In lots of ways Thomas speaks to us from the scripture as someone we can identify with. We see his doubts and project our own awareness & our cynicism onto him.
We don't know that much about him from the scriptures, barely mentioned in the first three gospels, he has his first real contribution in John's gospel when Jesus and the disciples go to Lazarus' home, the scene where Jesus would perform one of his most spectacular miracles.
Expecting that they would be attacked, Thomas says, "Let us go along with him, so that we can die too!" Thomas it seems tended to expect the worst.
But it's the events following Jesus' resurrection that we most closely associate Thomas with. He is known as doubting Thomas, but when we look a little closer at the story, I don't think it's intended to tell us a story about doubt - it's there to tell us about Jesus.
The disciples have their meeting with the risen Jesus, but Thomas is not there. After Thomas' return, the disciples tell him what happened. In return, Thomas says the fateful words, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my fingers in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." Thomas needs proof.
Jesus' response isn't to have a go or scold Thomas for his need of proof.
His response is to give Thomas what he needs to enhance and encourage Thomas' faith. Jesus offers himself to Thomas. And so the scripture ends with Thomas having what he needs to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead.
The story of Thomas is not about doubting. The story of Thomas is about a merciful and loving Jesus. He is so merciful that He will come to us and give us what we need to believe
As people of faith we can sometimes keep our doubts in the closet, maybe afraid that our doubts or the elements of faith that we wrestle with might make us look like we don't believe.
But doubting is not the opposite of having faith. Doubting is in many ways the partner of having faith. When we doubt or struggle with a faith issue we can show that we are taking our faith seriously. Sometimes it's the doubt and the struggle that makes us search for the answers - which makes us understand truths in a more personal way - it brings us into a closer experience with Jesus, because just like with Thomas, Jesus will give us what we need to believe.
In this way, I think that we are very like Thomas, because when it comes to our faith, why should second-hand be good enough?
Imagine someone described a meal to you - however eloquent their descriptions, however vivid the way they conjure up the atmosphere and the smell, however many adjectives and verbs they throw at it - you can't experience that meal - you can't taste it.
Thomas didn't want a second-hand experience of the risen Jesus; he wanted it to be personal and intimate. His comments as the disciples went to Lazarus' home show that he was a man of great faith; he was ready to follow his messiah to death.
When we have doubts and struggles with our faith it can be a scary place to be.
But when we have certainty - when we think we know what we believe - that can be scary for some of us too. Because when you have knowledge when we work it out in our heads that there is a God that we can and have experienced - from that point we have to react.
Three years ago, how many of us knew about some of the problems that folk seeking asylum in this country face? When we know, we have to react.
We might be aware that GLBT folk around the world sometimes face oppression from their governments - but when we know the name of someone in crisis - we have to react.
When we have our encounters with Christ, when we metaphorically put our fingers in his wounds and connect with him, we become aware of the need to look beyond our own lives and to affect the lives of others.
If we are willing to work through our fear and our doubts, we will find the other side of today's Gospel that teaches us also about faith. If we are honest in our relationships with one another, we can experience mutual support in learning to believe what we cannot easily see.
Based on our life with God in the body of Christ, we can recognize the power of the Holy Spirit at work among us, providing new possibilities that can move us beyond doubt, fear and anxiety and inertia.
Through the power of God, miracles happen - things that which we would doubt possible can come to reality. Dreams can be fulfilled, forgiveness offered, obstacles overcome, pain relieved, hunger fed, spiritual longings relieved, and love experienced in all the Easter glory of the risen Christ.
Thomas speaks
to us of a modern life, someone we can identify with, someone looking to experience
Christ in a real way. However we encounter the risen Jesus, in the loving
act of a friend helping us through the tough times, in the bread and wine
of communion or in the need to come to the aid of a stranger, we can respond
to it by building the body of Christ, so that other folk who only see the
cynical side of Thomas can also learn to see the joyful side of someone who
believes.
(Dan Joseph)
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
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