Poor Thomas, saddled with that nickname “Doubting Thomas”, and for what? Wanting the exact same things the other disciples got? It doesn’t seem very fair. He finds himself in a remarkably similar situation. He has just heard the news that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, but he doesn’t quite believe it. He wants something more. That is the same situation the other disciples found themselves in. As we heard last week, Mary Magdalene had had the experience. She had seen him, she had touched him, and she went and told the others. They didn’t believe her. Luke said it sounded like an idle tale. It is only when they themselves have the encounter in the locked room that we heard about today, that they come to believe.
Thomas is in the same situation. He has heard the news that Jesus has been raised from the dead, but he doesn’t come to believe it quite yet. He wants something more, just like the others. Now the others are not called Doubting Peter or Doubting Beloved Disciple. Only Thomas, for some reason, got the name Doubting Thomas.
It is really unfair when you think about the larger story and the other times Jesus shows up and we learn more about him. Think about just a few weeks ago on the 5th Sunday of Lent when we heard the story of the raising of Lazarus. In that story we heard that Lazarus was sick, but Jesus did not go to heal him. Then Lazarus died, but Jesus did not go right away to be with the family. Jesus waits a couple of days and then says they are going to go to Bethany, which is about 2 miles away from Jerusalem, and see Lazarus’s family. The disciples say that are not so sure about that. It is rather dangerous for us there, since they want to kill you. That is the reason we left last time, so it is not a very safe option. But Jesus says this is what we are going to do. It is important. And Thomas says, OK, then, we will go with you so we can die with you. That doesn’t sound like a Doubting Thomas. That is an act of faith. Courageous Thomas sounds like a better nickname than Doubting Thomas.
I don’t think it is a very fair name, especially if we look where the story goes as we heard in the Gospel today. When Thomas does have his encounter with Jesus he sees him, but did you notice that Thomas doesn’t actually follow through with every thing that he said he needed to do in order to believe? That doesn’t seem like much of a skeptic to me. Thomas says I need to see him, and I need to touch him, but when Jesus shows up, did you notice that Jesus offered, but Thomas doesn’t actually do it? Caravaggio, in that great painting, got it wrong. Caravaggio has Thomas’s finger in Jesus’s wound, but when Jesus offers, Thomas’s response is simply, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus says that Thomas has come to believe because he has seen him. If Thomas was a real skeptic, a real doubter, he would have at least done what he said he needed to do. He probably would have come up with a few more things, a few more demands of Jesus to test and be sure this was really happening. This is not a story of a doubter, it is a story of a man full of faith. Faith-filled Thomas sounds like a better nickname for him.
The Gospel reading today is all about belief. How do we come to believe? For Thomas, he came to believe because he heard the story and because he saw, but he didn’t need his other senses to verify it. That was sufficient for him. Jesus says blessed are those who did not see him, but believe. The Gospel writer says this is why I wrote the book, so you would come to believe when you hear these stories, whether you have an experience or not. The Gospel does not say one way is better than the other. It does say blessed are those who do not see, but it does not say cursed are those who need more. It simply says that is good, too.
All the different ways we come to believe are all valid, they are all valuable and important. Philosophers teach us there are four ways we come to know anything: through perception, that which we experience with our own senses, we see, touch, taste, or smell. We also come to knowledge through memory, that which we bring up from our memories. We come to knowledge through inference, that which we can reason out. And we come to knowledge through testimonies, the stories of other people. We could talk for hours on each one of these methods, but that is not the point of the sermon. Needless to say, they are all important, they influence each other, and for different people different ones have more weight for them in the life.
We see that Thomas needs not just the story, but some kind of perception. He needed to see. He thought he needed more than that, but he actually did not need that much more. He needed to see and hear Jesus to believe.
Different people have different levels of what they need. Some people need to see or feel or touch, to have their own personal experience of the divine or holy in their life. Other people are good with the stories that are passed on, hearing from other people who had those experiences. Some people need the inference, the logic, the reasoning to come to believe in God. Most of us need multiple of these. The reality is they are all influencing each other, no matter how much we think one is the one that really matters for us. They are all there. They are all important to varying degrees.
The question really isn’t how we know anything in this world, or more importantly for us about God. That is a question for each of us individually. The important thing is not how we learn something, but that we keep working at it, that we try and grow and learn and deepen our faith by getting to know God better, whether that is through experiences, or through sharing stories, or through reasoning, or through remembering. The question is not the way we do it, but the way we work growing our faith. The important thing is that we take that knowledge that is in our minds and let it seep down inside of us until it is in our heart.
Belief is not just about the mind, although it seems like that is what we mean these days when we say the word belief. Belief is a much richer word that means so much more. For instance, if I tell one of my kids I believe in you before they go on the soccer field or the concert stage, they don’t think, O good—dad thinks I exist. They think, dad has confidence in me, he trusts me. The word belief has these multiple layers of meaning. We want to have that kind of movement from the head into the heart, from a simple intellectual understanding down to that deeper level of confidence and trust.
Every week we recite the Creed, We believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. For many of us, it is intellectual. Do I intellectually assent to this point or that point? But when we do that I think we actually miss the point because it is not that level of belief, it is the deeper belief, that trust and confidence level of belief. This is the God in which I put my trust. The Creed was originally written in Greek, and the Greek word literally means “give ones heart to.” We give our heart to the God who made this world. We have confidence and trust that we can give our heart over to the God that came down here to be one of us, to be with us, who taught us, who healed us, and so entered into our life that this God died for us on the cross, and rose to pull us back up into God. We give our heart over to this God that is continuing to work in this world as the Holy Spirit. We believe, we trust, we have confidence, we give our heart to the God who made the world, came into the world, and is still in the world.
We want to work at understanding and moving that from our mind down into our heart, moving it from what we understand to what it is we are willing to trust. That is the task that is always before us, a task that seems more important in this moment when everything seems so uncertain and so shaky, to know where it is that we can truly put our trust.
So, my friends, that is what I invite you to do. Work on your faith, whatever way you need to. Work on your faith, deepen your faith. Move it from your head into your heart, and learn to trust in the God who loves you, loves you enough to have made this world, loves you enough to have made you just the way you are. This God who loves you enough that he came down here to live our life and our death, and to rise for us. This God who loves us enough that he continues to work as the Spirit in this world. Put your trust in this God, today and always.
AMEN
