On this Second Sunday of Easter I had the opportunity to preach and preside with the virtual community of All Saints in Nagoya, Japan. I am very grateful to have been part of this worshiping community in Christ. Below is the more or less what I preached based on the Gospel from John, 20: 19-31. For more information on All Saints please follow this link: Link
There are some who believe that the US moon landings were staged; staged to look real in some undisclosed military hanger. In a failed homemade rocket, there was the recent death in February of “Mad” Mike Hughes attempting to prove --- that the earth is flat.[1] And today, as we gather virtually under the umbrella of global pandemic, “conspiracy” theories is not just an American phenomenon. We have stories being shared of COVID19 starting in some secret military laboratory.
Unfortunately, the 21st century has seen a rise in conspiratorial thinking for with the good of the internet we have a downside: an unfiltered clearinghouse that breeds those seeking the “truth;” “truthers” who find “co-truthers” to explain and support each other in this pursuit.
As you can probably tell I do not have a high opinion --- not of the curiosity or healthy skepticism --- but of “truthers” who don’t trust governments, science, academics or anything else except for none other than what they deem to be true. However, today’s gospel not only speaks to this present moment not only in the most famous death in history, the death of Jesus Christ, and the conspiracy theories around his death that have abounded for centuries, but we also see someone who is really trying to get at the truth. This figure is no lonely outsider on the internet wearing a tin foil hat, but one of Jesus’ own disciples: Thomas, a “truther” someone we in fact mirror.
First let me back up. The death and resurrection of Jesus from the beginning has long been the target of conspiracy theorists. The general tendency of these quests is based on a view that the disciples acted in concert to claim that Jesus was alive when he really wasn’t; that he died and the disciples “helped” him become “alive” again. Of course, why these disciples would do these seems to be a more elusive question not pursued. Others have speculated that Jesus didn’t actually die but just fell unconscious or “swooned” on the cross and eventually staggered out of the tomb. For whatever reason they did not trust the fact that --- namely the Romans ---were pretty good at the industrial application of the death penalty, the cross as an effective form of death, and the author of John furthermore tells us that Jesus was speared in the side (19:31-37). That would have been quite a “swoon,” and Jesus must have been in really great shape to survive all that besides the flogging under Pontus Pilate! And others have speculated that the disciples had a mass hallucination out of grief, or that they actually saw a ghost.
Well despite 2,000 years of theories, thankfully the testimony of the death and resurrection of Jesus is resilient. Indeed, it seems as though the gospel of John itself embeds an answer to the “truthers” in the text, and one of the places we see this most clearly is in this account in the Gospel of John today.
Let’s review our gospel. After the death of Jesus, at least ten disciples and perhaps others including women --- yet without Judas who was dead and Thomas who was gone --- are hiding behind locked doors in the evening of the same day of the resurrection. Although they had heard from the women --- in John from Mary Magdalene --- that she had “seen the Lord” all remained in confusion, doubt and fear.[2]
Suddenly Jesus appeared among them with the greeting, “Peace be with you” (v. 19) along with showing them the evidence of the wounds in his hands and side. It’s a strange combination: Jesus is risen in a physical body and yet can also appear through locked doors. It’s clear that this is a different kind of body, neither ghost nor flesh as we know it, but a body nonetheless. What was the reaction after their shock? We are told that the disciples “rejoiced” after seeing the evidence.[3] Mary’s testimony had been vindicated.
Later, when the others recount to Thomas what they had witnessed, “We have seen the Lord” --- by the way you may have noticed that they are the same words used by Mary Magdalene --- he is skeptical.[4] Thomas is not taking their story for gospel truth just yet. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”[5] After all, they had the benefit of seeing scars. Why shouldn’t he?
Thomas may have thought his fellow disciples were engaging in their own collective conspiracy theory. We can summarize that Thomas was a thinker, a questioner. For example, in John 14:5, Thomas pressed Jesus on his statement about where he was going. It wasn’t that Thomas was afraid --- after all, in chapter 11 Thomas was the one prepared to go with Jesus to a dangerous place, even if it meant his own death.[6] Rather it seems Thomas wasn’t going to buy into any kind of story, false information or wild speculation.
The church has often called Thomas the “doubter” following Jesus telling him “do not doubt but believe.” I don’t like that label, because by labeling Thomas as the “doubter” supreme, it suggests reason and intelligence is somehow contrary to faith or that he was inordinately unusual. Thomas simply wants the truth, not that much different than the other disciples or shall we admit it all of us who faithfully walk in Christ on this journey of faith. Thomas doesn’t reject the idea of resurrection outright; he simply wants more --- the same evidence the other disciples had received, that Mary Magdalene had received. In other words, Thomas wants to experience the risen Christ for himself.
