Archive for the ‘Thomas’ Category

Is seeing believing? Thomas

April 6, 2024

Easter 2 – 2024

John 20:19-31

Marian Free

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

In the name of God, who reveals Godself to us, as and when we need to know God’s presence. Amen.

Today’s gospel is rich in detail, detail that we fail to notice because our focus too often has been on Thomas. The idea of a doubting Thomas has become part of our lingua franca as if the primary purpose of Jesus’ resurrection. appearances was to expose Thomas’ need for proof, to congratulate those who do not need proof and to chide those who need to see to believe.  

A number of problems arise when we approach Jesus’ resurrection appearances to the disciples with this blinkered, one-eyed approach. A primary problem, as I have pointed out previously is that among the disciples in John’s gospel, Thomas is one of the few who has a speaking part. It is Thomas, who in an earlier chapter avers that he will die with Jesus and Thomas who, when Jesus says that they know the way to where he is going (14:4) has the courage to ask the question that is on the lips of every disciple: “We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

Far from being the example of a questioning, doubting disciple, Thomas demonstrates what it is to be a leader among the disciples and a confident follower of the earthly Jesus. One might even argue that Thomas’s absence from the locked room (in which the other disciples had hunkered down “for fear of the Jews”) was that, of all the disciples he was not to be afraid to go out – even if that meant being put to death with or for Jesus!

If the focus of today’s gospel is not Thomas’ failure to believe, we need to look at the text anew. 

Looking at the two resurrection appearances together, we notice that the disciples (with the exception of Thomas) are afraid, so afraid that they have locked the doors of the house. They are afraid – despite the fact that Peter and John at least have seen the empty tomb. They are afraid –   even though Mary Magdalene has reported that she has seen (and touched) the risen Christ.  Thomas is not alone, until the other disciples see Jesus for themselves they are all unbelievers. It is only when Jesus appears among them and shows them his hands and side that the disciples let go of their fear and rejoice. 

What happens next suggests that Thomas feels that he has been hard done by. For some reason, Jesus chooses to appear at a time when only Thomas is not present. In the absence of Thomas, Jesus has commissioned the other disciples to carry on his ministry and has equipped them with the Holy Spirit. Further, Jesus has given those disciples authority to forgive. Up until now Thomas has shown leadership qualities, his absence now is evidence of his courage. It would be surprising if he didn’t feel disappointed and overlooked. His petulant cry might reflect his disappointment that he was not present and his refusal to believe his fellow disciples as much as it reflects his scepticism that Jesus had risen. 

Not surprisingly, Thomas’ demand is no problem for Jesus.  A week later, (possibly the next time they were all together) Jesus appears again. On this occasion the doors are shut, but not locked. Jesus again offers “Peace”. He invites Thomas to touch his scars and, to not be unbelieving[1], but to believe. Thomas’ response reminds us of his leadership qualities. Unlike the other disciples who, when they see Jesus, simply accept that he has risen, Thomas declares Jesus to be both Lord and God. Far from being the Doubter, Thomas is in fact the first, and only disciple in John’s gospel to identify Jesus as both Lord and God.

That leaves us with perhaps the most confusing aspect of today’s gospel – Jesus’ response to Thomas’s declaration. According to John, instead of commending Thomas for his declaration of faith (as he does Peter in the Synoptics), Jesus appears to chide him. “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” The question is, are those words addressed to the disciples as a whole, to Thomas alone, or does the gospel writer have his eyes firmly fixed on his readers, and on those of us who will read the words centuries later?

John concludes the resurrection account (and what some believe to be the original gospel) with the following explanation: “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name”. Given that the gospel is written at a time when there are no eye witnesses to Jesus, let alone to the resurrection it is possible to argue that the beatitude has quite a different intent. Jesus (or the gospel writer) seems to be making it clear that the readers of John’s gospel and those like ourselves who have come to faith generations later, are at least as blessed if not more blessed than those knew him in the flesh and who as a consequence, struggled to accept his resurrection.

We who have never known the earthly Jesus, but who have his life, death and resurrection reported and interpreted in scripture, do not have to struggle with the fact that our friend, Jesus was God after all. We, who did not have to ponder how someone so obviously dead could now be alive, have the advantage of knowing the resurrected Jesus in our own lives. We are indeed blessed, because seeing and knowing may in fact have been impediment to believing.

[1] This is more accurate translation and avoids giving Thomas the misnomer of “Doubting”.

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Blessed are those who believe without seeing??

April 15, 2023

Easter 2 – 2023
John 20: 19-31
Marian Free

In the name of God who reveals Godself to us in many and various ways. Amen.

