It was still the first day of the week. That evening, while the disciples were behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven.” 

Thomas, the one called Didymus one of the Twelve, wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, “We’ve seen the Lord!” 

But he replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the wounds left by the nails, and put my hand into his side, I won’t believe.” 

After eight days his disciples were again in a house and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus entered and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here. Look at my hands. Put your hand into my side. No more disbelief. Believe!” 

Thomas responded to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” 

Jesus replied, “Do you believe because you see me? Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe.” 

Then Jesus did many other miraculous signs in his disciples’ presence, signs that aren’t recorded in this scroll. 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. 

“Proof – what I want is proof.” That’s seems to be what Thomas needs in our story – proof that Jesus indeed had been raised, proof that the others disciples who had claimed to see him weren’t smoking something, or imbibing too much in the wine in their grief around Jesus’ death. A second-hand account isn’t enough for Thomas – and why should it be? I mean, why do these 10 other disciples get to see and touch Jesus, all because he didn’t happen to be there when Jesus first appeared to them? It’s not fair, and, frankly, why should he believe something profoundly fantastical? Some things you can take someone word on it – but this, this requires more than just the word of a group of grief-stricken disciples. Surprisingly, perhaps, Jesus gives it to Thomas, a moment, an encounter all his own. To help Thomas believe that Jesus is risen, Jesus offers his wounds, the nail marks, the signs that the man crucified is the man before him. It’s interesting that it’s the wounds of Jesus that will be proof to Thomas that it is him, his Lord, this Jesus of Nazareth, truly risen from the grave. And it’s even more interesting that there are, in fact, still wounds and nail marks on that risen body, that love given flesh and bone, buried, and now alive. Look, if you’re going to rise, I would think, wouldn’t you want to rise minus the wounds of crucifixion, or the scars from a long chemo regimen, or lashes found in a body who has died because of an auto accident. And when I rise, which we are promised will happen to us on that last great day, I want to rise with my 21-year-old body, and my head full of hair.

And yet Jesus doesn’t rise with a scar-free body – Jesus rises with his wounds, and he offers them to Thomas so that he can put his fingers into the slash of flesh caused by the sword that pierced his side on the cross – and Thomas can run his fingers over the palms where they beat nails into his flesh. We don’t know if Thomas took him up on the offer, but I think I would have, despite the grossness of it all – I would want to know for sure that these wounds were real, because it would make this reality with Jesus very real to me. It’s also clear that the writer of John wants us to take this moment, the proof given in this moment to Thomas and be able to live with not being able to put our own fingers into Jesus’ wounds, to not experience what these earliest disciples experienced. Jesus is reported to have said this: “Do you believe because you see me? Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe.” Even in antiquity, making the case that your Savior is risen isn’t an easy one to make – and the writer of John’s Gospel knows that many of us, most immediately in the late first century, but also us hundreds of years later, will wonder if Jesus really did rise on that day so long ago. There will be doubt, and Jesus words are meant to honor the fact that we won’t be given what the disciples had, what Thomas had, which is a body to touch, warm to the touch, scarred by what happened only days earlier. Doubt will creep in for many of us about this moment, but not only this moment – for some, there will be doubt about God’s presence in this world full of such evil, and doubt about whether or not God is even real. Jesus seems to know this, that we will doubt, and he acknowledges that truth in these words about enormity of what he is asking of us – to believe without the proof, without the body, without the wounds, the scars over which we could have traced our fingers across.

And I’m glad Jesus acknowledges that truth, that for some belief in God, in Jesus, in an empty grave, is no easy thing. Certainly some of us never struggle with doubts, or we don’t struggle with them in any significant way – it may flicker here and there, but it doesn’t haunt us, as it haunts other Christians. Jesus seemed to know that it would be hard for some of us to be at ease with the claims of our faith, and he acknowledged the beauty of such faith, such trust, when it happens within the most skeptically inclined among us. As Jana said, doubt gets a bad rap sometimes, as if wondering if something is true or not is somehow an act of unfaithfulness, as if we betray God by sometimes doubting her existence. Now, don’t get me wrong – there is something to be said for those who never doubt much or ever – it is a gift, perhaps from God, that some simply have never doubted parts of their faith. I admire those who’ve never doubted, never struggled with the questions I sometimes do – and I don’t think it’s because they don’t think deeply or has rigorously as I do. The stereotype that some have of a person with a strong faith, a strong set of beliefs, as someone who is willfully ignorant, or not seeing the complexity of the world or faith, or has their head in the clouds, is ridiculous. Some of the smartest people I know have rarely entertained much doubt and some of the, well, not so smart people I know seemingly do nothing but entertain doubts. Each type of people, the doubters and the non-doubters, and the many in-between, exists, and each, in their own, receive a gift from the surety of their faith – and the rockiness of their faith.

