Luke 24:13-35
Thomas is an interesting character. He was labelled “The Twin” (which is actually what “Thomas” means), and for a good part of his life, that’s all he was. Like Tommy Smothers: he may have looked at his brother thinking, “Mom always liked you best, at least you got a real name.”
But it got worse. These days we know him not just as Thomas, but as Doubting Thomas. That’s especially harsh in some Christian communities where doubt is considered the worst sin possible. “Believe you sinners, or go straight to hell!”
And the bar for what to believe in such congregations is really high. Their favorite memory verse is Matthew 17:20 (in King James English, of course), “If ye have faith as large as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, ‘Remove hence to yonder place’; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
…Wow, that’s powerful. But it can carry a sad implication. Let’s say your mother is in the hospital with corona virus; you pray for her to recover, but she doesn’t. A strictly literal interpretation of Matthew 17:20 would tell you: it’s your fault! If you’d only had enough faith, she would have made it.
That leads some folks to say, “Just tell me what to believe and I’ll believe it, no matter how unbelievable it is.”
I love those Christians. They are my brothers and sisters, but on this I think they are wrong. For starters, Jesus sometimes spoke hyperbolically or even “parable-bolically.” He didn’t really think a camel would fit through the eye of a needle or that we have to start hating our parents to follow him. If my wife tells me to go jump in the lake, I don’t start looking for a big body of water, I start thinking about what I did wrong. …Well, that’s getting off track. The point is: to think we have to get belief just right or God won’t do something for us is to misunderstand a big part of what Christ is all about.
Jesus knows “getting things just right” and being human are mutually exclusive. He came to save sinners, not condemn them. And he doesn’t condemn Thomas for wanting to see his hands and side. …By the way, go back and look at the first paragraph of today’s reading. When Jesus first appeared to the other disciples, they didn’t say, “Jesus! Good to see you. We knew you were coming and that everything’s would turn out fine.”
No, they’re hiding behind locked doors because they believe everything was going horribly, and the people who crucified Jesus were now trying to find them. That’s why the first thing Jesus says is, “Peace be with you.” Peace in a fearful situation is exactly what they don’t have. Next, he shows THEM his hands and side, and it’s only then that they believe.
Now, skip to a week later. This time Thomas is with them. Why wasn’t he with them the first time? We don’t know, but I have a reasonable guess. I think Thomas may have been the only one brave enough to go out and do some grocery shopping. The others were too afraid to move. He would have been afraid as well, but sometimes you just have to get milk, and bananas and toilet paper; so out he goes.
I’m making that up, but this idea that Thomas was courageous is actually the only other thing the Bible tell us about him. In John 11, Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick and tells the disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” (John 11:7)
“Rabbi,” they say, “(that is a really truly horrible idea!) A short while ago, the Jewish leaders tried to have you stoned.” (That happened in John 10:31-33)
Jesus says, “Our friend, Lazarus, has fallen asleep. I need to wake him up.” (John 11:11)
Again, the disciples say, “(Hello, bad idea!) If he sleeps, he’ll wake up on his own!” (“We don’t need to risk life and limb to see it!”) (John 11:12)
You’ll remember I said Jesus sometimes used parables and hyperbole? This was one of those times. You can practically see him slapping his head, thinking, “You guys are WAY too literal.” He says to them, “Lazarus is dead. I am going to him.” (John 11:15)
And it is then that Thomas – and only Thomas – says to the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16)
Thomas was brave, brave enough to go with Jesus even when he knew it was dangerous. In Mark 10:37, James and John say, “Teacher, let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left when you come into your glory.” (Mark 10:37) It’s one of several times the disciples make it clear they think they have hitched their wagon to a star. They’re following Jesus to his coronation, not his crucifixion, and every king hands out money and power to his closest friends. Thomas may have been the only one who said, “I love him, too. But I think one time Jesus was talking literally is when he said following him will mean carrying a cross. [He said, “Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27).]
The long and short of it is: I think Jesus respected Thomas for his courage and even for his questions. I’m sure there were times when Thomas asked something the others were thinking, but were afraid to say. In our story today, he says out loud, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25)
The other disciples probably thought, “How can you SAY that? We TOLD you we saw him alive,” completely forgetting THEY hadn’t believed until Jesus showed them his hands and side.
