‘Doubting’ Thomas

‘Doubting’ Thomas: a sermon by Kenneth Padley
Reading: John 20.19-31

Senses make sense. We need a combination of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell in order to understand the world around us. Through sensory engagement we receive information and come to determine what is true and trustworthy.

Within the Bible, sensory evidence is important in the writings associated with Saint John. John’s gospel is often praised for profound theology and spiritual symbolism. That is why St John’s symbol is the eagle. Nonetheless, John is also concerned with concrete evidence and earthly witness. So, while on the one hand we read in his gospel that ‘God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth’ [4.24], on the other hand, John also understood Jesus as the one in whom God is embodied on earth. For this reason, the overture of his gospel announces God’s Word made flesh in the advent of Jesus. This language is deliberate and controversial. John spoke of Jesus as ‘flesh’ to scandalise his Greek readers who, under the influence of Plato, assumed that religion was about escaping materiality for some higher, disembodied plane. John firmly tethered his readers back to earth because his Jewish heritage taught him that God is creator and, therefore, that matter matters.

There is, I think, another Jewish influence in the way that John’s community played with sensory evidence. In order to receive a conviction under Jewish law it was necessary for two or more witnesses to agree. (This is why Jesus’ Jewish prosecutors were so keen for witnesses to line up against him.) And at crucial points in their writing, the Johannine community does something similar, except that they want to stack up evidence, including evidence from the senses, in defence of Jesus.

• Thus in the first letter of John we read about the agreed witness of water, blood and the Spirit. This is an odd passage saying something to the effect that salvation is not just about spiritual liberation but also tangible change in human lives.[1]
• And then in the book Revelation (another Johannine document), the writer both hears and sees mystical things but it is only when what he sees and hears are put together that we have the complete picture.[2]
• Thirdly, something similar is going on at important junctures in John’s gospel, most particularly in the emphasis of chapter 19 that Jesus actually died, and the opposite stress in the chapter which follows on the reality of his resurrection.

From that chapter, John 20, we heard last week how Mary Magdalene saw the risen Jesus outside the tomb. But the evidence of sight alone was not enough because Mary had not expected to meet her Lord again. It was only when she also heard him call her name ‘Mary’ that the penny dropped. At this point Mary was denied the evidence of touch, a scene known to painters as noli me tangere – do not hold on to me. It is as if Jesus had half-ascended to the Father. But Mary did not need Jesus’ physical caress to accept the resurrection; for her, sight and sound were evidence enough.

John’s drama next cuts to the scene which we just heard, the appearance of Jesus to the disciples in the locked room. Here three pieces of sensory evidence cohere to convince the disciples that they were not being deluded by an apparition.

• They heard Jesus say ‘peace be with you.’
• They saw Jesus reveal his hands and his side.
• And they felt Jesus’ breath, commanding them to receive the Holy Spirit. (In this, for John, the events of Easter, Ascension and Pentecost are enigmatically bound up into a single event.)

What a blessing it must have been for the disciples to enjoy such an intimate encounter with their risen Lord.

But what about Thomas? Thomas was not so fortunate as to meet Jesus on Easter Day. Naturally, he was skeptical: ‘unless I see the mark of the nails, and I put my hand into his side, I will not believe.’ Had I been in Thomas’ sandals I would have demanded nothing less. We think of Thomas as ‘doubting’ but he was asking for no more than the evidence that his companions had been granted a week earlier. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails, and I put my hand into his side, I will not believe.’

However, when it came to it, Thomas believed on less evidence than the other ten. A week after Easter, Jesus again stood among his followers. And he offered to fulfil Thomas’s request, Come, ‘put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Yet Thomas did not take up Jesus’ offer. Unlike the disciples a week earlier, Thomas did not engage his sense of touch. For Thomas, seeing and hearing was believing so he fell to his knees in adoration, ‘my Lord and my God’.

This story about Thomas has a vital role to play within the purpose of John’s gospel. This is because Thomas spans the gap between the ten disciples on Easter Day and believers in 2025. On the first Easter Day, the ten had evidence of sight, sound and touch. A week later, Thomas saw and heard but did not touch. And this launches the challenge because, as Jesus concluded to Thomas, ‘have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

My friends, those resurrection believers are us. Thomas’ faith is commended. But the faith of John’s readers is commended all the more. We have not been granted any sensory encounter with the resurrection, but we do have the witness of those like John who recorded the experience of people like Thomas as a stepping stone to our own situation.

Next Sunday our gospel reading will come from John 21, the chapter in which Jesus and the disciples share a fishy breakfast on the shore of Galilee. That chapter, however, was a later addition to the original version of John’s gospel. Note well that the first edition of John’s gospel concluded in chapter 20 with the confession of Thomas. His acclamation ‘my Lord and my God’ was intended as a conscious echo of John’s opening sentence. The gospel which begins with the Word who was with God and the Word who was God very deliberately concludes with Thomas’ articulation of the same awesome truth, Jesus as Lord and God. Thus following Thomas’ confession, the original edition of John’s gospel hastily wrapped up with the assertion that ‘Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 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.’ Full stop. The end.

Like Mary Magdalene in the first half of John chapter 20, Thomas was not doubting at all. Both Thomas and Mary were sensible assessors of the evidence, just like rational humans in every age. Faith is not groundless nor unreasonable, except in the polarized yet remarkably similar mindsets of religious fundamentalists and atheist fanatics. Faith is sensible and sensory. Thomas was not doubting but reasonable. And, as such, he is the bridge to our own age and an encouragement to us all.

[1] I John 5.6-12.

[2] E.g. Revelation 7.4 cf. 7.9.