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| The Incredulity of St. Thomas by Caravaggio, 1601-1602 A.D. |
The Twin — that's what
all the other disciples called him,
and it suits Thomas ...
because in a way,
he's all of our twin.
+ Searching for Enough
Tyler Staton's Searching for Enough has been my faithful companion during Holy Week and now into Eastertide's 50 days of joy. And for one more post (see also "Personal & Powerful Enough," "A Good Way to Die" and "Jesus' Most Offensive Act"), I love how Staton helps us engage with Thomas and the passage in St. John's Gospel that many throughout Jesus' Church will be looking at this weekend in the Revised Common Lectionary.
By late Sunday night, every living disciple has been greeted by a supernatural encounter with the resurrected Lord — except for Thomas. Mary Magdalene is frantically spilling out her story; the two followers from Emmaus are trying to catch their breath from a run in the dark so they can get theirs out; and the ten who witnessed His appearing are talking over each other, interrupting every couple of words, everyone wanting to deliver their version of witnessing a man walk through the wall of their locked room.
Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe." + John 20:24-25
To give some backstory on Thomas, John 11 records the story of Jesus' return to Bethany (before Jesus and the discples went to Ephraim). The last time Jesus was in Bethany, His life was threatened. He was promised a sure and brutal death if he dared to return. Naturally, all the disciples tried to talk Him out of going — all of them except for Thomas, who said, "Let us go, that we may die with Him" (John 11:16) Jesus wanted to go to Bethany, and Thomas was ready to go with Him, even though he expected it would cost them both their lives.
Thomas was ready to die
with Jesus.
He wasn't ready to live
without Him.
And when that fate,
the one Thomas wasn't ready for,
was suddenly thrust on him,
he learned a lesson we all pick up
somewhere along the way:
life is more disappointing
than hopeful,
so the safest way is to
never get your hopes up.
I've watched people pray with hearts full of faith for healing and then watch their loved ones die. I've listened to people recount debilitating abuse they faced as a child and ask, "How am I supposed to be healed now by the God who didn't rescue me then?" I've prayed and counseled people of faith who have been crippled by mental illness for long stretches, and I've mourned when a few of them took their own lives. I've watched people get the life they wanted and be so disillusioned by it that they fall apart, and I've also watched people miss out on the life they wanted and be so disillusioned by it that they fall apart.
There are endless varieties to the plot, but no one gets through a life of faith without coming face-to-face with Thomas's disappointment in the days following resurrection. For all of us, he is our twin.
Isolation and Disappointment
Maybe you've already asked yourself the obvious question: "So if Thomas was one of Jesus' disciples, why didn't he encounter the resurrected Jesus when Jesus suddenly appeared in the upper room?" That's what real, honest, existential doubt often does to us. And it can make the community of belief nearly intolerable.
Often, the first symptom
of doubt is isolation.
Like Thomas, we can deal
with a black-and-white world,
but we can't deal with a
community of people
trying to talk to each other
into seeing in color.
In times of doubt,
the human instinct is
to withdraw into isolation.
When Jesus was in His spiritually
darkest hour in Gethsemane,
He wanted His three best friends
right there with Him.
He didn't try to gut it out alone
or grin and bear it.
He invited His community
into His pain (Mark 14:33-34).
We tend to do the opposite.
When our souls are overwhelmed,
the human temptation is
self-isolation, to turn inward,
not outward.
There's a strange comfort we find in withdrawing from a believing community during times of unbelief or uncertainty. Doubt can create the feeling that "I'm on the outside, and these people can't understand or relate." This feeling is often the product of perception, not conversation. It usually comes from looking at a whole group of people and categorically making assumptions about them, not the repeated experience of voicing our doubts humbly, honestly, and vulnerably to individuals in that community.
Maybe the community surrounding us is actually making a lot of sense. Maybe we love and respect the people in it. Maybe we'd still like to laugh with them, make plans with them, or share meals with them, but we just can't stand to open up this subject with them because belief is a topic of pain or frustration or anger or just plain disinterest for us at the moment.
As understandable and human as that is, the funny thing about this brand of isolation is that we don't remain isolated for long. We still want the community belief used to give us — those people to share our experience and affirm us by understanding and agreement, so when some believing community (be it a local church, a group of friends, or something else) stops being the source of affirming agreement, we go looking for it elsewhere. In times of doubt, we want to find people who agree with our doubts and affirm our version of skepticism.
But building community
around our doubt always feels
comforting at first,
but it's isolating in the end.
It quickly delivers a
sense of honest, loving,
understanding camaraderie,
but relationships built on
a shared disagreement,
a shared skepticism,
and disenchantment
can be paralyzing ...
That's why I think Thomas
walking back into the upper room
on Sunday night might be
the most courageous act
found anywhere in the Gospels
by someone not named Jesus.
We are much quicker to see the world through disappointment than hope because it's safer. Building our lives on disappointment won't make anything better, but it will protect us. It will cover us like fig leaves and keep the most vulnerable parts of us hidden. When we are mentored by our disappointment, we get uneasy around hope; we learn to resist it at all costs. Allowing disappointment to play a defining role in your life might guard you from pain, but it will also most definitely guard you from any greater hope that might bring life.
Lament Interlude: Jesus, I Have My Doubts
+ Jon Foreman, 2021 A.D.
Jesus, I'm sorry 'bout last night.
Jesus, we both know I tried.
Jesus, feels like the world's in pieces.
I'm sure You've got Your reasons,
But I have my doubts.
