Believing is Seeing

by Rev. Dr. J. Travis Moger

[Posted on his behalf by Jeremy]

Our text for this Sunday relates the story of Doubting Thomas, found only in John 20:19-31. The first three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—tell us nothing about this obscure apostle. I don’t really like the epithet “doubting” Thomas. I think a better one would be “honest” Thomas, because he admitted his doubts, or “believing” Thomas, since he came to believe. Church tradition tells us that after Pentecost he preached the Gospel in India. When the first European missionaries arrived on the Indian subcontinent in the sixteenth century, they were surprised to find thriving indigenous churches full of “Thomas Christians.” But before Thomas could be used so mightily by God, he had to overcome his doubts.

The central miracle of our Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus. It’s the main theme of theapostles’ preaching in the book of Acts and is included in all Christian creeds and confessions.Paul even says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins”(1 Cor. 15:17). But that doesn’t make it easy to believe. The idea of a bodily resurrection goes against all of our experience. Dead people stay dead.

We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t with his fellow disciples when Jesus appeared to them postmortem, but we do know he wasn’t convinced by their story about seeing Jesus. He told them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). Thomas wanted proof, empirical proof,that it was really Jesus and not a ghost. And he got it. Jesus appeared again to the disciples, this time with Thomas present, but instead of rebuking Thomas for his unbelief, Jesus offered Thomas the tactile evidence he had demanded: “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe” (20:27).

This offer for Thomas to touch Jesus is all the more surprising because just a few verses earlierJesus says to Mary Magdalene, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my father”(20:17). (The NRSV translates the command, “Do not hold on to me.”) Although Jesus forbids Mary to touch him in his resurrected state, he gives Thomas permission. Immediately upon seeing Jesus, however, the former doubter immediately blurts out, “My Lord and my God!” It was enough to see Jesus is his resurrected form. The Bible doesn’t say Thomas manually inspected the wounds as he had said he wanted to. This fact is all the more interesting since so many artistic interpretations, like Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (above), show the apostle inserting his finger in Jesus’ side. For Thomas and the other disciples seeing is believing.

The experience of seeing the resurrected Jesus was so important and exclusive that it became a prerequisite for apostleship. At least that’s how I read Paul’s statement, “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” (1 Cor. 9:1). The rest of us don’t get to see the proof with our own eyes. We have to be satisfied with historical evidence: “These [things] are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). Thankfully the Gospels give us reliable evidence based on eyewitness testimony. The lack of firsthand proof doesn’t make our faith weak or defective. In fact, Jesus praised those who believe without visual proof: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (20:29). The writer of Hebrews says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (11:1). For us seeing isn’t believing. For us, believing is seeing.

Faith comes naturally to some but not to others. The story of Thomas—believing Thomas—teaches us that God can handle our doubts and wants to help us when we are struggling with our faith.

Buckle Your Seatbelts…

I'm posting this on behalf of Abby, who's internet access might be a bit flaky this week. Enjoy! - Jeremy

This week’s Lectionary Texts are Jeremiah 1:4-10, Luke 13:10-17, and Hebrews 12:18-29.

As we come to the end of what I am unofficially terming “The Summer of the Prophets,” our travels are slowing down and more of us are remaining in one place for longer stretches as we get back to our school year routines (a pattern that seems to hold true even for those of us whose lives are no longer dictated by the academic calendar as students or parents of students or teachers!). The Lectionary follows suit, whether by plan or by chance. Rather than jumping to a new prophet every couple of weeks as we have all summer (a couple weeks with Elijah, a couple with Elisha, two with Amos, two with Hosea, two with Isaiah), our next NINE Sundays of Old Testament lessons will remain with one prophet: good old Jeremiah (or young Jeremiah, when we meet him this week).

Jeremiah, we will find, can be a tough prophet to sit with for one week, let alone nine. His book is amazing, his prophecy words we need to hear; but Jeremiah’s prophecy contains words that are not always easy to hear. One of my favorite authors, Kathleen Norris, speaks well in her book The Cloister Walk of her difficulty in hearing the book of Jeremiah read continuously in its entirely over the course of several weeks of morning worship at a monastery:

“One day, not long after we’d begun to read Jeremiah, and it was dawning on us that we had a long, rough road ahead, a monk said to me he was glad to be reading Jeremiah in the morning, and not at evening prayer, when there are likely to be more guests. ‘The monks can take it,’ he said, ‘but most people have no idea what’s in the Bible, and they come unglued.’ Coming unglued came to seem the point of listening to Jeremiah. Hearing Jeremiah’s words every morning, I soon felt challenged to reflect on the upheavals in my own society, and in my life. A prophet’s task is to reveal the fault lines hidden beneath the comfortable surface of the worlds we invent for ourselves, the little lies and delusions of control and security that get us through the day. And Jeremiah does this better than anyone.” (Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk. New York: Penguin Books, 1996, p. 34)

Coming unglued…that doesn’t sound pleasant. But sometimes, it seems, the glue of our old ways, molds, plans, and perceptions needs to be loosened before a new call can unfold. Our first encounter with Jeremiah this week gives us a window into the sacred moment of call where Jeremiah’s life as he knew it began to come unglued so that God, through him, could address the needs of a world that is crumbling. Jeremiah’s life is given a new calling, a commission that will bring both judgment and hope not just to Jeremiah’s own people, but to the nations of the world.

Our Gospel and Epistle texts dovetail with this unsettling theme of coming unglued for the sake of new possibility. When Jesus heals a woman who has been bent over for 18 years, not only do the paralyzed bones of her body come unglued from their crippled state when they hear the call of Jesus’ voice, but the Temple authorities come unglued as this Rabbi issues a call that breaks all their carefully planned rules and ideas of propriety. Likewise, the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that we no longer operate under the tangibles of the Old Covenant and its regulations, but in the realm of a Spirit who is creating a New Covenant in ways that are often unpredictable and untamed. As Eugene Peterson’s The Message puts the last verse of the reading, “God is not an indifferent bystander. [God’s] actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and won’t quit until it’s all cleansed. God himself is Fire!”

Friends, if we are going to spend 9 weeks not just with Jeremiah but with this sort of God, we’d best buckle our seatbelts…for who knows where such a God’s call will take us?

May peace be with you on this unsettling journey,

Abby