The Way of Belief (John 20:19-31)

There are two stories at work this morning: Jesus appearing before the disciples in his resurrection glory, gifting them with his peace and empowering them with the Spirit and then the resulting second appearance, this time with “doubting” Thomas in the room as well. For some listeners, the second story is quite familiar, recollected from years of Sunday school lessons or the popular image of Thomas kneeling before Jesus, touching the wounded hand of Christ, the disciple who doubted and now chastened appropriately, he believes, tracing the nail marks with reverence.

Trouble is the text never says anything about Thomas actually touching the wounds of Jesus. While the imagery is quite popular (indeed, just this past week, I suggested it as an appropriate scene for a stained glass panel celebrating Easter), the Gospel of John tells Thomas’ story with a different spin on faith and belief. Read the story carefully again: Thomas hears of the resurrected Jesus and claims he will believe it only if he sees Jesus and even touches his nail-marked hands and wounded side. When Jesus appears before Thomas, Jesus gives a word of peace and then offers himself before Thomas to allay any further suspicion or uncertainty. “Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas immediately replies: “My Lord and my God”, a statement of belief, so instantaneous that he has yet to approach Jesus and touch his wounds. In this moment of encounter, Thomas believes, even when he stated he needed to see and touch Jesus to believe.

If you read John’s gospel, especially the twentieth chapter, you will find that Thomas has gotten centuries of bad press, singled out as the “doubting” disciple. Read chapter 20, the “Easter” story of John’s Gospel, and you will find Thomas is not alone. Here, you encounter a cast of characters who struggle to believe populating the Johannine Easter:

Mary Magdalene, and then Peter and the “beloved disciple” (John himself?), discovering the empty tomb, yet thinking it is a case of Jesus’ body being taken away; 

Mary Magdalene, who confuses at first the resurrected Jesus with a complete stranger, thinking him the gardener, and Jesus patiently helping her “see” him;

The disciples (minus Thomas) hearing all of these reports, yet hidden away, keeping it low key, and jumping in fright when Jesus suddenly appears through the locked door;

Then, Thomas, whose reticence gets singled out unfortunately to the extent he is known primarily as “doubting Thomas”, demands to see and touch before he will believe, yet upon seeing Christ, Thomas forgets his earlier insistence that he must touch the wounds of Christ before he will believe.

Strangely, every single one of them is part of Jesus’ inner circle, those who have heard his teachings, accompanied him all along the way, and yet, in the aftermath of that fateful trip to Jerusalem, these disciples disbelieve the news of Christ’s resurrection. Seeing Thomas in the larger context of John’s story, you realize that there is a bigger story afoot on Easter in John’s gospel. Jesus has been lifted up from death by God, brought into the glory of resurrection, yet each time the resurrected Christ encounters an inner circle believer, they need help believing this has come to pass!

When Jesus stands before Thomas, he says to Thomas, “Do not doubt but believe.” The Greek text does not use the word “doubt”. Instead, the Greek text translates: “Do not be unbelieving but believing” (Gail O’Day, “John,” NIB, Vol. IX: 850) Fr. Raymond Brown, a significant 20^th-century scholar of John’s gospel, renders Jesus’ word to Thomas: “Do not persist in your disbelief, but become a believer”.

Brown suggests that the crisis of belief among these inner circle disciples is part of the Gospel of John’s teachings about belief. Jesus heals people, changes water into wine, and even raises Lazarus from the dead. For some characters in John’s gospel, they find themselves “believing” only in part: drawn to the miraculous element, giving Jesus honor and respect for his powers, but when it comes to the resurrection, they struggle to see the fuller story.

Going back through John’s gospel, we find Thomas appearing two other times, less known than this Eastertide text. Thomas appears in what seem “blink and you might miss him” cameos, but if you know John’s love of telling stories even with the minor characters, you pay attention. This so-called “doubter” is sometimes the braver of the disciples. When Thomas enters the plot, he speaks up at times when he is perceptive and at times when he is struggling to understand, giving voice to the mixed feelings within the inner circle.

When Jesus goes to Lazarus’ burial site, Thomas knows the consequences of Jesus traveling where his opponents among the religious establishment can more easily catch him. In the words of Baptist Johannine scholar Alan Culpepper, Thomas is “the clear-eyed realist who knows that following Jesus back to Judea means risking death”. When Thomas is confused about Jesus’ teachings about his coming death and resurrection, Jesus offers the teaching about his being “the way, the truth, and the light”.

