Thomas Believes - Do We? Easter 2A

 

Thomas Believes – Do We?

That is the question this text seeks to put forward. A narrative in two parts, one week apart.

 

Act I: We are told that a group of disciples, not including Thomas, are hiding behind locked doors. What is interesting is that the text does not say “disciples.” The word, going back to verse 18 in chapter 20 of John is mathetai, which means “followers” or “students,” and which the NRSV later translates as “community.” So, this is a broader and larger group than just the eleven remaining disciples. They are hiding for fear of some in Jerusalem who have succeeded in encouraging the Empire to execute Jesus.

 

This community is the crowd of men, women, and childen, many of whom came with Jesus from Galilee. They are afraid in part because they do not believe the witness of Mary Magdalene who tells them, “I have seen the Lord!” We are not told how Jesus enters the room. We are told, however, that he breathes on them and says, “Peace be with you.” Those present would recognize this as the same breath of life that the Spirit of God breathes into the nostrils of Adam in Genesis 2:7. With this gift of the Spirit John suggests that the resurrection of Jesus, and what Luke calls Pentecost, all happens on the same day!

 

As to this “peace” he breathes on them, the text uses Eirene as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew or Aramaic shalom. This “peace” which is shalom is used in the Bible to express God’s vision and hope that all creation is One, every creature, every person, in community with every other creature and person; and that we work together to bring God’s “peace” of joy, well-being, harmony, and prosperity to one and all, including creation itself (which, as we have seen recently, is sometimes depicted by the prophets as the jury when God puts humanity on trial!) This greeting and breath is likely the origin of “Passing the Peace” in the Eucharistic Liturgy! Its is no casual greeting as used by the Risen Lord. His shalom means we are to seek Justice and Peace for all people while respecting the dignity of every human being, creature, and creation itself. This is the Shalom of Christ, of the Shalom of God, or what Jesus sometimes calls eternal life.

 

He then gives the gathered community authority to forgive sins, which in John’s Good News of Jesus has little if anything at all to do with personal misdeeds. That is the job for Santa Claus who keeps track as to whether or not we have been naughty or nice. Rather, John defines sin as not recognizing and embracing the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. This is the sin of the World.

 

This sin is related to the community’s command to love others as Christ loves us. And as Jesus says in John 14, we are to continue Jesus’s work of making God’s Shalom known in the world. He says if you believe, you will do the works that I do, and greater things than these will you do! The implication is, if we are not doing the works he does, and greater works than these, then we truly do not believe that Christ is Risen. We are to make it known that it is God who does the works Jesus does, it is God who raises Jesus from the dead, and not Jesus himself. And for those of us who do believe, he promises it will be God who will work through us and raise us as well! The Sin of the World is disbelief, and our failure as a community to faithfully follow and represent Jesus to the world. It is this disbelief and failure for which the World deserves God’s forgiveness and our forgiveness since the world’s failure to believe is directly linked to our failure to represent God’s Shalom to the world as Jesus does in so many different ways.

We do well to note that our general confession says: we have not, we have not, we have not….not I have not. We, the community of God’s people in Christ, have failed to do what is expected of us: to follow Christ and continue the work he does. This is faith. This is belief.

 

Act II: Enter Thomas who missed the whole episode the week before. It does not help that the NRSV, and every other English translation, has Jesus say to Thomas, “Do not doubt, but believe.” For the like word disciple, the word “doubt” is not in the text. The Greek word is apistos which means “unbelief.” “Do not unbelieve, but believe,” says the Risen One!

 

We know that the community did not believe Mary Magdalene until they experienced the Risen Jesus for themselves. Here he appears for a second time a week later. Thomas is now present and asks for nothing more than what they had wanted as well – a direct revelation of the Risen Christ. This is Thomas, who when Jesus said, “Let’s go to Bethany and Jersusalem,” when the disciples say, “No, it is too dangerous,” it is Thomas only who says, “I will go with him that I may die with him.” Thomas was arguably the most faithful of the twelve.

 

Mary says, “I have seen the Lord.” The gathered community of followers (more than the eleven) says, “We have seen the Lord.” But it is Thomas who makes the boldest declaration of all: “My Lord and my God!” Once again, Thomas is the only one who sees God fully revealed in the Risen Jesus. Thomas understands that Jesus reveals the true Glory of God and God’s desired Shalom for all creation; for all humankind; for all creatures, and for creation itself!

 

Jesus then tells us that to be a first-hand witness of the Risen Lord is not a prerequisite for faith! Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe – as a result of hearing the experience and testimony of those original witnesses, and their embracing and continuing the work of God’s Shalom that Jesus begins. We know the Risen Lord because they saw him and followed him. This, writes John, is the essence of faith; the essence of belief; the essence of eternal life here and now. This is living in the kingdom of God.

 

The narrator then tells us that all of this is written either that 1) you too may come to believe, or 2) that you may continue to believe. Both options are found in the various and oldest manuscripts of John. The main point John the evangelist makes is that this whole episode, indeed, the entire Gospel of John, is for us – those of us who read and hear this today. For John faith is not a one-time event, but a process, and that the process of faith is not is not the same for everyone. Some come to believe in Christ and later deny him. Others, like the community gathered in Jerusalem, have a tenuous belief that competes with their fear. And yet there are still others who believe but who do not fully understand. And of course, those like Thomas who continue the work Jesus begins, and “greater things than these.”  We need to remember that this is our story. It is about us. All of us who dare to identify ourselves by the name of “Christ.”

 

Those of us who read and hears this story are invited to believe, to become a person of faith, and to follow in the way of Jesus, doing the things he did, “and greater things than these.” For it is only by our participation in the full life, death, and resurrection of the Risen Lord that others know that we truly are people of faith; those who love others, all others, as Christ loves us. The question, then, is this: do others come to faith, come to believe, by all that we do and say as a community of God’s Shalom and Love? For we are those people called to be the rest of the story.