John 20:19-31

My name is Thomas. I was a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. I wasn't there when Jesus appeared to Mary and the other women. I wasn't there when Jesus appeared to Peter and John and the other disciples. Frankly, I'd rather not say where I was. The Friday Jesus died was the worst day of my life. Not only was I stunned at the arrest, torture and execution of Jesus, I felt like an idiot. I felt as if I had simply wasted the last three years of my life, following Jesus around. It had been obvious to me that he was an exceptional man, destined for great things. By following him I was hooking my wagon to a shooting star.

But don't get the wrong idea. My discipleship was genuine, not something I had calculated would put me with a better class of people. For one thing, spending only a week with Jesus would have quickly disillusioned any Jewish man that he was going to be hanging out with the upper crust. Jesus ate dinners with thieves such as tax collectors. He offered his food to prostitutes and sick people and all sorts of folks I had been taught to avoid. By the standards of the day, we hung out with the wrong crowd.

Yet there was a strange magnetism about Jesus that attracted not just the other disciples and myself, it also attracted some of the well-to-do and powerful folks. Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha are three examples. Lazarus was pretty well fixed. Then there was Nicodemus, a highly respected member of the Jewish high council. Even after Jesus died, a rich man named Joseph of Arimathea laid Jesus' body in his own tomb. Jesus just appealed to many people across the whole social spectrum. Few people who knew him or knew about him were neutral about him.

And that meant that for every ten people who loved him, there was at least one who hated his guts. Jesus gave so many people such aid and comfort. He healed them, he taught them, he preached and he loved them. But he also gave some people an awful lot of grief. He was not above calling names, and the names he called some people, right out in public, were pretty stiff ones. So he angered a lot of people, and they didn't take long to decide that Jesus had to go. And a lot of the ordinary people got mad at him, too, over religious issues.

I should have seen his coming, and maybe I did, really, but just wouldn't face it. It's not like there had been no indications that some people were out to get him. Once we were in Jerusalem and Jesus was being pestered by some people who wanted him to answer plainly whether he was the Christ. Finally Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." That put some folks over the edge, and they actually picked up stones to stone him to death, right there on a Jerusalem street! Let me tell you, I was plenty worried, and scared, yes, very scared, because let's face it: once a mob's blood lust is up, it's hard to stop.

Somehow, Jesus talked them out of it. They calmed down, but Jesus wouldn't stop while he was ahead. He continued to explain how he was the son of God, and for that we all literally had to run for our lives, Jesus included, clear out of town. We went all the way across the Jordan river, where the people had known John the Baptist well and were much more kindly disposed towards Jesus. There we rested and many people believed in Jesus. And there we got word that Lazarus was deathly sick.

Well, he was dead already, but we didn't know it. Jesus seemed to know it, though. He took two days to decide whether to go to Lazarus' town of Bethany - back across the Jordan into what I and the other disciples had concluded was enemy territory. When he said, "Let's go," we disciples started arguing among ourselves about whether to go with him. We tried to talk Jesus out of going - in vain, of course, because Jesus always listened to our advice but he never took it, not one time. When it became clear to us that Jesus was going to see Mary and Martha most of the disciples still were reluctant to accompany him.

Finally, I told them, "Let us also go, that we die with him."

By that time in my walk with Jesus, I had become devoted to him personally. Oh, his cause was great, his message was holy and his mission was pure, but that wasn't what drew me too his side any longer. Those things were still important, but I said I would go and die with him because, quite simply, I loved Jesus himself. Jesus cause and work and mission had become less important, somehow, than Jesus himself. And if Jesus was determined to go to Bethany where there was a real risk of being stoned to death, then I couldn't bear the thought of him taking that risk without me there also. If Jesus died without me there, I wouldn't have been able to stand it. I choked down my fear because I loved him. It was so simple as that.

Nothing bad happened. Jesus called Lazarus forth from his tomb. Later, I found out that Lazarus being raised was the event that led the high council to decide for sure that Jesus had to die.

Somehow, I became a coward. Yes, a coward. When we went together to Bethany, I would have stood beside Jesus if the people had tried to stone him. I would have shielded him with my own body until they beat me down. But on his last Thursday night, when we were in the garden, an armed cohort of soldiers came up, and I freaked out. I just lost it. They arrested Jesus and let me tell you, I knew what was coming. The cross, no doubt about it! I knew the back-stabbing ways of so many of the high council members.

So I ran. Only Peter had the guts to stand and fight, but Jesus stopped him. Then we all fled, but I think I ran hardest of all. I, who would once have sacrificed myself to save Jesus, I just chickened out. When Jesus died, he died alone. I wasn't there to save him. After Jesus was buried, I was so ashamed. I was hurt, I was angry and I was disappointed beyond description. I wish that I had had the courage to take a sword as Peter did. Only not even Jesus' command would have made me put it down. Yes, I told myself all day Saturday, if I had just had a sword, I would have saved the day, and even if not, I would have died with Jesus.

But now, Jesus was dead and I still lived. I hated myself for my cowardice, for my faithlessness. And now I had no aim in life. I had followed Jesus, and Jesus was gone. I was completely adrift. If God could allow Jesus to die, then faith was pointless.

So when the other disciples told me, "We have seen the Lord," my response was unenthusiastic, to say the least. 'No, really' they insisted, 'we have seen him, in person, right here.'

