The story of Thomas invites us to believe, not in death, but in life through Jesus and to hold space for the unbelievable bigness of God’s love .
Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Second Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 20:19-31
God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The church has been a bit hard on Thomas.
The gospel writer says he already had a nickname – he was called “the Twin” – but we never call him that, do we? We call him “Doubting Thomas.” And, every year, when we hear this story on the second Sunday of Easter, I always feel a lot of sympathy for him. For one thing, it’s really not fair that he is the only one who gets the nickname “Doubting.”
Because every one of those disciples in that locked room were doubters.
They had all already heard from an eyewitness that Jesus had risen. Mary Magdalene had told them all, earlier that day, that she had seen the risen Christ. And there they still were, huddled in fear, with the doors locked, doubting. And it wasn’t until all of them saw the wounded hands and side of Jesus that they believed. Thomas wasn’t the only doubter. He was just the last doubter, at least among the inner circle, and only by chance.
And maybe doubt isn’t such a bad thing anyway.
The story that God would become human, that God would die, and that God would rise again from the dead–that story was and still is, a little bit unbelievable. I received some feedback from an earlier sermon that encouraged me to be careful about describing the love of God as unbelievable or incredible, inviting me to ponder if I really want to say that God’s love is not able to be believed – that we can’t believe it.
But I think I do. Maybe I don’t want to go all the way to say it can’t be believed, but it is difficult to believe–and we shouldn’t forget that. Because if we believe it too easily, I think we tame the wildness of God, we shrink the hugeness of God’s love. If we stop demanding to witness, to see and touch God’s goodness, if we stop being on the look out for Jesus’ scars, if we take all of it as a given, as obvious–then we are liable to forget how earth-shattering this story really is.
How ridiculous it is. How mind-boggling. How unbelievable.
That niggle of doubt keeps it in perspective. Keeps the extraordinary bigness of God’s love from becoming small and mundane.
So I think it is alright that Thomas doubted – that all of them doubted. And it’s good that we have this yearly reminder to believe the unbelievable.
But, of course, it’s also good to remember that believing has a shadow side.
In the tradition I grew up in, we rarely talked about Christians and non-Christians, we talked about believers and non-believers. But as I’ve grown older, it sometimes seems like a strange distinction to me. Because everyone believes in something. We’re all believers. Some believe in Christ, and others believe in different faiths, or they believe in humanity, or in a higher power or a greater purpose or the idea that life has meaning – or they believe equally that life has no meaning. But everyone believes in something.
And so that’s the other reason I don’t think it’s fair to call him “Doubting Thomas.” Because Thomas was a believer.
Before he met the risen Christ, he believed in death.
He believed, with good evidence, that death was final. He believed in death so much, that the idea of the resurrection, of life, was for him, unbelievable.
And it can be so easy to believe in death.
So easy to believe in the things that suck the life right out of us. To believe in lies and conspiracies and our own superiority, to embrace paranoia and pessimism and despair. To believe that nothing will ever change, or if it does, it will change for the worse. And to be mired in those beliefs so deeply that we can’t even see that they are killing us.
So I’m not sure that Thomas’ problem was doubting. I think he and the other disciples believed – but they didn’t believe in life.
And that’s what Jesus comes to change.
He shows them his hands and his sides, shows them his living, breathing body, and tells them to believe – believe in life! Believe that life is possible, even after death. Believe that wounds can turn into scars. He tells them to believe!
Jesus doesn’t want us to believe so that we get the right answers on some cosmic test. We don’t need to fret about believing the right things or believing them hard enough. Nor do we need to despair about the impossibility of believing the unbelievable. No, the gospel writer tells us: “These things are written that you may continue to believe…and that through believing you may have life in Jesus’ name!”
Believe in life – so that you can have life!
Life that is full and abundant, completely trusting the giver and sustainer of all life. That’s why believing is important. Not because having the right list of beliefs in your head is your ticket to heaven.
It’s important because believing how we get to trusting.
If I don’t believe that the chair will support me, I will not trust it with my weight. Belief and trust are bound up with one another, so bound together that in Greek they are the same word. And whereas we are tempted to separate them, because for us belief is individual and cognitive, while trust is relational and emotional, in this passage we are invited to both.
Because what Jesus really wants from Thomas – from all them – from us – is relationship. Jesus wants us to believe so that we can get to trust. So that we will lean in with all our weight and trust that we will be supported. But since it is so difficult to trust if you don’t believe, Jesus helps with that too – showing us the evidence we needed to see to believe — to believe in life. To believe that life and hope and healing are possible. And to believe that love and joy and peace and all the other fruits of the Spirit cannot be permanently trampled by fear and despair and hatred. That life is not destroyed by death.
And when we believe in life through Jesus, when we trust Jesus with our lives, we experience life – we become fully and abundantly alive.
And that has a name – it’s called faith.
So, perhaps we should start calling him Faithful Thomas. Faith isn’t the opposite of doubt. The opposite of doubt is certainty. Certainty runs from doubt, tries to kill it, and never looks back. Faith reaches down to lift doubt up too.
There is room for doubt in faith. There is room for unbelievable in believing. There is room for needing to put your fingers in Jesus’ wounded hands so that our unshakeable belief in death may be overcome by belief in life, may be overcome by the enormity of God’s love, until we cry out with Thomas in awe and in trust: “My Lord and My God! We believe.”
In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
