John 20:19-31
19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them,“Peace be with you.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
24 Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came.25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”
26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me?Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
IN NOMINE JESU
Be Like Thomas
Poor Thomas. He will forever be called by that terrible nickname, Doubting Thomas. That moniker has remained with him for two thousand years since Christ rose again, and I imagine it will stay with him until Christ’s return. He has bourn the brunt of countless moralistic sermons about faith, where Thomas is held up as a great example... of what not to do. It even seems like Jesus piles on, saying in our Gospel reading for today, “Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
Of course, Thomas should have had faith, although none of the other disciples did. Remember, Peter and John saw the empty tomb, and yet Jesus still found them hiding out in a locked room, afraid and confused. All of the disciples, including Thomas, should have seen the resurrection coming. Jesus had foretold it plenty of times. And certainly, when all the other disciples actually saw the risen Lord, and told Thomas, he should have believed them. That’s why there are so many sermons about how you should have faith and not be like Thomas.
But that is not how this sermon is going to go. Instead, I want us all to be grateful for Thomas. Thomas disbelieved so that you could believe.
Ok, where are we in the story? Last week we heard about the women who saw the empty tomb, were told Jesus had risen and fled. John, in his Gospel, tells us they told Peter and John who raced to see the empty tomb but didn’t see Jesus. Then He revealed Himself to Mary Magdalene and that night appeared to the disciples hiding in a locked room. But Thomas wasn’t with them that Easter night.
So, where was Thomas? Why wasn’t he hiding out with the other disciples in the locked room when Jesus appeared? We aren’t told. But the larger answer to the question, why wasn’t Thomas there, is that he absent that night so that you could have the benefit of hearing his story.
Let’s back up. What do we know about Thomas? What kind of man is he? The Apostle Thomas appears three times in John’s Gospel. We first meet Thomas in John chapter 11, when Jesus proposes that they go back to Judea after Lazarus’s death. Now the last time they were in Judea, the Temple authorities tried to stone Jesus, so from the disciple’s perspective, going back means risking death by stoning. The first one to speak after Jesus suggests going back, though, is Thomas. He says, rather bravely if you ask me, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
The second time Thomas shows up is in John 14. The disciples are in the upper room and Jesus is teaching them about His impending death and resurrection. But it hasn’t actually happened yet, and so the disciples don’t understand a lot of the conversation. Thomas, confused, says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” To which Jesus responds with some of the most beautiful words in the Gospel, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”
We know from these two passages that Thomas isn’t some kind of especially hard-nosed skeptic by nature. If I were to choose two adjectives to describe Thomas, I’d pick loyal and confused. He’s loyal, in that he urges the other disciples to follow Jesus to Judea, even though he thinks they might die there. And he’s confused about what exactly Jesus is saying in the upper room. But, and here’s the important thing, that description isn’t so extraordinary. It could just as easily be given to Peter, who is also loyal (at least, up to a point), and also confused by what Jesus is saying about his resurrection. Thomas is a normal man. Maybe a little braver, actually, than some of us. Closer to Jesus than most other people. When he heard from the other disciples that Jesus had been raised from the dead, he had a totally normal reaction: he didn’t believe them.
Why? Well, Thomas knew that Jesus was dead, and had been dead for three days. He wasn’t at the cross to see Jesus die, but John was there and a lot of other people. He trusted their account of it. He knew, after all, that Jesus’ body had a spear thrust through its side - which he could only have known by the account of witnesses like John. But when John and the other disciples say they’ve seen the risen Jesus, Thomas doesn’t believe that. It’s just not realistic. Sure, the disciples saw something in that upper room. But what? Eyes are fallible, prone to deception and so for Thomas, seeing is not believing. No, Thomas will not believe, will never believe until he touches Jesus’ body, touches the very wounds made by the nails and the spear.
That demand shows just how deep his unbelief went. There is no way Thomas would have said this if he thought there was any chance Jesus would actually show up. You don’t say to someone who’s been horribly wounded, “Ohhh, can I feel your cuts?” Nope, Thomas was sure Jesus dead, not resurrected.
