Jeremiah 17:5-8
5 This is what the LORD says: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
7 "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.
8 He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."
John 20:19-30
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!"
20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
22 And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
23 If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."
24 Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.
25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "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."
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though 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; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
28 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
29 Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
30 Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the
(NIV)
Now and then we here some pessimistic skeptic declare that he or she could believe in God if the Lord would only send a SIGN.
Frederick Buechner, novelist and sometime preacher, has posed the question, “why doesn’t God send us a sign to dispel all our doubts, such as a message in the sky, written by the rearrangement of the universe, with suns and moons to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s”, so that the night sky would read, “I Am God! I Really Do Exist!!!!”
Woody Allen, the well-known comedian, has said that he would believe in God if God would send him a sign – such as making a large deposit in a Bank Account under the name, “Woody Allen.”
There is nothing new about this desire to have a sign from God.
We want confirmation for the things we believe.
Jesus recognized this and said in the fourth chapter of John, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” (John 4:48)
It is this type of thinking we see in Thomas in our New Testament lesson.
Historians and biblical scholars have not been kind to Thomas. In fact, they have traditionally been very severe in their treatment of this member of the twelve Disciples of Christ.
And they have good reason to be harsh toward him. For like Frederick Buechner, Woody Allen and so many others, Thomas demanded a sign. He wanted proof that Jesus was risen from the dead.
Unlike some of the other disciples and followers of Christ, Thomas was not around on Easter morning to see the empty tomb, or to speak to a radiant angel, or to recognize the return of his teacher from the dead.
When those who had seen the evidence told Thomas that Christ was alive again, there is not a hint of saintly wonder and acceptance of the miracle. Instead there is the human response of the skeptic: “Unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my fingers on those scars, and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
We can almost see Thomas shifting his eyes and folding his arms and raising his eyebrows and saying, “Peter, how gullible can you be? Peter, you poor man, you are in denial. Jesus is dead. We saw it ourselves and nothing can change that!”
Thomas flatly and openly dismissed the story as false, responding to it in much the same way that we respond to those outlandish stories in the National Enquirer that proclaim fool proof ways to lose 20 pounds in three days.
The news of the Resurrection was easy news to dismiss. The first reports of the Resurrection took place in the dark cold early morning hours. The first witnesses were women who had been emotionally and mentally strained and overwrought by what they had seen during the confusion of Thursday’s arrest and trials, and during the horror of Friday’s crucifixion.
With their eyes full of tears, their hearts full of sorrow, and their minds full of confusion, how could one possibly expect them to see and to think clearly?
“They must have found the body stolen and imagined the rest,” thought Thomas. “Or perhaps they had imagined it ALL.”
“Even the later, alleged appearance to the other ten disciples could be explained away,” or so Thomas must have thought. He must have believed it to have been nothing more than a sheer hallucination born of frayed nerves, or of the intense longing for what could have been.
And so, when approached by his friends with this fantastic, unprecedented news that their dead master is alive again. Thomas replies with honest doubt: “Unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my finger on those scars, I will not believe.”
Because of this overwhelming doubt, nearly everyone has been rather harsh in his or her evaluation of old Thomas. We look at him with the disappointed look that a teacher might give to a bright student who has failed the test. “Come on Thomas, surely you could have done better than that. Surely you could have mustered up enough faith.”
We are not kind in our treatment of Thomas. We look at him as a failure in faith.
And yet, whether we admit it or not, in many of us who are so faithful, there exists a bit of doubting Thomas.
For many of us are more like Thomas than we would like to believe, or admit.
We, too, have our doubts.
We doubt that God cars for and loves us.
We doubt our salvation.
We doubt that the Resurrection took place.
We doubt the very existence of God.
We do not DENY any of these, for if we made a flat denial, we probably would not be here this morning. We would be back home comfortably reading our newspapers and having a late breakfast. Or at the beach enjoying the weather.
We don’t deny.
We doubt.
We want to believe, but we also wonder – what if?
What if God doesn’t really care all that much about little ol’ me?
What if salvation is not really possible after all?
What if Jesus did not rise from death but remains buried in some unmarked and forgotten tomb in Israel?
What if God does not exist?
Perhaps the reason so many of us looks down on Thomas and describe him with such harsh words of “doubt” and “failure” and “unfaithful” is because when we see Thomas we see a reflection of a part of ourselves. A part that we do not like. A part that we wish was not there.
For who among us has NEVER, EVER felt some twinge of doubt creeping up in his or her thoughts?
IS it true?
Is the Bible true? God? Christ?
What if it is not?
What if?
We all have doubts -- At one time or another, about one matter or another, and the way most of us deal with doubt is to suppress it. We ignore it and refuse to admit it to ourselves and we certainly refuse to admit our doubts to others.
As if dealing with some hideous crime or some embarrassing mistake, we hide everyone any evidence of our doubt and we wear a mask of faith and we pretend to believe without question.
After all, what kind of Christian would we be could be if we admitted that our lack of faith had resulted in doubt?
We treat doubting as if it were some sort of spiritual disease and in a sense that is exactly what it is.
But we make a mistake by dealing with doubt by suppressing and ignoring it. But PRETENDING to be faithful and PRETENDING to have no doubts will not cure the problem. Sooner or later, the old doubts resurface.
IS God real?
Did Christ rise from death?
Is it true?
What if it’s not?
What if?
Denial and suppression is not the way to deal with our doubts.
When we treat doubt by ignoring it, we become like the man who feels the sharp pain in his and and chest, but refuses to call a doctor for help.
Ignore it, and maybe it will go away.
We feel the doubts. We are disturbed by the haunting questions about God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. We feel doubts and our response is to ignore it. Maybe the doubt will go away.
But the doubts never quite go away.
They remain.
If we are hard on Thomas, if we look down on him, maybe it is NOT because he, like us, felt the pain of doubt.
Maybe we look down on him because he, UNLIKE so many of us, had the courage to face his doubts head on.
Thomas was indeed a man of courage.
When Jesus announced his intention to go to Jerusalem and die, the reaction of Thomas was “Let’s ALL go and die with him.”
And it was with courage that Thomas faced his doubts.
He knew that ignoring these doubts would not make them go away. If anything would resolve them, it would be by facing them head on.
“Unless I see the scars of the nails on his hands, and put my fingers on those scars, and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
One week after Thomas expressed that doubt, Jesus appeared to him and told the disciple, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands, reach out and put your hand in my side. Stop your doubting and believe.”
And Thomas believed. All his doubts were resolved. And not only that, but he was able to go beyond and make a giant step of faith beyond what most of the other disciples had made. Others had described the Risen Jesus as Rabbi, prophet, Messiah, King. But it took Thomas, who having expressed and faced his doubts was able to say with great faith, “My Lord, and my God.”
Having faced his doubts Thomas was able to resolve the questions of faith and come out with a STRONGER faith that ever before.
It is good if we are free from doubt. Jesus himself said, “Happy are those who believe without seeing me!”
But IF we have those doubts, and many of us do, it is good that we face them and search for an answer, rather than ignore those doubts and hope they simply disappear.
For only then will our faith grow and be nurtured to be a stronger, more realistic faith.
Copyright Maynard Pittendreigh, 2003
All Rights Reserved
