Well, here we are once again. It’s the annual St. Thomas Bash. No, it’s not a party, at least not in the usual sense. It is like school kids making fun of the one student who is different. What were some of those things? Freckles, olive skin, kinky hair, albinism, stuttering, coke bottle glasses, crutches, wrong neighborhood. Whatever the difference was, we weren’t very nice, were we? We didn’t want to open the doors of our lives and let that person in, so we made fun of them in order to keep them out and maintain our identity.
That’s what we do with Thomas. We make fun of his demand to touch the risen Lord before he will believe. The disciples often acted like a bunch of school children, and this was just another one of those situations.
Thomas could have been jealous that everyone else got to see Jesus and he didn’t. Or maybe Thomas was an intuitive learner. Perhaps he liked to study things to discern the implications before making a decision or commitment. He’s called “the Twin.” Maybe he wasn’t really a twin but someone who looked at things from all angles, so that going into things, he was of two minds.
The other ten disciples and the women were all high on the news they were telling Thomas that Jesus had risen. Thomas was trying to process that information. Were all of them drunk on something? Were they hallucinating? Thomas was trying to assess the truth of what they were telling him. He wasn’t denying what they were telling him, he just wanted a reference point from which to judge their news.
In many ways, Thomas represents the majority of people with whom the former disciples, now apostles, come in contact with as the church blossomed and grew in the weeks and years following Jesus’ resurrection and the Day of Pentecost. In last analysis, Thomas was anything but a doubter. He went on to travel to India and evangelize the Jewish diaspora community there to form the Mar Thoma Church, one of the oldest Christian communities.
The discerning side of Thomas counter-balances the parts of the church which have always been drawn to powerful preachers and charismatic leaders. We see this reflected in Paul's letters – particularly the letters to Corinth, and Paul’s attempts to instruct them in the struggle they face in discerning which of the preachers and leaders available to them were really faithful to Christ's way of leading (1 Corinthians 1:10-13). Paul also noted that they had a tendency to focus on the spectacular gifts to the detriment to the fullness of the Spirit and of kingdom-living among them.
The community of faith always struggles to be faithful to the way of God and of Christ, and is always tempted to seek alternate, worldly ways of being successful, surviving, having an impact, accomplishing (rather than being) the mission. The account of Thomas helps to shape that on-going struggle with faithfulness.
This is not a new struggle. It is reflected in the Gospel stories of the disciples struggling to understand and accept the way of the cross (Mark 8:31-33, 9:30-32), asking Jesus to give them to seats of power (Mark 10:35-40), asking if now is the time for the kingdom to be inaugurated (Mark 13:3-4), etc. A skilled propagandist would have left these stories out. However, they speak of the human condition. They were included because it was a way of instructing the early church in faithful discernment about the true and faithful way to go about their business to proclaiming the Good News of the Savior who triumphs over sin and death, rather than fighting against the powers and principalities of a world ruled by oppressive regimes, hate, distrust, greed, and fear.
Seventy years ago this past week the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was martyred for his activity against one such oppressive regime that, like every other oppressive regime, thought that there were no allegiances greater than that which it demanded. Yet the Barmen Declaration, of which Bonhoeffer was one of the principle authors, clearly states,
“Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.” (1)Bonhoeffer is reported to have said that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. That seems odd, yet it makes sense. The oppressive regimes of the world are always certain. There can be no deviation from the established line of thought. Certainty creates dependency. As long as all the established structures and ideologies hold, everything is fine. Everyone can depend on that. Not only for stasis, but also for interpretation. Only what the head honcho says is true. Only the leader’s world view is valid. Followers are dependent on the leader for what they are allowed to think and do.
Faith on the other hand is trust. Faith was never meant to be an affirmation of some frail, static body of beliefs, cast in stone and incapable of surviving a collision with empirical evidence. Our faith is dynamic and vibrant. It is not an intellectual exercise.
Faith is a fire that burns within us, fueled by God’s grace. We must tend the fire or be left in the cold ashes of indifference. That means asking questions, posing conundrums, wrestling with inconsistencies and uncertainties.
Constant fidelity is the ideal of faith. But few of us achieve it. We are human. We get tired. We get distracted. We are sinners. We serve our pride and our appetites. We stray from our faith. We may even deny it. But faith is not our creation. We did not will it into being, anymore than we willed ourselves into being.(2)
Faith means unlocking the doors, not locking them and bolting them fast against the world. The church is full of locked doors that are images of certainty rather than faith. The church cringes behind these doors because it is afraid of the world. These doors make it difficult if not impossible for the outside world to come in and experience the grace of believing in Christ.
What are these doors? Some of these doors are ritual, archaic or arcane language, a limited number of acceptable musical genres and instrumentations, a hierarchy of leadership, a mentality of letting the professionals do all the work, a voyeuristic consumerism of being entertained, well-built walls of individual privatism, an arm’s length fear of getting involved so just throw money at issues and keep one’s hands clean.
Thomas was not afraid of getting his hands dirty or risking involvement or questioning certainty. Like the father of the sick son who said to Jesus, “I have faith; help my lack of faith” (Mark 9:24), Thomas wanted the free gift of faith deepened and strengthened.
So we come to the Lord's Table with nothing in order to receive everything. We come doubting, discerning, seeking, acknowledging the power of Christ and his Spirit in our own lives and in the life of the world around us. We come, to unlock and open the doors of fear, dependency, certainty so that we may experience a gracious God whose ideas about life in its fullness always far outstrip our ability to imagine or understand. We come, having faith, and needing help for our lack of faith. We come to touch eternity through the commonest of elements – bread and grape juice. However we are, we come as individuals to become community, to be community, to proclaim a risen Savior.
Alleluia! Thanks be to God.
(1) “Barmen Declaration,” Book of Confessions, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), (Louisville, KY: Office of the General Assembly, 2014).
(2) David Sellery, “Speaking to the Soul: Touching Faith,” http://episcopalcafe.com, April 7, 2015.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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