“But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:24-25)
The unforgettable words of ‘Doubting Thomas’ that are particularly familiar to us this time of year as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.
We get Thomas’ confused and conflicted testimonial each year at about this time along with a handful of other eye-witness accounts to the resurrection of Jesus, such as the story of the two unnamed disciples who met Jesus while walking the road to Emmaus, and those of us who have been attending church for any length of time will probably be familiar with all of these accounts because, in truth, there aren’t very many of them!
We have four Gospels in the Christian Scriptures, three of which contain a resurrection account. Matthew’s account is extremely brief, all contained in Matthew chapter 28, Luke’s Gospel goes into a little more detail but still only takes up one chapter (Luke 24) and then we have a couple of resurrection stories told by John, the most detailed of which is the one concerning Thomas.
Given the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus to the message of the New Testament it is rather startling how little is really said about it in the Christian Scriptures as a whole. Indeed, as has been pointed out, in terms of pure bulk, there is more material in the New Testament about caring for the poor than there is about the resurrection (though caring for the poor is, of course, a significant New Testament theme).
Moreover, if you look at the different resurrection accounts in the Gospels side by side, two common characteristics stand out in each account. Firstly, none of the resurrection accounts actually gives account of the resurrection. In other words, nobody actually saw the resurrection take place. They saw before and after and, interestingly, Jesus never bothered to fill them in on how it all actually happened.
The second really striking thing, I would suggest, that the New Testament accounts of the resurrection of Jesus have in common is that the disciples come off looking really stupid in all of them.
The two nameless disciples talk passionately about Jesus as they trudge along the road to Emmaus, completely oblivious to the fact that they are talking too Jesus! Likewise, when Mary meets Jesus outside the tomb she mistakes Him for the gardener. We have Peter’s tearful reunion with Jesus on the beach, where they deal with his three-fold denial of his master, and then there’s the story of Thomas, which begins with his passionately negative response to the announcement of his fellow disciples that Jesus is risen – “AS IF!” – and it concludes with Jesus telling him off!
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (John 20:29)
In other words, instead of finishing with the blessing of Thomas, the story concludes with Jesus saying that people who are not like Thomas are blessed!
I’m not sure why Christian parents call their children Thomas, and it tends to be people at the Evangelical Protestant Bible-believing end of the Christian spectrum who do so most regularly, when the Bible’s portrayal of Thomas is far from ideal!
‘One day you’ll grow up to be a great doubter like your namesake, son!’ Is that really what want our children to aspire to?
And it’s not as if we can appeal to the succeeding chapters in John’s Gospel or other books in the New Testament to redeem Thomas. This is Thomas’ one great scene. He hangs about in the background during the earthly ministry of Jesus, saying very little. He takes centre stage for this great moment where he spits his dummy and then is dragged into faith by the risen Jesus, after which he exits, stage left!
In defence of Thomas it could certainly be said that he was not the worst! It could certainly be argued, at any rate, that there were other disciples who performed even worse than he did!
Thomas probably found this comforting. I know for myself that when I reflect on my failings as a husband and as a father that I do find it mildly comforting to reflect on the fact that there are worse than me. Perhaps Thomas, likewise, did find it mildly comforting to look back and compare his own performance to that of, say, Judas.
In truth though, if the best thing you can say about yourself as a disciple of Jesus is that there are others who fail more spectacularly than I do, it’s not an especially encouraging testimony to a life of faith, is it?
The flip-side of this though is that there is no shortage of spectacular failures in the New Testament. Indeed, as I reflected on this, and on the lives of the disciples of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament, it really did strike me what a bunch of losers they all were!
Am I being too harsh? I know that many of us who have been brought up in the faith have grown up thinking of Peter and James and John and the boys as a sort of affable bunch of stooges, but it strikes me now how tragic that line of thought is!
Islamic literature provides us with a striking contrast in this regard. For those who have read any of the stories of the lives of the companions of the Prophet, you’ll recognise immediately that they are stories of a very different ilk.
The titles given to the Prophet’s companions themselves give a clear enough indication of contrast:
- Abu Bakr, the truthful
- Uthman, the generous and pious
- Abdullah Ibn Salam, the slave of God
By contrast we have our New Testament heroes:
- Thomas, the doubter, and his friends
- James and John, the sons of thunder (meaning that they were hot-heads)
- Not to mention Judas, the betrayer!
I suppose there was also Peter, the rock, though he turned out to be more sand-pile than rock, denying Jesus three times.
Again, why is it that we at the Evangelical Protestant end of the Christian spectrum so regularly name our children after these people?
This is not to say, of course, that there are not heroic characters in the New Testament. There are. Even then though, they are not necessarily the kinds of persons we want our children to emulate.
The book of The Acts of the Apostles would seem like the obvious place to find heroic tales of the followers of Jesus, and indeed there are some ripping yarns in that book that reflect very well on Jesus’ disciples. Indeed, right in the first few pages of that book we are introduced to one of the most flawless Christian leaders known to the New Testament – the saintly Stephen!
We meet Stephen in Acts chapter 6 where he is playing the role of a godly accountant, seeing to it that poor relief is fairly distributed between the church’s Greek-speaking and Hebrew-speaking widows. Flick the page and you’ll see he’s developed into a fiery and outspoken preacher, proclaiming Jesus to the world. Flick the page again and he’s dead!