If you’re around my age, you may remember President Ford who once tripped on national television walking down the stairs of an airplane; another time he was filmed falling while snow skiing. Comedians made fun of him and he became known as President Clumsy, but the odd thing was: Ford may well have been our most athletic president. He was a football player in college, an excellent swimmer, and – yes, he fell while skiing, but – if you don’t fall sometimes you’re not pushing yourself. I think that’s what happened to Thomas: his moment of doubt was captured by the Gospel of John’s camera and he ended up with a label he didn’t deserve.
I’ve asked a good friend, John Knauff, to share a monologue with us in the role of Thomas. We’re going to hear Thomas as he looks back on a life I’ve based on a combination of the Bible, traditions about Thomas, and my own imagination.
Thomas: My father told me that, when I was born, he and my mother were very poor: their land had just been seized because they couldn’t pay the taxes needed to support the Roman army that occupied Israel. However, though they had no money with which to raise a child, as good Jews, they couldn’t help but see my mother’s pregnancy as a blessing. They prayed for a healthy boy or girl, and had names picked out for each: Joseph for a boy, Miriam for a girl.
In Genesis 2:16, God tells Eve that childbirth will involve great pain. That was certainly true for my mother: her labor lasted two full days. At the end of that time, the midwife told father that mother had lost a lot of blood, but my brother, Joseph, had arrived safely; and she thought both of them would do fine. But the midwife came back a few minutes later to say a second child was coming, and coming out feet first. Worse, my head was too big to exit the birth canal. She asked father if she could crack my skull and pull me out. He agonized and eventually said no. They finally cut me out after mother died from the loss of blood.
Having already used the chosen name for my brother, father simply called me “Thomas,” which translates as “Didymus” or “The Twin.” He confessed to blaming me for mother’s death. That was compounded 17 years later when my brother fought with three Roman soldiers to stop them from harassing me. Joseph was arrested, and whipped so badly he was partially paralyzed. He never blamed me, but father and everyone else did.
I suppose it’s no surprise that I emerged from that angry and bitter, guilt ridden, not trusting anybody or anything.
Father died when Joseph and I turned 30, shortly after the three of us managed to purchase a small plot of farmland, barely big enough for one man to take care of. With my brother a cripple, that man was mostly me. We grew wheat, barley, figs and grapes. When the rain came, we turned a profit; when it didn’t, we almost starved. Joseph was always optimistic that the year ahead would be the wettest ever. He even wanted to invest the tiny amount we’d managed to save in buying a little more land and some extra seed. I convinced him to wait for actual rain instead of watering future crops with hoped for moisture. It’s the only thing that enabled us to survive.
A few years ago, around the time of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, all our farm chores were done, so we decided to go hear a traveling preacher named Jesus who had lately gained quite a reputation. We spent a day walking (hobbling, in my brother’s case) to a small mountain on the northwest edge of the Sea of Galilee. We were surprised to find thousands of people had the same idea. I didn’t think there was a chance we’d be able to hear him amid such a throng, but Jesus stood on top of the mountain. A slight wind behind him blew his voice toward us, and the bowl-shaped lake behind us turned the place into a natural amphitheater.
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn,” and I thought of my father who never got over mother’s death. He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and I thought of my brother, forever crippled simply because he tried to defend me from the Romans. He said, “Blessed are you when people insult you and say all kinds of evil against you …falsely.” I thought of myself, blamed by nearly everyone except my brother for things that were not my fault. “Rejoice and be glad,” Jesus said, “because that’s how they persecuted the prophets who went before you. And know this: GREAT will be your reward in Heaven.”
…Well, it sounded good, but I would need to see it before I believed it.
He told us to love everyone, even our enemies. That sounded crazy to me. Then Jesus said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will have worries enough of its own. Instead, seek first the Kingdom of God.” At this, I think my brother tried to punch me in the shoulder because it’s the kind of thing he’s always telling me. But – because his limbs didn’t work very well – he ended up falling over. I would have gotten mad, but he was having too much fun laughing at himself.
When Jesus finished preaching, a great crowd of people pressed in on him, asking to be healed of pain, seizures, demon possession, …even paralysis. I thought it was a colossal waste of time, but Joseph hobbled into their midst while I turned around and threw a few aimless rocks into the lake. I didn’t see Joseph again for almost half-an-hour. I suddenly realized there was a good chance he’d fallen on the uneven hillside and couldn’t get up! I was about to start looking, when …he ran up to me.
