Readings (click here for full text of the readings):
   Acts 5:12a, 17-22,25-29, Psalm 111, Revelation 1:(1-8)9-19, John 20:19-31

Thomas gets a pretty bad rap. He only appears a few times in the Bible, and yet he’s probably the best known disciple, next to Peter. There’s even an adjective that’s so associated with him that it’s almost become part of his official name: Doubting Thomas. There aren’t too many other people who will forever be known by such a negative adjective.  “Bloody Mary” is one.  “Typhoid Mary” is another.  It’s not a group you really want to belong to.

But I think that Thomas actually gets a bum rap. Sure, he doubts.  Jesus says exactly that when He invites Thomas to feel the holes in His hands and side: “Do not doubt but believe,” He says to Thomas.  But who said that doubt was necessarily all that bad?  Peter, after all, never seemed to doubt, and look where that got him.  He was always completely sure: at first he was sure that he would follow Jesus to the death, and then he was sure that he didn’t even know Jesus.  He was so sure about that he repeated it three times, and only after the cock crowed and he realized the depth of his betrayal did he go back to being sure that he loved Jesus.

So maybe certainty isn’t all it’s cracked up to, and maybe doubt isn’t so bad after all.  Because doubt doesn’t necessarily reflect apathy or lack of interest.  It’s not as if Thomas just couldn’t be bothered with this whole resurrection stuff.  If that had been the case, he wouldn’t have asked for proof. He’d have just said to the other disciples, “Sure, Jesus rose from the dead. Whatever you say. Now let me get back to what I was doing.”

The reason Thomas asked for proof is that he realized how important all this was. He knew that if Jesus had risen from the dead, then everything had changed, and his life would never be the same.  And what was he really looking for proof of?  Was it that Jesus was alive, or that Jesus had actually died in the first place?

Because it would seem pretty obvious that Jesus was alive. He was standing right there in front of Thomas in the house.  Either Thomas’s eyes were playing tricks on him, or Jesus was right there.  But that wasn’t enough for Thomas.  He needed to feel where the nails had pierced Jesus’ hands. He needed to put his finger in the hole where the soldier had pierced his side with a spear, from which blood and water spilled forth.

Thomas needed to know that it was all true. Jesus being alive wasn’t enough. Thomas had to know that Jesus really had died, and had risen.  Why?  Because only then would everything that Jesus had said have any real claim on Thomas. Up until then, Jesus’ words had been only that: words.  He’d said some nice things and some hard things and some mysterious things. Thomas had learned a lot.  But Jesus had also said that “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Thomas agreed with that, but he needed to know that Jesus had really gone ahead and done that.  He needed to know that Jesus loved him enough to go that far.

Thomas doubted not because he didn’t care that much; he doubted because he cared so much. Because if the story was true, then this really was the greatest love there could be.

Then Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!”  Exclamation point at the end.  Full stop.  Now that may not sound like much to us in today’s world, but back then that was a huge thing to say.  In fact, Raymond Brown, one of the great biblical scholars of the twentieth century, once called that “the highest Christological confession in the Gospels.” And it came from “doubting Thomas.”

And you want to know the most amazing thing of all? We never hear that Thomas went ahead and felt Jesus’ hands and side.  The Bible jumps straight from Jesus inviting him to do so to Thomas making his remarkable proclamation.  You’d think that if Thomas had really touched Jesus’ hands and side we would’ve heard about it, but we don’t.

Maybe Thomas didn’t actually touch Him.  Maybe “doubting Thomas” didn’t need any more proof. Maybe it was enough that Jesus stood there in front of him in the flesh.  Maybe it was enough that Jesus told him it was okay to touch him, that Jesus didn’t condemn him for doubting because Jesus knew exactly how much was riding on Thomas’s question.

We give Thomas a bad rap, but Jesus knew exactly where all that doubt was coming from.  The doubt was coming from Thomas’s desperate need to believe that Jesus really did love him that much – enough to die for him.  And when you’re confronted with the possibility that the thing you hope for most in the world might really be true and be yours, sometimes you need a little help believing it.  Because when something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

Except when it comes to God.

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