People of faith, Christians, have a tendency to recoil whenever our faith is challenged to verify or to validate the claims that we make. Very often, in the face of an onslaught of scepticism, we recoil when people say “Prove to me” or “Show me” that what you believe is real.
Martin Marty, who is a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and formerly the editor of The Christian Century says that we live in an age that is defined by a Greek word: empieria. It means “to observe and then to experience.” In other words, to look at what we can see, and then to validate it by an experience that corroborates the evidence. He says that this empirical validation has become one of the great phrases of our age. It applies not only to science: it applies to theology, it applies to the realm of ideas, it applies to technology, and to medicine. Empirical verification and validation is what is required.
When we are faced by this, Christians are somewhat intimidated. Why should we bother? Who do we have to justify? How can we verify what we cannot see? So often we become defensive. You see that in the debates that have calmed down a little bit, but are particularly poignant south of the border between those who believe that God created the world and those who believe that it evolved from some natural manifestation or activity. Such is the nature of that debate that both sides, it seems to me, are overly bellicose in their assessment, probably the religious of the two more so.
Same thing when we mention the name Charles Darwin to Christians. Often his name is met with a rolled eye or maybe a glancing look that causes us to be red cheeked. Charles Darwin is not someone we consider as one from our ranks. Yet, in the beginning of his life Darwin was actually a man of faith. He was a man who explored science and looked at the nature of the world around him, and then looked at those who take the Scriptures so literally that they kill it, and he says that these two cannot live side-by-side.
It is not that which caused Charles Darwin to lose his faith. He lost his faith because of the death of his daughter. It was the death of his daughter that caused him to question the very God that he previously believed in. Yet, when we address Darwin, when we try to take on those things, we are caught in such a way that we become vociferous and judgemental as religious people. We simply cannot tolerate having someone like that being mentioned.
So, what is in this conflict? It is a strange one. We do not want to verify what we believe for fear of what? Jesus wasn’t frightened of verification. He wasn’t frightened of validation of what he was doing. On the contrary, after the Resurrection, Jesus appears before the disciples in the Upper Room and he points to them and he says, “Look, touch my hands. Touch my side.” After the Resurrection, Jesus is quite clear, quite open to verification and validation: “Come on, touch me. Feel me. I am here.” Jesus wasn’t frightened of that. So why are we?
When we look at a character like Thomas in our reading today, we give him a bad name. We call him “Doubting Thomas.” What a horrible moniker! If there are moments when we are unsure or unclear or we want evidence, what a horrible phrase to give somebody. Jesus doesn’t call him Doubting Thomas. Why do we?
We call him “Doubting Thomas” because we are frightened. We are frightened by the likes of Thomas. He wanted validation. He wanted verification. He wanted evidence. And we are intimidated by that. I am going to suggest to you this morning that we should not be. On the contrary, we should have the greatest confidence in our faith. We should not recoil. We should not be frightened or fearful of those who may challenge us. Let us rise to that challenge. Let us face it, as Jesus did. To understand why that is needed, we have to understand what happened after Good Friday.
What happened after Good Friday, and particularly after Easter Sunday, is that there were many moments of evidence and many experiences that were validated by testimony. There was one who went into the empty tomb and immediately believed. There was another who saw the grave clothes had been moved, changed and folded and believed. There was another who had an experience of an angel or a spiritual manifestation and believed. There was another, as we looked at on Easter Sunday, who heard her name and believed.
There were others who were fishing and were encountered by the Risen Christ and believed. There were several walking on the road to Emmaus and were encountered by Him and believed. There were some in the Upper Room that were gathered in fear we are told: frightened. Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you!” and they believed. In different Gospels, written at different times, to different communities with different styles of Greek, from different sources, we have this collection of evidence based on what people had encountered and experienced and observed after the Resurrection of Jesus, before his ascension into Heaven.
The problem is that there was one person who wasn’t party to all that evidence. There was one, who for some reason, wasn’t there. That was Thomas. Poor Thomas wasn’t at the party! Poor Thomas wasn’t present. He wasn’t in the garden. He wasn’t in the Upper Room. He wasn’t on the road to Emmaus. He is upset! He hears everyone giving this evidence and he says, “Look, unless I experience it and unless I put my hand in his side and unless I see for myself, I will not believe” all because he simply wasn’t there.
