Sermon – Trusting What We Know
Exodus 15:1-11; John 20:19-31
4/12/26
Today we follow the gospel accounts of events after Jesus rose from the dead. One of the most famous and significant stories is the one we have today from John’s Gospel about Thomas, one of the original 12 disciples (and who apparently may have had a brother very similar in appearance). You heard the passage, maybe for the 100th time, and the story has not changed. Jesus appears to the group of disciples except for Thomas; later they tell him about the appearance; and he swears that he will not accept their witness unless he has the physical evidence right there for him to see and touch. Of course, the physical evidence for someone who was recently crucified is quite gruesome. Still, he refuses to believe unless he can touch the wounds that prove that he is the same Jesus who was crucified. 2000 years later, we are familiar enough with this story that Thomas even has a nickname – Doubting Thomas. He is the only New Testament character to be singled out like this, and this is his signature story that defines his place in the narrative.
Thomas’ story is a significant one because the community of John who kept this story and shared this story needs for us to hear this story. Among many stories that were never recorded, this one is. They thought it was important enough to pass this message along, so we should probably listen. One question we need to consider is whether Thomas is the villain, the hero, or the fool. John’s gospel is trying to teach us something through Thomas. Is he the villain, the hero, or the fool?
Someone with the common name “Doubting” is probably not someone you would want to look up to, especially in a context of faith. That moniker makes it easy to (and we do) denigrate Thomas as the standout of this band of disciples who refused to accept the resurrection as told. We know the world of faith depends on faith, not doubt. Jesus himself indicates that while it is nice that Thomas does eventually believe, the truly good and virtuous and blessed children of God are the ones who are not like Thomas – the ones who are more trusting and more faithful. Blessed are the ones who believe without having to see first. Thomas feels like a weaker, JV version of Jesus’ followers. Poor, poor Doubting Thomas.
On top of that, there are plenty of people who would consider it sinful, maybe even evil, to reject what should be believed. It is not like the other disciples were asking Thomas to believe that there were unicorns in a distant land or that dark matter exists (there’s a throwback to last week). These were Jesus’ disciples, the people who knew Jesus better than perhaps anyone, and they had a heart for Jesus more than perhaps anyone, and they were confident that Jesus had appeared to them all – not to just one in private but to all of them together except for Thomas. How could Thomas NOT believe what they were saying? He exchanged what should have been healthy, earned trust for the refusal to believe his closest friends. They had already seen impossible things together before, but he could not believe this? That just seems deeply wrong. Maybe his doubt makes him the villain of this story. One way to read this is “Don’t be like Thomas. Instead, be faithful and true.” There are church traditions that frown, frown, frown on any hint of doubt and what that might mean. Some doubts may even be worse with the refusal to believe that Jesus rose from the dead right at the top. This is what makes us who we are as followers of the RISEN Lord.
Or maybe Thomas is the hero. At the end of Mathew’s Gospel in the passage we call the Great Commission, Jesus meets the disciples up on a mountain by the sea, and the text explicitly says that some of them doubted. Maybe Thomas was not the only one who had to question something so significantly difficult to fathom or accept. Maybe he was the only one courageous enough to express his reservations. It takes strength to stand up to your friends when you cannot agree with them. Furthermore, doubt itself is a vital, foundational element to learning and growth. If we only ever accepted the way things are or the way we perceive things, then there will never be a need to go beyond what we know or think we know. We will never arrive at new thoughts, new insights, new discoveries, and new understanding. That newness leads to growth. By church tradition, Thomas ended up travelling further from Jerusalem in their quest to spread the gospel than any of his brothers. He ended up in modern day India by church tradition and founded Christianity there before he ultimately gave his life there. If this is true (BIG IF), then he had to have the most trust to travel so far to such a strange place to them. His strength of doubt became the foundation for his strength of faith. Maybe he is the hero.
Or maybe Thomas is the fool. This is not to mean he is an idiot, but he was just a regular person like any of us who tends to act foolishly. If the life of Jesus was a season of Survivor, none of us would have made it to the end. They, on the other hand, had already done the impossible by still being around and together, but they had all also just abandoned Jesus just as he predicted while was still alive, with Peter the most notable one, but Jesus still found them together and gave them a job: Go tell people about me. Yes, Thomas looks silly here. He was shamed for his lack of faith in front of the others and all of us. You can hear it in his voice. He does not even need to touch Jesus. Just Jesus’ being there unravels his doubt, and Jesus did care enough to come back. He wanted Thomas to believe, too. The other disciples had to see it, just like him. None of them believed the women who went to the tomb that first Sunday. Thomas is a guy just like us, and he was still there sticking it out with the other disciples. He was way over his head trying to comprehend things that make him look silly so many years later. The truth was so big and so hard and seemed absurd. Thomas fell right into it.
I am not sure about you, but if there is any aspect of Thomas with which I feel like I can identify, it is Thomas the fool. He is caught up in his emotions and the struggles of his brain. He knows there are things that must be and things that must not be. There is truth and there is fiction – fact and fantasy. I cannot see him being playing a villain or trying to be the hero. He was hurting. He was broken. He was disappointed. He knew that his teacher, friend, and Messiah was brutally and unjustly murdered, and Thomas hid like everyone else. Now, the others are saying that every related law of nature just got flipped, especially the most bedrock one – death itself. Jesus came back in the flesh, and apparently, he had been saying that was going to happen for a while. Thomas is a fool of a man, just like me. Just like us all.
In his honest foolishness, he opens the door to an incredibly important issue, however. We live in a day and age of unprecedented, fabricated truth. You can find many videos out there that seem entirely live action with real people talking to us on the screen while the images are telling us that they are completely computer generated. We are well past Hollywood magic and CGI. Any one of us can make a video that looks completely real about anything. Truth is precious, and truth is being pressed. Honestly, we should all keep a measure of skepticism. Don’t believe everything you read, hear, or see. Question what you encounter unless you know it is true. There are whole industries out there trying to make us believe everything but the truth. They are trying to take our money, our vote, and our freedom.
When Moses was singing in the book of Exodus, he was praising God for what he knew was true. They had just crossed the Sea, and the forces of Egypt were vanquished, never to be seen by them again. Moses had witnessed a miracle of miracles following a whole series of signs. He sang his heart out in praise of God for what he knew was true. There was no question as to who had saved the people. The people would begin (again) questioning God’s saving in the coming days, but then and there in that moment, there is absolute certainty.
It is truly a good and wonderful thing to have a solid foundation upon which to stand and build. It is also a necessary gift to question and even to doubt our assumptions. Test the spirits so to speak. Find out what is true, even if we have look foolish doing it. We are not going to know all the answers, and this world is making truth so much more complicated and malleable. There is truth, however, that we can keep close. God has always been and will always be love. It might not always look or feel like it, but love is the rule of life and our greatest truth. Jesus lived this out and continues to show us what this means. It means that you and I and the neighbor down the street and the random stranger and one who has it in for you are part of this network of love. We are part of this life of love. We have to begin and end with love. And this love has our best interest at heart. I might look like a fool trying to understand what this love means for us today, but I have to try. I have to admire Thomas for trying to make sense of things and to find the greater truth. Thankfully, he found what he needed to know. In Christ, we can, also. I may be wrong about all kinds of things, but I am right about this one. True God-given love is true.
To God be the glory. Amen.