John 20:19-31
Today we continue our celebration of Easter, which began last week and runs until mid-May. We celebrate all those Sundays because Easter is too important to last only one day, but is instead a season. In reality, Easter also happens every Sunday morning we gather, although as the year moves along, we don’t always recognize that.
Throughout the Easter season we read the stories of people who had encounters with the risen Jesus, beginning today with Thomas. We read about Thomas a few weeks ago when we read the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. The disciples tried to dissuade Jesus from going to Jerusalem when Lazarus died because it was so dangerous. When Jesus was determined to go, it’s Thomas who said, “We may as well go too so we can die with him.” This always seemed to me like one of the braver things a disciple said or did.
In today’s appearance we read that Thomas doubted that Jesus had appeared to the disciples because he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. This earned him the nickname “doubting Thomas,” which has become a negative way to talk about someone even to this day. The author of the gospel has Jesus tell Thomas that those who believe without seeing are more blessed that he is. That might have happened, but it also might be an editorial by the author. By the time the gospel was written, virtually everyone in the Jesus movement believed without having seen Jesus, because those reported to have had a personal experience of his resurrection were long dead. So the verse also serves as a compliment to those who would have been reading the story. Whatever, the story has come to be about the negative aspects of doubt. I’m going to suggest in a bit that doubt isn’t the point of the story, but first, let’s think about the role doubt plays in our lives.
Start with the simple stuff -
I doubt that my cousin in Atlanta who never corresponds with me is sending me photos by email three times a week, so when the blurb on the email says, “I should have sent these long ago” I don’t open it. I bet doubt is saving me a computer virus.
On Wednesday the Wednesday Kids had dirt cake with gummy worms for dessert. My grandson Colin told me the worms were delicious, which I doubted. So when I bit into one and it was beyond gross, I didn’t eat it. No doubt he was right, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
Doubt also creeps into our lives in more significant ways –
For a time in my family, the teenagers had to pick up their rooms before they could go someplace with their friends on weekends. When they said, “If you just let me go this one time, I’ll clean all day tomorrow” I doubted that. Sometimes I let them go anyway, but I wasn’t surprised when the cleaning didn’t happen.
I also wrestled with deciding what teen activities were safe and what friends were a positive influence. Probably every parent has doubted the wisdom of some decisions they made. Parenting is made up of a million hard choices, some of which we second guess. Some of which we get wrong, as well as those we get right.
Many of us have friends or family members we love who struggle with illness or addiction. When they tell us this time they are going to get treatment right, change their bad habits, and be a new person we believe them. And we doubt them. All those changes are hard and almost no one gets them right the first time or the twenty-first time.
We doubt that the new car we’re buying is going to be as perfect as the salesperson tells us. We doubt that the new diet plan is going to be as easy to follow as advertised. We doubt that the new system at work is going to solve all the problems of the old one. We doubt that all the grass seed we put in the bare spots in the lawn is going to sprout. We doubt all these things because we’ve lived long enough to know from experience that things are rarely as easy as they are made out to be. And often doubt serves us well.
But we are also people of hope who believe Jesus lived, died, and lived again in a way that gives hope to every generation and transforms the world. And so in spite of doubt, we’re often ready to take another chance. That’s what I think this story is about.
It’s not about doubting Thomas, it’s about cautious Thomas, careful Thomas, practical Thomas, who was steadfast in his commitment to Jesus. Remember, he’s the one willing to go with Jesus to see Lazarus even if it killed him. He’s the one running errands to keep the group supplied so he missed Jesus the first time he appeared. He’s the one not ready to go off in a new direction with a resurrection story he hadn’t verified. He’s going to remain faithful to Jesus’ mission and ministry, even though the leader was executed.
I’m thinking that the lesson in this story isn’t that doubt is bad. This story is about what we do with our doubt and how we remain faithful and steadfast in spite of doubt. This story encourages us when doubts creep into our relationships – with family, friends, neighbors, co-workers. It encourages us when the groups we join and the projects we sign on to don’t go as smoothly as we anticipated. It tells us that in spite of doubts, we don’t have to give up on the whole enterprise. We can hang in there and keep on hoping.
So when friends fall off the wagon, we try not to enable them, but we also don’t give up on them. When kids make bad decisions, we let them learn from the consequences and we surround them with enough love that they can try again and do better. When we get a hard medical diagnosis, we acknowledge that the future is uncertain but we still trust the treatment plan and hope for the best. When the world seems to have gone to hell in a hand basket, we keep on writing legislators and emailing the governor and voting. We keep talking to our neighbors whose yard signs we don’t like. We keep on cooking and planting and giving blood.
You’ll notice that in spite of resurrection, the church who claims Jesus as Lord didn’t come full blown into itself the next day and thousands of years later we’re stilling getting some things right and some not. Along the way there may well have been as many doubts as there has been faith. And we’re all still hanging in there, because it seems like the best thing to do. And it seems like Jesus is still with us, encouraging us to keep going.
Next time you doubt something is true, go right ahead. Lots of things should be doubted. But remember steadfast Thomas and in spite of your doubts, don’t give up on the people or the possibilities.