Why Do You Believe?


Sunday, April 23 2006
Easter 2B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 20:19-31

19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “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.” 26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” [PAUSE] 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written 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.

It’d been fourteen years. For someone who is 42, fourteen years is still a pretty long time. I’m beginning to gain a sense of perspective on it, but it still represents a pretty sizeable chunk of my time so far on earth.

I shared with some of you some of my fears in traveling to Chile at the beginning of the month, being worried about feeling out of place, of being disconnected, of no longer feeling like I did while I was growing up there – as though it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be there – that I BELONGED there.

That was why it was with an incredible sense of relief that I walked out of the customs area of the airport and started walking along the concourse without seeing my brother Jimmy in the crowd. I wasn’t worried. I knew where I was, I knew I could find my way, and I knew where I needed to go if for some reason they weren’t able to get to the airport.

They came through the doors I was approaching and we climbed into the van they came in and started back towards Santiago. They were in and out of the parking lot in less than 15 minutes.

Digital cameras have done wonders for my picture-taking. Ours is about 4 years old. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that high-end cameras do, but it does have one really cool thing that we found early on. When you take a picture, the image stays on the viewfinder screen for about 10 seconds. In that time, you can review your shot and decide if you want to keep it or not. If you don’t, there’s a button just to the right of the display window that serves a dual function – it will help you white balance, if you are using the camera in anything other than the automatic mode, and it will, with a single push of the button, let you decide if you want to keep the picture you just took. If you don’t, all you do is push the ‘set’ button at the lower left and the picture … goes away.

The settings on the camera allowed for four hundred and four pictures to fit on the memory card we have in it. When I left for Chile on the fifth of April I had room for three hundred and eighty-five pictures, since I’d forgotten to download the pictures we’d taken at Caleb and the other second graders’ performance at school the Monday night before I left.

You’d think that would be more than enough room to take all the pictures I wanted, wouldn’t you? You’d be right, THIS time. I did have a few frames left when I got back, but it was less than 70, if memory serves. I took some … shall we say “interesting” pictures while I was there. I took pictures of cars in traffic, blurred shots of city parks as we drove by, a street vendor selling ‘barquillos’ – a baked tube similar to an ice cream cone in texture with ‘manjar’ – caramelized sweetened condensed milk – packed in the middle of it. I took sequential pictures of a trolley climbing up to the observation area on San Cristobal Hill, overlooking the city, so that if you click through them really fast you can see the car climbing towards you. Never mind that the camera HAS a video setting, where I could have ACTUALLY recorded the trolley COMING up the hill.

I also took some other pictures that are a little harder to explain. I took pictures of the church where my friend and fellow MK Todd and his wife attended the funeral of their two year old daughter after she drowned in their pool right before Christmas of 1999. I took pictures of my feet walking on the sidewalks of my old neighborhood. I took pictures of the bell tower of the catholic church that is two blocks from where we used to live, as I approached our old house, I also took pictures of the block in FRONT of our house, which used to be full of older apartment buildings, stores, several houses and a theatre. The entire block has been razed. They are getting to build something else, most likely a couple of larger, taller apartment buildings. I took pictures of the view from the front of our house up the street, towards the park, where the weekly open air market – the feria – came and set up, and I took pictures of the mountains I grew up with as a constant backdrop, always reminding me that there was something bigger out there than me.

And I took a couple of pictures of myself reflected back in a convex mirror that had been set up so that people pulling out of their driveways could see if someone was coming down the street or the sidewalk.

You see, it’d been so long, and my sense of connection with Chile had grown so tenuous that I wanted to have some kind of proof that I had actually BEEN there. So I have this picture of a mirror, with the blue sky behind it, and me reflected in it, holding the camera.

Proof is a big deal when it comes to some things. Proof was a big deal to Thomas. Actor and Playwright Craig McNair Wilson put it this way:

If Thomas were alive today, [he’d be from] Missouri. His favorite phrases were, “Oh Yah?” and, Really?” and “”You’re kiddin’!” Some folks believe anything they hear. Not Thomas. He wanted a second opinion. He wanted to hear it from a more reliable source. Thomas also said, “Seeing is believing.” When Thomas finally saw Jesus – after the resurrection – Jesus said, “Not seeing, yet believing – that’s believing!” (YHWH Is Not a Radio Station in Minneapolis And Other Things Everyone Should Know, Harper & Rowe, San Francisco, 1983)

Let’s unpack the story a little more. Last week we read from the gospel according to Mark that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome …

“went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Remember, we talked about that being the place where it seems like the earliest rendition of the Gospel according to Mark ended? There were no resurrection appearances, there was no Emmaus Road, no Peter running to the tomb … and no Thomas.

