[Machine transcription]
How blessed are they who have not seen, and yet whose faith has constant been, for they
eternal life shall win.
Amen.
Christ is risen.
Alleluia.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ.
Amen.
Don’t be such a doubting Thomas.
Odds are you’ve heard this said, maybe to you before.
I remember when I was younger and I first heard this, and I didn’t really
know the scriptural reference, and I thought, who is this Thomas guy and why
is he so skeptical? And I think it’s a little odd that we use the adjective
doubting to refer to Thomas, because you won’t find that word anywhere in today’s
gospel lesson. But I guess that doubting Thomas has a better ring to it than
unconvinced Thomas or incredulous Thomas, and I’m not sure that you can actually
preach a sermon on this text without talking about Thomas, and that’s somewhat
unfortunate because he doesn’t need to be the focus of the lesson, nor his
disbelief. It’s easy to skip over the first part of this lesson and head
straight for Thomas, but there are many words of comfort and assurance from
Jesus that we should really occupy our thoughts on. So I want to hone in on
these in a few minutes, but for now let’s talk about our friend Thomas because the
Holy Spirit highlights his doubt for our benefit. So given our tendency to say
doubting Thomas, it’s no wonder that we might think of him in a bad light,
especially if we only look at him in the context of this passage. We might think
to ourselves, what was Thomas doing while the other ten disciples were locked in
room and hiding from the Jewish authorities. Was he hiding somewhere else?
Was he running away for fear of his life? Worse yet, was he cooperating with the
authorities to turn the others in? Now, this hardly seems the case that Thomas
had somehow turned his back on his disciple brothers, and thus Jesus. Others
say Thomas wasn’t with them the week prior because of his doubting, that he
had simply given up hope. Now, this too simply cannot be the case. If so, why did
he go to the room a week later to rejoin the others after Jesus’ first appearance?
Surely he had heard about this appearance and returned to see if Jesus
might reappear. Now, earlier in John’s Gospel, when Jesus learns of Lazarus’
death, he tells the disciples, let us go to him, and the disciples were afraid for
fear of the Jews that they would try to stone Jesus. But Thomas agrees with Jesus
and he says, let us also go that we may die with him. So this doesn’t sound like
a man who was afraid, even though he was well aware of the dangers of being close
to Jesus. Now some, maybe our pastor, speculate that Thomas was actually out
looking for Jesus. After all, if he wasn’t afraid of the Jewish authorities, then
maybe he was out looking for the risen Lord. Now, if we don’t think poorly of
Thomas for his absence, then we probably do because of his unbelief. After all, he
was the only one of the eleven who had doubted, wasn’t he? John isn’t clear about
this, but the other gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, each tell us that
all the disciples doubted. Mark says Jesus rebuked them for their unbelief
and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he
had risen. Luke’s account says they still disbelieved, even as Jesus stood before
them showing them his hands and feet. So we probably shouldn’t
single Thomas out because he was only doing what the other disciples were
doing. So why then does John, and only John, mention Thomas? It’s so we get to
hear Jesus tell him, blessed are those who believe and have not seen. Now it’s
not wrong of us to think that John points out Thomas’s actions so that he
and both we will identify ourselves with it. We all experience doubt and
disbelief at some point. We all say, I believe, help my unbelief at one time or
another. And in today’s world of reliance on science and technology, we become
suspicious of claims that cannot be proven by physical sight. Seeing is
believing. I saw it on the internet, so it must be true. So at first we may think
John uses this example of Thomas to show us our own doubt, so we think on our own
failure to believe without physical evidence. But the crux of any gospel
lesson is to take us away from ourselves and focus on God’s goodness and mercy in
his plan of salvation through us, through faith in Christ alone. And now I can
almost hear Thomas in heaven saying, you’ve already spent enough time talking
about me, you better talk about Jesus. So Jesus’ first words to them at his
appearance were, peace be with you. Now according to John, this blessing had only
been given to them once before, and it sounds like a phrase that we might
mistake for just some simple casual greeting, but this isn’t some kind of
1960s feel-good saying or gesture. It makes me think of this sign that’s on
183 between my house and church. It says, make this the year, and then underneath
it, peace. To the right, there’s an image of a hand making the peace sign. Now I
guess the people that pay for this advertising don’t realize that every year
since AD 33 has been a year of peace. Maybe not the peace that the world
wants, but it’s certainly the peace that we need. So when saying, peace be with you,
Jesus isn’t speaking of peace of reconciliation in the external world. No,
he’s talking about the peace of reconciliation between God and
man, which has only been achieved through his own death and resurrection. So the
time had come for this, and Christ is proclaiming this peace to his disciples.
