesus said in response?
“I am the way, the truth and the
life.”
And so, by the time we get to
this scene of Tom needing proof of the resurrection, we see that perhaps it’s
not because he’s less faithful than the other disciples. Perhaps it’s because he takes these things
more seriously than any of them. For
those other disciples didn’t believe the resurrection when Mary Magdalene told
them she had seen the Lord. They were
still locked away in a room for fear of the Jews. And then, after the risen Jesus appeared to
them, speaking words of peace, showing them his wounds, they didn’t change
their behavior. They didn’t run and
tell, but they continued to stay locked in a room, playing it safe.
Tom knew he needed proof –
and wasn’t afraid to say it. And Jesus
didn’t rebuke his need for proof. Jesus
didn’t tell him he was faithless.
Jesus came just for him and
said, without Tom even asking, “Put your finger here and
see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but
believe.” Jesus welcomed his skepticism,
and offered his very body as proof. He
invited Tom to touch him. But here’s the
intriguing thing (at least to this preacher lady):
Does our text say Thomas touched Jesus? Actually, no.
Our text just says Jesus invited him to.
And that invitation was all the proof Tom needed. He then cried, “My Lord and my God!” And one
more time, new life followed after Tom’s powerful words of honesty.
Thomas loved late. He believed begrudgingly. His faith was as much his mind as his
heart. But that didn’t mean he was less
a witness to the resurrection. If
anything, it means it meant more to him.
Yes, Jesus did say to him, “Have you believed because
you have seen me? Blessed are those who
have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
The word ‘blessed’ Jesus uses is also
happy. Happy are those who have not seen
and yet have come to believe. Happy are
those for whom faith comes easily. For
that is a lighter journey than the one of rational proof.
Faith did not come easily to
Tom. It might not come easy to some of
us. There might be times that the
resurrection seems like a pie-in-the-sky idea until we ourselves experience God
bringing us out of darkness and despair.
There might be times that the resurrection sounds like a fairy tale
unless we finally get good news from the doctor. There might be times Easter seems utterly
irrelevant to our lives unless we see proof it matters.
This is not the happy journey
of faith. But it is the serious,
difficult way of Thomas, a faith realized through wounds and doubts.
Maybe we should trust Tom. Jesus did.
Jesus didn’t label Tom a threat to his truth. Jesus invited him to touch his wounds, and
that invitation was enough for Tom.
Touching these wounds is not happy work.
When we touch the wounds of Jesus in the news of mass murders in Kenya,
in racial tension in our country boiling over, in our own bodies that begin to
let us down, it is painful. Maybe that’s
why Jesus said “happy are those who have not seen and yet have come to
believe.”
But like Tom, we do see his
wounds. They are also our wounds. And when faced with such violence, we reply
out of the aches of our souls, “My Lord and my God!”
Like Augustine, we say to our
risen, wounded Lord:
You called and clamored and shattered my deafness;
you flashed and
gleamed and banished my blindness;
you were fragrant and I drew in breath and now pant
for you.
I tasted and now I hunger and thirst for you;
you touched me and I have been set ablaze with longing
for your peace.
And that same risen Lord
answers us with those words he spoke over and over again, that they might sink
into all the wounds of this world like a healing balm. He says, “Peace be with you.” Alleluia!
Amen.
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