Here today we jump straight TO that story. John goes directly from the scene at the tomb, much richer in detail and dialogue than the Mark account, and puts us in the upper room with the disciples, who are still quaking in their sandals in fear of the Jews – the ones who had just worked it so that their master, their Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, would be crucified and killed, and as far as they knew, was still laying in the tomb. It bears mentioning that even though the disciples had been told that Jesus had arisen, that news alone had not transformed them. They had received the word from the women after THEY left the tomb, but that could be explained away as a hysterical hallucination. The empty tomb could just as well be the work of grave robbers.

And in that first appearance, Thomas was not there.

Right there we need to stop. I suspect we have more in common with Thomas than we might care to admit, but here is one thing that is fairly objective – in other words, neither here nor there on the value judgment scale – let’s have a show of hands, was anyone in this room present at this first appearance of Christ after his resurrection? See? We, like Thomas, were not there when Jesus first appeared to his disciples. So is it any wonder that we encounter some of those same reactions that Thomas had when we present the story of the Gospel to an otherwise unbelieving world?

How is it then, WHY is it that we believe? Or do we?

Thomas’ response to the reports from his fellow disciples – and their response to HIM – would serve us well as an example of how to treat skeptics in our midst. In the other three Gospels, Thomas is simply named among the other disciples as they are listed. In John, we have his character developed in a way that prepares us for this scene: in 11:16, after Lazarus has died, Thomas is almost as impulsive as Peter has been shown to be, encouraging his fellow disciples to go with Jesus to where Lazarus is buried so that they, too, can die with him, in order to believe. In 14:5, after Jesus has told the disciples to not worry, that he is going to prepare a place for them, Thomas comes out with the classic thick-headed response – we don’t KNOW where you’re going, how are we supposed to know that? In short, we have a picture of a man who was loyal to a fault – doggedly loyal is the way the commentator put it – willing to die for his Master, and somewhat slow on the uptake when Jesus started speaking in conceptual terms rather than concrete ones. Thomas was nothing if not literal-minded.

What is interesting to note is that, despite his disbelief of their report of Jesus’ having appeared to them, Thomas was still part of the fellowship a week later, when Jesus made his second appearance. To be honest, I would think most of the other disciples probably recognize that, had THEY not been in the room when it happened and seen him with THEIR own eyes, their reaction to the news would have been similar if not the same as Thomas’.

And then there’s the conclusion to the passage. Most of us know it by heart. Jesus answers Thomas’ request to put his fingers and hand inside the wounds he bore by walking right up TO Thomas and saying “Okay. Go for it. Here they are, have at it.” Thomas’ confession is recorded with no mention of whether or not he actually touched Jesus. It would seem that it is NOT necessary, after all, to actually touch the wounds in order to believe.

Jesus’ question to Thomas after his resounding confession – “My Lord and My God!” – is one that we are confronted with in some cases each day of our lives. “Have you believed because you have seen me?”

The blessing is for us to receive in Christ’s next statement: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

So let’s go back to the original question: Why Do YOU Believe?

Can you say you have not seen Jesus?

In Matthew 25 Jesus tells us that when we feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome a stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit those in prison, we are doing it to HIM, not just those who are at that moment suffering.

And if, at some point in your life, you have received that presence through a visit, through a gift, through a meal, a drink, a word of welcome, can YOU truly say you did not see Christ in that person, offering that grace in the name of our Lord?

Can you truly say you have not seen Jesus?

Jesus was letting the disciples know, in these appearances, that although he was in fact still the same person they had known and followed for the previous three years, their relationship was changing – he had been, up until the day before – a physical presence, someone with whom they could sit and speak face to face, toe to toe, eye to eye. For these few brief days and weeks, Jesus continued to interact with them on that level, but in the course of that time, he was making it clearer and clearer to them that he was now more than he had been – as Thomas confessed – he was now Lord and God.

As the Gospel spread, more and more people who had never had a chance to meet Jesus personally, as the disciples had, came to believe. Think about it, all these people believing in a man they’d never met, whom they wouldn’t recognize even if he DID appear to them, but who they accepted … on faith … as their Lord and Savior.

Is it that different for us today? Whether you find it easy or hard to believe, there’s a place for you. Perhaps you’ll step into our midst and say ‘I have to put my finger … there before I believe.’ That’s okay. Or maybe you’ll step into our midst and come right out with ‘My Lord and My God!’ … and that is welcomed as well. Either way, just like Thomas, Jesus will meet you where you are.

Let’s pray.