4/5/59

Scripture: John 20: 19-21; 24-29

How deep is our belief in Easter? Let us not answer in terms of new clothes, or Easter eggs; not in terms of the lovely Easter lilies or the promise of spring; not in terms of record breaking attendance at some worship services in Holy Week or on Easter Sunday; nor of the exceptionally fine music which is played and sung at that time; not even in terms of the previous memories associated with the season. But let us think in terms of our answer to the question: “If a man die, shall he live again?” And of the answer that Christ has given: “Because I live, you also shall live.” [John 14: 19].

It may be easy to believe, as long as death seems far away. Death’s reality is not too deep to be endured while we are young, or in good health, or both. Death becomes a sterner reality when someone we know and love approaches the valley, or goes into its shadow --- someone whose life means everything to us. It may be that death has recently struck very near to some of us in this room. And one is deprived of the accustomed presence, bearing wounds which are just beginning to heal and scar. The nearer our fear, or our loss, the harder it may be to believe in Easter; --- and the more we may be inclined to sympathize with Thomas, the doubter.

At first glance, Thomas does not cut a very good figure. The other disciples have raised no questions after they have seen Jesus alive after his death. They are sure they have seen him. Thomas was not present with them when this happened. He is not carried away with their news. He has to be convinced. He doubts the report.

The three synoptic gospels do not tell this story. They simply list the name of Thomas among the twelve. But the gospel of John is more explicit, though certainly not flattering to Thomas. In the Bible, Thomas is first seen at a conference of the apostles in Perea where they have taken refuge after the first threat of hostility from authorities in Jerusalem. While they met together, a messenger came to tell Jesus that his friend, Lazarus, brother of Mary and Martha, is dying at their home in Bethany. Bethany is very near to Jerusalem. Jesus is ready to go immediately. But the apostles resist the idea. “Master,” they say, “the people down there have been ready to stone you; and are you going there again?” But they can not dissuade him. And so they reluctantly yield to his self-confidence. But Thomas takes a dark view of it. “Let us go also,” he says, “that we may die with him.” [John 11: 16].

The second time that a saying of Thomas is recorded is at the last supper. Having accepted the worst, he declines to be comforted by what the Master tells them. Jesus has been talking about his Father’s house with many rooms, where he in going to prepare a place for his friends. Assuming that the apostles understand, Jesus says, “You know where I am going and you know the way.” [John 14: 4]. But Thomas interrupts, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” [John 14: 5]. The poetry of Jesus is wasted on Thomas. He wants plain, literal prose. Thus far, Thomas has revealed himself as one of those who look for the worst, find it, and face it. He has a lot of company in our time.

Then, in the Easter scene, his desperate courage becomes sheer despair. Thomas has missed the evidence that Jesus has given the others. He rejects their testimony as both unlikely and impossible. And Thomas cries out, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.” He is there at the bottom of the slough of despond; he doubts everything except his own doubts. He is a man who had died in spirit with Jesus, but will not rise and live with him.

Can the faithful excuse such conduct by an apostle? Perhaps the first task is not to excuse, but to understand. John Bodo has a theory that may be a bit far-fetched, but nonetheless plausible. Thomas was called “Didymus” in the authorized translation of the Bible. [King James version] It means the Twin. The Revised Standard Version simply translates it “the Twin.” In fact, says Bodo, the name “Thomas” is a transliteration of the Aramaic word for “twin.”

If Thomas was one of a pair of twins, where was the other one? The gospels give no clue. But suppose that Thomas had a twin brother who died in the full flower of youth just before Thomas met Jesus. Suppose that this twin brother had been almost literally half of Thomas’ own life --- a friend, companion, brother whose death left Thomas in a tragic state, shared in some degree by all of us sooner or later. The loss of sweetheart, husband or wife, parent or child, or cherished friend leaves one as Thomas may have been left, like the poet Tennyson, who writes:

Break, break, break

On thy cold gray stones, O sea!

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

---the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

And Thomas was alive, but without further interest in life. He went about his business, but his mind was not on it, nor his heart in it.

Then, to his emptiness, came Jesus of Nazareth. With no intention on his part, Thomas transfers his love to Jesus. The Master whom all of his friends came to know as a “friend who sticks closer than a brother” became for Thomas a twin brother --- the one whom no one should take from him. Here is John Bodo’s theory. And if we examine it further, it could have interesting implications.

It may be no accident of omission that we have so few recorded words of Thomas. He may have had very little to say. He could have been content to follow Jesus around, adoring him with all of his once buried, and freshly risen, love; ready to defend him against anyone or anything --- chiefly against death.

But Thomas was a realist. If he had once experienced the traumatic shock of death, he was not able to forget it. He knew that death always comes in the end. He was well aware of the Master’s mortality, but he was quite deaf to the Master’s promises. So, when others were ready to take Jesus at his word, with the comparative unconcern of those who have not thought much about death, Thomas, who had met it head on and had been left bruised and bleeding by it, showed a perceptive, heroic kind of courage! “Let us go,” he said, “that we may die with him.”

He was ready to die with Jesus, because he could not face life without him. Having already half-died with his brother, he did not wish to outlive the one who had more than taken his brother’s place. But Jesus kept prodding the old wound in Thomas. He insisted on repeating the promise that Thomas was sure no man could fulfill. In fact it seemed unkind to make such promises in the hearing of one who had learned, at close range, the awful finality of death.

