In today’s gospel, it’s still Easter Sunday, in the evening. The disciples are all hiding out in a locked room, presumably the same room where they celebrated the Passover meal just a few nights ago, right before Jesus was betrayed, arrested and crucified. Mary Magdalene had gone to the tomb early that morning, and found it empty, assumed that someone had stolen Jesus’ body, and run to this room in a panic, not knowing what to do. Peter and the disciple Jesus loved ran back to the tomb with her, and confirmed that it was, indeed, empty. His body was gone. Then they went back to that locked room, possibly even more frightened now that Jesus’ body was missing. The gospel tells us, parenthetically, that “the disciples still didn’t understand that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”
So, Peter and the disciple Jesus loved, both miss seeing the two angels, and Jesus, when he appears to Mary. But Jesus sends Mary back to the disciples with a message—that he is ascending to God.
So, why are the disciples still huddling in fear behind locked doors? Surely Mary delivered the message. Didn’t they listen to Mary? Didn’t they believe her? Sadly, they probably didn’t. In that patriarchal culture, women were not considered trustworthy witnesses. Women were considered too emotional, too irrational. And Mary had, only just come running to them, clearly upset, perhaps on the verge of hysterical, because the tomb had been robbed. (Yes, tomb robbing was a thing, even back then. And a more rational conclusion about a missing body than was the resurrection story.) They may well have thought she was simply overcome with grief, maybe to the point of hallucination. Just as in all the other gospel accounts, the disciples didn’t take Mary’s witness or her message any more seriously than the accounts of the other women who found the tomb empty, except for angels.
The disciples are laying low, because they fear they may be targeted next by the temple authorities, especially now that Jesus’ body has disappeared. So, they are all hiding behind locked doors—all but Thomas. We are given no explanation for Thomas’ absence. The scripture just says that Thomas wasn’t with them. Where was Thomas? Had Peter and the gang gotten hungry and sent him out to pick up some Pizza? Or was he escorting Mary Magdalene home, making sure the poor, hysterical woman got home safe? Had he decided to go check out the empty tomb for himself, to look for the angels Mary claimed she had talked to, or to ask the cemetery caretaker if he knew anything? Or had he been sent to do some spying around the temple or the synagogue and find out what people were saying about Jesus? Did anybody else know his body was missing? Were they whispering about conspiracy, saying the disciples moved the body? Maybe he just needed to go for a walk in the fresh evening air and clear his head?
We don’t know much about Thomas from the gospels, aside from his nickname, the Twin. He’s pretty quiet. But we know he is brave, and loyal. When Jesus announces that he plans to go back to Judea because Lazarus is dead, the other disciples try to talk Jesus out of it, warning Jesus that he will surely be killed. But Thomas says, “Let’s all go, so that we may die with him.”
But now, perhaps because he is brave enough to leave that room, he isn’t there when Jesus shows up. Everyone else is there. Everyone else sees the wounds in his hands and his side. Everyone else is given the Holy Spirit. Everyone else is given the power to forgive sins. But not brave, loyal Thomas. Everyone else gets what they need in order to believe, but not Thomas.
Everybody else says the resurrection is real, because they have seen Jesus for themselves. But none of them believed a few hours ago, when Mary told them she saw and spoke to Jesus. Put yourself in Thomas’ shoes. Would you believe? Or might you suspect that they’re playing a prank? Might you wonder what is going on? What has everybody been eating, or smoking? Might you check to see how many empty wine flasks are lying around the place?
Can you imagine the disappointment? The injustice? Didn’t Jesus know Thomas wanted, needed to see him too? No one else believed until they saw Jesus with their own eyes, heard him speak with their own ears. Is it fair to expect that Thomas would be able to believe without the benefit of a similar experience? Personally, I sympathize with Thomas. Honestly, I think we tend to judge Thomas unfairly. Why should we expect Thomas to believe what the other disciples are now telling him, when they didn’t believe Mary, who told them the same things only a few hours earlier?
Thomas insists he needs to have a Jesus experience just like the one the other disciples have had in order to believe. Thomas has the courage to name what he needs in order to believe the impossible. And Jesus hears him, and shows up for him, albeit, a week later.
Jesus shows up, shows Thomas his wounds, and tells Thomas to touch them with his own hands, which is astonishing, because he told Mary not to touch him. The text does not say or even suggest that Thomas does touch him. Just seeing is enough to draw from Thomas the most profound and accurate confession of faith in the gospel. Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!” Thomas recognizes that Jesus is God, incarnate in resurrected human flesh, not just the Messiah, or the Son of God. No one else sees Jesus so clearly.
Jesus tells Thomas not to doubt, but to have faith, to trust. The text indicates he is addressing Thomas, but I would argue that he is addressing everyone in that room. Because none of them believed until they saw with their own eyes. But I need to clarify something here. I want to share with you a quote from Craig Koester, one of the leading experts on this gospel. “Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Faith incorporates doubt.” Let me say that again. “Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Faith incorporates doubt.” The truth is, that faith is believing something that is uncertain, unlikely, some might even say, irrational or impossible. Faith is a choice. A decision to trust God no matter what, even when it makes you look or sound crazy; even when there is no evidence, no reasonable explanation, just because God is God, and for God, nothing is impossible.
Doubt is not our enemy. We all have doubts from time to time. We all have questions, things in scripture that we wrestle with, struggle with, things that we wonder about. That doesn’t mean our faith is weak or insufficient. Faith is about trusting God, in the depths of our hearts, despite our fears and our questions and the reality that we don’t have all the answers and we don’t have facts, measurements or photographic evidence, no proof to back up our beliefs. If we had no doubts, had no reason to doubt, then it wouldn’t really be faith. It would be fact. Doubts exist because, like the disciples, we live in a world that is cerebral, that demands logical thinking, a world that requires proof and scientific data and plausible explanations for everything. But faith comes from the heart, not the head, and sometimes our hearts and our heads disagree. It’s natural to doubt things we can’t understand much less see or touch. But God is beyond understanding, so we trust with our hearts. In my experience, questioning and wondering about the things that give me pause is healthy and serves to strengthen rather than weaken my faith and my Christian witness. Having doubts does not mean we lack faith. It means we long to know more, to be closer to Jesus, to know God more completely.
Thomas had profound faith, despite his doubts. He had faith enough to trust God to show him what everyone else had seen. Although we never hear anything more about Thomas in the scriptures, he’s not even mentioned in the book of Act, Thomas’s story doesn’t end here. Thomas travels by ship to India, shares his faith and starts a church, one of the very first in existence, and it is still thriving today. Despite all his doubts, Thomas was able to share and witness to his faith in a land with a very different culture and language, where Judaism was unknown, and convince others to believe along with him. My friend Sinny, a doctor from India, traces her Christian faith all the way back to the Apostle Thomas. Many believed without seeing, and were, therefore, blessed because of Thomas. So maybe, being a Doubting Thomas isn’t such a bad thing.