You
know this song – sing it with me:
I just wanna be a sheep – BAAAAAA.
I
just wanna be a sheep – BAAAAAA.
I
pray the Lord my soul to keep,
I
just wanna be a sheep – BAAAAAAA.
What
if we wrote a verse about Thomas?
Would it go like this?
Don’t wanna be a doubting Thomas.
Don’t
wanna be a doubting Thomas.
Don’t
wanna be such a total wuss.
I
just wanna be a sheep – BAAAAAA.
Not bad, I suppose. Here’s the thing, though – every year, on the second Sunday of Easter, we preachers find ourselves in the midst of a dilemma: Thomas is actually one of the more confident and assertive apostles. Earlier in the gospel of John, when Jesus is preparing to go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from the dead, Thomas is the disciple who says, “If he’s going, I’m going – even if it means I’m going to die with him.” Thomas is an all-in sort of disciple. We might even describe Thomas as a “tipping point” disciple.
Careful
reading of our gospel text bears this out. Ten of the eleven apostles were in the room hiding when
Jesus appeared to them. Judas was
dead by his own hand at this point, so that leaves one: Thomas. Where was Thomas? All we know is that he’s not hiding
with his friends, but given his willingness to die earlier in John’s gospel,
perhaps he’s out in the city.
Perhaps his grief compels him to wander the streets at night, hoping to
follow his Master and friend into death.
There’s nothing there to back this up – but there’s nothing there that
says it didn’t happen, either.
Whatever
might have happened, we know this much is true: Thomas is no more of a doubter than any of his fellow
disciples. Circumstance sets him
apart, not a lack of faith.
Reading the whole of John 20 tells us that everyone was confused and
uncertain about what was going on.
The disciples were hiding.
The women were frightened.
Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener, for heaven’s sake! Not one person responds to the
resurrection with absolute, unwavering faith. But in the end, “doubting” Thomas is the one who gives the full
confession of who Jesus is: “My Lord and my God!”
What
if this story isn’t about human ability to believe in the midst of confusion
and fear? What if this story is
about how God acts in the darkness of our confusion and fear? Let’s go all the way back to the
beginning of the gospel of John and read together, shall we?
In
the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
2 The
Word was with God in the beginning.
3
Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came
into being. What came into being 4
through the Word was life, and
the life was the light for all people.
5 The
light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.
9 The
true light that shines on all people was coming into the world.
10 The
light was in the world, and the world came into being through the light, but
the world didn’t recognize the light.
11 The
light came to his own people, and his own people didn’t welcome him.
12 But
those who did welcome him, those who believed in his name, he authorized to
become God’s children, 13 born not from blood nor from human desire
or passion, but born from God.
14 The
Word became flesh and made his home among us. We have seen his glory, glory
like that of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
From the very beginning of the gospel of John, three things
are foremost in the mind of the writer:
1.
Jesus has come into the world as the living,
incarnate Word of God;
2.
In the darkness of our world God’s people have
struggled to behold Jesus in faith.
3.
That darkness cannot extinguish the Light.
Here, at the end of the gospel of John, we see yet again
that Jesus is the light invading the darkness. With his friends in hiding, afraid, barring the door against
everything threatening, Jesus invades their fear and infuses them with his Spirit. He will not let them remain in their
fear, hiding, locked away in darkness.
Not those who were there the first night, and not Thomas who comes into
their darkness a week later. Nor,
it seems, can we keep Jesus away this night, either.
We
come with our own confusion and darkness to this gathering of disciples. It is different than that of the first
disciples, to be sure. Your life
is not threatened by the authorities.
We don’t gather behind locked doors. In many ways, it could be argued that we have become the authorities, the church not
just triumphant, but dominant. But we still live in darkness: doubt, fear, uncertainty, and the
difficulty of living together as people still captive to sin. Yet Jesus continues to invade our
darkness and infuse us with his Holy Spirit. He does so this night also.
If the earliest followers of Jesus,
who lived and ate and slept and walked and listened and served and prayed with
Jesus for three years, were assaulted by doubts and fears even after the
resurrection, then we have to assume that we, too, will have doubts and fears
as we follow Jesus. We are the
brothers and sisters of Thomas, of Peter, of the beloved disciple, of Mary and
the women at the tomb: uncertain,
afraid, confused – and this is the state in which Jesus comes to us bearing
God’s peace.
My colleague Heidi said once, “You
know, the Resurrection is just impossible to believe. I can’t do it on my own. I can’t get my head around how it happened. There’s no way I can believe this
without God doing it for me.”
Heidi is right: we simply
do not have the capacity within us to believe our way out of confusion. We use the creeds to describe what it is we believe, but the creeds do
not describe how we come to believe –
and neither do our friends who have no room for doubt, with all their simple
plans for salvation and their certainty about who’s in and who’s out. We construct a dangerous façade when we
insist that certainty and confidence are the hallmarks of a genuine Christian
faith, particularly when we insist that OUR version of the faith is the only
legitimate faith. As Pastor Ken
Carter wrote, “The gospel is not something that we can impose on others. People
must discover it for themselves…”[1]
I’ll say it again: no one was certain what was happening
that first week after the Resurrection.
Confusion reigned – and it was in the midst of confusion that Jesus came
to his disciples. Confusion about
Jesus and the Resurrection are not the marks of a lack of faith: confusion is the mark of a faith
seeking deeper understanding. What
is more genuine: to be so
absolutely certain about Jesus’ resurrection that you never ponder its meaning,
or to be so intrigued by Jesus’ resurrection that you continually question and
search for understanding? To admit
confusion is to admit to a desire for growth, a desire for revelation, a hunger
for truth that will not be sated by platitudes and cheap grace. Thomas, Peter, the beloved disciple,
Mary, the other women at the tomb:
they knew they weren’t seeing the whole picture, but their confusion was
the avenue by which Jesus increased their faith. Confusion can be the mark of great faith on the cusp of
awareness, waiting for God to tip the chalice and pour out grace and
understanding until our hearts are overflowing.
Jesus wasn’t offended by these
confused friends. On the contrary,
he welcomed them in the midst of their confusion, and thus so do we. Jesus appeared in the upper room, in the
midst of his frightened, confused followers and said, “Welcome.” So the invitation has gone out through
the centuries following: we
confused followers of Jesus are welcomed to Jesus’ table again and again, to
receive God’s peace through Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit and be sent into the
world to proclaim the good news.
Thomas was not rejected in his confusion. Jesus didn’t cast his followers out when they didn’t
understand everything about his resurrection right away. So also to us, confused though we may
be, Jesus says, “Come.”
How about a new song, one that’s
honest about who we are and who Jesus is?
Do you want to live in the light of Jesus? Then sing with me, and Thomas, and Peter, and all those who
gather in the name of Christ, no matter how deep the darkness may be: “I want to walk as a child of the light
/ I want to follow Jesus…In him there is no darkness at all / the night and the
day are both alike / the Lamb is the light of the City of God / shine in our
hearts, Lord Jesus.” May the Holy Spirit fill you with faith. May you know that darkness is not dark
to God your Creator. May the light of Christ shine into your darkness this
night, and may you know the joy of walking as a child of of the light. Amen.
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