April 11, 2021
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
1 John 1:1-4; John 20:19-31[1]
Have you ever been not believed? “No, really. I saw it. It
was right there!” It’s even worse
when the doubt is delivered in a condescending tone. “Yeah? Suuure. Oh, I believe you.” When the other disciples
told Thomas “We have seen the Lord,” they must have been hurt when he said,
“Unless I see… I will not believe.” This was one of their own brothers, one who
had lived and travelled and experienced the living Jesus right along with them.
Why wouldn’t he believe them?
It is easy for us to impose our twenty-first century
scientific worldview on the situation and defend Thomas. After all, we are
trained to be skeptical, to test and verify what we hear. Don’t trust anything
you read on the internet, right? Thomas is suspicious. He didn’t experience it
himself, so he needs to see in order to believe. That’s understandable. How can
he know it is really Jesus if he doesn’t see the wounds?
Sometimes wounds are a tool of conveying identity or
experience. Scars have a tale to tell – “I’ve been there.” We can learn a lot
from people who carry the scars of their experiences. Want to know what combat
is really like? Ask a wounded veteran. Want to know what prison is like? Talk
with an ex-con. Want to know what to expect from your upcoming surgery? Ask your
neighbor who has been through it. “We’re you there when they crucified my
Lord?” Show me the scars, Jesus, and I’ll know it’s really you.
When I was a student at the Chicago Theological Seminary, we
had a youth program called DEPTH. Yes,
we brought young people to the seminary for a weekend event. The word was an
acronym. The “P” stood for “Partner”; an event where we would bring two
different youth groups together for a weekend of learning and service together.
The two groups would often be from different contexts – one suburban,
Caucasian, the other urban and African-American or Latino.
One weekend in particular we invited guest speakers, one of
whom was a former gang member and CeaseFire[2]
outreach worker. CeaseFire was an
anti-violence program which would attempt to mitigate conflict on the street
before it turned violent. These people were often former gang members, who used
their street credibility as an inroad to show community members better ways of
communicating with each other and how to resolve conflicts peacefully.
When our guest spoke about his experiences, and why he had
joined the gang, the room grew silent. He spoke about a deep need for
belonging, to be part of something bigger than himself, and to be important and
respected in a world where the color of his skin, his accent, and the
neighborhood he was from labeled him as less than others. He had lived that
life, nearly died from it, and finally escaped from it. As he spoke, you knew
that TRUTH was being spoken. He had the scars to prove it. The kids in the room
who had been showing off and acting tough were now hanging on his every word,
and we had to start dinner an hour late.
This man, now in his thirties, had learned
conflict-resolution skills, understood the legal and penal system from the
inside, and had a way of helping kids see the inherent value in themselves.
Despite all the strikes against him, despite all the negativity, racism, and
fear directed at him, he had found a way to respect himself, and respect others,
to value life more than money, peace more than power, love more than hatred. “I
was a gangster;” he said, “now, I’m a person.”
Must we see in order to believe? Is seeing truly believing?
Are we prisoners of our senses, distrusting and rejecting whatever we cannot
see, touch, taste, smell, or hear? Thomas had
seen. He was there when Jesus gave sight to the blind, fed the five-thousand,
and healed the lepers; and, significantly, so had the disciples who bring him
the news of the resurrection. Does he not trust even his friends? They have
lived through the same earth-shattering experience of the arrest and
crucifixion of their master, and yet Thomas cannot bring himself to trust in
their word. And this is where the community of believers is threatened from the
very start.
Has something happened between Thomas and the other
disciples? There is no mention of a falling-out in the Gospels. But for some
reason, Thomas doubts them. This is strange for a community built on love and
trust. Thomas challenges the credibility of the other disciples. Maybe it was
the betrayal by Judas that had shaken his faith in his friends.
Now, you won’t trust someone you think is a liar or a
hypocrite. This may be part of our current dilemma in politics and the news
media. We’re pretty sure the politicians and talk-show hosts are all liars and
hypocrites, or at least the other side is, and so we trust no one who doesn’t
reinforce our pre-conceived ideas. Sometimes we listen to what sounds good so
much that we forget that we don’t know these people or their true motivations. We
might fall into the trap of thinking that we can trust people whose job isn’t
to tell us the truth as much as it is to tell us what we want to hear.
But that wasn’t the dilemma for Thomas. These were fellow disciples;
the people Thomas probably knew better than anyone else. Did he think they were
liars or hypocrites? Was their word not good enough for him? What more proof
did he need?
It may be that there is no solid data, no verifiable proof or
empirical evidence that will convince us to believe something we’ve always
denied. Sometimes it’s easier to live with a lie; the truth can be too painful,
especially if it reveals our sins and shortcomings, our failures and
foolishness. Thomas might have thought, if Jesus is really alive, then I was
wrong to flee, to abandon him, to give up. Even worse, he’ll know what I’ve
done.
We don’t get to see the scars or touch the wounds. And yet,
if we are to move from death to life, we must have some faith. There is a point
when we must stop distrusting one another simply because we don’t like what we
hear. We must find a way to trust the motivations of the ones who love us, who know
us best, and who want us to grow toward health and wholeness.
It is possible to believe in God, to believe in the risen
Christ, and to carry on the work of the Church without proof. Even if our own
faith is shaky, even if we don’t have the same conviction as our fellow beloved
disciples, we can try to trust in them. If the Church is a community based on
love and trust, then we really do have to trust, and love, one another. Especially
when we hear the impossible, “We have seen the Lord.”
God, we find ourselves locked away, unable to love and trust.
Come into our presence. Speak your words of life into our hearts. Say to us
once again, “Do not doubt but believe.” Help us to know the risen Christ. Show
us his face reflected in those around us. May we, who have not seen, come to
believe and be blessed. Amen.
[1] The
scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard
Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of
the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] CeaseFire was an anti-violence program
and initiative of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention aimed at reducing
street violence by using outreach workers to interrupt potentially violent
situations. It ended in 2015.
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