You heard right: he RAN up to me! I asked what had happened. He said, “I have no idea! I just know Jesus healed me!” I said, “Oh, give me a break.” He said, “Would you like to race home? With these new legs, I’ll beat you! In fact, watch this….”
Then he picked up a stone and threw it into the lake! Actually, it barely got to the water, but still: he threw it! That morning he could barely bend his elbow.
In the weeks that followed, I became convinced that this new Joseph was permanent. I asked him if he’d mind handling the farm himself, now that he could. That would allow me to check Jesus out and see if he was the real deal or just another false prophet with (admittedly) one or two really good tricks up his sleeve.
I joined Jesus’ followers and eventually became part of his inner circle of disciples.
I remember one night: we were sitting around a campfire and Jesus told us how he was tempted after his baptism. He’d fasted for 40 days, and then he had a vision of the devil telling him to throw himself from the highest point of the temple. Angels would save him, proving to everyone that he was – indeed – God’s “chosen one.” In his vision, Jesus responded, “It is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
It was a powerful story, but I had to say, “Wait, are you telling us we should never question our beliefs; never test to prove we’re right?”
He said, “Thomas…, sometimes doubt just means you’re thinking, and only fools avoid a test to see if they’re right. Other times, though, doubt is simply a way to avoid inconvenient truth, and insisting on tests can be a way to put off what you know you’re supposed to be doing.”
By then, I had seen enough of Jesus’ dealings with our religious leaders to be certain that he was making hundreds of powerful enemies even as he inspired thousands of faithful followers. But I determined then and there that his man who had healed my brother, who was such a real-world advocate of love, and who insisted that the honest search for truth is completely compatible with devotion to God…, I determined that Jesus was worth following, even if it meant death.
Thomas is an interesting character. He was labelled “The Twin” (which is actually what “Thomas” means), and for a good part of his life, that’s all he was. Like Tommy Smothers: he may have looked at his brother thinking, “Mom always liked you best, at least you got a real name.”
But it got worse. These days we know him not just as Thomas, but as Doubting Thomas. That’s especially harsh in some Christian communities where doubt is considered the worst sin possible. “Believe you sinners, or go straight to hell!”
And the bar for what to believe in such congregations is really high. Their favorite memory verse is Matthew 17:20 (in King James English, of course), “If ye have faith as large as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, ‘Remove hence to yonder place’; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
…Wow, that’s powerful. But it can carry a sad implication. Let’s say your mother is in the hospital with corona virus; you pray for her to recover, but she doesn’t. A strictly literal interpretation of Matthew 17:20 would tell you: it’s your fault! If you’d only had enough faith, she would have made it.
That leads some folks to say, “Just tell me what to believe and I’ll believe it, no matter how unbelievable it is.”
I love those Christians. They are my brothers and sisters, but on this I think they are wrong. For starters, Jesus sometimes spoke hyperbolically or even “parable-bolically.” He didn’t really think a camel would fit through the eye of a needle or that we have to start hating our parents to follow him. If my wife tells me to go jump in the lake, I don’t start looking for a big body of water, I start thinking about what I did wrong. …Well, that’s getting off track. The point is: to think we have to get belief just right or God won’t do something for us is to misunderstand a big part of what Christ is all about.
Jesus knows “getting things just right” and being human are mutually exclusive. He came to save sinners, not condemn them. And he doesn’t condemn Thomas for wanting to see his hands and side. …By the way, go back and look at the first paragraph of today’s reading. When Jesus first appeared to the other disciples, they didn’t say, “Jesus! Good to see you. We knew you were coming and that everything’s would turn out fine.”
No, they’re hiding behind locked doors because they believe everything was going horribly, and the people who crucified Jesus were now trying to find them. That’s why the first thing Jesus says is, “Peace be with you.” Peace in a fearful situation is exactly what they don’t have. Next, he shows THEM his hands and side, and it’s only then that they believe.
Now, skip to a week later. This time Thomas is with them. Why wasn’t he with them the first time? We don’t know, but I have a reasonable guess. I think Thomas may have been the only one brave enough to go out and do some grocery shopping. The others were too afraid to move. He would have been afraid as well, but sometimes you just have to get milk, and bananas and toilet paper; so out he goes.