It’s that rockiness, though, that I think we’re invited to explore today, since it is about Thomas, the one who gets tagged as “doubting” when all he wanted was the same experience the other disciples had just had with the risen Christ. It’s clear that Thomas isn’t the ideal for the writer of John, and yet people like him are acknowledged in this Gospel, that there are people who struggle with their faith, their trust in a God they can’t easily see in this world, and in whose hands they can’t easily see move in this world. It’s been interesting thing for me, my journey of faith, because I’ve always been a questioner, a person wanting answers, a person who welcomes facts and history and context, who revels in the messiness of the Scriptures – and life – that you find all over the place. Last week I spoke of the fact that we are offered four different versions of Jesus’ life and for some that is disturbing, the fact there are differences across the four gospels in something like the resurrection story. It didn’t disturb the early church, of course, who knew of these differences, because they decided to include these different telling’s into our sacred text, the Bible. The beautiful messiness of the stories about Jesus were good enough for them, and I think they would be surprised that it would be problem for some of us centuries later. And yet, I can understand why it would be difficult for some, especially in our post-Enlightenment understanding of the world, and of history – but it never bothered me – it only fascinated and excited me, to see the human among these divine texts. I’ve had doubts about many things, especially around the church, around how we Christians can’t ever seem to live up to what Christ asks us to do, including myself, but a belief in God, a trust that God is here, that God is present, in ways that I sometimes can understand, but often cannot understand, that has remained for me.

But I know that isn’t the case for others – and I’m glad it isn’t, in a way. It keeps me honest, it keeps us honest, and because we’re a community that welcomes the doubters, the skeptics, the people who want both their hearts AND minds met, it reminds us that following after the way of Jesus comes in many surprising forms. I was an associate pastor of church many years ago that had a lot people with doctorates in the congregations, mostly in the sciences, and in that congregation I would estimate that at least 5% of the congregation were open about their agnosticism, if not their outright atheism. They didn’t believe, they didn’t have faith, and that lack of faith, that kind of skepticism that Thomas practiced if only for a little while, was right there for us to see. Most seemed to come to church because they were seekers, and curious and wanted to ask questions and to explore the meaning of the big questions with others doing the same. If Thomas wasn’t cast out of the family for not believing based on the word of other disciples, that surely meant that these beautiful rogue agnostics were welcome to be among us as well. I hope that is true for us, when we speak of welcoming others wherever they may be in life’s journey. Some of us may not be at that point, at agnosticisms or atheism, but we have our doubts, we wonder, we question, we raise our eyebrows, and that, my friend, is OK. There is room for people like Thomas among us, as there was room for Thomas in group of early disciples.

Proof is something I do not have, or perhaps can ever be comfortable offering you, because if something like God can be proved, then God can be disproved, and that seems not quite right, as if God was simply another theory that can be proofed out, like a math equation. Even to speak of God’s “existence” seems not quite right, because surely God doesn’t exist like you and I exist, or anything else exists like. As is so often the case, language just fails us when we speak of the Divine, of the Holy, when we speak of God, though we are stuck with it, with language that can’t capture the truth. The closest thing I have to offer is my experience of God’s presence in the world – and again, the word “presence” is not quite right, but I am stuck with it at the moment. The writer of 1 John says that God is love, and thus we should love one another. It’s probably a logically false argument, but I know love exists because I’ve experienced it many times, the giving of it, the receiving it – and it is perhaps the truest thing I know, that love is, that love exists, even in a world full of shadow and darkness. Because love is true, is real, then for me God is real, God is true, because God is love. Because there is love, there is God, who is love. That will satisfy no one perhaps, but all the other attempts at trying to prove God’s “existence” leave me unconvinced, and seem so easily dismantled, even by a believer like me. Yes, arguments can be made about the evolutionary nature and need for love for the species to thrive, but it seems to wring so hollow, because love can make us do things that make no sense in terms of personal or group self-preservation, like giving oneself for another, as Christ did on the cross.

And that love for us, God’s love for us, is what draws Jesus out of that grave on that great day thousands of years ago. And love is the reason why Jesus showed his wounds to Thomas, as a gift to him, and to us, that the doubters among us are in the family, always. And I want to offer this final truth today that I think the story invites us into and that is this: when we look at what is difficult, like the wounds of Jesus themselves, when we look at our doubts, or whatever is difficult for us to look at, doing so will not end us or nor end our faith. I think some of us are scared of asking the hard questions about God, faith, whatever, and yet Thomas asks the hard question, and he is offered not an easy answer, despite what we may think – he is instead offered wounds, themselves a difficult thing to look at, themselves loaded with a set of questions about who God is and is not. Looking at difficult things, like the wounds on Jesus’ body, doesn’t mean that our doubts will be confirmed, that our worst fears about faith or God will be realized. In fact, we’re actually invited to look at the difficult things in our lives, our faith, even the world, because of this profound truth: we can now look at difficult things differently because of the resurrection, because if there is one thing the resurrection tells us clearly is that our doubts, our trauma, our fears, they will not be the end of us. Because of Christ’s resurrection, we can look at our crosses, we can look at what is difficult to look at, and know that what is looked at isn’t the end of the story – the cross wasn’t the end of the story, it wasn’t then and it never will be. Doubts, trauma, personal and otherwise, it can be met, the wounds can be touched, and it will not be the end of us, not now and not ever. The Lord is risen, and he is risen indeed! Thanks be to God.