Are You a Doubting Thomas?

Please read John 20:24-29

Just over a year ago I was involved in a weekend mission to the Yorkshire Market town of Ripon.  We set up a stall in the Market Square on Saturday afternoon with the intention of giving away free pancakes; reasoning that if we gave people food they might talk to us.  It was almost impossible to set up the stall because of the ferocious wind.  Remembering what Jesus said about those with faith being able to do even greater things than he himself, I shouted into the wind, “In the name of Jesus Christ, calm, be still!”  Immediately the wind dropped and this was witnessed by my fellow students.  A prayer of faith had an immediate result!

Some of you will be doubting that story or looking for a rational scientific explanation.  There were plenty of witnesses – it happened just as I described it, but I’ll bet some of you don’t quite believe it.

Thomas had trouble believing the other disciples.  They told him they’d met the risen Jesus but Thomas didn’t believe them.  He said, “Unless I see the marks 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.”  Thomas words are very plain, they make it clear that both he and disciples are talking about a physically resurrected Jesus.  The doubt Thomas had was that Jesus physically rose from the dead.

This doubt is fairly common today.  Many outside church dismiss whole thing saying that we know dead bodies do not come back to life, it is simply impossible.  Some inside church have the same view.  They say that what the early Christians meant by resurrection wasn’t that Jesus physically came back to life, but that in the days and weeks following his death they could still feel his presence and therefore began to claim that he was still alive.  The idea that he physically rose from the dead came when later generations misunderstood what the very first Christians meant by resurrection.  Those Christians who think this way are the doubting Thomas of the modern church.

The gospel account makes it clear we are talking about more than a spiritual experience, though it was certainly that as well.  Thomas had doubted the physical resurrection of Jesus, but Jesus appearing before Thomas and other disciples convinced him that Jesus was indeed risen.  That is why he cried out, “My Lord and my God!”

For a while I was a doubting Thomas, but not anymore!  I believe that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead.  I believe that resurrection was a physical one as well as a spiritual one.  I believe this because that is what the Bible says happened and because it is the only logical explanation.

Since the earliest days of Christianity the constant claim about Jesus was that on the cross he defeated death and that by rising to life he proved death a defeated enemy.  If Jesus did not rise physically from the dead then how is death defeated?

If Jesus did not physically rise from the dead, then where did the idea come from?  In the pagan Roman world the idea of physical resurrection seemed as ridiculous as it does to many people today.  Even in Israel there was no concept of individual resurrection.  Many Jews believed that all the dead would rise when God brought in his worldwide kingdom, but not that anybody would rise before that day.

There are many proofs offered for the physical resurrection of Jesus, but perhaps the most convincing is that suggested by the internationally respected scientist and Anglican minister John Polkinghorne, who wrote, “One of the strong lines of argument for the truth of the resurrection is the astonishing transformation of the disciples from the demoralised, defeated men of Good Friday to the confident proclaimers of the Lordship of Christ at Pentecost and beyond, even to the point of martyrdom.  Something happened to bring that about.  I believe it was the resurrection and that if Jesus had not been raised it is probable that we would never have heard of him.”

The gospel account has more to tell us, though, than the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead.  It has a lot to tell us about Jesus, but I’ll focus on two main points that seem to me to be important.

The first is that the passage tells us who Jesus really was and, indeed, still is.  If the fact that he was physically raised from the dead doesn’t give us a bit of a clue, Thomas spells it out clearly when he calls Jesus, “My Lord and my God”, a title Jesus accepts without protest.

Some people today, including the more liberal Christian theologians, would say that Jesus was a great teacher, perhaps the greatest teacher who ever lived, but nothing more than that.  Some would go further and call Jesus a great prophet and somebody who had a closer relationship with God than anybody else, but would still say he was just a human being.  Perhaps that was how Thomas had always seen Jesus.

If you read Jesus words though, take into account everything that he said, he does not leave this option open to us.  He did not intend to.  Jesus cannot have simply been a good teacher because of the outrageous personal claims he made about himself.  He accepts Peter’s confession of him as “the Christ, the Son of God.”  He tells the Samaritan woman at the well that he is the Messiah.   Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life; nobody comes to the Father except through me.”  He said, “Anybody who has seen me has seen the Father.”  Nobody could be just a good human teacher a make these outrageous claims.  Jesus either was who he said he was, fully human and fully divine or he was a liar or he was mad.  All that we know from the gospels tells us he was a man with the highest integrity so Jesus clearly was not a liar.  Equally he clearly was not mad.  That leaves only one option left; that he was and is exactly who he claimed to be, the Son of God.

The second important point is that we do not seek out Jesus, he comes to us and meets us where we are.  Jesus knew of Thomas doubts, he knew what he had said so when he appeared before Thomas he made him the offer, “Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.  Do not doubt but believe.”  Thomas did not of course reach out his hand; the offer was enough to bring him to faith, as Jesus knew it would be.  Jesus met Thomas where he was in order to bring him to faith.

Jesus always comes to us where we are.  We see this pattern time and time again in the Gospels.  At the beginning of his ministry Jesus went down to the shores of Galilee and said to Simon and Andrew as they sat in their boat, “Come, follow me.”  Jesus saw Matthew the tax collector sitting in his custom-house and said, “Follow me.”

I’m sure that all of us can recall how Jesus came to us where we were and led us to faith, whether that was in a blinding moment of realisation or after months and years of consideration.

Are you a doubting Thomas?

Has Jesus met with you where you are and led you to faith?  Do you believe that Jesus was and is God, part of the Holy Trinity?  Do you believe that Jesus rose physically from the dead?

Are you a doubting Thomas?