Now, of course, Jesus knows they were still in disbelief, so he shows them his
hands and side and declares again, peace be with you. With this, Jesus is
reassuring them that he holds nothing against them for their doubt or their
disbelief, and this is in fact an absolution for them. This peace is also
given to them to encourage them for what is about to come. So now that Jesus has
absolved them of their doubt and their sin, he gives them their task. In John’s
version of the Great Commission, Jesus places them into his ministry that they
may go out and share the gospel and his peace with the world. And in doing so he
breathes the Holy Spirit upon them to strengthen them and endow them with this
authority to carry out the office of the keys, which is the gospel of forgiveness
given in the authority and name of Christ. Now Thomas, of course, missed all
this conversation, but there can be no question that Jesus was aware that
Thomas did not believe, and that he was actually there for this meeting, and that
he saw and heard what Thomas said, especially when Thomas said, unless I see,
I will not believe. And not just that he needed to see, but that he needed to
touch. So what does Jesus do? Well, he accommodates Thomas’s stubborn demands to
touch and see him, but he waits until Thomas is back with the others eight
days later. Now can you just imagine Jesus’ anticipation waiting to do this,
to spring this on Thomas? I mean he could have easily given Thomas some kind of
Saul on the road to Damascus moment in a blinding flash of light. The point is
that Jesus is the one who seeks out Thomas. Thomas is the lost sheep, he’s the
lost coin. He’s the prodigal son. Imagine the joy that Jesus felt as he returns
Thomas to faith with the words, do not disbelieve but believe. Now notice that
John doesn’t tell us whether Thomas actually touched Jesus. Maybe this is
just some inconsequential detail, but Thomas didn’t need to touch him. He
didn’t even need to see Jesus. Like the unclean woman who reached her hand
through the crowd to touch Jesus’ garment in the hope of healing, Thomas’ cure of
doubt came not from a touch or sight, but through Jesus’ words which placed
belief in Thomas’ heart. Belief that was expressed in Thomas’ exclamation,
my Lord and my God. Now this wasn’t merely Thomas saying this in the shock
of seeing Jesus, it was Thomas’ confession that he sees Jesus for who he
is, both his Savior and his God. And so what we might see is a mild reproach to
Thomas and really the others as well. Jesus asks, have you believed because you
have seen me? They might as well have said, yeah, of course Jesus, because they had all
professed disbelief without sight. So Christ appears to them so they would
believe, just as he healed and did other miraculous deeds in the sight of all
people so that they might believe. But now Jesus says the day is coming when
belief will come without sight and those who believe in this way will have favor
with God. And this is why the disciples are being called to preach, to preach
salvation and bear witness to Christ’s resurrection so that many would come to
faith not by seeing but by hearing the Word of God alone. Now in the last two
verses, John tells us there was more he could have written regarding Jesus’s
many other signs, but that the things he did write should be sufficient for us to
believe. The Gospels weren’t written as some kind of guidebook for our lives or
just simply as a mere historical account of the life of Christ. John’s words
should give us confidence that all the comfort and assurances that Christ gave
the disciples in that room, he gives to us also. This piece that got that Jesus
shared with them is the same piece of reconciliation with God that we heard
Pastor Gizzi announced to us in the absolution. We sang of this piece in the
Kyrie, and we’re going to hear it declared yet again in a few minutes when
we sing the Pax Domini, the peace of the Lord, before we receive the Lord’s Supper.
We even sing it at Christmas in the hymn, Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Peace on
earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled. So as Jesus says, even so I am
sending you, when he charged the disciples to go out and preach the good
news, he also says this to us as he bids us to do the same in our daily vocations.
Christ showed them again his hands and side so that they would see that he was
indeed raised from the dead, and so that we too will be confident that we are
going to have our own bodily resurrection. As he came to the disciples
in bodily form to show them that he is indeed God and man, Jesus will come to us
in the physical presence of his body and blood in the bread and wine of his Holy
Supper, not just as a remembrance of him or a symbol, his actual body and blood,
just as he said. And as he breathed the Holy Spirit on them, he sends his spirit
to us in his word and in the waters of holy baptism so that we may come to
belief and be strengthened in faith. As he gave the disciples the keys to the
kingdom of heaven through the authority to remit and retain sins, he so too
forgives us and calls on us to carry out the mission of the church to forgive the
of others. And yes, he tells us we are blessed, that we truly are receiving God’s
favor because we have not seen, but yet we believe. May we ever hold fast to the
one who removes our doubt and gives us the confidence of our salvation and
eternal life through faith in him alone. Amen. Christ is risen. Now the peace of
God which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ
Jesus, amen.
