"Jesus and Our Thomas Culture (Second Sunday of Easter)"
Pastor Roger Gustafson
Sunday, May 01, 2011
John 20:19-31
Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Jesus said to Thomas, “Do you believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Why? Why is it more of a blessing to believe based on faith rather than on the evidence? Sounds like the sort of question Thomas would ask, doesn’t it?
Thomas. Of all the disciples, Thomas is the only one whose name carries a qualifier: the doubter. Doubting Thomas – that’s how we know him, right? But it’s important to remember that it is church tradition that has stuck him with that label, not the Bible. Nowhere in Scripture is Thomas referred to as the doubter. And in fact, Thomas is not filled with dark suspicions; he just wants things to make sense. Thomas works with evidence, with the facts, with what can be proven.
Imagination is not Thomas’s strongest quality. We can just see Thomas sitting with the rest of the disciples, listening to Jesus tell one of his more obscure parables, and at the end of it we can imagine Thomas turning to the disciple next to him and saying, “I didn’t get that one. Did you get that? I didn’t get that. Why doesn’t Jesus just say what he means?” Thomas is simply honest and open about his questions, his inquiry. When Jesus is giving his farewell to his disciples he uses some mysterious phrases, says that where he’s going they cannot come, and that they don’t understand yet but someday they will, says “and you know the way to the place where I am going.” And the disciples simply sit there in silence, as if they’ve got it all figured out; but it’s Thomas who sticks his hand in the air and says, “Uh, no, we don’t know where you’re going, so how are we supposed to know how to get there?”
The next day, the way that Jesus was going became brutally clear. The next day, Thomas knew that Jesus’ hands were nailed to a cross; he knew that Jesus’ side was split by a spear; he knew that Jesus was dead. Not just pretend dead, not just symbolically dead; he was literally, physically, once-and-for-all dead. And Thomas knew what everyone knows: when you put someone in the ground, they stay put.
So when the other disciples tell Thomas that Jesus is no longer dead but that he is now alive again, it’s only natural for Thomas – stuck together the way Thomas is stuck together – to say, “What are you talking about? You mean he’s alive in a figurative way, or what? Look, I hear what you’re telling me, and I know what I saw, and those two things don’t match up. Please make sense to me.”
I like Thomas. I like him for his honesty and for his realism. I like Thomas for his approach to what is not obvious. And I like him for his desire for faith. After all, faith is not information, not knowledge. The New Testament letter to the Hebrews says that faith “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Thomas wants that assurance, wants that conviction; that’s why he shows up to be with the other disciples in the first place. And Jesus knows it, and encourages it in what sounds to us like a mild rebuke. Remember? Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” But a hard translation of that phrase casts it in a slightly different light. Jesus says, literally, “Do not become disbelieving, but become believing.” Jesus is saying to Thomas: “Become, Thomas, become deeper in your faith.”
Thomas is very relevant for us, because I believe that we live in the midst of a Thomas culture, a culture that stands outside the church and says to us, “Please make sense to me.” Recent polling by the Gallup Organization reveals a slight increase in mainline Christian church attendance in our country. That’s good news. But that slight increase is occurring because of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. What we’re also seeing is a glaring lack of two generations: Generation Y and the Net Generation, those people born between 1976 and the year 2000. Demographic data drawn from that group shows a generalized disengagement by young Americans from the institutional church. Whereas 15 percent of Baby Boomers describe themselves as having no religious affiliation, that percentage doubles among people in their 20s. These people represent the Thomas culture, standing outside the church, and saying, “Please make sense to me.” In some cases, members of the Thomas culture are inside the church, but their plea to the church is the same: “Please make sense to me.”
Four years ago a massive amount of data went into a book titled UnChristian, and that book delivered some painful news to leaders in the Church. It told us that young Americans were staying away from the Church in droves because they experience the Church as judgmental, hypocritical, homophobic, too political, isolated, exclusive. They hear what Jesus says, and they look at what the Church that bears his name does, and the two don’t match up.
