9-year-old Jeremy's mom asked the boy what he had learned in Sunday School one day. "Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When he got to the Red Sea, he and his engineers built a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across safely. Then he used his walkie-talkie to radio headquarters and call in an air strike. They sent in bombers to blow up the bridge, and all the Israelites were saved." His mom frowned. "Now Jeremy," she asked, "is that really what your teacher taught you?" "Well, no Mom, but if I told you the way the teacher did, you'd never believe it."
Many events in the Bible seem from our modern perspective, if we are honest, to be unbelievable. Take last Sunday: the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In thinking about that event I am reminded of an incident that transpired two years ago in the trial of the terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. One day it was reported that "Moussaoui, who is at odds with his own defense team, insists he is not crazy. Prosecutors agree [with him] and argue that Moussaoui's fervent belief in his dream [that President Bush will pardon him] is consistent with religious beliefs of Muslims...and"-get this-"is no more crazy than Christians believing in the Resurrection." Crazy, huh?
Well, Thomas may have thought his fellow disciples were crazy. "....But [Thomas] said [to them,] ‘Unless I see the nail holes in His hands, and put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in His side, I won't believe it." Ah yes...poor Thomas. He had missed Easter. The evening of that first day, after appearing to Mary Magdalene, Jesus had appeared to ten men in a locked upper room. When Thomas re-appeared from wherever he had been, they gathered around him, the disciples did, their eyes big and shiny, their arms reaching out to grab and shake him with the news: "We saw the Master!" Yeah, right. Think what Thomas had seen over the previous three days: The man he looked up to, ruthlessly taken away in the middle of the night to be interrogated and tortured, dying a horrible, bloody death on a cross. And didn't he, Thomas, warn them all what could happen if they went to Jerusalem? He had said, "Let us go also, that we may die with Him." (John 11:16) Now he finds his friends-his deluded, wishful-thinking friends-thinking they could wish away the hard truth. He looked around. If they had seen Jesus arisen, he thought, why were the doors still locked?
Even today he is derisively called, "Doubting Thomas." But he was not the only one to doubt. As we see in our gospel reading today, when Mary Magdalene was first confronted by the risen Jesus, she thought he must be the gardener. "If you took Him, tell me where you put Him so I can care for Him" she pleads. But this is after, Luke reports, two strange men in the otherwise empty tomb had just told Mary, "[Jesus] is not here; He is risen." So Mary Magdalene had doubted. It was only when she heard Jesus' voice that she believed He had risen, and ran and told the disciples. Then the 10 disciples "did not believe" Mary (Luke 24:11). When Jesus appeared before the ten, they did not believe until Jesus showed them his very real wounds. Finally, even when Jesus is about to ascend into heaven, we read that the disciples saw Jesus and "they worshipped Him; but some doubted." (Matt. 28:17) Some doubted, even then.
So, you see, Thomas wasn't the only one who doubted the Resurrection, at first-and I'm glad of that. Why am I glad? I am glad because I don't want to be taken in on something that is of the utmost importance. I know how easy it is for us sinful human beings to want desperately for something to be true, and then decide that it is true, when it really isn't. I'm not only glad the disciples doubted, and I'm especially glad that the gospel writers were inspired to record those doubts, because it makes the witness of the disciples to the reality of the Resurrection that much more believable. But, you know, we do not have the opportunity they had. We cannot see and touch the human body of the Risen Jesus until He comes again. People, such as Paul, can receive visions of Him, and even today we can sense His living presence - as I do - and that's important. But when it comes to Jesus' bodily resurrection, we must base our belief on what we have read, what has been written down-and written down for our benefit, and for the benefit of all the generations that have lived, and will live, since that time. As St. John tells us today, "But these [accounts] are written SO THAT you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah...." (John 20:31) John also wrote in his first letter, "We declare to you what we have seen and heard SO THAT you also may have fellowship ...with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ....so that your joy may be complete." (1st John 1:3-4)
You see, when St. Paul was emphasizing the importance of the Resurrec-tion to the Corinthians...when he was saying, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins," (1 Cor. 15:17) he did not point to the vision of Jesus that he had had on the Damascus Road, when Jesus appeared to him from heaven-no, he didn't point to that vision as "proof;" Paul instead pointed to the eyewitness testimony of Jesus appearing bodily to the disciples, and especially when Jesus appeared bodily to over 500 people at the same time - 500 people - "most of whom," Paul says, "are ALIVE" - alive, only 10 to 15 years after that Easter Day (1 Cor. 15:6). It's as if he's saying, "Do you doubt that that this great thing happened? Then go and ask those hundreds of people what they saw!!"
