'When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
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."
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."'
--John 20: 19-29
Back in my acting days my directors would always say, “don’t tell me, show me.” What does that mean? Telling is about relaying information, it’s cerebral. Showing, on the other hand, is experiential. It says something without having to use words. Telling instead of showing is seen in the artistic world as being, well, kinda lazy. The Russian playwright Anton Chekov once said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining, but show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
The apostles who were met by the resurrected Jesus on Easter Sunday were so moved by the experience that they had to tell the only one not there that day about it. And that, of course, was Thomas. I’m sure they were very detailed in their explanation, painting a perfect mental picture, but Thomas doesn’t believe them. Perhaps because he’s had his heart broken once and he doesn’t want to get his hopes up and have them dashed again. Thomas isn’t about telling, he wants to be shown. So, the next week Jesus arrives in the same manner and shows Thomas the nail and spear marks on his body, prompting Thomas to give that beautiful exclamation, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus was a show-er. Before his crucifixion Jesus showed people the love and mercy of God, he didn’t just tell them about it. And after his resurrection, he doesn’t just rely on the other 10 to tell Thomas that he has been raised, but he comes to Thomas and shows him that he’s alive.
But doesn’t Jesus chastise Thomas for believing only because he sees? “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”? We call him Doubting Thomas for a reason. Yes, those are the words on the page, but I’m afraid that some of us have heard messages over time that have done a disservice, both to “Doubting” Thomas and to the text itself when we’ve used this line by Jesus as a kind of endorsement for what we might call blind faith – believing whole heartedly in something without any evidence to back it up.
To understand what is really going on with this text, one needs to know what was happening with the communities that produced the four canonical Gospels, namely the community of the Gospel of John, which definitely bore a grudge against other Christian communities. You see, communities of faith grew up around the apostles and their stories about Jesus, which were all different, hence the reason why we not only have four canonical Gospels – Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John - but many, many others, including: the Gospels of Peter, Mary Magdalene, and Thomas. All of these communities had different ways of telling the Jesus story. The Fourth Gospel was reportedly based around eye-witness accounts from someone called the Beloved Disciple, whom many believed was the apostle John, and these stories were passed down for nearly 100 years before they were written. Over time this community saw their story as the most authoritative, and so in the Fourth Gospel you see not-so-favorable depictions of some of the other apostles: Peter loses the race to the tomb, Mary Magdalene takes a second before she recognizes Jesus, and Thomas is chastised for his unbelief. It’s not so much Jesus being upset at Thomas in this text, as it is the text itself serving as a way for John’s Gospel community to get a dig in at Thomas’ Gospel community. Denominational rivalries have existed as long as there have been followers of Jesus. All this has happened before, and it will happen again!
Furthermore, when Jesus gives that famous benediction – “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”. – it is less about Thomas specifically and more about the community who received the Fourth Gospel, the folks who read and heard these words. Remember that none of the folks in that community knew Jesus or met him , either his original or resurrected edition. To pronounce a blessing on those who never saw him and yet still believed his message is to lend support and encouragement to not only this Gospel community, but also every single person thereafter who would come to believe the Good News without ever actually having met Jesus of Nazareth.
This, of course, includes us today. And is there anyone of us right now who doesn’t have doubts at times? Of course not! I wouldn’t be a priest now had my priest growing up not encouraged my own questions and created space for me to explore my doubts and curiosities. She inspired me to be more like Thomas, to make my faith experiential, not just cerebral. For anyone to interpret this Gospel today – a story we hear every year on the second Sunday of Easter - as a knock on Thomas and folks who have doubts or questions about Jesus, the resurrection, God, or whatever misses the point, not only of what the community of the Fourth Gospel was up to but also what Jesus himself models about faith: that it is to be shown, not just told, experiential, not just cerebral. It is to be questioned and wondered about and even, at times, doubted, for in and through the questions, wonders, and doubts, lies true faith.
Have you ever wondered why Thomas was called Didymus, or the Twin? Some have said it may have been because he had a literal twin who was a disciple but not one of the apostles, others have even said it was because he bore a strong resemblance to Jesus. But the most prominent theory is that it’s because he holds doubt and faith together. Like Janus, the god of beginnings and endings, Thomas embodies two sides of the same coin, sides that have long been considered adversaries but are, in fact, siblings. To paraphrase a sermon from Cardinal Lawrence in the recent movie Conclave – which seems very appropriate right now – “There is one sin I have come to fear above all others: certainly. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.” Cardinal Lawrence admits to his own doubts during the conclave. Oh, and his first name in the movie is Thomas. Probably not a coincidence.
One of my favorite tv shows is the 1960s British spy drama The Prisoner, which has an oft-repeated line “Questions are a burden to others and answers a prison for one’s mind.” Fortunately, that ain’t how Jesus works. We don’t check our minds at the door when we come into his house. Thomas’ example reminds us that it is in questioning that we go deeper in our relationship with God and achieve greater spiritual, mental, and emotional maturity. Our wondering, our doubting leads us to a place where merely telling is not enough. Honestly, if we are to go out into the world and make disciples, as Jesus says to do, simply telling will not do it; in fact, it often pushes people away. Folks want to be shown. They want to be invited into an experience of the resurrected Jesus. Ours is an experiential faith, not merely a cerebral one. Thomas was not content with a mere cerebral idea or theory about the living Christ. Why should we? For all of us doubters, blessed Thomas, pray for us.