And Thomas bursts out, at the last supper, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. Like my brother, you are going to your death, and I want to go with you. So, do what you must, but please stop consoling us when you know there is no consolation.”

Probably the other apostles were provoked with Thomas. They may have resented his throwing cold water on their confidence in Jesus, or on their “all will be well” attitude, to which their immature faith had degenerated. They must have regarded Thomas’ question at the last supper as ill timed. They may not have been particularly surprised when Thomas did not join them after the crucifixion. They could hardly blame him for having deserted Jesus --- they had all done that!

The fear of death --- so abstract and unreal when all is well --- comes to its own when there is a real threat to life, marshaling an army of instincts dedicated to survival. It is an irony that Judas was the only one who had the courage -- and the requisite self-loathing in his case -- to follow Jesus into death. And even he accomplished it alone, when he hanged himself, far off from the scene of his Lord’s crucifixion. As for Thomas, for all the apostles knew, he might have been off somewhere contemplating some tragic course. He had never been a gracious companion to the others. It was not surprising that he did not seek their company now.

Then Jesus appeared to his apostles only a few hours after his first appearance to the women in the garden outside the tomb. Ten were present to witness this impossible happening. Ten could testify to Christ’s victory over sin and death --- and did testify. Did they go out looking for Thomas? Or did they wait until, by deep stubborn subconscious hope he groped his way back to that circle of hope and praise? We do not know.

What we do know is that, when they did tell him, Thomas rejected their witness. His cruel words, rising out of accustomed honesty, courage and despair, must have hurt him, as he spoke, more than they hurt the other apostles. For them, they were cruel disbelief; for him they were the creed of a man trapped in his own mortality --- the creed of a man twice dead, whose only hope was that a third call of death would take him to the end of grief and into oblivion.

How could anyone hope for more, before that first Easter day? Thomas was only more forthright in his recognition of the fact of death, more uncompromising with wishful thinking, more proudly wedded to his own integrity in the face of death. The other ten had the easy part now. They had seen a kind of Easter dawn which Thomas had not seen. And they were not impatient with him.

Nor was Jesus impatient with him. Jesus had not forgotten that it was Thomas who wanted to go with him to the side of Lazarus --- not because he thought all would be well, but because he was sure it would not be well. And Jesus had not rebuffed Thomas for questioning him about his destiny. Instead of a rebuff to Thomas, Jesus had responded with that great summary of the Christian faith: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” [John 14: 6]. Jesus had not lost patience with Thomas because the Master values honest doubt more than blind belief.

For belief can be blind. Gullibility, superstition, and warped prejudice can all be too closely akin to belief. There is a lazy acceptance of outworn theories and undeservedly enthroned dogmas that lends respectability to man’s inhumanity to man, retards human betterment, keeps the spirit of mankind from growing to further maturity.

God grants to every generation men and women who will not believe, just because it is the thing to do, but who question and probe and search, not because they lack faith, but because they seek a bigger faith in a greater God. Thomas would not believe in anyone’s “say-so,” -- not even the Master’s -- but he was capable of faith. For an excellent kind of faith is personal trust with unflinching honesty, and with courage to accept not only the best, but the worst as well. Thomas did not want to test the risen Christ crudely and literally. He needed to believe the resurrection more than anyone, but he wanted a welcome for investigation.

Few efforts are more foolish or self-defeating than to try to protect Jesus -- or the writings about him -- from the careful scrutiny of sincere seekers -- or perhaps even from the sleuthing of scoffers. Sincere seekers will usually find more than they have come for. Scoffers will often stay to pray. Only the possessive, uncritical, anxiously protective kind of believers stand to lose anything by free, thoughtful scrutiny of the record. They stand to lose their little dogmas, their puny self-respect, while the Lord shows Thomas his wounded hands, and Thomas sinks to his knees whispering, “My Lord and my God.”

Thus Thomas the Doubter becomes Thomas the Believing Apostle, not in spite of his doubts, but thanks to his doubts, and what he has discovered through them. Jesus in no wise rejected him. Indeed the Christ granted Thomas the extraordinary honor of a special appearance. And it was so, a little later, with Paul on the road to Damascus. [Acts 9: 1-8].

The world needed Thomas. Jesus knew how a converted skeptic could convert other skeptics. And he knew also how a converted Pharisee, Saul, could convert people with well-trained minds.

The mind of the masses usually appears for sale to the most attractive bidder. The mind of a person who insists on being an individual is not for sale at all. He may be lonely in his integrity. But he keeps himself open to new appearances of the truth.

This is the kind of person Jesus wants most -- the scholar, the scientist who will pursue the truth wherever it leads; the citizen of the world who will accept his fellow citizens as persons rather than the bearers of convenient labels; the human being whose curiosity and compassion encompasses everything human, but who hungers and thirsts for meaning beyond this precariously short mortal life.

If anyone in this room today has lost a twin, or is afraid of the valley for self or a loved one, or is uncomforted by the romance of spring, then take Thomas. Take the doubter who went all the way, and rest your faith in his faith. Take that kneeling figure surrounded by the radiance of his risen Lord. Say, with him, “My Lord and my God.” And then hear, with him, that tender, crowning beatitude uttered by our Lord, “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”

And Thomas was blessed, too. His doubts had led him to belief.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, April 5, 1959

Wood County Infirmary, April 22, 1959

Waioli Hiuia Church, April 14, 1974