Scripture can be found here…
Thomas is the one who is always ready to go.
Each time we meet Thomas in the gospel according to John, he is either expressing a readiness to go, or a willingness to go, or he has already gone.
We first meet him in chapter 11, when Jesus receives word that Lazarus is sick. Days later, knowing that Lazarus is dead, Jesus decides it’s time (at last) to go to Bethany. When he tells his disciples, Thomas bursts out with, “Let’s go too, so that we may die with him”—that is to say, with Jesus. The last time Jesus was in Bethany, some irate citizens tried to stone him to death.
But Thomas is ready to go anyway. To die, if it comes to that.
The next time we meet Thomas, it’s the night of the last supper. After supper, knowing that he will die on the cross, Jesus offers words of comfort to his friends. “You know where I’m going,” he says. “I’ll prepare a place for you.” Thomas, eager to go, nevertheless protests: “We don’t know where you’re going…how can we know the way?”
“I am the Way,” Jesus tells Thomas. “And the Truth. And the Life.”
And Thomas is ready. Ready to go.
So, why should it surprise us that, on the evening of that that long resurrection day—that day full of reports of Jesus and appearances of Jesus—on that night, Thomas is not holed up in the locked room with Jesus’ disciples. He was never one to sit around. He was always ready to go. He’s gone.
One of my friends speculates that Thomas was an essential employee—one of those who, in a time of emergency, doesn’t have the luxury of hunkering down at home to be safe.[i] My guess is that he was out getting provisions for everyone—that dinner didn’t happen until Thomas was back with bread and fish and yogurt and figs and the wine.
Thomas wasn’t there that first night, when Jesus came through the locked door of the room, and into the midst of his terrified friends, saying, “Peace be with you.”
Thomas wasn’t there when his friends (still frightened, but now filled with hope) looked into Jesus’ eyes, and gazed at his wounded hands and side.
Thomas wasn’t there.
So when he returned with provisions, and his friends, wide-eyed and a little stunned, told him what had happened, he said, “Well, that’s what I want, too. I want to see his hands and his side. I want to touch the wounds.”
I want to see what you saw.
So now, it’s a week later. And maybe Thomas sent Peter out for provisions—or maybe he just went earlier in the day. But here he is, and it’s the evening, and although the doors, again, are shut and locked, Jesus appears.
And he stands among them.
And he says, “Peace. Peace be with you.”
Then he says to Thomas, “Have at it my friend,” and he offers his hands and his side, and tells Thomas to go ahead and poke and prod.
“Do not doubt,” Jesus says, “but believe.”
Then Thomas makes the strongest statement of faith in the gospel of John. In fact, he is the only person in that gospel to fully affirm Jesus that is, in essence one with God.
Thomas says, “My Lord and My God.”
And then, I think, we come to the point of the story, which is to say, us.
There is a term in theater and in filmmaking that describes the fact that the people acting don’t usually acknowledge their audience. That term is “the fourth wall.” It’s as if the edge of the stage, or the camera, is just another wall in the space where the actors are performing.
In the next moment, Jesus breaks the fourth wall. He looks directly at the audience, he gazes into the camera lens. First, he says to Thomas,
“Have you believed because you have seen me?
Then, looking into the camera, he says,
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Now, Jesus is talking to us.
He’s talking to the people who are hearing this gospel proclaimed. That first audience, say, hearing these words sixty years after the events they describe. Or people hearing the story at any time over the past two thousand years.
He’s talking to anyone who knows about Jesus, not because they have seen the empty tomb, or his wounded hands or side, but because someone told them about those things.
He’s talking to us.
And one of the things he’s saying is, “It’s ok to doubt. It’s ok for your heart to be in two places—one place, being a place of fear and not knowing, and the other place being a place of joy and peace and embracing the good news.
It’s ok. There is room in faith for doubt. In fact, there is an argument to be made that doubt is the first step to a deeper faith, a faith that has weathered the storm, and come at last to calm water and safe harbor.
We are all standing in two places now. My friend Laurie preached this on Easter. We are standing, perhaps, in a place of fear at the same time we are in a place of safety. Or, we are standing in a place of danger at the same time we are standing in a place of trust.
It’s ok to stand in two places, until you can at last move to the place you belong.
That’s one of the things I believe Jesus is saying.
The other one is this: His resurrection means that God will always show up for us.
God will come through locked doors, breathing peace.
God will come into the midst of our fear, offering holy presence.
God will emerge from death, bringing life.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Katya Outchakoff, “Safer at Home?” Revised Common Lectionary, April 14, 2020, RevGalBlogPals.org. https://revgalblogpals.org/2020/04/14/revised-common-lectionary-safer-at-home/.