Now I have heard some whoppers before, but that one took the cake. These poor men and women were hurt as much as I was, but at least I hadn't gone off the deep end. I wasn't seeing ghosts. I thought about telling them the very obvious fact that dead people stay dead, and that these Jesus "sightings" were just grief-induced delusions. But what did that matter? Grief is grief. They were dealing with theirs by imagining they saw Jesus again, and I was dealing with mine by lapsing into total apathy.

So I just said that I wouldn't believe that any vision of Jesus I saw would convince me unless I could touch his wounds. "Well," Peter answered, "aren't you just a doubting Thomas!" The name stuck. Perhaps you have heard it on occasion.

For all the next week some of the other disciples kept telling me they had seen Jesus. Mary Magdalene was the most insistent. I found myself thinking that I could almost believe it myself. It sounded too good to be true, but there was such a new spirit among my friends, a radiant confidence and quiet joy.

After a few days I asked Matthew, "If you have seen the Lord, what is next? I mean, the must be more to this resurrection of Jesus you are so convinced of than him just showing up and going, 'Ta-Da!'"

"We're waiting," Matthew replied. "For what?" I asked. "For you," he said.

I began thinking. Matthew had always seemed a sensible type. He had always seemed to analyze situations with an accountant's mind, if you get my drift. If Matthew said these sightings added up, perhaps there was literally more to them than met the eye.

I wanted to believe, I really did! More than anything, I wanted Jesus to be alive so I could beg his forgiveness for running away in the garden. Oh, just to see his face, to hear his voice again! Sometimes during that week I would be out and I would see him, talking to someone across the street. My heart would leap! But then he would turn around and I would see it was not Jesus, just someone whose hair was like his. Or I would hear his footsteps on the stair, but they wouldn't belong to him after all, just to some stranger.

And at night, after a day of forlornly hoping Jesus really would appear to me, I would cry on my bed because I knew Jesus really was gone and I missed him so badly.

I couldn't believe my friends completely. Their illusions were just fleshed out more than mine, that was all. So for my faith to be reborn, I needed to see the wounds and feel them.

But Jesus didn't come to me, except in my heart and my desire. And my heart ached so bad, because it was still filled with my love for Jesus, but Jesus was gone.

Until that day at the end of the week when Jesus did come. We were all in the house and I looked up and there he was! He was standing right there, right in front of me! I couldn't speak. I think my heart must have stopped. I lost my breath. Was he real? Was this vision really him, or just illusion? And how did he get in here? The doors were shut!

He held out his hands to bless us and said, "Peace be with you." I just stared. I could clearly see where the nails had pierced his hands. There was no blood or open wound, just scars, but there was no doubt. Then Jesus turned to me and took a step in my direction. He said to me, "Put your finger here and see my hands." I couldn't move. My throat was so tight I could hardly breathe.

Jesus pulled back his cloak and showed me the red scar in his side. It was deeply depressed into his body where the Roman spear had been ripped out. "Reach out your hand and put it in my side," Jesus said. "Do not doubt but believe."

I began to cry. I gasped, "My Lord and my God!" And I fell to my knees because I was so ashamed for doubting him, for doubting my friends. I had let Jesus down again. Wasn't the testimony of my friends reliable? Of course it was! Yet I had resisted believing.

Jesus asked me, "Have you believed because you have seen me?" "Yes," I managed to whisper, so softly that no one heard it. "But I should have believed without seeing."

Maybe Jesus heard me, for he answered, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

When I looked up, Jesus was gone. Mary Magdalene was crying as I was. She came over and put her arms around me. Matthew was smiling from ear to ear.

I never did touch Jesus' wounds. Nor did I ever again think I needed to. I learned that the problem isn't doubt. I came to know countless Christians who were sometimes wracked by doubts. If God revealed himself in a way that left no room for doubt, perhaps there would be no room for you. The problem is not doubt but faith.

Later when I spread the Gospel to India I discovered that the people who came to follow Christ were at no disadvantage in having the same faith as we apostles. They actually can make the same claim as Mary Magdalene and apostles made to me: "We have seen the Lord!" They said it because they understood what I came to understand: that the Scriptures, prayer and the community of faith lead us not to external visions, but to the full experience of God in Jesus. The revelation of God in Jesus is grounded in the historical events the Scriptures relate, but the fullness of God in Christ is not trapped in history. Christ is ever new and ever knowable, even by people who never see a vision. The presence and reality of the risen Christ is always available through the work of the Holy Spirit. So all believers have the same access to Christ as we disciples.

My colleague John said he wrote his Gospel "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." What John was saying is to believe the Scriptures.

The authority of the Bible will never be discerned by endless arguments about whether it is literally true or whether certain sets of critical facts can be scientifically verified. The truth of the Scriptures is that they reveal the power and presence of the living God, and how this God is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.

The revelation of God, Christ and Spirit in the Scriptures mean that we who follow Christ are to have our collective and individual identities shaped by the Scriptures and what they reveal. So please, read the Bible.

I never got to ask Jesus to forgive me for running away from him when he was arrested. But I am sure he did, even without me asking. And over the later years, I would ask myself, did I really see him that day? He was there so fleetingly.

I know I saw him, but I also know that such a vision isn't essential to faith. I never stopped loving my Lord and my God. And I never missed him in my heart again, because he lived there for the rest of my days, a crucified, risen and living Lord.

(Comments to Don at dsensing@home.com.)
Franklin, TN
http://www.TrinityMethodistChurch.com