I’m making that up, but this idea that Thomas was courageous is actually the only other thing the Bible tell us about him. In John 11, Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick and tells the disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” (John 11:7)
“Rabbi,” they say, “(that is a really truly horrible idea!) A short while ago, the Jewish leaders tried to have you stoned.” (That happened in John 10:31-33)
Jesus says, “Our friend, Lazarus, has fallen asleep. I need to wake him up.” (John 11:11)
Again, the disciples say, “(Hello, bad idea!) If he sleeps, he’ll wake up on his own!” (“We don’t need to risk life and limb to see it!”) (John 11:12)
You’ll remember I said Jesus sometimes used parables and hyperbole? This was one of those times. You can practically see him slapping his head, thinking, “You guys are WAY too literal.” He says to them, “Lazarus is dead. I am going to him.” (John 11:15)
And it is then that Thomas – and only Thomas – says to the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16)
Thomas was brave, brave enough to go with Jesus even when he knew it was dangerous. In Mark 10:37, James and John say, “Teacher, let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left when you come into your glory.” (Mark 10:37) It’s one of several times the disciples make it clear they think they have hitched their wagon to a star. They’re following Jesus to his coronation, not his crucifixion, and every king hands out money and power to his closest friends. Thomas may have been the only one who said, “I love him, too. But I think one time Jesus was talking literally is when he said following him will mean carrying a cross. [He said, “Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27).]
The long and short of it is: I think Jesus respected Thomas for his courage and even for his questions. I’m sure there were times when Thomas asked something the others were thinking, but were afraid to say. In our story today, he says out loud, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25)
The other disciples probably thought, “How can you SAY that? We TOLD you we saw him alive,” completely forgetting THEY hadn’t believed until Jesus showed them his hands and side.
If you’re around my age, you may remember President Ford who once tripped on national television walking down the stairs of an airplane; another time he was filmed falling while snow skiing. Comedians made fun of him and he became known as President Clumsy, but the odd thing was: Ford may well have been our most athletic president. He was a football player in college, an excellent swimmer, and – yes, he fell while skiing, but – if you don’t fall sometimes you’re not pushing yourself. I think that’s what happened to Thomas: his moment of doubt was captured by the Gospel of John’s camera and he ended up with a label he didn’t deserve.
I’ve asked a good friend, John Knauff, to share a monologue with us in the role of Thomas. We’re going to hear Thomas as he looks back on a life I’ve based on a combination of the Bible, traditions about Thomas, and my own imagination.
Thomas: My father told me that, when I was born, he and my mother were very poor: their land had just been seized because they couldn’t pay the taxes needed to support the Roman army that occupied Israel. However, though they had no money with which to raise a child, as good Jews, they couldn’t help but see my mother’s pregnancy as a blessing. They prayed for a healthy boy or girl, and had names picked out for each: Joseph for a boy, Miriam for a girl.
In Genesis 2:16, God tells Eve that childbirth will involve great pain. That was certainly true for my mother: her labor lasted two full days. At the end of that time, the midwife told father that mother had lost a lot of blood, but my brother, Joseph, had arrived safely; and she thought both of them would do fine. But the midwife came back a few minutes later to say a second child was coming, and coming out feet first. Worse, my head was too big to exit the birth canal. She asked father if she could crack my skull and pull me out. He agonized and eventually said no. They finally cut me out after mother died from the loss of blood.
Having already used the chosen name for my brother, father simply called me “Thomas,” which translates as “Didymus” or “The Twin.” He confessed to blaming me for mother’s death. That was compounded 17 years later when my brother fought with three Roman soldiers to stop them from harassing me. Joseph was arrested, and whipped so badly he was partially paralyzed. He never blamed me, but father and everyone else did.
I suppose it’s no surprise that I emerged from that angry and bitter, guilt ridden, not trusting anybody or anything.
Father died when Joseph and I turned 30, shortly after the three of us managed to purchase a small plot of farmland, barely big enough for one man to take care of. With my brother a cripple, that man was mostly me. We grew wheat, barley, figs and grapes. When the rain came, we turned a profit; when it didn’t, we almost starved. Joseph was always optimistic that the year ahead would be the wettest ever. He even wanted to invest the tiny amount we’d managed to save in buying a little more land and some extra seed. I convinced him to wait for actual rain instead of watering future crops with hoped for moisture. It’s the only thing that enabled us to survive.