In the seventies and eighties, a popular saying among Christian educators was: “God has no grandchildren.” By that, it was meant that every generation had to come to know Jesus for themselves, that faith had to be owned by someone and not imposed on them. This seems to have been a key element of the Billy Graham and other evangelistic crusades, which always concluded with a challenge to those present to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour. Faith that was learned was seen as no substitute for a personal commitment to Jesus.

Billy Graham, and others like him, engaged in emotive and sometimes guilt inducing tirades in order to expose what to them was a superficial experience or expression of faith. As a result, many people did come to a genuine and lasting belief in Jesus. Others, who were simply caught up in the emotional hype fell away if they were not given support and encouragement or if they had no foundation on which to build. In the more conservative Anglican church of my youth, well-meaning adults in the congregations tried to convince us of the validity of the Christian faith, by telling us about the miracles that had occurred in their own lives as a result of faith. (Miracles were no substitute for relationship.)

There are of course, many, many ways that churches (and cults) endeavour to share what they believe and to convince outsiders to believe and to remain committed. In some instances, the threat of punishment or hell is used as a means of making drawing people in and keeping them there. Another method is to create sense of belonging to attract the lost and lonely. Belonging is seductive and the threat of exclusion ensures that those who have joined choose to stay.

“Belief” that is based on fear is not faith. It is certainly not a faith that is grounded in the knowledge of and relationship with the living Christ. But how does one come to know the risen Jesus? How, more than 2,000 years since the first Easter and in a world that is vastly different, can we share our conviction that Jesus is alive?

The early church had an advantage that we do not. Many of those who believed had seen the risen Jesus for themselves. Their conviction that Jesus was alive and the enthusiasm and life that was generated by that experience was like a magnet, drawing others into the orbit of their belief and enabling them to experience the risen Lord for themselves. Unlike us, the first disciples had the advantage that they could build on a common belief in the Hebrew scriptures and the promises and expectations contained within. Even so, their conviction that Jesus was raised was so compelling that they drew into the emerging faith those who not only did not know the earthly Jesus, but also those with no background in the Jewish faith.

Today’s gospel is often used to suggest that those who believe in Jesus without knowing or seeing him for themselves are more blessed than those first-generation believers who had the advantage of seeing the risen Jesus. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (20:29). These words have the weight of judgement or compulsion behind them and seem designed to encourage arrogance on the one hand and insecurity on the other. They do not sound like the words of Jesus. My suspicion is that these words belong to the generation of the gospel writers – a third generation church which was facing the same situation that we face – sharing the faith with those who have not and cannot meet the resurrected Jesus.

The words attributed to Jesus here are at odds with the rest of the account of Jesus’ appearance, which has at its heart knowing, seeing and experiencing for oneself that Jesus is alive. Until verse 29, there is no suggestion that the disciples need to have faith in the abstract idea of Jesus’ resurrection. As the gospels tell the story, it was only as Jesus’ followers came to see Jesus for themselves that they were convinced that he was alive. On the morning of that first day of the week, Mary Magdalene encountered and spoke with the risen Jesus. It was only later, when Jesus appeared among the disciples and showed them his wounds that they too rejoiced in their risen Lord. Finally, Jesus, instead of demanding that Thomas believe without seeing, appeared especially for him.

A personal encounter with the risen Lord convinced the disciples that he was alive, and being convinced that he was alive, they shared their conviction with any who would listen, drawing them into an experience of the risen Christ.

Centuries later people are still coming to faith through an encounter with the risen Lord because the resurrection is not a past event but a living reality. If Jesus has risen, then Jesus is alive, and if Jesus is alive, then it is possible for every succeeding generation to meet the risen Lord for themselves.

How we encounter the risen Lord differs from person to person. It may be the result of a dramatic encounter, or it may be the gradual realisation that one has absorbed and accepted for oneself the faith learnt as a child. It may take the form of a quiet assurance that Jesus is present in one’s life, or it may be an intellectual assent to the Gospels. Today’s gospel does not lay down a hard and fast rule, but allows that some will need to see, and that others will believe without seeing.

The first disciples could not help but share their experience. Successive generations have become more and more cautious. But others will only know what we know if we can share our passion or if we live in such a way that those around us can see that our lives are enriched and enlivened by our relationship with the risen Christ – by (among other things) our enthusiasm for life, our desire to make the world a better place, our steadfastness and calm in times of grief and trauma and our quiet presence.

How did you come to know the risen Christ? How does your life reveal that Christ is risen?

