Scripture can be found here…
Sometime after the resurrection—maybe twenty years later—a Christ-follower began to assemble a collection of the sayings of Jesus. Nothing about his birth. Nothing about his ministry, or his healing people, or his feeding them, or the miracles that seemed to break out whenever he was around. Nothing about his suffering, or his death, or his resurrection. Just his sayings. Some of the sayings are familiar, like this one:
The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like.” He said to them, “It is like a mustard seed. It is the smallest of all seeds. But when it falls on tilled soil, it becomes a great plant and becomes shelter for birds of the sky.”
~Thom. 20
And some of the sayings are not at all familiar, like this one:
Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.”
~Thom. 3
These sayings, scholars believe, were circulated among believers around the same time Paul was writing his letters, and about twenty years before the earliest Gospel we have in the New Testament. The first sentence of this book of sayings is this:
“These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Didymus Judas Thomas, wrote down.” This collection, which is not a part of our bible, is known as the Gospel of Thomas. It was lost for more than 1900 years, recovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945.
We meet Thomas, also known as Didymus, in our passage today. Thomas is from the Hebrew word for “twin,” and Didymus is the Greek word for “twin.” Thomas seems to be a twin. For nearly two thousand years the church has called him “Doubting Thomas.” But there’s more to Thomas than this one moniker. So today I’d like to expand on Thomas. What else do we know about this apostle, who is so famous for what happens in the passage we have just read?
Thomas appears in all four gospels. But in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he just a name on a list of the twelve—Jesus’ inner circle.
The Gospel According to John gives Thomas a lot more airtime. We encounter him three times in the Fourth Gospel, and each time, he is an active participant, someone who speaks out, and someone who moves the story forward.
We first meet him in chapter 11, the turning point of the gospel, the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. At the moment when Jesus decides it’s time to go to Lazarus, he acknowledges to the disciples that his friend is already dead. Thomas responds: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11: 16) This is Thomas: a man ready to act, the one who says, “Let’s go”—even when danger awaits.
We next meet him on the night of the Last Supper. Jesus is talking to his disciples, preparing them for what is coming. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus tells them. “I’m going to prepare a place for you.” But Thomas speaks up: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus responds: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” And this is Thomas, the one willing to ask questions, even when everyone else remains silent.
And then we meet him here. We meet him a week after the resurrection. Jesus appears to his disciples on resurrection day, in the evening. He mysteriously appears among them, breathing peace and showing them the marks of the nails on his body. But Thomas isn’t there that night. Where is he? The gospel doesn’t tell us. But our passage tells us that the disciples were hiding out because they were afraid. Does that mean that Thomas was the only one willing to go out into the city, say, to procure food for them, or to try to round up other followers of Jesus on that confusing day? Is this Thomas, one willing to risk danger to bring the community together again?
When Thomas returns, the others tell him who and what they have seen, which means they tell him that Jesus showed them his hands and his side—the marks of the nails. That’s what Thomas wants too. Only he wants more—he wants to both see and touch Jesus.
And that’s what he gets. A week later, Jesus, appears again, despite the closed doors, and he knows what Thomas wants to see. So he shows him. He invites him, not only to see, but to touch. And… we don’t know what Thomas Didymus does—we don’t know if he touches the wounds on Jesus’ body. But we do know what he says:
“My Lord and my God.”
A full affirmation of faith.
Why is Thomas singled out as the disciple who doubted? Why? Especially since so many of the disciples were hiding and afraid, and couldn’t trust in the resurrection story until Jesus stood in front of them?
One theory goes like this: The Gospel of John is having a conversation with the Gospel of Thomas. As that second saying I read to you suggests, the Gospel of Thomas is in many ways about an interior experience of the kingdom of God, and, by extension, the resurrection. That saying continues,
“Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. And you will know that it is you who are the children of the living father.”
~Thom. 3
Scholar Elaine Pagels explains it this way:
Now, [in the Gospel of Thomas], this Jesus comes to reveal that you and he are, if you like, twins.... And what you discover as you read the Gospel of Thomas, which you're meant to discover, is that you and Jesus at a deep level are identical twins. And that you discover that you are the child of God just as he is.[i]
Thomas is called the “twin” because his gospel suggests that is true of all who follow Jesus, and who seek to know him deeply. As for Thomas standing in for all those who doubt, Pagels suggests that the Gospel of John may have been responding to sayings such as this one from the Gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said, “Wretched is the body that is dependent upon a body, and wretched is the soul that is dependent upon these two.”
~Thom. 87.
Take that, says John, as he shows Thomas’ faith blooming after an encounter with the resurrected Jesus in all his bodily presence.[ii]
There’s so much more to Thomas than doubt. There’s courage, and there’s curiosity, and there’s a desire to gather the community of faith together.
And as this passage comes to an end, Jesus and Thomas—the gospel of Thomas—are very much on the same page, and together they send us a love letter through time. The Gospel of Thomas says, “Wretched is the body that is dependent upon a body.” And Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Each in their own way is speaking, not just to the people in that upper room, not just to those early followers of Jesus, but to us, we who have heard the story and taken it into our hearts.
Blessed are we who have not seen, but who have trusted in Jesus, our risen Lord.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Elaine Pagels, “Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas,” Frontline: From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians, Public Broadcasting Service, PBS.org, 1998.
[ii] Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Vintage Press, 2004).