Weekly Reflection: No Secondhand Faith
Jesus is alive. But not everyone knows this and not everyone that knows believes it.
It is the Sunday after Easter Sunday (we are now in the season of Easter!) and that usually means that we are focusing on Thomas, or should I say, Doubting Thomas. For centuries, we have made Thomas an example of what not to do. We fault him for not believing the other Disciples when he was told that Jesus was no longer in the grave, but alive. Why couldn’t he just believe that Jesus was alive? Why did he have to question? Why did he put up such a fuss?
Thomas is made out to be an outlier in the gospels. We see him as an unbeliever who needs to get right with God. But the thing is, if you meet Jesus, the first thing you are going to do is ask questions. If you aren’t asking questions, there is a problem.
Our text opens with the disciples sitting in a locked room. They may have heard that Jesus rose from the dead from Mary Magdalene, but they aren’t going anywhere. They saw what happened to Jesus, they knew how he died. Why would they want to face the Jewish leaders and risk their lives?
But then Jesus appears. Jesus knows they are afraid. He breathes on them, which is a sign of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that will empower these people to become the church. Jesus met them, he knew what they were feeling and gave them what they needed at that moment, a sense of peace in a time of fear and confusion.
They now believe that Jesus is alive, just as Mary said. But one of their numbers wasn’t there: Thomas. We don’t know why he wasn’t there, but he wasn’t. When he returns, the other disciples tell him that Jesus appeared to them. They now believed that Jesus was not dead, but fully alive.
But Thomas has questions. He knows Jesus was dead. He may have even seen the killing from a distance. He knows Joseph Arithamea and Nicodemus had Jesus placed in a tomb. Unless there was proof of Jesus’ existence, proof that he suffered, he would not believe.
This is where we judge poor Thomas. We say to others that he should have taken the words of his friends at face value. But Thomas didn’t want a secondhand account, he wanted a relationship. He had a relationship with Jesus and he wanted that again. Belief could only happen if he could meet Jesus again.
Days later, Jesus reappears to the disciples, and this time Thomas is present. Jesus tells him to touch the wounds in his hands and his side. He tells Thomas he no longer has to doubt, but believe.
So many times when Jesus met with people in the book of John he is faced with a question. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” asked Nathaniel. Jesus answered him and Nathaniel joined Jesus as he ministered to the people. “How can a man be born again?” asks Nicodemus. “How is that you, a Jew, would ask me a Samaritan for a drink?” says the woman at the well. All of them asked questions and the questions led to something more.
In this season of Easter, we celebrate that Jesus was raised from the dead. Jesus is not stuck in a tomb. We don’t talk about resurrection as if it were just some flimsy metaphor while Jesus is still dead. Jesus is alive. But not everyone knows this and not everyone that knows believes it. The only way that people get to know Jesus is to have a relationship with Jesus. For that to happen, we must be willing to have relationships with others around us, hearing their questions and inviting them on the journey.
John 20 ends with the following words, “But these things are written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, God’s Son, and that believing, you will have life in his name.” Jesus might not magically appear to us or others, but Jesus does appear through you and I, his disciples as we meet others. It is through the reading of the Word, the sharing of Bread and Wine, and through our witness, that we hope people will have an encounter with Jesus.
As we continue through this season of Easter, let us be willing to tell others about Jesus, let us be willing to handle the questions, because questions tell people if this is the God of love and forgiveness and because questions lead to a deeper relationship with the Savior.
Questions:
Why do you think Thomas wasn’t present when Jesus first appeared?
How did the receiving of the Holy Spirit change the disciples?
In verses 19 and 26 we hear that the doors were locked. What is the significance of this in the text? What did this mean to the disciples?
Jesus offered peace to the disciples and Thomas. What was the peace he was offering?