I know how he feels. I went to a baseball game last Friday night. It was a great game – the Blue Jays lost, but that is beside the point. It was a really close game with Boston, which is my other team. Sitting there, just between first base and home plate – four seats up, great seats – I could see everything. It was a close game. It was down to one hit either way it seemed. Colby Rasmus, the young and very talented Blue Jay, got to the plate, and all of a sudden, just as he got to the plate, two rather large gentlemen walked in front of me wanting to get some kind of libation that was available a little further along.
There they stood, these two huge men in front of me, just at the moment when Colby Rasmus swung and hit the ball out of the park! I didn’t see a thing! Forty-six thousand people get up and roar, and I am sitting with two fat men drinking beer in front of me. I missed it all. Now, here’s the question: did Colby Rasmus hit that ball out of the park or didn’t he? I don’t know. I didn’t see it. But, forty-six thousand people and my friend who was sitting next to me, who by the way was smart enough to get up and move to look to see whether or not the ball had gone out, all said to me that the score was true: Colby Rasmus had hit a home run. But, I didn’t see it, and I felt cheated.
I know how Thomas feels. “Wouldn’t it be nice if just once in a while” Thomas thought, “I might have seen what all the other guys saw. Unless I see it for myself, I will not believe it!” I felt that way. Thank goodness there is Jumbo Screen and replay, because I then saw it for myself: Colby Rasmus hit it out of the park! Poor Thomas! What was Thomas’ problem? Why was Thomas and why is Thomas a challenge to us? And why is Thomas a lesson for us as to how we deal with the world? I would like to suggest to you a few things.
One of the things is that I think the big problem with Thomas is that he broke the ties that bind. You see, all the evidence about Jesus after his Resurrection had come from his fellow disciples and Apostles. They had borne witness to what they had seen. They had expressed their views and what they had encountered. But, here’s the problem: Thomas didn’t trust their word. Even though he had gone through all these years of ministry with Jesus, even though he had been there all along, he wouldn’t believe.
Thomas was a different sort. In the Scriptures, he is referred to as “Didymus” which” literally means, “a twin” so Thomas wasn’t his real name by the way. That was his nickname: “twin” – Didymus. He was probably a Judas, not Judas Iscariot, and that is why his nickname is used, but nevertheless a Judas. This Apostle, Judas, had been there, part of the twelve, part of the community of faith from the very beginning. He had gone through everything with them, but now at the very end, after Jesus was raised from the dead, he sort of breaks faith with those.
He doesn’t trust the evidence that he has been given. He becomes selfish. He becomes introspective: “Unless I see.... unless I witness.... unless I can put my hands in.” It is all about whom? “I, me, Thomas, Judas” it is all about his obsession with his knowing and not trusting those who in fact had witnessed these great things. He says, “Until I see it for myself, I will not believe.” He wanted verification. He wanted validation. But, he wasn’t prepared to listen to anyone else.
This was a break of faith. It was a break of faith because so often throughout all this there is the interchange between the disciples and the Apostles and even Mary on all of this. Mary comes rushing to Peter and to John and says, “They have taken our Lord.” They immediately take her at her word, and they go and they see the empty tomb. But not Thomas! Thomas is his own man. He is not prepared to believe. Can you imagine, my friends, if we lived our life on this basis?
Never mind matters of faith, but in every other aspect of our life and our knowing, if we never trusted anyone else, if we never allowed the validation and the work and the research that is done by others to help us and to inform us, if every time we were going to believe something we would say, “I have to see it myself to believe it” what kind of a life and a world would we be in? If we actually had to say that we have to experience for ourselves the problems of nuclear fallout before we believe that it is bad, what kind of a world would we have if we didn’t accept the evidence that has come from someone else?
The philosophers are saying it all around us in all the great universities in the world. The likes of Michael Polanyi, the likes of Roy Clouser and other great philosophers, John Polkinghorne, who was here in our pulpit a couple of years ago, one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. They are all saying that in every facet of human existence there comes a point where you have to trust in the validation and verification of others. It is one of the ways we know: we build on it; we test it; we examine it; and we get to know it.
Michael Polanyi says, “There can be no knowing without personal commitment.” He goes on to emphasize the fact that “knowing is a form of activity, and like all activity, it involves the interaction of the person with a word beyond him or her. It is an activity that involves the whole person in a passionate commitment to make contact with that reality.” Now, that applies to science and history and sociology and politics and medicine and theology – and faith!
What we have been given though and what Thomas was not prepared to accept initially was the evidence of those who had witnessed something that changed their lives. And because of the change that it had given to their lives, they wished to bear witness to it for future generations. The Scriptures are about that validation. They are about those who have seen and believed. They are about those who have become witnesses of what they have seen and believed.
