Sermon: The Apostle Thomas: Faithful Doubt
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
July 1st 2007: 5pm
- Psalm 139:1-11
- Job 42:1-6
- 1 Peter 1: 3-12
The saint we celebrate tonight is famous not for his faith, but for his apparent lack of faith: Thomas the apostle. Even people with little exposure to the Christian tradition tend to understand the meaning of being called a ‘doubting Thomas’. Yet it seems to me rather unfortunate that the popular legacy of Thomas is one of doubt, when in some ways Thomas can be seen as a great encourager of our faith.
The apostle Thomas is most prominent in John’s Gospel. The writer of this gospel makes us party to the mental processing of Thomas’ understanding of Jesus and, in so doing, is able to bring out some of the strongest and most encouraging affirmations of faith. The disciples often provide very good company for us in our own struggles to comprehend the ministry of Christ and can be very useful mirrors of our own reactions to Christ’s teaching and ministry. The apostle Thomas certainly provides us with these opportunities of companionship.
One of the first times that Thomas plays an important role for us in this regard is in his response to the news of Lazarus’ death. At this time, Jesus announces to the disciples that he intends to go to his friend and his mourning family. The disciples are incredulous that Jesus would risk returning to Judea and to the death threats which seemed to accompany such a journey. Yet it is Thomas’ who ultimately affirms the apostles’ commitment to do so when in John 11:16 Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him”.
These words are spoken soon after Jesus’ teaching to the disciples about him being the good shepherd, ‘whose sheep know his voice, follow him and receive eternal life’. We don’t know the understanding behind Thomas’ conviction to accompany Christ. Like many aspects of Christ’s ministry, some things only become clear after the resurrection. So, on the one hand Thomas’ conviction could be seen as sheer fatalism. Yet, if Thomas here has understood Jesus’ teaching about his impending death, we find here one of the earliest apostolic affirmations of readiness to follow Christ in that path.
Later in John 14:6 Thomas challenges Christ to make that path clearer to him. Jesus talks to the disciples of how he is going to prepare a place for them in his father’s house. Jesus assures them that they, “know the way to the place where they are going” (v4) But Thomas pushes a less ambiguous answer out of Christ, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, How can we know the way?” This is when we receive the wonderful reassurance from Christ, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (v6).
So through Thomas’ questioning, we as readers of the gospel, receive this gift of Christ’s words for our own understanding. Thomas does this again in his encounter with the resurrected Christ, the encounter for which Thomas is most well known. Whilst some of the disciples have met the resurrected Christ, Thomas has not and he struggles to believe the resurrection truth of Christ through the words of other disciples. Instead he strongly affirms that, “unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my hand in his side, I will not believe” (John 20:27). It is a week later when Christ does actually stand amongst them in the locked room, bringing a greeting of peace, and inviting Thomas to indeed touch his wounds.
A week has passed, a week where Thomas was not able to verify the heart of the faith that the other dispels were affirming and coming to understand. That must have been a long and hard week for Thomas. Even though he had so honestly and strongly laid out what he needed to witness in order to share the belief in the resurrection, he was still amongst the disciples, still part of their fellowship, still, perhaps, chasing the questions of his understanding and seeking faith.
Our readings tonight are also readings to or of people seeking to understand God and seeking to affirm their faith in God when their circumstances would challenge the truth of God’s living presence amongst them. Peter’s epistle is written to the persecuted church – an enduring part of our church that experiences the wounds of Christ in a particularly intimate way. He speaks words of encouragement to them, reassuring them that the resurrection hope of Christ is able to transform their present sufferings, sufferings which might persuade them that God is not with them. He writes:
“In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have to suffer various trails, so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold, that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:607).
I don’t understand Peter’s teaching here to be that God has purposed these particular trials in order to deliberately test the reality of our faith. Rather, our human experience is inherently testing; life is often very hard and very difficult and a lot of very bad things happen to a lot of very good people. I find these words to be a tool to transform the difficulty of our experiences into the most valuable of all experiences, that is, our encounter with the living God. To speak in relation to Thomas, to touch the wounds of Christ and know that in doing so our own woundedness is being transformed into resurrection joy.
This is the pattern of Job, one of the most mysterious and comforting books in the Bible, a book which affirms that our sufferings do not deny God’s reality. Through Job’s trails and distress he longs to meet with God and argue his case with God, specifically he longs for a mediator. After suffering upon suffering God does come and speak with Job and it is being in God’s very presence that causes Job to affirm that he is, as he always was, God’s faithful servant. Whilst Job’s response to God is framed in repentance, in the following verses God confronts Job’s friends and affirms clearly to them that Job had indeed spoken rightly about God; in his searching and questioning he never let go of the reality that God was there…somewhere and that his sufferings weren’t a direct consequence of his sin.
Throughout scripture we are often encouraged to fight to keep our faith. Doubting and questioning need not therefore be in direct opposition to belief. As the father of the sick child in Mark’s gospel (9:24) famously cried out to Christ, ‘I believe, help my unbelief!’ We too can pursue our faith through our unbelief, through our doubts, through our questioning. It is better to openly and honestly confront our misgivings than to pretend that they are not there and to try and sweep them under the carpet of our consciousness. Therefore when we are troubled by aspects of our beliefs, we take those troubles to Christ and we either wrestle there for understanding or are stilled by Christ’s peace that we need not worry about those things with him. Either way, we are not asked to deny them.
Blind faith – believing although we haven’t seen – isn’t a denial of our need to touch, to physically touch, the reality of God. After all, did not Christ give to Thomas the experience of faith that he needed? St Anselm coined the famous phrase, ‘faith seeking understanding’. In our faith we seek to understand; we do not need to fully understand in order to have faith. Sometimes, like Thomas the apostle, we may simply gather with those who do profess faith and bring to that gathering our own doubts and needs for the tangible reality of God, and wait with them for Christ to bring the reality we need.
So my prayer for us all is that we will take comfort from Thomas, that we can, in a way, be faithful in our periods of doubting and through that honesty and faithfulness draw nearer than ever to God – and through that nearness then be able to profess a depth of faith that will give abundant praise, glory and honour to God.
Amen.