Stephen’s light burnt bright and short – very short – and yet we continue to call our sons Stephen.
This is the other side of the story, of course, when it comes to our New Testament heroes of the faith. They fumble and fall, and they die young!
Again, I think it’s worth pausing and recognising how counter-intuitive and seemingly irreligious this is.
Religion is supposed to help you live a full life, is it not? Surely a solidly religious person who obeys the laws of God and lives a pious and upright life should reap some earthly benefit for their efforts. They will be trusted by neighbours, rewarded for their diligent labour and live a long and peaceable life, surely?
No. The rule of thumb for the saints is that life is short and brutal!
That’s not simply true of the New Testament Apostles, of course. That’s been the pattern throughout Christian history.
One great discovery I made recently with my iPhone was a little app called ‘Saints’. It’s a free app, downloadable from the app store, which gives you a daily write-up of the saints whose feast-days fall on each day of the calendar year.
While I was preparing this sermon, for instance, I found it was the feast-day of a Polish saint whose name I can’t pronounce – Stanislaus Szezepanowsky. Stanislaus was a great eleventh century saint – a man of prayer who went on to become a bishop and was doing great things until he was assassinated while presiding at the Eucharist, as was Oscar Romero of course, as have been any number of other great saints before and since! It’s a disturbingly common pattern!
I remember when we had our first bush camp this year. Part of the proceedings there involved a service of dedication for our Fighting Fathers, and I found serendipitously that our time away coincided with the feast of Saint George (best known for his role in slaying dragons) and I thought that some stories from his life might serve to encourage the team – inspiring us all to use our fighting skills to further the Kingdom of God.
And the story of George is inspiring, at least until you get to the point where he’s tortured to death by the Romans, who saw that he was revived three times during his death lest he miss out on experiencing some of the pain. I won’t go into the gory details (literally). If you’re interested to know more you can download the app!
It is not a uniquely Christian practice to venerate our martyrs like St George and the great aforementioned eleventh century Polish saint whose name I can’t pronounce. What is uniquely Christian, I suspect, is to canonise characters who are really only remembered for their failings, and nowhere is this more obvious than with the blessed father of doubt, Thomas. We know little else about him, except that he doubted, but we love him nonetheless!
I assume that the reason we love Thomas nonetheless is because we recognise that Jesus loved him nonetheless, which indeed brings us to the heart of the Christian Gospel. For the essential proclamation of Jesus and of the entire New Testament is not “you too can be a great saint” but rather “God loves you anyway”.
It is good to be inspired and encouraged. It’s good to be challenged and admonished and spurred on in our faith to become more and more the persons we are destined to be, and yet this is not the essence of the Gospel. For the fundamental message of the Gospel is not “you can do it” but “God loves you anyway”.
And that’s why we love dear Thomas, and that’s why we keep wheeling him out year after year at this time, because he is an archetype of our human failings – fumbling and shouting and whinging and doubting – and yet he is loved.
Yes, there is a place for Thomas at the side of Jesus, and yes, there is a place there for us too, and it’s not because in the end we manage to accomplish enough on the positive side of the ledger to balance out all our weaknesses and failings. It’s simply because we are loved and forgiven our many failings.
We have every reason to believe that Thomas did in fact go on to do great things. Indeed, by the third century there had been two books published recording his deeds – the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas – and even if only a small portion of those stories are true it is hard not to be impressed with the man! Apparently he travelled to India, founded seven and a half churches, performed countless miracles, and saw countless numbers of people become followers of Jesus before, predictably, meeting an untimely death on the end of a spear.
What is instructive is that none of this is included in the New Testament! Some of these stories about Thomas must have been known even by the time the Acts of the Apostles was published and yet none are included. Likewise, if it’s true (as most scholars suggest) that John’s gospel wasn’t published until the second century, then many of those details about Thomas’ ongoing history would have been known to the author (or authors) of that Gospel too, and could have been included as a postscript to the Thomas story! That didn’t happen either.
This is instructive, I think, as it reflects the fact that the authors of the New Testament didn’t think it really mattered whether or not we knew the great things Thomas did in later life. We can find all that out for ourselves when we get to Heaven! All that we need to know now was that he was a lot like us. He struggled, he doubted, he failed, and yet he was loved. And if that’s not a good enough reason to call your son Thomas, then I suppose nothing is!
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe”, says Jesus (John 20:29). Yes, those who are not like Thomas are indeed blessed, and yet Thomas is blest too, for in the end all are blessed for all are loved.
First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, on Sunday the 19th of April, 2015.
Rev. David B. Smith
Parish priest, community worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of four. www.FatherDave.org
Great sermon!
Yes, the disciples were full of weaknesses and failings. They were idiots like us all. But the one thing that set them apart and made them disciples of Jesus was that they nurtured a life-giving spark in their souls. (Except for Judas.) This was the spark that recognized and was drawn to the Divine in Jesus. This is what set them apart. Even though they fell short on many occasions, they never put an end to that deep eternal love they felt for God. They never let the world and its illusions so overwhelm them that they gave up this Source of All Love. I think that is what made these particular idiots stand out for Jesus in a world full of idiots. For the Love of God to be fruitful on earth, God needs to be loved back.