(John 20.19-31) (Easter 2)
28 April, 2019 – ©Koula Poulos
My friend Jill and I often talk about Bible stories. We find they can really help us think about things more carefully. Over our thirty-five years of life together, the stories of the Woman at the well, the Good Samaritan, Mary’s perfume being spilled over Christ’s feet, the Raising of Lazarus and, in particular, the Feeding of the 5000, have cropped up more times than I could count.
But the ‘doubting Thomas’ story is not one I can remember we’ve used very often. Although I distinctly recall, long ago at Sunday School, worrying that I might not come out as ‘blessed’ at the very end of this story. We have heard how it finishes, with Jesus telling Thomas that those who do not see the wounds but still believe will be ‘blessed’. We have all worried that we might have wanted, like Thomas, to have actual physical evidence before we believed in the resurrection. It is a challenge many have felt in their hearts, sometime or other.
So let’s look how this story unfolds. Thomas was a disciple but he missed out when Jesus first appeared to the rest of the Twelve after his resurrection. When the other disciples told him about this extraordinary experience he refused to believe them, absolutely. Unless he actually put his fingers where the nails had been and felt the wounds in Jesus’ side, he insisted, he would not believe.
But then, so beautifully, we hear about how, only eight days later, and with the door tight shut, Jesus miraculously appeared, alive, among his disciples again and Thomas, thank goodness, was present. Really, that would normally do as the ‘happy ending’ of this story. Jesus’ simple blessing, ‘Peace be with you’ would have served well enough.
But, as so often happens in our gospel stories, there was an extra twist, an extra gift. Jesus actually turned to Thomas and invited him to feel his hands and to thrust his finger into his side. Imagine the moment, the drama, the captivating suspense of it!
And no wonder Thomas’ remark that follows was powerful, cathartic, even. With his words, ‘My Lord, my God’… he became the first in post-resurrection history to openly recognise Jesus’ divinity. We are relieved to discover that, though doubting and wobbly at first, he came out ‘very ok’ in the end.
And only then comes Jesus’ reminder that those who believe without seeing are ‘blessed’.
It is a brilliantly simple, startlingly wonderful and provocative story! Perhaps we should use it more often as we wend our way through the ups and downs of our lives.
But firstly I always want to know a bit more about the characters in a story, don’t you? What do we know about Thomas? What sort of man was he, that he took such an important role in the post-Easter story? And what happened to him afterwards?
Well, we can read that Thomas was a twin (‘didymos means twin) and he was a disciple. John began to express something of his character, earlier on in his gospel, in chapter 11. Jesus was intending to return to Judea but the other disciples reminded Him that the Jews were planning to stone Him. Thomas was not deterred. He courageously suggested, ‘Let us also go that we might die with him’.
So we can see already that Thomas had his strengths. It was brave of him to suggest accompanying Jesus into this danger. And his courage can be comforting for those of us who feel identified with him in his later doubting.
And later, when Jesus explains, in John’s chapter 14, that He will come again, reminding his disciples that they already know the way He is going, Thomas speaks up… He asks Jesus his famous question, ‘How can we know the way?’ We see Thomas already emerging with an enquiring mind.
And, another thing, if it hadn’t been for Thomas’ courageous question, Jesus may not have chosen that moment to give us his profound reassurance. He utters his famous words, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. How many times have we used these words to help us through our darkest moments? So thanks, Thomas, for asking the question…
And today we have read John’s now-famous story of Thomas’ doubting journey to belief. After that, nothing more about Thomas from John. We have only Eusebius, the fourth century historian, to go by. He tells us that Thomas continued as an apostle in Syria, used his skills as a builder in the construction of a royal palace, was gaoled for giving money to charity and ended up as an apostle in India where he was martyred.