They hear Jesus say, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold, and I must bring them also” because my life is for everyone. That’s what they hear Jesus say, but then they see Pastor Terry Jones down in Florida burn a copy of the Koran, and they say, “This just doesn’t make sense.” They hear Jesus say, “In my Father’s house are many rooms,” everyone is welcome. That’s what they hear Jesus say, but they see the Church fracture and splinter itself after vicious fights over sexuality, and they say, “This just doesn’t make sense.” They hear Jesus say, “Come to me, all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” That’s what they hear Jesus say, but they hear the Church tell them, “Unless you dress like this, smell like this, behave like this; you aren’t welcome here.” And they say, “This just doesn’t make sense.”
It isn’t that the Thomas culture is anti-God; in fact, most of them profess some belief in God. Their struggle is in making sense of what they see and hear. And the people they look to are you and me.
So how do we make sense to a Thomas culture? We start by remembering who we are, who God has made us. We are the Body of Christ. We believe that Jesus has done for us what we could never do for ourselves – bring us into right relationship with God. We are Easter people; we are signs of life!
We live in a country that badly needs some signs of life. Survey after survey tell us that we are deeply pessimistic in our nation. We’re pessimistic about the future, we’re pessimistic about the economy. Gas prices are up, unemployment is up, Congress is locked in a grudge match over the budget, and we’ve lost all confidence in our government to make any substantial change for the better. As a nation, our mood is pretty dark.
But as the Body of Christ, as Easter people, our confidence is not in human government; our confidence is in Christ. Proverbs 3 says it well: “The Lord shall be your confidence.” We believe that all earthly situations are temporary, the only eternal reality is the eternal God, and we see the Resurrection of Jesus as God’s promise to all of humanity.
Easter is not a metaphor; it’s reality. It is central to everything else that we profess. The only reason that we have hope for today, the only reason that we have hope to work for a better tomorrow, is that the Savior is alive! Jesus is resurrected from the dead, and his Holy Spirit now continues his work of salvation, and that work will continue until God chooses to finally bring his kingdom fully upon the earth. We are privileged to take part in that work, and the only way we can be truly effective is to be who God has made us.
When we live as the Body of Christ, God gives us the power to actually be what we are receiving: we can be the forgiveness of God, we can be the radical acceptance of God, the total inclusivity of God, the genuineness of God.
God is not finished with creation, and he is not finished with you either. In fact, as your life is a work in progress, you are exactly what our Thomas culture needs to experience.
Robert Coles was a brilliant child psychologist in our country. In 1961 he began studying a small group of African-American school children who were in the vanguard of the court-mandated desegregation of the public school system in New Orleans. Every day these children were subject to the shouting and taunting of angry adults as they made their way to school; it took the National Guard just to get these kids inside their school. Finally, one of these children, a 6-year-old girl named Tessie, had had enough. She had had enough of being shouted at by angry adults. So one morning she told her grandmother that she wasn’t feeling very well, thought she should stay home.
Her wise old grandmother gathered her into her lap and told her this: “It’s no picnic, child – I know that, Tessie. Lord Almighty, if I could just go with you and call all those people to my side, and read to them from the Bible and remind them that he’s up there, Jesus, watching over all of us. Lord, I pray for them, those poor, poor folks who are out there shouting their heads off at you. You’re one of the Lord’s people; he’s put his hand on you. He’s given a call to you, a call to service in his name.” Tessie decided that she felt well enough to go to school after all.
The Lord has put his hand on you too. And he offers you to this Thomas culture as his best proof of the Resurrection of Jesus. That’s why it’s a blessing to believe without having seen, because every time you choose to act as the Body of Christ – every time you forgive, every time you act in radical acceptance, radical inclusivity; every time you act with genuineness and authenticity in your relationships, particularly your intergenerational relationships – the crucified Christ comes to life.
Every time you choose to step out in faith, the Word becomes Flesh – for you … for Thomas … and for this world that God loves.
Amen.