A few years ago, around the time of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, all our farm chores were done, so we decided to go hear a traveling preacher named Jesus who had lately gained quite a reputation. We spent a day walking (hobbling, in my brother’s case) to a small mountain on the northwest edge of the Sea of Galilee. We were surprised to find thousands of people had the same idea. I didn’t think there was a chance we’d be able to hear him amid such a throng, but Jesus stood on top of the mountain. A slight wind behind him blew his voice toward us, and the bowl-shaped lake behind us turned the place into a natural amphitheater.
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn,” and I thought of my father who never got over mother’s death. He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and I thought of my brother, forever crippled simply because he tried to defend me from the Romans. He said, “Blessed are you when people insult you and say all kinds of evil against you …falsely.” I thought of myself, blamed by nearly everyone except my brother for things that were not my fault. “Rejoice and be glad,” Jesus said, “because that’s how they persecuted the prophets who went before you. And know this: GREAT will be your reward in Heaven.”
…Well, it sounded good, but I would need to see it before I believed it.
He told us to love everyone, even our enemies. That sounded crazy to me. Then Jesus said, “Don’t worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will have worries enough of its own. Instead, seek first the Kingdom of God.” At this, I think my brother tried to punch me in the shoulder because it’s the kind of thing he’s always telling me. But – because his limbs didn’t work very well – he ended up falling over. I would have gotten mad, but he was having too much fun laughing at himself.
When Jesus finished preaching, a great crowd of people pressed in on him, asking to be healed of pain, seizures, demon possession, …even paralysis. I thought it was a colossal waste of time, but Joseph hobbled into their midst while I turned around and threw a few aimless rocks into the lake. I didn’t see Joseph again for almost half-an-hour. I suddenly realized there was a good chance he’d fallen on the uneven hillside and couldn’t get up! I was about to start looking, when …he ran up to me.
You heard right: he RAN up to me! I asked what had happened. He said, “I have no idea! I just know Jesus healed me!” I said, “Oh, give me a break.” He said, “Would you like to race home? With these new legs, I’ll beat you! In fact, watch this….”
Then he picked up a stone and threw it into the lake! Actually, it barely got to the water, but still: he threw it! That morning he could barely bend his elbow.
In the weeks that followed, I became convinced that this new Joseph was permanent. I asked him if he’d mind handling the farm himself, now that he could. That would allow me to check Jesus out and see if he was the real deal or just another false prophet with (admittedly) one or two really good tricks up his sleeve.
I joined Jesus’ followers and eventually became part of his inner circle of disciples.
I remember one night: we were sitting around a campfire and Jesus told us how he was tempted after his baptism. He’d fasted for 40 days, and then he had a vision of the devil telling him to throw himself from the highest point of the temple. Angels would save him, proving to everyone that he was – indeed – God’s “chosen one.” In his vision, Jesus responded, “It is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
It was a powerful story, but I had to say, “Wait, are you telling us we should never question our beliefs; never test to prove we’re right?”
He said, “Thomas…, sometimes doubt just means you’re thinking, and only fools avoid a test to see if they’re right. Other times, though, doubt is simply a way to avoid inconvenient truth, and insisting on tests can be a way to put off what you know you’re supposed to be doing.”
By then, I had seen enough of Jesus’ dealings with our religious leaders to be certain that he was making hundreds of powerful enemies even as he inspired thousands of faithful followers. But I determined then and there that his man who had healed my brother, who was such a real-world advocate of love, and who insisted that the honest search for truth is completely compatible with devotion to God…, I determined that Jesus was worth following, even if it meant death.
We can’t know for sure, but tradition tell us that Thomas eventually went to India and shared the Gospel there, converting many Jews and not a few Hindus. This painting by Rubens is called “The Martyrdom of St. Thomas.” It depicts the fate that awaited most of the disciples, they were killed for sharing a Gospel that thrilled many, but threatened some. You and I only know that Gospel because disciples like Thomas dared to tell his story. Would you pray with me? God, thank you for Thomas and thank you for understanding both his doubts and ours. Help us believe where we have not seen, help us share that belief with all your children, and help us love in good times and bad. Amen.