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The danger of certainty

April 10, 2021

Easter 3 – 2021

John 20:19-31

Marian Free

In the name of God “whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts.” Amen.

Hymn 453 in Together in Song begins:

We limit not the truth of God
  to our poor reach of mind,
by notions of our day and sect,
  crude, partial and confined.
No, let a new and better hope
  within our hearts be stirred:
the Lord hath yet more light and truth
  to break forth from His Word.

“The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from His Word”. As the hymn suggests, if we believe that we know all that there is to know about God or think that God’s self-revelation ended with Jesus we are limiting the truth of God to our imperfect capacity to see and to understand. If we approach our scriptures in a glib and superficial way, we are almost certain to draw the wrong conclusions. And if we see scripture only as a collection of proof texts, we will be guilty of using the bible to reinforce our own preconceptions and we will miss the depth and complexity that lies within scripture as a whole. 

An example of the latter can be found in a common interpretation of today’s gospel. There are 13 verses in our reading which are themselves part of a wider context – including Jesus’ resurrection appearances, the entire gospel of John and scripture as a whole. Despite this the focus has almost invariably been on two short phrases: “Do not doubt but believe,” and “blessed are those that not having seen me believe.” Read together, and separated from their context, these two quotes imply that doubt is incompatible with faith and that Jesus is indirectly censuring Thomas for doubting that he had risen.

Isolating these phrases from their setting leads us to ignore the fact that Jesus does not condemn Thomas but makes an appearance especially for him. It overlooks the fact that having seen Jesus, it is only Thomas among the disciples who proclaims Jesus as: “my Lord and my God.” Detaching these phrases from the gospel as a whole means that we forget that Thomas alone promises to follow Jesus even unto death. It also means that we pay no heed to the faithlessness of all the disciples who abandoned Jesus at the first hint of trouble and who now, two weeks after the resurrection are still hiding in terror. Without the benefit of the other gospels, we fail to realise that Thomas is not the only disciple who finds it hard to believe that Jesus is risen. 

Doubt is not limited to Thomas but is a consistent theme throughout the bible. Many of the people whom we consider to be heroes of the faith had moments (even years) when their faith in God wavered or failed. Abraham and Sarah are remembered for their courageous faith, but together they doubted that God would keep God’s promise to give them a son. Moses did not have confidence that God would enable him to lead God’s people out of Egypt. Jeremiah wondered at times if God had abandoned him and the Israelites as a whole constantly doubted that God had their best interests at heart. Job doubted God’s fairness and the Psalmist doubted when God appeared to be silent. Doubt it seems is a constant companion of faith. 

It is certainty, not doubt, that is the opposite of faith. Certainty has all the appearance of faith and yet it leaves no room for God. Instead, it assumes that it is possible to know everything that there is to know about God. Rather than being evidence of a strong faith, certainty is an indication of arrogance and independence. It is a sign of belief in what one knows rather than a conviction in what one does not know. A sense of certainty creates a feeling of security which blinds a person to the unexpected actions and revelations of God. Those who choose certainty over uncertainty have overlooked the fact that God is full of surprises. 

God simply does not behave the way we want (or hope) that God will act. No one expected that God would enter human history. No one believed that God’s anointed would be born in humble circumstances rather than in a palace. No one thought that the salvation of Israel would be brought about by the crucifixion of an itinerant preacher from Nazareth. God is simply not predictable, because we do not have the mind of God. 

Certainty may be comforting and reassuring, but it can also be deceptive, sending us down blind alleys and providing us with a false sense of security. It can also be a deterrent for those who are coming to faith but who have questions of their own. Certainty implies that we have all the answers when, unless we are God we do not. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have an answer as to why an infant is still born, or why the good die young and the evil sometimes prosper. I don’t know why we live on a planet that is so unstable that hundreds of thousands can die in a tsunami or why humans are so volatile that hundreds of thousands more are forced to abandon their homes for refugee camps.  But I do believe that my uncertainty in the face of unanswerable questions frees others to ask questions of their own.

So, you see, I believe that doubt or uncertainty is an integral part of faith. Uncertainty provides a space in which we can learn and grow, forever deepening our relationship with a God who is ultimately unknowable. Doubt opens us to the possibility that God might reveal Godself in a new and unexpected ways. Without a certain amount of incredulity there is no faith, only a self-centred assurance of one’s own truth. I prefer to live with ambiguity, filled with a sense of wonder and awe in a God whom I can never fully know and who will continue to surprise and delight me. 

