The "Doubting Thomas" in All of Us
a sermon based on John. 20:19-31
by Rev. Heather McCance

Poor old Thomas, Doubting Thomas, who on this day every year is put down in churches around the world for his lack of faith, his inability to believe in something he had not yet seen. I feel sorry for him, really, especially considering that earlier on, while the other disciples were trying to discourage Jesus from going to Jerusalem where there were people who wanted to kill him, it was Thomas who said, Let's go with him, let's go and die with him if that's what it takes. How did Thomas the Brave become Doubting Thomas?

Most of us, if we're honest with ourselves, have to admit that there are times when we have doubts of our own when it comes to our faith. When we've wondered to ourselves whether there really is, in fact, anything after this life. When we've wondered whether the bread and wine we share week by week is anything other than bread and wine. When we've felt that there was no one even listening to our prayers, never mind answering them.

Yes we all have doubts. Which leads to the question of why, when we have doubts, do we stay in the church, why don't we turn around and walk the other way in those times when we can't, for whatever reason, believe?

Thomas could well have gone the other way. After hearing the story of the other disciples, he might well have disbelieved them. After all, the past few days hadn't exactly proven them to be the most trustworthy bunch. After Thomas had expressed his willingness to die with Jesus, he watched one of the disciples betray him into the hands of his killers, he saw another deny ever having known him, he watched most of the rest of them run away, abandoning Jesus to his death. Thomas could hardly be blamed for his reaction. Sorry, folks, but you're all nuts. Jesus is dead. You're just victims of your own wishful thinking.

So, believing Jesus to be dead, what was it that kept Thomas around? Why didn't he just go back to whatever his life was before he'd left it to follow this wandering preacher from Nazareth? Because it was a week later that Jesus appeared to him, and Thomas had evidently stuck around.

Well, I'm not sure why, but reading the story I believe that Thomas stuck around because of his ties to the rest of the disciples. After all, they'd spent a lot of time together, some three years according to John's gospel. They'd grown to know and love one another, and even with their leader gone, that bond was still there.

And as for the other disciples, they might well have given up on Thomas. After all, Jesus had prophesied that he would rise from the dead, they were reporting nothing that Jesus himself had not told them. Why should this doubter be allowed to continue to be a part of this special group if he didn't believe them?

But Thomas didn't give up on the other disciples, and the other disciples didn't give up on Thomas.

I know a priest who grew up on the prairies, who with her sister used to spend summer evenings catching fireflies to put into a jar. She told me that if you caught enough of them, you could read by them when your parents thought that you should be sleeping. he jar full of fireflies created a nice, steady, constant light. But if you looked at the jar carefully, you could see that the individual fireflies were twinkling on and off again. None of the fireflies were on all the time, but the light of the fireflies that were on kept the light steady for the fireflies that were off.

Thomas, once so brave, couldn't be on all the time. But the community of disciples upheld him when he was weak, when he had trouble believing, until he found that he, too, could believe, until he, too, experienced the presence of the risen Christ in his life and could cry out with the others, My Lord and my God!

When I have doubts about the things I believe, it is often you, my fellow Christians on the journey, who keep me going. Just when I feel that God can't possibly answer prayers, someone will tell me about a prayer that was answered. Just when I find myself bitter that human beings will ever do any good, one of you tells me of a complete stranger doing some good deed. Just when I find myself questioning God's very existence, someone will tell me about the deep sense they have of the presence of God in their life.

Like the fireflies, like Thomas, none of us can be shining all the time. All of us will have times when we can't shine, when for whatever reason we cannot believe. But that's when we have to count on the light of all the others in the community to shine for us, to lighten our life until we find our way back and are able to shine again.

So when we say the Nicene Creed in the new version of our service, it begins, "We believe." And someone once told me that even though he can't believe all the things in the creed all the time, that "we" makes it possible for him to say the creed without feeling like he's lying, because he's speaking for the whole community and not just for himself.

And this is also why every time someone is baptized or confirmed, the whole gathered people of God are asked to make a promise, to support the person in their life in Christ. This is why one of the promises we make when we are baptized, or that we make on behalf of a small child who is baptized, is that we will continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers. Because none of us can be a Christian on our own. All of us need the community of believers to be there, to shine for us in our dark times, just as we do our best to shine for others in the community when they need our support.

Thomas's story has, if not a happy ending, than a powerful one. After this experience with the risen Christ, he became Thomas the Brave once again. And when the apostles went out from Jerusalem to spread the news about Jesus, Thomas went to India. Many people there came to believe in Jesus through Thomas's work, and in the 1700s when Christian missionaries arrived in India, they found there a thriving if small group of Christians known as the Mar Thoma church, a church that continues to this day. But Thomas himself met the same fate as many of his fellow apostles, for the teachings of Jesus that the last should be first and the first should be last flew in the face of the strictly enforced Hindu caste system and Thomas was put to death around the year 50. Thomas the Brave to the very end.

You and I might not be as brave as Thomas, and we might not have had the chance Jesus offered to him, to put our hands in his side, to touch the wounds on his hands and his feet. But we do have the same strength that he did, the strength that kept him around until he could feel Christ's presence in his life again, the support of a community of people of faith, who will shine for us whenever we feel our own light faltering. Amen.