What is our motto, our slogan, at St. Thomas? A Believing Church in an Doubting World. From the very beginning, God called His people to believe, to be faithful, to trust Him. God told Noah to build an ark; and he believed Him and was saved. He told Abram that he’d give him the land of Canaan and a true heir of his own flesh; and he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Likewise, from the beginning there was unbelief. Cain didn’t believe that God would accept him if did what is right, and he murdered Abel; his labors were cursed. When Noah built the ark, no one believed the prophecy of the coming flood; they were swept away. Belief has rewards and unbelief has penalties. Saddest of all, God told Adam and Eve to eat anything they wanted, except for the fruit of one, measly tree; they broke faith, believing the serpent rather than God, and paradise was broken.
Unbelief, faithlessness, distrust in God, is a sure source of death and destruction. That’s the counterfeit, saints. Here’s the genuine article. Belief, faith, trust in God and in Christ Jesus, brings life eternal. We will investigate this in today’s Gospel. John 20 starting at verse 19.
“On the evening” (Jn. 20:19). Disciples were in overwhelming darkness ever since Judas went out to betray Jesus, “And it was night” (Jn. 13:30). Nevertheless, it was the first day of the week—the beginning of the new creation, when God says again “Let there be light.” On Easter even, though the disciples locked themselves in for fear of the Jews, Jesus—the light of the world— penetrated their darkness, entering in spite of the locked doors. He came and imparted to them the ministry of the reconciliation of the world. “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Co. 5:20).
Now, when the risen Lord appears, it’s hard to keep it secret. Moreover forgiveness of sins wasn’t meant to be confined to the community of disciples (that’s us). So the disciples made a small, weak first step, and told Thomas. There could be no safer place to start evangelization than within the group of Jesus’ own followers. They told him, “We have seen the Lord!” And the disciple’s first attempt to witness to the resurrection utterly failed. Thomas said, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it” (Jn. 20:25). Thomas wasn’t just saying, “There, there; now, now,” figuring the others had a tough day, patronizing them. He was calling them liars and demanding radical proof for a radical claim.
The disciples couldn’t respond to Thomas’ demand, only the Lord could. Here’s what I find very encouraging: the following week Jesus appeared again to Thomas as well. God took the witness of the ten, and He gave it legs. They offered Thomas all the testimony they had, and when he asked for more than they could give, God provided. We are responsible to witness to what we have seen. As St. John writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at, and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 Jn. 1:1). We aren’t expected to provide evidence that God alone can give, just what He’s given to us.
Thomas saw Jesus, but he perceived more, declaring; “My Lord and my God!” Jesus says, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Jn. 20:29). St. Thomas believed that Jesus was Lord and God because he saw the risen Lord. The author of Hebrews tells us, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Heb. 11:1). Faith is trusting that God’s promises are true. When Thomas stared at Christ, with His pierced hands and gaping side, the bridge that his faith had to traverse was shortened. Jesus was risen! Thomas now had to accept or reject the evidence before him.
God offered to Thomas the chance to shine, to accept the testimony of the other disciples, yet Thomas’ dullness became a source of encouragement to future generations. His skepticism touches the hearts of all Christians who “missed out” on the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. No Christian with a considered faith fails as some point to ask whether Jesus yet lives—and thus, whether every promise of God, all of which have the perfection and fulfillment in Christ Jesus, is trustworthy. And so Thomas became every man. Thomas was called Didymus, which means twin; and you and I are his twin. When I ask, “Where are You, Lord? Are You still there?” then my cry resounds, “Unless I thrust my hand into his side.” Christ says to each of us, “Stop doubting and believe” (Jn. 20:27).
Belief, faith, and trust in God and in Christ Jesus bring life. We prayed today that we may, “Show forth in our lives what we profess by our faith.” We have asked God for authentic faith, where deed and word align.
Well then, at the moment of our baptism, while the waters are still rolling off of our head, and our soul and faith is pure, why doesn’t God either immediately take us out with a meteor, or better yet, just gently take us on up into heaven? Why risk our faithfulness? To exhaustively answer this question would require hours of explication and is more than the usually scope of a Sunday sermon. But the question deserves asking and deserves answering because it affects every person who becomes a Christian and it touches to the very heart of who we are as St. Thomas the Disciple Anglican Church.
Look in verse 31: “These 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.” (Jn. 20:31). The Gospel is written that we “may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” God has written his name on our forehead, even as the priest sealed us with the sacred Chrism at our baptism, saying, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” And while the Gospel is the message of God to His people—those who have already accepted Him and received the gift of adoption—, as the people of God, we are the messengers whereby God conveys His love to the word.
So why risk our faithlessness? This takes us back to Jesus’ words on Easter, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (Jn. 20:21). What are we here for? Or rather, what are we sent out into the world for? To do what Jesus was sent to do. “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world” (Jn. 1:9). “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (Jn. 1:16–18). “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (Jn. 6:33). “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (Jn. 10:10).
The Lord Jesus came to bring life, to bring light into a dark world, to make the Father known. Unbelief brings death and destruction; belief, faith, brings life eternal.
As Christians we are members of what? Of a social club—one that happens to have a scrum-diddly-umptious fellowship hour every Sunday? We are members of the Body of Christ. A member is a limb. When we say that we are members of St. Thomas the Disciple, we mean that we are the limbs of this Christian community. You are the foot, the leg, the ribs, the hand, they eyes of this community as it reaches out into the world. Christ is the Head, and our pastor, Fr. Norman, is like the spine, through whom the members of this body are coordinated, joined, and arranged.
St. Theresa describes this vividly: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out on the earth. Yours are the feet by which he is to go about doing good. And yours are the hands with by which he is to bless us now.”
We are the Father’s witnesses to Salisbury and Wicomico County. A believing church in an unbelieving world. Through our belief and faithful witness that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, we can influence this community to have life in Jesus name. “Let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Mt. 5:16).