And then, suddenly, Thomas has the opportunity. The pattern repeats: an evening, a locked door, an appearance by Jesus. Jesus somehow knows that Thomas had expressed some skepticism and offers the evidence that Thomas was looking for. “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.[7]
We like Thomas immediately notice, Jesus’ resurrected body retained its scars. Not old scars. Not faded scars signaling a long-ago accident on a playground, but freshly healed wounds still raw enough to allow an invitation for a truth seeking disciple. Although the Biblical Greek in the gospel of John is not clear as to whether Thomas actually touched Jesus, if Thomas did, I can just imagine Jesus wincing at that pain. The openness of wounds not only signaled real death and resurrection, the scars revealed real engagement, real presence. The presence of the wounds spoke to the very question that troubled Thomas and for which he hungered for the most. Christ is standing before him, before us unequivocally: “I am here. I am here with you. I don’t float a few sanitized feet above reality; even after death, I dwell in the hot, searing heart of life.”
Let’s look again at the doubt. Notice that Thomas’ qualms are about the reports of the resurrection. Thomas has suspicions about the veracity of what he was hearing from the other disciples about the risen Jesus. That helps us to understand what Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not doubt but believe,” he’s really saying, “Thomas, it’s me, in the flesh. I am here. I am present. Believe in the testimony of the disciples and the women.”
Perhaps another piece of this event that we need to be reminded about is that what Jesus says to Thomas was being applied equally to all of the disciples.[8] When Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” these words are for all time and place. In that time and place, all had the same predisposition, the same inclination. All believed that Jesus was alive only because they saw Jesus in the flesh. Like Thomas, the other disciples before him, both men and women, did not believe Jesus’ resurrection either; Thomas didn’t believe the report of the disciples, the disciples did not believe the report of the women. They were all across the spectrum of doubt, “truthers,” and their reservations were only suspended when they saw Jesus alive with their own eyes.
So when I realize how the disciples are no different than Thomas or Mary before them it opens a window for me. I will gladly admit I would rather have a resurrected Jesus visibly standing right here in this time of fear, confusion and doubt. It would make this whole thing of belief so much easier. And in actuality even if this time wasn’t challenging, don’t all of us have a bit of Thomas, willing to push back on what, at times, seems challenging particularly when in faith the going gets tough?
An additional piece for us to ponder I believe is, if we consider the evidence of when the gospel of John was written --- roughly 90-100 CE --- the audience was not that far different than our own contexts, those earliest small communities of faithful who had never met Jesus. They were like us relying on the testimony of others. In a sense, the gospel of John more than the other gospels is speaking as testimony to future generations who have not seen Jesus who hunger about the truth of the gospel. The author of the gospel of John of all the gospels is strengthening us and asking us to believe, but not just on the basis of the evidence itself. The author wants us to believe in the ongoing, unseen presence of Jesus Christ. Perhaps that is why of the four gospels the author of John has such a strong focus on the Holy Spirit, the baptismal waters and Holy Communion.
Certainly, the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is quite compelling from a historical perspective. It’s not that the Gospel of John is suggesting that the evidence is unimportant rather in these recorded words of Jesus the author is laying the groundwork for futures Kierkegaard’s and our leaps of faith.
It is a good time for me to be reminded that I may sanctimoniously point out how I don’t wear a tinfoil hat and how assured I am that the earth is a sphere, a blue marble in a vast universe, I am in fact a “truther” who seeks the precense of Christ, in how the impossible had become possible and despite all kinds of fear, confusion and doubt, I listen to those who believed and wouldn’t shut up about it. Thankfully I have the eyewitness testimony of the gospels against all that is arrayed against it. I have as the author of John puts it later in the text: “these things are written so that you might come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (v. 31). I have the witness of subsequent generations of believers. I have this virtual community, along with hundreds of thousands around the world, who all attest to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
And finally, when I recognize that I am a truther, perhaps grudgingly, thankfully, I walk in faith in today’s story where Jesus is at the apex of his resurrection victory displaying his recently healed wounds without shame or apology. In those scars I am reminded of all that God has done, all that God has made possible and all that God will make possible through the resurrection.
Thankfully, Jesus himself recognizes this journey for as he calls blessed, it is so we are blessed when we live out this scarred testimony, blessed to live as the presence of Christ to other “truthers” with the testimony that Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed “truthers.” Walk in faith. Amen.
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a31077307/mad-mike-hughes-death-flat-earth-rocket-crash/
[2] vs. 18
[3] v. 20
[4] v. 25
[5] v. 25
[6] John 11:16
[7] v. 27
[8] v. 29