witnesses to the resurrection: Thomas (John 20:24-31)

 

My favorite band is Irish band U2. Their music has been a significant part of the soundtrack of my life. Recently amidst the pandemic, two members of the band, reworked many of their songs and recorded them as acoustic numbers which reflected the Irish folk heritage. To publicize the reimagined songs they invited David Letterman to Dublin to do an interview and TV special based round the first public performance of those songs.

During the interview the topic of nick names came up…  The two members of the band being interviewed were Paul Hewson and David Evans… but you may not recognize those names because they are known by their nick names, nick names they picked up in their Christian counterculture group in the mid 1970’s… Paul is known as Bono (which is short for Bono Vox… Latin for good voice, from a hearing aid shop in the Dublin high street) and a good name for a lead vocalist. David Evans is the Edge…so apt for a progressive guitarist. David letterman asked them why the two other members of U2 Larry Mullins Jr and Adam clayton didn’t have nick names? The reply was that their original nick names were the jam jar for Larry and Mrs Burns for Adam… neither of which stuck nor sounded good for a rock band. They didn’t fit.

This Easter season, from Easter Sunday through to Pentecost at the end of May we are looking at witnesses to the resurrection. People who met the risen Jesus and whose encounters we have recorded in the gospels.  Encounters which help us to have confidence in the physical resurrection of Jesus and what it means for us today. In today’s reading from John’s gospel we are going to look at Thomas… Thomas, who we are told was also known as  ‘Didymus’ which means the twin… by the way that isn’t a nick name as Thomas itself comes from the Aramaic word for twin… its just a Greek translation.  But he has picked up a nick name which has made its way into our modern vernacular ‘Doubting Thomas’… and is used in a negative way, to denote a skeptic, someone who is reluctant to beelive. It’s a nick name he does not deserve and one which does not fit the gospel narrative of his encounter with the risen Jesus where he moves from not being easily persuaded to being the first to actually articulate what the resurrection means, and thus form the high point of the whole of John’s gospel. When he sees Jesus raised from the dead he proclaims ‘My Lord and my God’.

Let’s have a look at this passage. This encounter this witness.

Firstly who is Thomas? Thomas is mentioned only eight times in scripture in the gospels and Acts. In the synoptic gospels and acts he is only mentioned in lists of the twelve disciples. In john he is mentioned as one of the twelve, present in John chapter 21 on the shore of galilee, an encounter with the risen Jesus that focuses on Peter’s restoration.

In john he also takes a more central role at the raising of Lazarus in John 11:16 where Jesus speaks his going to Jerusalem in face of threats to have him killed and Thomas says ‘let us also go, that we may die with him’. Which shows us the great depth to Thomas’ commitment to Jesus. He has his hope so tightly caught up in Jesus he is willing to go and die. There is an intensity to this man and his faith.

Then at the last Supper in John 14 as Jesus talks of going to prepare a place for his disciples and coming to take them to be with him, Thomas asks the question “but Lord we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” again showing he is really wanting to know and understand what Jesus is saying. Jesus reply of course is the last “I am” saying in John’s gospel   I am the way the truth and the life… no one comes to the father but through me”.  Thomas and we receive this assurance from Jesus that it is in his person, that we are put right with God.

In the passage we have read to us today we have Thomas’ encounter with the risen Lord. So lets have a look at that… In the beginning we are told that he was not with the disciples when Jesus appeared to them on the evening of that first Easter Sunday. No reason is given for his absence. It’s hard to argue from silence, but perhaps he was away wrestling alone with his having deserted Jesus and not died with him, or that he had this hope of a way, truth and life and it had ended in the tragedy of the cross. Like the other disciples he was wrestling with the despair of shattered hope.

When he finally joins the disciples he is greeted by their affirmation that they have seen the Lord… but is not willing to as EM Blaiklock puts it”hazard his life on a false report, mistake, hallucination or fabrication.” Or even an imposter. I don’t know about you but there is something real and honest and very human almost fitting into our twenty first century scientific mindset about Thomas’ response… “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and feet and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side I will not believe.” 

We are told a week later they were in the house again and this time Thomas was with them, the door was locked and Jesus appeared in their midst. We are confronted by the fact that Jesus resurrection body is somehow different, not limited as our bodies are, and Jesus is able to be present with his people physically even in a locked room. He is no longer confined by space and time… Resurrection is not reanimation or resuscitation, it is something new and different. But it is Jesus, he greets the disciples with his normal greeting “peace be with you” he looks straight at Thomas and addresses Thomas’ doubts and conditions almost word for word “put your finger here; see my hands: reach out your hand and put it in my side” and addresses Thomas’ affirmation unless I will not believe by saying ‘stop doubting and believe’.

Often we think that doubts are not a good thing they separate us and drag us away from God. But I love the fact that Jesus is able to address Thomas’ doubt and his questions. God is not put off by our doubts if we are open about them and open to seeking the truth they can lead us into a deeper understanding of, and encounter with Christ. Jesus shows us his care for Thomas, and I think that as we wrestle with things, doubts we can trust that Christ cares for us and is able and willing to reveal more of himself to us.