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“Blind unbelief is sure to err”

April 18, 2020

Easter 1 – 2020
John 20:19-31
Marian Free

In the name of God whom Abraham confronted, with whom Jacob wrestled and with whom Job argued. Amen.

“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
I would like to say that I don’t want to contradict the gospel, but those who know me would know immediately that that was not true. So I will be honest and say that, however pious they sound, these words – purported to be the words of Jesus – are at best coercive and at worst abusive – especially when they are used to bully people into believing or to dismiss as unbelief questions or doubts in relation to faith.

I could give many examples of the way in which this text is misused and abused. This is clearly illustrated in a story that I hope I haven’t already shared with you. Some years ago, I attended a conference on Spirituality, Leadership and Management. The keynote speaker devoted a large portion of his talk denigrating Christianity, while at the same time using the images of the Christian faith to expound his own theories of wholeness and life! Later that evening as I was wandering around the conference venue, I met another attendee, Jack, who asked me what I had thought of the speaker. I responded by saying something to the effect that I felt that it was unnecessary for him to be so disparaging of the Christian faith. Jack’s response took me completely by surprise. He explained that he had attended an Anglican Boy’s School and that as a teenager he had taken his faith very seriously. He was however confused by a number of things, in particular belief in a virgin birth. He finally plucked up courage to ask a teacher to explain. Instead of taking the question seriously or entering into discussion, the teacher simply responded that Jack had to accept the virgin birth as a matter of faith.

As he recounted this experience, Jack’s eyes filled with tears. He had been made to feel that his faith was inadequate. His question had simply been dismissed. The failure of his teacher to honour his question and to engage with his doubt had hurt him so badly that some 35 years later the hurt was still evident. Having been made to feel that his faith was not sufficient, Jack had simply stopped trying to believe. His tears were evidence that this loss continued to be a source of grief and that his exploration of other forms of spirituality had not (at that point) been able to fully mend the hurt or to fill the void.

I cannot recount this story without feeling angry on behalf of Jack and on behalf of all who, having found some aspects of the Christian faith challenging, confronting or simply improbable, were denigrated or silenced – usually as a result of ignorance, insecurity or, dare I say, a lack of faith on the part of the responder.

You will note from today’s gospel that Jesus’ response to Thomas’s incredulity is quite different from that of the teacher in Jack’s story. In Thomas’ absence, Jesus had not only appeared to the disciples, he had also shown them his hands and his side. In other words, he had offered them the very proof that Thomas sought, he had made it easy for them to believe. I’m sure that many of us can relate to Thomas’s disbelief. Someone who has been dead for three days doesn’t simply appear in a locked room! Thomas’ imagination simply could not encompass something so incredible – perhaps his friends had seen a ghost. He, like them had to see and touch in order for him to comprehend that Jesus was not dead but alive.

Jesus does not denigrate or dismiss Thomas’ questioning. He honours it. Not only does Jesus appear a second time, but he invites Thomas to see and to touch. Then Thomas does what the others have not – he acknowledges Jesus as his Lord and God – becoming the first of the disciples to do so.

To believe that God expects unquestioning faith and obedience is to misread both the Old and the New Testaments. When God threatens to destroy Sodom and all its inhabitants, Abraham dares to challenge that decision and when God appears to Jacob at night, Jacob wrestles with God till dawn. Moses has the impudence to tell God that destroying the Israelites will ruin God’s credibility in the eyes of the surrounding nations and Job questions why God would take away his family, his possessions and his dignity. Even the prophets have the nerve to challenge the wisdom of God’s decisions and Jonah in effect says to God: “I told you so.” In fact, as Sister Eileen Lyddon points out: “the Jews in the Old Testament questioned God frequently and vigorously.” Even Jesus has a moment (albeit brief) of wondering if God’s way was the only way.

God does not respond to these questions, challenges and doubts with anger or even with disappointment. God does not dismiss or disparage those who do not conform or those who refuse to accept God’s way blindly and without thought. God’s response to each (with the exception of the sulky Jonah) is one of acceptance and indeed of respect. God does not demand blind obedience and God does not scorn, denigrate or coerce. The opposite is true. Biblical evidence confirms that God honours the doubters, the questioners and the challengers. God is worn down by Abraham and finds a worthy match in Jacob. God heeds the challenge of Moses and God does not think any the less of the prophets for all their doubts, criticisms and questions.

God meets us where we are; encourages and affirms us and, as a result, draws from us not blind faith, but a relationship built on trust, respect and love. God comes to us and reaches out with scarred hands, hands that have fully identified with the human condition and in response we can only declare (without threat or coercion) that Jesus is indeed: “Our Lord and our God.”

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