Our Sermons

Bible Passage: John 20:19-31
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  April 19, 2020

Doubting Thomas…It’s an unfortunate nickname. Because it wasn’t just Thomas, you know. Unbelief was the default reaction to Jesus’ resurrection. Even his closest followers didn’t catch on before his death or in its immediate aftermath. The Gospels aren’t filled with stories about how people were all waiting for Jesus in confidence, instead we read about how they scattered and hid in fear. So it wasn’t just Thomas. But his specific story of doubt is recorded for a reason. The Gospel of John, specifically, likes to address problems by characterizing the actions of one person. So it’s not just Thomas’ issue and it’s not just his statement. His story is here to teach all of us a lesson on doubt.

Thomas doesn’t get much press except for his skeptical statement here in John 20, but it seems that virtually every time he said something in the Gospels, it was significant. There are three occasions. And in each one Thomas shows himself to be one of solid, grounded confidence who is not afraid to ask tough questions and who has no intention of papering over the truth.

In the first instance, Jesus received word that his friend Lazarus had died at Bethany. Now Bethany is about eight miles from Jerusalem and is the center of power for Jesus’ enemies who at this point  want to stone him. So when Jesus announces his intention to go to Bethany the disciples try to convince him this is a very bad idea. But when Jesus makes it clear that he’s going, foremost among the disciples, Thomas is prepared to follow through on the cost of his commitment. Thomas says, “Let’s go too, so that we may die with him.” Now, that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement but Thomas’ loyalty is not at all shaky. If that’s what Jesus wanted to do, then so be it. In the second instance Thomas is the one who asks the tough question that everyone else wanted to.  At the Last Supper, Jesus was talking about going away but that his relationship with the disciples would continue and so on and so on. And I can just imagine the confusion quotient in the room growing rapidly. It is Thomas who steps in and asks the grounding question: “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way.”  To which Jesus responds with the famous words, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

That is the background to today’s encounter after Jesus’ resurrection. Sketch this picture in your mind. Thomas is someone resolutely committed to Jesus, prepared to do whatever Jesus asked of him. He’s a man of his word and he’s tough; he can take hard news straight up without sugar coating. No one was more loyal to Jesus. No one was more shattered by Jesus’ death than he was. But he wasn’t there when Jesus appeared to the disciples. For all he knew they had seen a ghost. He was not going to succumb to fantasy, which is sometimes what people resort to when the truth is too hard to accept. There were claims that the body had been stolen and Thomas wasn’t going to be deceived by the other disciples, his well-meaning, but grieving friends who had convinced themselves that Jesus was alive. Thomas flatly refused to take their word.  Not that he didn’t want to. But he simply had too much integrity to say that he trusted something he didn’t.“Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” The words he spoke tell us of the horror of what he experienced that Friday. The Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death are sparse on details, so it’s hard for us to feel what Thomas felt as Jesus died. In fact, Thomas’s declaration of doubt is the only time nails are mentioned in the Gospels as part of Jesus’s crucifixion. Most of what we know about Roman crucifixion we learn from other sources. The slaughter of Jesus outside Jerusalem had been so gruesome that it was all but impossible for Thomas to imagine a resurrection. True, Thomas had seen Lazarus’s resurrection. But Jesus had been there to raise him. How does a dead, mutilated man raise himself? “Unless I see…I will not believe.”

Have you ever had doubts? Have you ever wondered about this whole business of Jesus and the cross and his resurrection?  Have you ever asked yourself if your faith is really only superstition, some opiate for fear, some phase you’re moving through?  Have you ever wondered, “Am I a Christian only because of my parents? Or some other less-than-sincere reason?” Often we’re afraid to struggle with our doubts and we push them into the background. Sometimes it’s because we’re afraid of what we might find.  Sometimes we’re afraid of what others might think. Sometimes we think our doubts will be equated with faithlessness or evilness, which should never be the case. Sometimes we’re afraid that if we allow ourselves to entertain our doubts we might fall forever into the dark night of unbelief. I know as a younger man it was a terrifying experience to have people ask me questions about certain things in the faith I struggled with myself. These doubts are hard to talk about, but even more important to talk about. My friends, don’t push doubts into the back of your mind and pretend you don’t have them.  Rather have the courage of faith to admit you’ve got some doubts too. Faith feels shaky at times. Sometimes it’s because we stop working on our doubts too soon and just resign ourselves to having them. It’s like getting to a hard level of a video game and instead of working through it, you just decide to play something else. We do that with faith. There are hard things that we need to wrestle with, to work through, and it is different for each person, but the worst thing we could do is bottle it up and focus on something else. My friends, don’t do that. May we learn from Thomas to speak about our doubt with other Christians. Even at the risk of their misunderstanding.

