4/2/61

Scripture: John 20: 11-31

Even on Easter morning, the stubborn fact remains that Jesus was crucified. It was true on that first day of the week after the terrible Friday when he was done to death on a hill outside Jerusalem. It is true this morning, Easter day, 1961. It was true on the day of Pentecost when the spirit came upon the people who gathered around Peter in Jerusalem. The horrible truth of it could not be avoided; Jesus was crucified.

The fact that a tomb was found empty on the resurrection morn, with the breathless, hopeful joy which that discovery brings, does not brush aside the inevitability of mortal death nor the awful power of sin. For all the triumph of our faith, honesty compels us to concede the power of evil and of death, especially as we encounter them in our own lives.

Behind our shouted assurances of faith remain our whispered doubts. Behind brave hopes lie broken dreams. Behind our earnest intentions stand tragic reminders of our sweet promises turned sour. Behind tender memories of former affections there lies the chasm of separating death.

We do not easily arrive at Easter! God did not arrive at it easily! For, with all of the joyousness of Easter, the fact of the crucifixion remains to haunt the consciousness, and the conscience, of mankind -- of you and me.

But Easter does bring the glad assurance that death is not final; that even our persistent sin does not bring the last word. God’s word is the last word. And God’s word is that this Jesus who was crucified by men is both Lord and Christ.

For all its tombs, life’s end is not despair. For all of its crosses, life’s meaning is not nailed finally to a crossbeam.

We are slow to see both sides of this wonder. Doubts assail us. And yet doubts do not need to destroy us -- only test us.

For this reason, I wish to follow on with one more of these examinations of the lives of Jesus’ apostles which we have undertaken on the four preceding Sundays. Let us think today upon Thomas.

Popular language has dealt unkindly with Thomas. He is commemorated in the phrase, "doubting Thomas." We say that Thomas is like us when we say, "I’m from Missouri; you’ve got to show me!"

Of course there is some truth in the phrase, "doubting Thomas." But there is also something which comes close to slandering Thomas. For there is something to be said to his credit as well as to his debit.

The first three gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tell us not much about Thomas except his name. He is just listed as one of the twelve disciples. But in the fourth gospel, that of John, this man Thomas becomes a more vivid character; and we see him more clearly defined.

In the fourth gospel, Thomas is referred to as "the twin." The King James translation of the Bible calls him "Didymus" which is the Greek word for "twin." I don’t know to whom he was twin. There have been some interesting speculations, some of them quite unlikely, as to Thomas’ relationship with any of the 12. The fact is that he was close to Jesus, as one of the men whom the Master had called to be his special followers and confidants, and emissaries.

Now you remember the circumstances of Thomas’ doubting. He had not been present with the other disciples on that Easter evening when, having met behind closed doors, they found the risen Jesus with them. Is there here a possible reminder of what any of us is apt to miss when we forsake the assembling of ourselves together? Christ promises that "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." And it may be that we risk the missing of that presence when we fail to gather with others at the appointed time.

At any rate, the other disciples found Jesus in their midst. And when they later told Thomas about it, he was flatly, openly, incredulous. He pushed the whole thing aside as in the realm of the impossible. One could hardly credit as fact, the reports of the women who said they had seen an empty tomb in the morning. They were overwrought, their eyes were filled with tears; and anyway it was only half light. And as for the alleged appearance to the 10 disciples, who could say but that, with overwrought nerves, they had suffered a hallucination? They might have wished to see Jesus. But Thomas was not interested in wishes or fancies. What he wanted was facts. And Thomas laid it on the line. "I’ll not believe it until I feel the nail prints in his hands and the spear-wound in his side."

So we are usually severe with Thomas. His tests for grounds of belief sound crude --- almost repulsively so. But he had a doggedly honest mind. He had not much poetry in him. He was matter-of-fact, and was not the kind to be rushed in believing even what he wanted to believe. He was sincere enough to face facts, however grim and dark they appeared to be.

And so, in the fourth gospel, Thomas emerges as a man of quite definite characteristics. (1) For one thing, he was a man of courage. Thomas first appears in the Lazarus story related in the 11th chapter of John. News had come that Lazarus was ill. But for two days Jesus made no move at all to do anything about it. Then he prepared to go to Bethany. Bethany was one of those villages which was close to Jerusalem. It was one of those places where Pilgrims to the Passover would normally stop for lodging.

By this time the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem were determined that Jesus must die. He had already been in danger of death by stoning a couple of times. For him to go to Jerusalem - or even near to Jerusalem - seemed to be an act of suicidal recklessness.

What made it worse was that word now came that Lazarus was dead. And so, to go to Jerusalem, or anywhere near it, seemed not only reckless, but useless. When Jesus intimated his decision to go to Jerusalem, his disciples came near to abandoning him.

It was the normally-silent Thomas who spoke up. "Let us also go, that we may die with him," he said. [John 11: 1-16]. Thomas could see nothing but disaster ahead. Nevertheless he was for going. He was grimly determined to be faithful unto death.

