“A saint for our times”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, December 21, 2022
John 20:24-29 (Forward, p. 43) CEV p. 1129
Over the years, the apostle Thomas has gotten a lot of bad press, quite unfairly, I would allege. He has picked up the unfortunate moniker, “Doubting Thomas’—simply because of this one incident following Jesus’ resurrection, simply because he doubted and wanted some hard, fast evidence before he’d believe. And doesn’t this make eminent sense: people who are dead and buried don’t normally emerge from the grave; dead men don’t come back to life and walk around? Thomas can hardly be faulted for raising some questions about this, and for being reluctant to believe something that had never happened before.
The problem with tarring Thomas with this brush is that he wasn’t the only one who had trouble believing that Jesus was now alive (see Mark 16:10,13,14 for instance). Luke’s gospel says even more and tells us that the other disciples thought they were seeing a ghost and that it was only His act of showing them His hands and His feet and eating a piece of baked fish in front of their very eyes, that they were convinced (see Luke 24: 37-43). We are told that even at the Ascension, forty days after Jesus had been raised from the dead, after forty days of His having been in their midst, there were still some of the disciples that doubted (Matthew 28:17).
So doubting is quite natural, quite to be expected.
Sad to say, this one incident casts a negative light on what was otherwise quite an interesting and significant person. He was called to be one of the Twelve and right away was part of their outreach mission (Matthew 10:3,5) (see also Mark 3:13-18 and Luke 6:15). Surely, both that choice on the part of Jesus says something about him, and certainly this successful mission trip shaped his character and his faith.
Little is said of his character or personality in those passages, but John 11:16 tells that he was a bit of a pessimist, a kind of Eeyore type of person. Thomas says to his fellow disciples—after Jesus has predicted His own death--“Let us all go with the Teacher, so that we may die with him.” So, we read there that he was undoubtedly brave and willing to face the ‘worst’, but, at the same time fully expecting the worst.
And, at the Last Supper, when Jesus speaks of leaving them in order to go and prepare a place, Thomas asks the question that is probably on everyone’s mind but are unwilling to ask: “Lord, we do know where you are going, so how can we know the way to get there? (John 14:5). The other disciples were probably embarrassed to ask what they thought was probably something they should already know--in other words, a silly question. But here I am reminded of what a university prof once said, namely that the only silly question is the one you don’t bother to ask. And out this possibly ‘silly’ question, came Jesus’ epic announcement, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” And so, we owe Thomas something ‘big time’—due, yes, to his inquisitive, questioning, unable to just let things sit, nature. Except that he just had to know, we might never have received these words from Jesus.
And so it was with the Resurrection: he just had to know. It wasn’t that he was a skeptic that would not believe no matter what. No, he wanted to have faith, to believe, but he needed hard and fast evidence. He needed reassurance.
We hear of Thomas only twice in the later chapters of the New Testament (in John 21:2 and Acts 1:13) and there he is simply mentioned as one of the Twelve. But tradition holds that he subsequently went to south India as a missionary, founded the church there, and was martyred there for his faith. And so, his faith in Jesus, once established on a firm foundation, became the rock-hard basis for the rest of his life’s exploits.
To me, all of what we hear of Thomas suits him very much as the ‘saint for our times’. Questioning is very much part of our modern ethos and we are encouraged to question almost everyone and everything. And, I would allege, that it is a good practice even for Christians, namely to look at the evidence and ask questions of what we read and hear. In other words, don’t just leave that ‘silly question’ unasked. Ask, search, question, seek to understand. But then, once we have done so as best we can, gone as far as the information will take us, to put our faith and trust in our Lord Jesus, just as Thomas did. Amen.
Forward notes: “But [Thomas] 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’” (verse 25b).
Commemoration: Saint Thomas the Apostle
“Today the church commemorates Saint Thomas the Apostle, and our text shows Thomas at his most vulnerable and truthful.
“The other disciples have experienced the resurrected Jesus, but Thomas was not with them. When Jesus appears a second time, Thomas is blunt but truthful: he won’t believe as they do until he has some physical proof of Jesus’s resurrection.
“I’ve always admired Thomas. Who wouldn’t love to have the opportunity to touch the wounded saviour? When Jesus appears to Thomas, there’s no judgment on Jesus’s part. He encourages Thomas to touch his hands and side, and Thomas responds with deep devotion to his Lord.
“To believe in the resurrected Jesus is at the heart of faith, and yet we have opportunities to touch our saviour every day. There are plenty of wounded people in this world, and each time we work for their common good, we add kindling to the fire of our love for our Lord and our God.”
MOVING FORWARD: “How would you respond in Thomas’s position?”