doubting Thomas or hopeful Thomas?
April 3, 2016
Second Sunday of Easter Year C
Happy Associate Pastor Sunday! All across the country, heads of staff are on vacation and associates everywhere are reading the story of Thomas for the third, fourth, fifth time. I actually kind of love it, it’s the one Sunday where I can count on a lot of my friends also preaching with me. And don’t worry, I get to go on vacation next week.
I also love it because I love this text. On the surface it looks simple. Thomas is a doubter. Doubt is bad. Don’t be like Thomas.
That absolutely misses the point for me.
This is always the text for the Sunday after Easter, which is good because it’s a great resurrection story, but I almost wish it was the Easter text itself, because it is the story that people who come to church most need to hear.
It’s not just Thomas who doubts, all the disciples are doubting, they are all scared or afraid. Jesus had died. Yes he had also been resurrected but these guys don’t know that yet.
Then Jesus appears to them through a locked door and it’s amazing, awesome wonderful! They got to see Jesus! They go find Thomas and tell him all about it and they’re so excited and he’s like huh. Ok. Well… I won’t believe it until I touch him with my own hands.
Too often we define Thomas by his doubt, rather than his fervent hope and trust. He shows us that doubt and hope go hand in hand. Thomas didn’t think he would never see his Lord, rather than doubting that he would see him, he hoped. He didn’t think that Jesus’ appearances were one and done, that he had missed out forever, he had hope.
And so do we. Because we hope we have cause to expect the Risen Christ to show up, answer our prayers, give us what we most need, to bust through locked doors and pour out the Holy Spirit upon us – not just once and not just on some, but over and over again for all.
Outlook editor Jill Duffield wrote in her editorial this week, “This year, in the midst of more terrorist attacks, more division, more fear, more doubt that peace and reconciliation are possible or even desirable, I am drawn to Thomas. I am drawn to Thomas for his honesty, his refusal to accept that he’s missed the risen Christ and should take others’ word for it that Jesus is alive, his stubborn statement that counts on the truth of God’s promises: “You will see me, I will hear you, I can and will bridge divides and break down barriers, peace, my peace, I will give to you, forgiveness is won and yours to share, don’t doubt, hope, not only hope, BELIEVE.” (1)
We need more Thomases in the church and in the world. We need people who ask the questions everyone else is afraid to voice, “How can we know the way?” We need people to say what is on so many people’s minds, “Unless I see, I will not believe.” We need stubborn, foolish followers who count on the truth of Jesus’ promises, those embarrassingly faithful people who won’t go along to get along but who expect the risen Christ and the Spirit to show up and send them out.” (1)
Thomas isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions. We need that too.
I started thinking, and now I believe, that hope and doubt really go together. We doubt because we hope. We question whether something is true because we want it to be true. If we didn’t care, we would just write it off as nonsense. But we do care, so we do doubt.
I admire Thomas in this passage. He names his need, he lets the disciples know what he’s thinking and feeling, he refuses to accept his outsider status. He won’t just go along to get along. He won’t accept the others’ word for it and in so doing gets the title “Doubting Thomas.” In insisting on equal treatment, he becomes the personification of skepticism when perhaps he should be praised for tenacity, honesty, patience and faith.
What if we thought of Thomas in those terms? What if we imagined him to be the one in the group who asks the tough questions others think but don’t voice? What if we heard his statement as not one of doubt but one of hope, expectation? What if we considered Thomas’ response a truly faithful one that took to heart Jesus’ promise, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.” Maybe Thomas was counting on the truth of Jesus’ instruction, of what Jesus had told them just a few days earlier: “I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.” (1)
This idea of doubt and hope going together was growing on me, small at first, like the little buds on the trees I can see from our balcony that overlooks the 270 spur. On Monday morning there was a tiny bit of green, now it’s spread and I can see green everywhere. and just like that, I can’t let go of the connection between doubt and hope. Hope is why we are here. Especially during this Easter season, we hope, we pray, we sing, we rejoice, we ask the question that Pastor Roy posed to us last week: what if it’s true?
Instead of a community that is shattered by doubt, I hope that we can be a community that makes room for doubt.
I doubt more than I believe. I question more than I can answer. And yet we need hope, because when we look around, sometimes we can’t help but wonder where God is.
When I first heard about the bombing on Easter Sunday in Lahore, Pakistan that killed 69 people and injured over 300 others, that was my first thought. Christians were targeted but people of all faiths were senselessly killed on that day, and God grieves for all of them.
When I hear something so horrific, so unbelievable, children ripped from their parents, families torn apart, all for the simple reason of going about their daily lives trying to find joy in a place that has already seen so much terror, my first thought is always “why?” How could you let this happen God? Where were you in that park on that day?
Those questions sound a lot like doubt. I know that. But I ask those questions because I hope. I hope that God’s light will shine brighter than the darkness, that God is there grieving with parents and grandparents and children and sisters and brothers. I hope that God is reaching out, busting through closed doors and showing up just when we think God won’t. Locked doors couldn’t keep Christ out, neither can anything else.
This is a story about how far Christ will go to reach us.
When we are there: in grief, in pain, in sadness, in doubt… precisely when we need God the most, that is when God wants to meet us. When we are desperate, as Thomas was, for a glimpse of the holy, for the touch of God, for an assurance of God’s love, that is when God comes to meet us.
A week after the resurrection, though the doors were shut, Christ appeared among the disciples and spoke directly 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.”
Thomas’ hope is made manifest, he sees Jesus for himself. And after that experience he not only echoes the witness of his comrades but makes the most profound confession of faith about Jesus contained in the New Testament, calling Jesus “my Lord and my God.”
But all of that comes after he has a chance to voice his doubt. And sometimes faith is like that – it needs the freedom of questions and doubt to really spring forth and take hold. Otherwise, faith might simply be confused with a repetition of creedal formulas, or giving your verbal consent to the faith statements of others. But true, vigorous, vibrant faith comes, I think, from the freedom to question, wonder, and doubt. (2)
Can any of us really be sure? Will any of us truly believe without hesitation until that mysterious moment when we get to see and touch Jesus for ourselves? Probably not. And so we doubt. We question. We wonder, we wander. But also we trust, we rely, we hope. And God reaches us, busting through closed doors, opening up closed hearts. That is the power of the resurrection. Amen.
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After sermon…
Thomas comes to faith because he first has the chance to voice his doubt and questions and then experiences Jesus for himself. Perhaps the opportunity before us this week, is for us, the Thomas’s here in the chairs, in this church, to do the same.
Pass out index cards to write one question about faith, God, the church. Fold it up and put it in the offering.
- Looking into the Lectionary by Jill Duffield: http://pres-outlook.org/category/ministry-resources/looking-into-the-lectionary/
- David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2016/03/easter-2-c-blessed-doubt/
courage in the cracks 