And give the other disciples credit as well.  They could have shunned Thomas, given him the cold shoulder, thrown him out of the club for his doubting, but they didn’t. They, apparently, were learning what we all could stand to learn—that our identity, our confidence, our esteem comes from Christ, not from how we stack up against others in faith. (i.e. more doubts vs less doubts, more knowledge vs less knowledge, long time in the faith vs new time in the faith).  What matters most is what unites us: faith in Jesus Christ and his love. 

The love of Jesus is, after all, the one thing that ultimately convinced Thomas. One week later, Jesus appears again among his disciples and almost immediately singles Thomas out. Jesus looks him in the eye and offers him the exact visual and tangible demonstration that Thomas said would be necessary to dispel his doubt: “Put your finger here; see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it into my side.  Stop doubting and believe.”  And Thomas did. True to character he said, “My Lord and my God!” without reservation. Notice that Jesus doesn’t shame Thomas for doubting. Jesus does not extinguish a smoldering wick or crush a bruised reed. He doesn’t encourage doubt, of course, but he doesn’t call Thomas faithless. Doubt is not the absence of faith. If we didn’t have faith in the first place what would be there to doubt? We can only doubt while believing. The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is unbelief. In fact, it is through overcoming doubts, through wrestling with doubt, that faith grows resilient.

Timothy Keller writes about doubt in his book A Reason For God. He says, “A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.” Thomas’ doubt was transformed into testimony. May we be able to trust that the same will be true for us. That when we have doubts, if we take them to Jesus. If we keep coming back to his Word. If we keep meeting with Christians. Through this process of wrestling, the Holy Spirit will use the means of grace to strengthen our faith. When we bring our doubt to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, will give us antibodies to attack the Devil’s lies and the world’s skepticism. We will emerge on the other side of doubt stronger than before, deeply rooted, and able to give a strong testimony for Jesus Christ. We too will say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God.”

There’s one last thing I need to talk about today. Jesus answered Thomas’ confession of faith “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”   Jesus’ words here remind me of something which he said after healing the man born blind at the end of chapter 9. Jesus  said, “I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (John 9:39). Jesus had come to open the eyes of the heart. Eyesight, visual proof if you will, was never a guarantee that people really “saw” Jesus. I think about the chief priests and the pharisees. Or Judas, perhaps the greatest example of this tragic truth. Proof does not equal faith. That’s where Thomas was most mistaken. He said, “Unless I see, I will not believe.”  But faith, by definition, is being sure of what we hope for and confidence of what we cannot see (Hebrews 11:1). Faith should not demand sight. 

Physically risen from the dead, standing with his nail-marked hands outstretched, Jesus said to Thomas, “Stop doubting and believe.” Because at that point it wasn’t so much faith as forced admission. But Jesus knows that we cannot turn off our doubts like a faucet. And so in love Jesus turns to us and says to our hearts which often long for proof, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Do you hear the encouragement of your Savior today? He still comes in love to be with you in your doubt. And his love, his sacrifice, and his resurrection, has accomplished your salvation for you even when you have trouble understanding it. And we are blessed, comparatively more blessed than Thomas even with all his proof, because we walk by faith and not by sight. 

Despite the fact that I can’t trace the nail marks in Jesus’ hands, I believe that he truly rose from the dead. And more than this, will one day raise me and all who believe to life everlasting. And I believe that Jesus comes in kindness to all who doubt to encourage them in faith with his love. And I believe, through the Holy Spirit, that you will grow stronger in faith as you wrestle with your doubt and confess Jesus as your Lord and your God.

Amen.