Sermon: Second Sunday of Easter, John 20:19-31, April 16, 2023 Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: Second Sunday of Easter, John 20:19-31, April 16, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

We just heard again the familiar story of so-called doubting Thomas. I say so-called because I think Thomas has needlessly gotten a bad rap for centuries. He’s been maligned because of his demand: “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.” This seems like an ultimatum, doesn’t it?

But think about it: all Thomas is asking for is pretty much the same thing that all of his other disciple compatriots got. All of them, except for Thomas, got to see the risen Jesus and his wounded hands and side, indication that the one who was crucified had been raised. Thomas simply wanted the same opportunity that the others had. Does that make him a villain? Not at all. It seems only fair to me.

But Thomas persists in the popular Christian imagination as doubting Thomas. Doubt, understood as a feeling of uncertainty or a lack of conviction, is not such a bad thing. In fact, doubt is something we all experience. How can we not? If we’re honest with ourselves, we have doubts about all sorts of things in life, even concerning our faith sometimes. I know I’ve had such doubts at times.

But then we hear Jesus apparently, on first glance, condemn doubt in today’s story in John. When, finally, Jesus appears to Thomas, honoring his request, Jesus said to Thomas: “Put your finger her and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

And here’s where I disagree with the scholars who translated the biblical Greek using the word “doubt.” A better translation of the Greek, arguably, is something like: “Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” Unbelief, or faithlessness, is a stronger conviction than mere doubt. Doubt does not add up to unbelief or being faithless. The condition of doubt is akin to the anguished father of the boy possessed by a spirit who cried out to Jesus: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” (cf. Mark 9:24)

And here’s where I am drawn to make one thing quite clear, and perhaps I’ve preached this before, and I know I’ve taught this in our bible studies: the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. For faith is trust in precisely that which is not certain, not fully known, that which persists as still mysterious. When you’re certain about something, there’s no need for such trust in the unknowns. If you’re certain about something, there’s no room for faith understood as trust.

Think about it: certainty, or even the pursuit of certainty, ironically, becomes its own kind of unbelief, of faithlessness, because trust is not involved.

And in John’s gospel the big problem of sin centers precisely on unbelief. Time and time again, John reports the distinction between believers and those who don’t believe. Listen to these familiar and beloved words from John: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” But then, John goes on with these words: “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” (John 3:16-18) Unbelief is a huge issue in John’s Gospel.

But I don’t ultimately see total unbelief in Thomas’ request of Jesus to see the mark of the nails in his hands and to put his finger in the mark of the nails and his hand into Jesus’ side. Nor do I see this as a demand for proof, for certainty. Rather, I see Thomas’ stance as a plea for personal, physical encounter with his beloved rabbi. Thomas’ demand comes from a stance of faith, of trust, rooted in three years of experience with his trusted teacher.

When Thomas had his desired encounter with the risen Christ, the response was immediate. He readily and passionately confessed his faith: “My Lord and my God!”

Then John reports that Jesus addressed people like us who were not among the twelve original eye-witness disciples of Jesus. Addressing Thomas, but indirectly commenting to the rest of us, Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

By the time John wrote his Gospel, believers in Jesus probably had no first-hand experience of Jesus. In other words, the Christian community for which John wrote was filled with people who had not seen and yet had come to believe. And we also believe even though we are not, two-thousand years later, eye witnesses to the resurrection.

But even if we are not eye witnesses, there’s still an element for us in Christian life of “seeing is believing.” We may not be eyewitnesses like the original 12 disciples, but we have nonetheless seen the real effects of Jesus’ resurrected presence in our lives.

Think of this, for example: when the eucharistic host is placed into our hands there’s a sense in which we are seeing, touching even, Jesus’ wounded hand and embracing Jesus’ wounded side as he reveals his real presence to us in, with, and under blessed bread and also wine.

And likewise, when we’re immersed into the waters of baptism, and as that water is sprinkled on us in baptismal remembrance and thanksgiving as I walk down the aisle with bucket and wand in hand to get you wet, do we not also come into contact with Jesus and ultimately his scarred, resurrected hands when he pulled us from the flood in rescue, joining us to his death and resurrection as we are baptized into his body, the church?

And when we engage each other in Jesus’ name and Jesus is in the midst of us as he had promised whenever two or three of us gather, is this not also an encounter with the risen Christ even as we converse with each other?

And through such means, do we not also cry out as Thomas did in faith and trust and belief: “My Lord and my God!”?

And doesn’t the written word function for us as John suggested in today’s story that these stories are written down so that we may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we may have life in Jesus’ name? (cf. John 20:31) So we continue to read and hear the written word to perpetuate our faith.

Still, we may doubt. Still, many of us end up shutting ourselves up in rooms, literally or metaphorically, locking the doors of our hearts and minds because we’re scared. We live in scary times when we fear that which or those who may come after us to do us harm. We’ve grown to not trust each other – business, government, educators, sometimes even our neighbors with differing opinions. So many of us live in chronic fear and mistrust.

And you know what? Jesus still finds his way into the locked rooms of our hearts and minds to declare to us again and again, as he did to his disciples, “Peace be with you.”

For our doubts and fears do not have the last word. They didn’t for Thomas and the others. And they don’t for us. Because Jesus manages to find his way to us despite our being closed off from others and maybe even from Jesus.

Because Jesus finds his way to us, even behind locked doors, Peter’s testimony to the crowds recorded into today’s first reading rings true: “God raised Christ up, having released him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.” It was impossible for Christ to be held in the powers of fear and death. Christ escaped the grip of death to find his way to us bringing peace to us even now.

The means through which we encounter Christ today are generally not as dramatic as the encounters the first eyewitnesses had. But our more indirect encounters, in the word and the sacraments and in Christian community, nonetheless lay claim to us. If they didn’t captivate us, we wouldn’t be here right now; we wouldn’t keep coming to church.

So it is that the reading from First Peter rings true for us as well: “Although you have not seen [the risen Christ], you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9) Thanks be to God.

And so it is that as Christ brings us peace, Christ also sends us on a mission. Even as the Father sent him, Christ sends us – to bring peace to a violent, mistrustful world, to forgive others in need of forgiveness, and all of this in the power of the Spirit of the resurrected Christ – so that others may encounter the risen Christ and exclaim along with us, “My Lord and my God!”

For Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed, Alleluia! Amen.