Just because it is beyond the experience that we have does not make it invalid. In fact, it causes us to look at it and examine it and to study it with even greater clarity. My invitation to sceptics who say “I do not like what you believe; I do not believe it is verifiable” is: “Go back and look at the evidence and then we will talk.” Often, the opposition is facile, and is not looking at what is actually being presented.
There is another problem, I think. Well, maybe it is not a problem with Thomas – maybe it is a blessing – and that is that faith comes by hearing. The Apostle Paul, in writing to the Book of Romans in Chapter 10:17, simply says this: “Faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God.”
All around it in this text that he uses, he refers to the fact that how can you call on one in whom you do not believe, and how can you believe in that one if you have not heard of him? “How beautiful are the feet” he says, “of those who bring the good news.”
For Paul hearing comes by faith and faith comes by hearing. It is fascinating that duality of faith and hearing is so prominent in The New Testament, and where it really starts to find its roots is in the encounter with Thomas. Jesus, the second time around, goes to Thomas and says, “Look, if you want to see and experience what the others have experienced, go ahead, touch my hands. Go ahead, touch my sides. I have no problem with verification.”
We don’t know whether he actually ends up touching him, but he definitely takes Jesus up on an invitation to do something, and maybe just before he touches him – who knows, the text doesn’t tell us – Jesus stops him and says, “You know, Thomas, blessed are those who believe without having seen.” In other words, “Just stop for a moment, Thomas. Maybe this is a time for you to simply believe. Maybe it is time for you to say, “We’ve already got the evidence. Now is the time for you to believe.”
Jesus is saying, from now on in all of this you will get to know from hearing. From this moment on, it will be the testimony of those who have seen that will be the evidence for you. From this moment on, it is that those who believe will have heard. Thomas says, at that very moment, “My Lord and my God!” He gets it! He understands that all his claims for evidence are in fact nothing compared to an encounter with Christ and his Word.
That is why throughout the ages, for two thousand years, billions of people if we count us all up over those years, billions of people have believed what they have heard. They haven’t seen. They haven’t had verification. They haven’t had visions. They haven’t had appearances. Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. We believe! We believe because Jesus knew when he left that he was sending something, sending someone who would validate and verify what had happened in his work, that is, the power of the Holy Spirit.
We have the power of that Spirit and we have the Word and we have the witness and the validation of those who have gone before us. We have so much! But, it does raise this question: are you Thomas’ twin? A twin can be a powerful thing – Lord knows we saw that today in the Minute Message on golf! Being a twin is a powerful thing: it is like being the two sides of the same coin; it is two individuals having the same origin and the same root. We have the same origin as Thomas.
Well, initially, one could say that is a bad thing. We are sceptical. We want evidence. It is all about us! Or, are we the twin of Thomas in that we believe and we say “My Lord and my God!” If we are a twin of Thomas on the “My Lord and my God” then we have no need to fear those who want validation. We have no need to fear those who have a different view than ourselves.
One of the most beautiful books that I have read in my life is A Prayer of Owen Meany written by John Irving, which I think is one of the great classics of the twentieth century. There is a moment where John, who is the narrator in this great book, talks about and has an encounter with Owen. Basically, they are outside, and there is a granite statue of Mary Magdalene. It is in the evening, and as they are talking and watching this statue darkness comes down, and after a while you can’t see the statue any more.
Then there is this dialogue between John, who doesn’t believe in God, and Owen, who always believes in God. This is how it goes – and it is the direct quote from the book:
Owen says to John, “You have no doubt she is there.” (Mary Magdalene)
“Of course, I have no doubt.” says John.
“But you can’t see her. You could be wrong.” says Owen.
“No, I am not wrong. She is there. I know she is there.” John yells.
“You absolutely know she is there even though you can’t see her?”
“Yes!” John screams.
Owen says, “So now you know how I feel about God. I can’t see Him, but
I absolutely know He is there.”
Owen Meany lived his whole life with no question whatsoever that God was there. It is interesting, because John reaches the point in this where he actually starts to believe because of the witness of his friend, Owen Meany. Owen Meany’s confession and commitment causes John to trust his friend.
All Jesus wanted from Thomas was for him to trust his friends, who had seen him. But he didn’t. So Jesus, with courage and no fear, says, “Touch me.” But he adds, “It is better if you would believe without seeing.” Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!” Surely, this should encourage us all. Amen.