It may be easy for an optimist to be loyal in a difficult situation; for he always expects the best, and looks for a "happy ending." It is harder for a pessimist, who really expects the worst. And Thomas was continually a pessimist. Yet, just because he could see disaster ahead, he found no reason for turning back. There might be violent death ahead, but there could not be disloyalty! It may well be that Thomas was the one who rallied the disciples, in their failing loyalty, on the day that Jesus announced his decision to go to Jerusalem. For he was a man of real courage.

(2) But he was also bewildered. This becomes clear in those days toward the end. Down in Jerusalem, in the Upper Room, Jesus was trying to persuade the dull minds of his disciples to see beyond the approaching cross. "Where I am going you know," he said, "and the way you know." Thomas broke in, "Lord, we do not know where you are going; and how can we know the way?" And he received a great answer from Jesus: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." [John 14: 1-6].

Thomas couldn’t live with an unasked question. It might be said that the art of getting and sharing knowledge consists in asking the right questions. It could also be said that the way to certainty is to have the right kind of doubt.

The answer of Jesus to Thomas is short and quite clear. Jesus was saying to him, "Thomas, I know you do not understand what is happening. No one understands. But whatever happens, you have me. I am the way, the truth, and the life." What we need in our world, more than an argument, is a presence. No argument is fully convincing. What Jesus offers is not an argument, but himself.

(3) Thomas was a man who could not believe. When Jesus, later that week, died on the cross, it seemed that the end had come. And Thomas’ only desire was to be alone. He may have been like a well-bred animal, injured and creeping away to suffer alone. So it happens that, when the disciples found Jesus among them that resurrection night, Thomas was not there. And when he was told the good news, he refused to believe it. He had to see for himself; feel for himself, touch and handle for himself.

(4) But Thomas became the man of devotion and faith. Jesus came back. He invited Thomas to put his finger in the nail prints of his hand, and to put his hand in the spear-wound of his side. Confronted with his Lord, Thomas breathed out the greatest confession of faith in the New Testament: "My Lord, and my God."

Two facts stand out from this story of Thomas in the New Testament. One is that Jesus blames no one for wanting to be sure. Jesus did not blame Thomas for his doubts. He knew that this disciple of his, fighting his way through the wilderness of his doubts, would be the surest man in Christendom. Jesus does not say to a man, "You must have no doubts." Rather he says something like this: "You must profess a faith of which you have become sure, and you must fight your battle until you are sure."

But it must be noted of Thomas that he found his certainty not through intellectual conviction of the truth of a creed so much as in first hand experience of the power and presence of Jesus Christ himself. And the second of these emerging truths is that certainty is most likely to come to a man in the fellowship of believers. When Thomas was alone, he was doubly alone. Cut off from the fellowship of men he was cut off also from the fellowship of Christ. It was when he got back into the fellowship that he met Christ again.

Does not this same truth appear to us? If we find Christ on this glorious Easter day do we not need to find the same assuring sense of his presence next Sunday, and the next and the next, in company with the believing community?

This is not to say that one never encounters Christ in solitude and silence. For many will testify that they have so found him. But it is to say that one is most likely to find Christ in the company of those who live Christ.

The fourth Gospel gives us one more glimpse of Thomas. [John 21: 2]. For Thomas is there when Jesus met his men beside the Sea of Galilee. Thomas had learned a precious lesson; from now on, he was with the fellowship of believers, and he was there when Jesus came to his own.

The New Testament has nothing further to say about Thomas. The stream of tradition has him at work in various parts of the world as it was then known. One of the most insistent traditions is that he went to India. Of course, many people were a little vague about just where India was, except that it was to the east. However there is an ancient branch of the Christian church in India which calls itself "mar Thomas." Scholarly opinion is, on the whole, inclined to think that the Thomas who went to India was more likely a Nectorian missionary than Thomas the apostle.

Nevertheless Thomas had, through his doubts, become so convinced a disciple of Christ that he might have gone to India, or anywhere else, to carry the message of his Lord and his God. Thomas was no stained-glass saint. His first reactions were not to do what he was told to do, and not to believe what he was asked to believe. The good news was, at first, too good to be true for him. But the very fact that he became convinced through his doubts made him a fiercely intense believer once he was convinced. And what convinced him was not argument, but the presence of his Lord. Thomas made the discovery, again and again, which every Christian has to make, that by himself all looks impossible, but that with God all things are possible!

If the women who went to the tomb on that first day of the week were the first to discover a wonder, and if Peter and John were the first of the apostles to perceive the excitement and joy of the resurrection, it was Thomas who had the great truth most solidly imbedded in his soul after he arrived at it through his doubts.

And all of us who live through some of it with him may look to the present, living Lord for final assurance that life’s end is not despair. Eternal life has its beginning here and now. We live in the power of the resurrection. This power enables us to look honestly at what is selfish in our lives and to receive God’s assurance that, though we crucify His love, He loves us still.

Life is not merely length of days. It has a qualitative as well as quantitative essence. Truth and mercy, forgiveness and love become our answer to God’s own love revealed in the victory of the resurrection. He trusts us to love!

A gospel account says that an angelic presence spoke to those who came to the tomb on the first Easter morning saying: "He is risen; he is not here." The experience of Thomas, and perhaps of all us who have our kinship with him, is the hard-won conviction that Christ is risen indeed. He is here!

Amen

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 2, 1961.