Beyond the Benefit of a Doubt: Sermon for Easter 2A

This is the second Sunday of Easter, which means it’s “Thomas Sunday.” Last week, on Easter Day, we heard the story of Jesus’s appearance to Mary Magdalene, in the garden that contained the tomb. This week we hear about the second and the third of the five resurrection appearances at the end of John’s gospel. The second one we hear of today still takes place of Easter Sunday, and the third one a week later. 

Today we have heard again the story of how Jesus appeared to the disciples that Easter evening—all except Thomas. When Thomas hears about Jesus’s miraculous appearance, he doesn’t believe until he sees with his own eyes. One of the first details we hear is that the disciples are behind locked doors, for fear of their own people. I wonder if there’s anyone here who can relate to being shut away for fear right now? Being separated from friends and loved ones out of fear and anxiety of being struck down with no warning, perhaps wondering if we—and the whole world-- are being punished for something or wondering if we have been abandoned by God?

We live in a time right now when some, just like those disciples, question where God is in this pandemic, in this time of fear, anxiety, and mourning. Some even take that question to the level of disbelief. Yet the question might be better understood if we turn it around: it’s not that Jesus is missing, it’s that we do not recognize Jesus when we see him. Perhaps we discount him because we think he looks like a gardener. Perhaps we discount him because he appears to us in humble circumstances, or he looks different than we expect.

It is obvious in our gospel that Jesus has been changed by his Passion and Resurrection, and that even those who love and know him best have a very hard time recognizing him. Why should it be any better for us, 2,000 years later? Each and every story we hear after Jesus’s resurrection centers on the disciples’ confusion and a failure to recognize Jesus at first. Not just the story of Thomas. Doubt and confusion play a part in the story of every encounter with the risen Savior. There is no one thing that gets the disciples to recognize Jesus.

But perhaps we can hear this passage differently because of where we ourselves are, this year especially. Once again we are promised and reminded that, no matter what barriers separate us, Jesus always shows up. Jesus always seeks us out and finds us where we are. Even behind locked doors. Even when we erect barriers out of fear. Jesus finds us even in the locked room, when we have isolated ourselves. Despite any locked doors, Jesus stands among his beloved ones and says “Peace be with you.” Three times. Here is another strong promise of Jesus’s presence. He has not uttered these words since the Farewell Discourse. This reminds the disciples of the last time they heard these words in John 14:1—“Do not let your hearts be troubled…” at the moment of their greatest distress. 

The idea of peace is not a disembodied peace that Jesus offers—Jesus stands among them and among us, offering the peace of his presence to help assuage our doubts and anxiety. It’s the promise of Jesus’s presence among us that brings us peace.

We are reminded today that, because Jesus loves us individually, there is no pattern in how Jesus comes to us. Jesus adapts his approach to us based on where we are emotionally. With Mary Magdalene, as we remembered last Sunday, it’s in her name being called and hearing the voice of Jesus that she recognizes him. With Thomas, though, the recognition comes through seeing, and being in the presence of Jesus. We have a history of assuming that Thomas touched Jesus, but the text never says that he did, actually. Seeing is the critical thing—seeing, and the reassurance of the restoration of relationship between Jesus and those who love him. And those of us who have gone weeks without seeing co-workers, friends, family, and loved ones in person can certainly understand Thomas’s need to see—not just see, but be in the presence of those we love and so desperately miss. But like Thomas, we have to wait.

Despite what has been depicted in artwork through the centuries, the idea of Thomas not actually touching Jesus can be a powerful metaphor for us right now. As we miss being with each other, with friends and loved ones in particular, Jesus reminds us that presence can exist even when physical touch is impossible. That locked doors cannot keep Jesus away from us. Nor should locked doors keep us from still carrying the good news of Jesus Christ—risen and alive, loving, healing, never-failing—out into the world.