That’s why “doubting” isn’t a very good description of his state of mind. Thomas wasn’t doubting at all. He was sure. Doubting implies that there is a sort of middle-ground reaction to the resurrection. But there isn’t. Either Jesus was raised from the dead, or he wasn’t. Thomas is right. Wishful thinking does no good at all. Neither does some kind of squishy platitude that Jesus lives on in our hearts. I am reminded of a popular Easter hymn called “He Lives.” It’s not in our hymnal but you hear it a lot. It goes, “He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today! He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way. … You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart?”
If Jesus is still dead, but figuratively alive in your heart because you think about Him a lot, then when you die that’s it. There is nothing. That’s the end. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then he was obviously not God, and he obviously can’t do a thing for you when you die. Or, in the words of Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” In that case, he says, “your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” and “those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.”
So how can we know for sure that Jesus did, actually, physically, rise from the dead? St Paul lists hundreds of witnesses to the resurrection. But John gives us the story of one particular witness: Thomas.
Thomas declares, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Jesus wasn’t visibly present to hear him say this, but He is God, and he knew.
Eight days later, the disciples are in the locked room again, only this time, Thomas is with them. And Jesus walks right into the room, despite the locks on the door and the bars on the window.
As a side note, why does Jesus wait 8 days? Cyril of Alexandria, writing in the early 400s, thought that it was to verify that we are a people whose holy day is the eighth day, which is the day of new creation, new birth, and resurrection from the dead. John Chrysostom thought Jesus waited eight days so that the other disciples would have time to soften Thomas up. We don’t know for sure.
But we do know that Jesus suddenly appears. He turns His gaze on Thomas. We can only imagine what Thomas did in that moment. Did he freeze up? Did he start shaking? He had said he would never trust his eyes to tell him the Lord was risen, did he persist in his disbelief in that moment?
Jesus doesn’t give him a chance to continue in his disbelief. “Put your finger here, and see my hands;” He says, “and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
There are a lot of paintings portraying this moment. One, by the medieval artist Caravaggio, is particularly explicit. In the painting, Jesus grips Thomas’s wrist, forcing his finger into the wound in his side. In the painting we see Thomas’s impudent finger moving aside the flap of skin covering the wound. It is so graphic that it’s actually hard to look at.
I imagine it was hard for Thomas, too. The sixth century poet Romanus Melodus wrote, “Who protected the hand of the disciple which was not melted at the time when he approached the fiery side of the Lord? Who gave it daring and strength to probe the flaming bone? Certainly the side was examined. If the side had not furnished abundant power, how could a right hand of clay have touched sufferings which had shaken Heaven and earth? It was grace itself which was given to Thomas to touch and to cry out, ‘Thou art our Lord and God.’…For truly the boundary line of faith was subscribed for me by the hand of Thomas.”
It’s amazing, isn’t it? By touching Jesus’ real life flesh and blood, Thomas realized that Jesus was God. Only God could defeat death like that.
Gregory the Great, writing in the five hundreds, said it this way, “It was not an accident that that particular disciple was not present. The divine mercy ordained that a doubting disciple should, by feeling in his Master the wounds of the flesh, heal in us the wounds of unbelief. The unbelief of Thomas is more profitable to our faith than the belief of the other disciples. For the touch by which he is brought to believe confirms our minds in belief, beyond all question.” Jesus answered Thomas so that you could believe.
“Put your finger here,” Jesus says to Thomas, “and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” To you he says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
We are not given the privilege of seeing Jesus, and only Thomas was given the honor, that terrible honor, of touching His wounds. But his story was written down for you. John writes, “These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Thomas doubted so that you may believe, and thus be raised from the dead on the last day. That is why this is not a “don’t doubt like Thomas” sermon. Instead, hear the word of God, written for your sake, and exclaim with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”
He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