Culpepper suggests Thomas is more of a realist, one interested in the practical and not at all interested in abstract concepts or ideals. In other words, Thomas is far much more like the rest of us. The world works a certain way. Culpepper says, “Realist more than doubter, Thomas stands in for all who, like Mary Magdalene, embrace the earthly Jesus but have yet to recognize the risen Christ” (Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel, p. 124) You really should not fault Thomas. His worldview is quite rational: “dead is dead”, end of story.

In John’s gospel, Brown notes there are two types of believers. One type believe due to being “superficially impressed by the marvelous”. One encounters a “light weight” belief in John, those who give belief to the extent you have to be impressed with spectacle (whether it be commenting on the fine taste of the sudden vintage of wedding wine or predicating belief only upon seeing and touching the wounds of Christ). After the resurrection, however, these sorts of believers are unveiled as holding shallow beliefs. If you are to understand the full message of the gospel, a deeper belief is required.

Brown suggests that the deepest belief, the one that embraces with joy the glory of Christ’s resurrection, is the one that understands what is happening beyond the most visible signs. Belief comes by seeing “a heavenly reality behind the miraculous, namely, what Jesus reveals about God and himself” (John, Anchor Bible, Vol. 29A, 1050). It is one thing to see the empty tomb. It is quite another to see God at work in the midst of things, doing something that surpasses all expectations.

During my first year of college, an introductory course engaged students around questions of critical thinking. College takes your worldview and challenges your suppositions, convictions, and myopias alike. Other life experiences can do the same, a time when life challenges you to the extent you learn a new way of seeing things. As part of this college course, we looked at an old woodcut image of a young shepherd boy. Somehow, he has stumbled and fallen to the ground. As he picks himself up, he realizes that he has left his familiar meadow and the hillside full of sheep, discovering instead a strange and different world, a place where the unknown and fantastic lurks in a landscape of unknown planets and stars. The college instructor loved using this image as a teaching tool. The little shepherd has a choice now before him: does he crawl back to what he has known (the meadow and hills of a shepherd) or does he crawl forward into this strange and different world.

This returns us to the question of belief. The cast of John 20 eventually all saw Jesus and believed. Even Thomas, crawling through the world in the valley of the shadow of death, decides to leap up and confess his faith that something new and different was happening. “My Lord and my God!” is the resounding confession of the first Christian believers, the culmination of a theological narrative woven throughout the gospel by John, who tells us in the first chapter, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Belief is seeing the world beyond the obvious, seeking to see God at work in the world even when we feel as if God is absent or we obsess about the signs we expect, even demand, to see if we are to believe. Belief asks us to engage a worldview that surprises us anew and sends us off on journeys previously unimagined. As Raymond Brown translates Jesus’ word to Thomas (and to us): “Do not persist in your disbelief, but become a believer”.

This past week, I listened to a National Public Radio program revisiting the last year of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life. During the period from 1967 to 1968, King challenged the Johnson administration’s ongoing war in Vietnam and the critical needs of the poor. King found the result of such prophetic vision resulted with immediate challenge from critics, ranging from the White House down to fellow religious and civil rights leaders. The advice was “stick with your field”. King rebuffed the criticism,

Before I became a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the gospel. When my father and others put their hands on my head and ordained me to the Christian ministry, it was a commission. Something said to me that the fire of truth is shut up in my bones. When it burns me, I must tell it.

King’s social witness is part of that same Easter witness required of those who believe in Christ’s resurrection. The gospel is not just a mere set of beliefs or a collection of wise sayings and tales given by a first century Jew from backwater Nazareth. The gospel is about being a believer in Easter, not just when it is time to break out the Easter baskets and enjoy the beautiful lily on the mantle. The Easter story should be deep down in you, words that confess Christ as Lord and God. The struggle to believe is mighty, for you wrestle with the life of faith all along life’s journey. Yet, there is truth found in the resurrection that cannot be tamed, one that pushes us beyond the world as we know it, beyond a sense of inevitable fate. Belief in Christ, rightfully understood, is one that dances with joy and burns deep down in our bones, knowing that there is a greater reality where God is made known.

Becoming a believer is what the Easter faith calls us to embrace. As John's gospel puts it, these things are written down so that you may come to believe. These words are offered to you so that you, who have never seen Christ as these disciples did, may believe and have life.  AMEN.