Originally preached on April 16, 2023 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Reading, PA.
Gospel text: John 20:19-31; The story of Thomas experiencing Jesus post-resurrection.
Today’s gospel lesson has a lot to do with belief, and seeing and what ultimately sounds like needing proof that Jesus showed up to the disciples in the locked room. It is not always easy to take a story at face value. We, as humans, have skeptical brains and want some back up proof to understand and accept what others have told us. I’m sure each of us have had those doubts – maybe not about faith but about something – and we certainly have people in our lives who do have questions. Every time I read this passage, Every time I approach my faith, I try to make understand without seeing and feeling Christ’s wounds what being a Jesus follower is all about. My science brain starts trying to make sense of this story, and I might be with Thomas on this.
Before shifting into a career in ministry, I worked on research biology within the environment. I loved it. I studied the health of streams in agricultural lands that primarily had cattle farms by checking out the bugs that lived in the water. It was a year’s long survey that helped analyze the effectiveness of efforts to repair the vegetation around the streams to see if the water quality got better for the insects and fish who lived there. I loved following the scientific method from a question, to hypothesis, setting up an experiment or figuring out how to best collect data and then analyze for the universal truth I was trying to prove. That’s just how my brain works, and I think that’s how Thomas’ brain works.
So beginning with the question: What is Jesus up to with his post resurrection appearances?
Now a hypothesis: Jesus is leaving us with two major takeaways: he commands us to forgive, and as a result Thomas is the first to proclaim Jesus as God.
Lets set up our survey in the Bible and locate when Jesus is appearing to the disciples. If this was a scientific paper, a lot of this information would end up in the introduction. We’re only days after his resurrection, the Passover celebrations are winding down and people are leaving Jerusalem. The disciples are hiding out of fear of the Jews – which is really the Jewish leaders at the time, likely referring to the leaders who were collaborating with the Roman Empire posed a threat to first Jesus followers.
We have to be careful about our language here because so often we conflate this small group of people being referenced here with all Jewish people. We allow this small group to represent all of the Jewish community, even today, and down that road leads to antisemitism and hatred for our Jewish community members. That’s not okay. We can be smart in our reading and understanding of context and translation here in the Gospel to know who exactly the disciples are afraid of. And that is not our current Jewish neighbors who. The anti-defamation league put out a report in late March that antisemitism is on the rise in the US, and we need to remember that Jesus was also Jewish and have compassion for our neighbors.
Back into the story and our scientific inquiry into scripture, we find out later that Thomas was not among the disciples who were in a locked room when Jesus appeared to them after the resurrection. Well, any good method for testing a hypothesis has a control group, a neutral who didn’t experience Jesus firsthand, and a group who does.
We don’t know where Thomas was. He could have been in deeper hiding somewhere, out on a grocery run, or checking in on the state of the city after the events of the week for the rest.
Here’s the crux of this experiment: Jesus breaths the Holy Spirit on the disciples. We are looking to see how the disciples respond vs Thomas. This breathing the Holy Spirit on the disciples is the same word in Greek, the Hagia Pneuma, when God breathed life into humanity in Genesis 2:7. This is Jesus breathing eternal life into his disciples. Into us. Into this community, laying the foundation that forgiveness is central to this community. I like the way this is translated in the Message Bible: “If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?”
Now Thomas shows up and I can’t help but wonder what the mood in the room was when Thomas, our control group, walked in? Were the rest of the disciples excited that they got to see Jesus, or spooked that he came through a locked door? Were they confused? I can imagine what the emotional whiplash might be: in the fresh grief of losing a beloved teacher, he appears before them. I am not sure if I would be comforted or challenged by his appearance.
Thomas’ reaction to their news is understandable. There are several moments of unbelief throughout the Gospels, including earlier in this chapter when Peter had to go check the tomb because he did not believe Mary’s proclamation that Jesus had risen indeed. So Thomas has his questions and wants to see himself. He yearns for a living encounter with Jesus just as his sibling disciples had. I can relate, and maybe you can too, to Thomas who can’t settle for someone else’s experience of resurrection, but sticks around in the hope of having his own. We can relate to someone who dares to confess uncertainty in the midst of those who are certain. To someone who recognizes his God in woundedness, not glory. When we look at Thomas, we see a man who yearns for a living encounter with God. Aren’t we all looking to experience Jesus’ resurrection too?
Jesus has charged the disciples to forgive, to go out and share that good news? Jesus first forgives them - for their abandonment, for their fear, for their paralysis. Then he charges them to go and do likewise. This is the point on which this whole great experiment of faith is hinged upon: Jesus has, died and rose again, and does that matter? How do the disciples respond? Once Jesus’ Holy Spirit breath is in each of us, how do we respond?
Early in the Gospel of John people are invited to “look” and to “come and see” (see John 1). We are invited to learn about this ongoing experiment of faith, and like gravity, prove the hypothesis over and over again that Jesus is present in our lives. In John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene proclaimed good news to disbelieving disciples, and they’ve witnessed to Thomas, who was absent from the first resurrection appearance in the locked room. It is Christ centered community that helps to make the resurrection real to each of us – we see the evidence of Jesus’ presence —Today that might look like rejoicing together over a new job, surviving an illness, living in recovery, accomplishing a goal, ability to pay off debt, and so on. We point to the goodness of God with our lives, wounded and transformed.
Like any classic experiment, our results are not quite what we expected. The result to experience faith isn’t that we stick our finger in Jesus’ wounds, but we understand that Jesus experienced this wounded world, and whenever we experience it, it brings us closer to Jesus.
But sometimes this is hard to see. Thomas is known in John’s gospel as the one “called the Twin” (11:16; 20:24; 21:2). Professor Johanna Haberer brilliantly describes Thomas as our “twin” in doubt and faith.* She points out that he is the patron saint of precise things: building, construction, architecture. All very STEM fields. Thomas wants to understand what he’s getting into and asks probing, analytical questions. He’s the same disciple who asked Jesus, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (14:5), to which Jesus responded, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6). Seeing/not seeing, asking questions, and believing/disbelieving are a part of Thomas’s personality; Jesus never reprimands him for this.
So here’s our conclusion this morning: and Thank you for coming on this journey into scripture with me. Jesus is big enough to handle our questions, our doubts, our unbelief. What we are left to figure out is how we respond to the proclamation of Jesus present, alive, resurrected among us? We are forgiven, which means we can share the good news that we are so incredibly loved by God that God sent Jesus to live with us, and the Spirit to inspire us. May the way we live our lives be evidence in this great experiment of faith.
Amen.
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