 

Thomas now responds “My Lord and My God”. There is a famous painting by reformation artist Caravaggio called the ‘incredulity of Thomas’ which has him touching Jesus, examining the evidence as he wished, but in the gospel we are not told that he does that. Jesus tells us that he believed because he saw. We Simply know that he responds to Jesus with “my Lord and My God.” Thomas is the person in John’s gospel who fully understands what the resurrection means. We are used to that affirmation of the deity of Jesus, but Thomas is a first century Jewish man, so for him this statement of worship is profound, amazing shocking even. He is willing to affirm that Jesus is divine “my Lord and My God’ that the resurrection validates who Jesus said he was his unique relationship with God. Part of Thomas’ reluctance to believe was the enormity of what it means. To believe that Jesus rose from the dead challenges us to ask the question who is Jesus? Thomas gives us the most amazing wonderful and challenging answer. Jesus is the unique son of God… was with God and was God before the creation as the writer of John’s gospel told us way back in the beginning.

Thomas according to Paul Metzger takes us through a very human process, one that Elizabeth Eliot says Christians go through when they face difficult faith crushing times. We go through Despair, the pain and suffering of a crucifixion like occurrence, to doubt, where is God in this, is God good, is it just a dead end, and finally on to devotion as God responds to us… “my Lord and my God”. This is the process Thomas works through. Old testament scholar Walter Bruggermann sees the same process in the psalms where there are the laments Psalms of disorientation, when it’s like we’ve been picked up by storm waves and spun round and round, and also Psalms of re orientation where the psalmist has found themselves comforted and assured because of the abiding presence of God… I mentioned U2 at the beginning of this message and they sing a song called stuck in a moment which articulates the danger we can face as we work through this process of getting stuck in it… stuck in a moment and we can’t get out of it… but if we trust the risen Jesus to meet us in that process we can be moved to that place of devotion, of transformation.

We don’t have a record of Thomas’ in scripture after the ascension and Pentecost, the scriptures, Acts and the epistles follows the spread of the gospel westward into the heart of the roman empire, with Peter and then Paul. It fits our Eurocentric understanding of the spread of Christianity. But that affirmation “ My Lord and My God spurred Thomas also to devote his life to telling people of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised to life again ‘My lord and My God”. Thomas we are told from other early church sources went east. He went outside the Roman Empire with the gospel. The church in Assyria claim that Thomas was the first to proclaim the gospel in there region. He is also seen to have taken the gospel to India. Both northern India and the southern region, even the early church in Sri Lanka trace their heritage back to Thomas. We have a group of Indian Christians who use our hall for birthday celebrations, they are part of a church in India that traces its roots back to Thomas. Thomas may have even gone to China with the gospel. We do know that he died by being run through by a lance in India in 72 AD. That he is considered the patron saint of India that that affirmation of ‘My Lord and My God’ took him way out of his comfort zones way out into the world to tell the story of Jesus. He was a faithful apostle convinced of who Jesus was. That is the challenge that the affirmation ‘My Lord and My God” really does bring to us as well. If Jesus is raised from the dead we are confronted with who he is, and it changes everything.

The passage does not finish with Thomas’ affirmation. Jesus gets the last word. He says to Thomas “You believe because you have seen”… then it’s almost as if Jesus turns from focusing from Thomas to look at those who this gospel was first written to, and beyond them to you and I today. If this was a movie it is a breaking the fourth wall moment. Jesus looks at us at you and me and he gives a beatitude “blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed”. That’s us… we have the witness of scripture, the witness of an empty tomb, the witness of people like the twelve, Mary Magdalene and the other women, of peter and Thomas and we have come to believe in Jesus, crucified and resurrected  as our Lord and our God. Because of the resurrection and Jesus ascension we have been given the Holy Spirit, and Christ dwells within us.

Then the gospel writer figuratively comes and stands with Jesus and addresses his readers. He tells us the purpose he has written the gospel. John tells us that he has chosen these specific things Jesus said and did so we would believe. The gospel is a series of signs and wonders and Jesus affirmations and teaching, based on them… so that we may believe. Believe in Jesus, the word made flesh, who was crucified and rose to life again, believe in Jesus as the messiah, gods anointed one, and the son of God and through that belief that we may have life… We may not see Jesus physically raised from the dead but we are not called to a blind faith, we have these witness accounts.

This series on witnesses to the resurrection is designed to give us confidence in the physical resurrection of Jesus. That you can believe… that in your own life we too can proclaim ‘My lord and my God’. I don’t know if it sends you out to India but it does invite us to step out and to a life of following Jesus where the spirit leads. ‘My Lord and My God’ is just not to be the soundtrack of our lives… but the very essence of our life… the focus and driving force of our life  and where we find life… abundant full life and eternal life in and with the risen Christ.