Now looking at the Resurrection in this way is very convincing to me NOW. But back when I was a young man, I doubted. I told myself then that I doubted because of "science"; but I was wrong about that. Science tells us about natural events, and the resurrection was a supernatural event. My so-called "scientific" doubt was only one of two reasons that I began to disbelieve. So what was the other (and really the more important) reason? Well, as I look back on it, I think that part of me didn't want to believe it was all true, because I knew that I would have to live my life differently if it were true. Now I think we're all in this boat, we're all faced with this, for if the Resurrection is true, then all sorts of other things are true, too: not only is it true that we can go to heaven through faith in Jesus...it becomes true that we don't have to ‘look our for #1' and be selfish in this life, because God will always take care of us...and because Jesus rose again it becomes especially true that we are now called to serve and obey this Amazing Jesus, doing what He wants-not what we want-for He calls us to do whatever it takes-even suffer-in order to spread His love and the news of His salvation. Now, if you don't want to live that sort of life, a life of sacrifice, you can reject the risen Jesus to His face...but that takes a lot of guts.
Instead, most people do 1 of 2 things: some follow the risen Jesus in a sort of "half-way" mode. Others hold that because The Faith is sometimes hard to explain and defend, they can walk completely away from it. They get picky. It's like that fellow I once heard about who was walking on a beach one day when a woman came up to him, bragging about her dog. "Watch this," she said, tossing a stick into the ocean. He watched as this lady's dog walked on water to get the stick, and brought it back. "What do you think about my dog?" The gal said gleefully. "Poor thing," he replied. "I guess your dog can't swim." Some people do this to God. They object to this or that thing in the Bible or in the church. It becomes a dodge, a mind-game; it's all a way to avoid taking up your cross and following Jesus.
You see, even after he saw the Risen Jesus, Thomas had a choice to be like those people-and Jesus knew it. You see, Thomas' problem was NOT his doubts. Jesus is not criticizing Thomas for doubting what others had told him about the Resurrection. Everyone doubted, as I mentioned earlier. It was a GOOD thing that Thomas expressed his doubts openly, for Jesus meets those doubts directly; Jesus grants his wish; Jesus shows Thomas what he wanted-to see and touch the wounds in His hands and in His side. Didn't Jesus once say, "Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find"? Jesus wants us, like Thomas, to openly express our doubts, our questions. Ah, but then comes the tricky part...for when Jesus answers those doubts, then comes the true test. Will we accept the answer God gives us? Will we accept that The Master really does have an amazing plan and purpose for us and for this world? Will we accept that Jesus does want us to live as His servants, according to His plan? Will we accept that? Will we?
You know, instead of saying to Thomas, "Do not doubt, but believe," Jesus says this: "Don't be unbelieving. Believe." To get back to the original Greek, Jesus says to Thomas, "Do not be faithless, (apistos) but faithful (pistos)." "Do not be faith-less, but faith-full." --And Thomas responds to Jesus' challenge. He not only calls Jesus, "the Master," but he calls Him "my Master," and Thomas adds this-something no one had ever said before-he calls Jesus "my God." Now that is being "faith-full"! And Thomas went out from that room and proved that Jesus was his Master and his God. He traveled to the area around Iran and converted people whose descendants still worship Christ there today. There Thomas was killed for preaching the Faith-"faith-fully." He became "St. Thomas" as God's grace opened the way to Him to serve God, to fulfill his life, and to live eternally with God Himself.
It's clear that Thomas gained the full benefit from his doubt. We, too, can get the full "benefit of the doubt"-the full benefit of Christian belief-from Thomas' doubt. Thomas spoke for later generations in demanding full proof; that he got that proof should inspire us to believe what he saw, and receive the blessings Jesus says we get from that belief. "Even better blessings," said Jesus, "are in store for those who believe without seeing." St. Paul says that "faith comes from what is heard," (Romans 10:17), and today we hear Thomas saying, "If I can believe, you can, too."
We, too, are called not only to believe in the Resurrection, but to serve the Resurrected Lord, calling him, as Thomas did, "My Master! My God"-your Master over your whole life, your God over your whole life, and over mine. We are called, as Thomas was, to make the truth of the Resurrection fully real in our lives, by all we say and do, and in so doing we become "faith-full" instead of "faith-less." So, may you and I follow the faithful path of Thomas-where doubt leads to solid conviction-and turn away from "faith-less-ness" together. Amen!