Thomas is the only one who gets the adjective “Doubting” attached to his name as a slur. But remember, in the story we hear today, ALL the apostles were doubtful, or they would not have been afraid. None of them were able to believe until they too had seen Jesus with their own eyes. Thomas is the one who is willing to admit the emotional crisis that all the apostles are feeling, which manifests itself in the locking of doors of the house where they were staying. The two incidents in which Thomas speaks in John’s gospel show him as brave enough, vulnerable enough, and honest enough to admit he has questions.

Doubt is a sign of engaging with our hope and our faith. Doubt is a sign that we are evaluating, learning through questioning—and being vulnerable enough to share those questions and ask for more information when we need it.

When seen without caricature, Thomas has always had a heroic quality to him in my mind. He is willing to admit that he has doubt. He doesn’t keep those doubts to himself, which would have been easier and far more popular. Thomas is willing to give voice to his doubts. And when he gives voice to them, his needs are met. He DOES get to see Jesus. He does get the proof his doubtful heart needs. 

Some would say that we, too, live in a time of doubt. I wonder. Perhaps we should take it a step further. We seem to live in a time of disbelief. Shaped by the modern sensibility, we fear being seen as naïve, gullible, credulous.

Some among us have also decided that authority comes from one’s own decision, rather than from fact, expertise, or authority. And those people endanger us all in their insistence that their hunches and their freedoms—freedoms granted from the bosom of community—are all that matter, that their independence is more important than consideration for others and for the communities which make their lives possible, whether they like that reality or not. 

They refuse to believe that they owe a responsibility to the very community which makes freedom possible. Freedom without responsibility and love for each other and the common good is anarchy. It treats others as mere tools, or worse, threats. Such anarchy is grounded in disbelief that rejects the gospel of Christ, which seeks to promote shalom: community, justice, and empathy as our responsibility for the most vulnerable among us.

Disbelief is the adamant unwillingness to be converted to a new reality, even when presented with evidence. Disbelief is the stopping of the ears to hear that which surrounds us. It is the stubborn rejection of the warnings of a traumatized planet, reeling from tons of pollutants and casual human disregard. Disbelief snuffs out the light of inquiry and douses the wick with water. 

Doubt, on the other hand, is the oxygen that can make the flame burn brighter. Doubt invites examination, and is willing to adapt to new information. When Thomas DOES see Jesus and see his wounds as proof, he exclaims “My Lord and My God!” He abandons his skepticism in the face of proof, and states the unthinkable—that Jesus is not just the Son of God, but IS God. All while also being the same beloved, fully human teacher Thomas has known and loved. We have a God who is fully human and fully divine—that’s why Thomas’s confession is important. 

We are called to proclaim a Savior who is with us in our suffering because he still bears the marks of his own suffering. Those marks Jesus bears are there to remind us that God loves us that much. And we, as the Church, are called to bear our own marks into the world, so that the world, too, can see and believe. These marks and wounds are the sign of a love greater than words can express—a love that, when we open our hearts to it, overflows and spills out of us into a world starving for it.

Thomas’s doubt has led him further toward being a bold, powerful witness to who Jesus truly is. Thomas may have been initially wary or confused, but who isn’t at one time or another? The flame of belief, and of yearning to believe, burns within Thomas, and despite the locked doors, he remains still open to possibility. Especially to the possibility that his relationship with Jesus continues even after the cross and the tomb. And that's a precious lesson for us today, as well.

We have much to learn from Thomas, because Thomas reflects the willingness to suspend stubbornness, cynicism, and anxiety, and to allow the light of mystery to penetrate, bringing him to new understanding and enlightenment, remaking what he has previously known. Thomas may doubt, but he is willing to admit that he does not know everything. He is willing to be shaped and reformed in light of revelation, and to open himself to a new understanding of reality. Thomas is willing to own up to being human.

May we also be willing to doubt, to question, and to proclaim. May we be willing to suspend disbelief enough to see and hear what is right before us. May we make a space within our imaginations to receive new truths, allowing the risen Living Savior to break in among us, and reshape what we think we know.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 service broadcast on Facebook Live on April 19, 2020 for St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Acts 2:14a,22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31


Notes:
I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis for hosting a webinar via Zoom on this text on Friday, April 17, 2020.