Interestingly enough, though, there is an extraordinary coda. Strangely, a book called the ‘Gospel of Thomas’ is now kept in the Nag Hammadi library. Of course, as you know, it has not been included in our Bible, having been discovered much more recently. However in this hauntingly spiritual document, Thomas claims that it contains the sayings of Jesus to himself. One of the most famous of these sayings is where he claims that Jesus told him that the kingdom of heaven is not ‘with the birds in the sky’ or ‘with the fish in the sea’. Rather, Jesus says in Thomas’ gospel, ‘it is inside of you and outside of you’. Reading this confirms our insights into Thomas as a character, doesn’t it? He came to understand the whole meaning of Jesus’ outer role on this earth only after he had been invited to thrust his hand inside the wounds of Jesus’ body.
There are so many ways we can go with the Thomas story. Theologians have gone on using it in many wonderful ways. I will just linger today with three of them.
The first finds the brilliance of this story in the affirmation that the strong man doesn’t always win. In the Hebrew scriptures we had David and Goliath and in modern popular fiction we have Harry Potter. However, here we have a gospel story about God choosing to be identified with the most vulnerable but emerging, triumphant over death, to Thomas. We have the death and rising of a brown-skinned man, in the context of an oppressive state. Here we have the story of a Person who experiences the reality of suffering, exposing the violence of society but ultimately receiving the mercy of God. And this mercy is not only for Himself but for all humanity, including for the criminals who die alongside him. He extends this mercy to those of us who keep asking questions and to those of us who, though weak, experience His divinity deep inside us without physical proof.
The second theological way the Thomas’s story is used is in the affirmation of our own bodilyness. So often we fail to recognise the miracle of our own bodilyness. Jill and I often bemoan the way our bodies are aging. We weep when we discover that we are losing our physical strength and even our memories. We are not as quick and clever as we used to be. It doesn’t take long though, for us to remind each other that, if we didn’t have old bodies, we’d have no bodies at all. We’d be dead! Jesus had a wounded body as Thomas saw. And He became a real bodily presence to all his disciples around that table, in a closed room, twenty centuries ago!
A third theological way Thomas’ story can be used is to reveal the importance of sharing the suffering of others. During Lent, a group of us attended a series of Lenten Studies under the direction of our minister, Neil and his partner, Sarah. We followed a book called ‘A Voice in the Wilderness; Listening to the Statement from the Heart’. We talked about the words of our Indigenous leaders who had met in Alice Springs last year. You may remember that they concluded that meeting with a powerful statement. It called on us all to provide an opportunity for their voice to be heard on matters of national importance.
One emphasis of our study was that we need to share the wounds our indigenous peoples have suffered as a result of our occupation of their country… that it is only in sharing those wounds that we can share their healing.
Some of this sharing could be heard at our National Folk Festival this year. Beth Roberts and I were there and we heard this group of wonderful indigenous women sing songs to tunes that the Christian missions had taught their ancestors. However they had added words which express some of the specific hurts the indigenous women’s ancestors experienced. Things like ‘loss of country’ and ‘farewells’ to relatives, were sung in the old mission tunes we have all heard and loved. It was a sharing of their pain across our two cultures and perhaps some beginning of a sharing of the healing.
Jesus shared his wounds with Thomas to suggest to us the potential healing of the whole of humanity. Will Thomas help us today to feel the wounds of our oppressed peoples, I wonder, so that we all may find a communal but much-needed healing.
And finally it would be wrong of me to deny the voice of a younger member of our family. When we told him the Thomas story over dinner he said it reminded him of contemporary responses to the reality of climate change. Some people can’t believe it’s happening, he said, until they see thousands of dead fish in their much-loved river. Some people have felt, all along, that the human species has abused this planet beyond its endurance for many decades. Others are, understandably, still denying this enormous, but difficult-to-comprehend, change in our climate. What more can we say except to listen to such young voices, and to take this Biblical opportunity to think?
And so, dear friends of St Ninians, long may we prosper, with and without our doubts, and grow in grace as we face the future under the care of our new minister.
And, in the spirit of Thomas, may we go on discovering the kingdom of heaven both within and without our own wounded, aging or imperfect bodies,
in our church, in our country and even within and outside our beloved planet.
Now, and for ever more, Amen
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