The disciples weren’t in Galilee yet. No, they were still in Jerusalem, hiding in the upper room, afraid of those who were against their Lord. The reading as a whole today shows a severe lack of faith on the part of most of the people involved. Jesus comes to visit His apostles not once, but twice. Not once, but twice does He enter in through a locked door. Not once, but twice, does He have to demonstrate to His disciples that He really is alive.
The usual thing to do with a sermon for this Sunday is to either beat up on Thomas for not trusting the word of the disciples or to praise him for his inquisitive, independent spirit. While I’m not sure either of these are fair reactions to today’s gospel, I will say that we have to do a little of both. But it’s not really Thomas we’re praising and condemning. It is ourselves.
What was Thomas asking for that the other Apostles had not already received? Nothing really, for they had all received a personal appearance by Christ.
So, where precisely does Thomas’ sin lie? In doubting? Perhaps, but more than that, in his disbelief of the Apostolic Word. The account of Christ’s appearance in John 20 gives us a powerful text for our lives as Christ’s people. We pray constantly to the Lord along with the unnamed man who begged Jesus to heal his child, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief!”
The Lord had appeared to the Twelve, but Thomas wasn’t with them on the evening of the first Easter day. Where was he? We do not know. And it is here that Thomas’ problem begins. Thomas was not with his brothers. He was not with the Body of Christ. He was not gathered with them. A fertile ground was thus prepared for Thomas’ doubts. And so also today, for us, when we absent ourselves from gathering around the Lord's gifts and Word with the Body of Christ, Satan moves in quickly to plant doubt. How can we be rooted to the vine and yet be absent from where we are nourished by the Vine Himself? There is nothing in the Scriptures to suggest that the faith is a “me and Jesus” type of thing. Poor Thomas. It wasn’t even for him “me and Jesus”: just Thomas—all alone, apart from the Apostles.
The Apostles, having received the Lord’s peace, were anxious to tell Thomas what they had seen and heard. This is what the Apostolic ministry is all about, the ministry that continues to this day among all faithful undershepherds of Christ, called by the church and put into office to proclaim and teach and preach and so to strengthen the Lord's royal priesthood.
And so the Apostles said, “We have seen the Lord!” But Thomas responds with these bone-chilling words, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Notice the “I” and the “my” and then the “never.”
In our post-modern culture, doubt has nearly become a virtue. It is little surprise that we would like to praise Thomas for his doubts. Who of us does not doubt? One hymn in our hymnal basically talks about Thomas in terms of a modern skeptic. He is seen as a factual, self-reliant man. I’m not convinced this is the whole picture. Wasn’t it Thomas who a short time earlier had beckoned his fellow disciples to go along that they might die with Jesus, when they were about to go see Lazarus? Thomas was a man of stubborn faith, a man who would buck the crowds and hold to what was right. But the horror of death had gone a long way toward making Thomas doubt his fellow disciples. His doubt was not the problem, so much as it was his stubbornness in it. Yet, there can be no excuse making for doubt, only repentance. That is the way the Holy Spirit uses the Law of God to handle doubt, so the healing balm of Gospel can be applied. Doubt is no virtue and it is only “natural” in light of the Fall into sin, which has corrupted all things and set us at enmity with God from the moment of our birth. Doubt may be natural, but it is certainly no good if it ends up in disbelief!
Even so, Thomas’ greater sin was not his doubt, but his disbelief! How chilling is the word “never” he uses. He knew better. He had seen Jesus’ power over life and death. Why could he not trust the words of his fellow disciples?
Where in your life is the doubt? Where is the disbelief? And when have you felt the “never”— that deep, black pit into which doubt and disbelief leads, the hopeless recesses it brings and the darkness into which we are plunged by doubt and disbelief. Recognize these times for what they are: times of temptation by the forces of darkness and evil. The prowling Satanic lion’s breath is on your neck in these dark moments. Pray that you not fall into temptation! As we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “deliver us from evil!”.
We are called to flee from disbelief and doubt, to run as fast as we can away from it! Instead, we should join our brothers and sisters in Christ where the Word given to the Apostles is preached and where the Lord’s treasures of salvation are given out in Word and Sacrament. Hear the absolving word of Christ from your pastor, or from a brother and sister in Christ. The presence of Christ is of no value to anyone unless that presence is a gracious, giving and forgiving presence. It is precisely in the Gospel's absolution—the cleansing from sins by the promise and command of God—that we receive the blessing and treasure of the present Lord. We have the certainty that this absolution works in today’s text as well, where Jesus tells His disciples, “If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.” (John 20:23) This power of the keys is one of the greatest abilities that God’s church on earth has—the privilege and right to use God’s own power of forgiveness. Do not neglect this gift!
Eight days later Thomas was with the Apostles and again the Lord appears and mercifully shows Himself to Thomas. But do you notice what the text says? Eight days before he had appeared and the doors were locked. Eight days later those doors were still locked! Pentecost had not yet happened. The Apostles were still cowering in fear, even after their Lord’s appearance! And so we as well, we too find ourselves cowering behind all kinds of locked doors. Doors locked by our sin, our disbelief, our doubt. We lock the doors as much to keep our selves in as to keep others out. We lock our doors so as to not let anyone hit us with the truth which might shake us out of our lethargy, which might demand more than a half-hearted response to the news that Christ is risen. We struggle through our lives with the tension between the our nature as saints before God, in Christ, and as sinners. Where are your locked doors?
As followers of Christ, chosen by Him in the waters of Holy Baptism, we are called to confess that we do lock our doors. We are called to confess the sin in our lives that locks doors to Christ and to others. Having confessed, we are called also to repent of it—to throw away the key, or, perhaps more properly, to give the key over to the proper owner, Jesus, whose claim will not be denied by our foolish selfishness and desires to makes things into what we want rather than what He wants.
And so the Lord appears then and again speaks words of peace to His Apostles. To Thomas he invites him to touch and feel and see that in fact He is risen. And then Christ says to Thomas, “Do not disbelieve, but believe!” Although Thomas was faithless, although Thomas sinned by not trusting the good news of Jesus, yet Jesus did not turn His back on Thomas. Although we lock our hearts and lives to our Jesus so often, whether by not loving God the way we should or not caring for each other as Christ cares for us, we have a promise that cannot be taken away. As Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2, “If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.”
In this season of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, this season in which we recall His life which never ends, we remember and rejoice in the Lord’s promises to us, as we celebrated last week in the Lord’s Supper: “Take and eat, this is my body, given for you. This is my blood, shed for you.” The great “for you” was Thomas’ salvation and is ours. Christ, in your place on the Cross, receiving the just punishment you deserve, all for you! His righteousness given. Your unrighteousness taken by your Lord. And to you, as to Thomas, the Lord says, “Do not disbelieve, but believe!” For His blood cleanses you from all sin, opens your heart to receive the gifts He gives. You are forgiven. Each and ever sin is washed away, removed, as far as East is from West—forgiven!
He loves you beyond anything you can comprehend, but some day, when you see him face-to-face, you will gaze directly into the eyes of Love Incarnate and at that very moment you will know joy unspeakable. What hope! What joy! What a blessing!
And until that day, rejoice in the Word, first delivered to the apostles that first Easter day, and witness to your Lord's Resurrection. In the Word is our hope, our strength, our courage and our very life. Indeed, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed!
The peace of the Risen Christ be yours, now and always! Amen.
Last updated April 2008 by the webmaster.