Jesus, I have my doubts
When everything that's right feels wrong,
And all of my belief feels gone,
And the darkness in my heart is so strong,
Can You reach me here in the silence?
Singing these broken songs,
Looking for the light for so long,
But the pain goes on and on and on,
Can You reach me here in the silence?
Jesus, what a week we've had?
Jesus, has the world gone mad?
Jesus, feels like the world's in pieces.
I'm sure You've got Your reasons,
But I have my doubts.
Jesus, I have my doubts.
(Chorus)
Are You there? Can You hear me?
Do You care? Are You near me?
'Cause I'm scared and I'm weary.
Are You there? Can You hear me?
Our Greatest Fear: Doubt or Belief?
I wonder if the Bible makes room for God to meet people in the midst of doubt more than some communities that are formed around the very same Bible.
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted. + Matthew 28:16-17
What does it tell us about
the heart of God that He
put the keys to the Kingdom
in the shaky hands of people
who were something
less than certain?
That He looks the doubter
in the eye and says,
"Not at some future point when
"Not at some future point when
you get every intellectual quibble
sorted and every question answered,
but right in the midst of your doubt,
I choose you. I trust you. I send you."
Jesus is comfortable with doubt.
But if some of Jesus' Church can be afraid of doubt, our post-Christian culture is at least equally afraid of belief. After all, doubt is so much more fashionable than belief. Doubt is thought inherently intelligent, thoughtful, and respectable, while belief is usually lumped in with categories like narrow-minded, gullible, and inconsiderate. Philosopher and professor Dallas Willard put it this way: We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes.
It is worth considering the thought
that belief is more inherent
to human beings than doubt.
We are all born believers.
You came into this world
with a readiness to believe,
a relentless kind of hope,
a free self-giving love,
and heart bent toward justice.
What biblical scholars call
the imago Dei ("image of God")
was alive in you at first.
Cynicism and skepticism,
to whatever extent we carry them,
were picked up somewhere
along the way in this world.
New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks wrote an article a few years ago that got my attention. He was exploring a trend in the modern generation of young adults — that being cold and detached have become fashionable. Today, disenchantment is admired. We (I say "we" because I am a part of the young adult generation he describes) are always investigating but never committing, suspicious of commitment, and especially suspicious of anyone who dares to be committed. The premise of the article is a generation of people with educated opinions but fearful lives, unwilling to walk out on any limb of committed belief because they're fearful it will snap beneath them.
We are all fragile when we don't
know what our purpose is,
when we haven't thrown ourselves
with abandon into a social role,
when we haven't committed
ourselves to certain people,
when we feel like a swimmer
in an ocean with no edge.
If you really want people to be tough,
make them idealistic for some cause,
make them tender for some person,
make them committed to some worldview
that puts today's temporary pain
in the context of a larger hope.
People are really tough only after
they have taken a leap of faith
for some truth or mission or love.
Once they've done that,
they can withstand a lot.
We live in an age when it's
considered sophisticated to
be disenchanted.
But people who are enchanted
are the real tough cookies.
There was a time in history when belief was so common that the courageous move — was to doubt. Today, cynicism, skepticism, disenchantment, and uncertainty are so common and doubt has become so fashionable that maybe the tables have turned. The most honest, most courageous, most reckless move is belief.
As a pastor, I get to stand in front of a room filled with people and talk about the biggest questions every last one of us faces but spend the vast majority of our lives distracted from really considering. The bravest person in the room is trying to figure out if I've got anything meaningful to offer at all or if I'm a complete quack who decided way too early in life on set conclusions to the questions that really matter, and now I'm stuck mumbling nonsense to a mostly bored audience.
The bravest person in any local church
is the person honestly trying to
figure out if Jesus is worth real consideration,
because if He is, it will probably mean
questioning the foundation
their entire life is built on.
It means the conclusions that have always made them safe aren't safe anymore.
Encounter: Have You Tried Asking?
God saw the whole world spinning mad, but He also saw Thomas's world spinning mad. He climbed down, right into the place of Thomas's personal brand of pain and disappointment, his particular need, and said, "Here's a way to live again!" Anthony Bloom writes, "A relationship becomes personal and real the moment you begin to single out a person from the crowd."
That's exactly what Jesus did on resurrection morning in the garden when He went from a general explanation to a personal address: "Mary."
It's what happened when Jesus showed up on the shore and called out to Peter, "Throw your nets on the other side!"
It's what happened when Jesus showed up on the shore and called out to Peter, "Throw your nets on the other side!"
And it's what Jesus did in an upstairs hideout in central Jerusalem when He held out His scarred wrists to Thomas, saying without words, "This is what you were waiting on, right? I haven't given up on you, Thomas. Don't give up on Me."
Met by God's living presence,
the words tumbled effortlessly
from Thomas's mouth:
"My Lord and my God!"
Lost in the translation is
the power of this declaration.
Scholars call it the highest praise
given to Jesus anywhere in the Gospels.
No one ever thought more of God
than Thomas did when God showed up
in the place of his disillusionment,
pain, disappointment, and doubt.
Frederick Buechner writes:
If men and women are to believe
in His resurrection in a way
that really matters,
they must somehow see Him
for themselves ...
Now as then, it is not His absence
from the empty tomb that
convinces men (and women),
but the shadow at least of
His presence in their
empty lives.
Thomas wasn't convinced by
the evidence of an empty tomb.
But when he asked, he met
the presence of the living God.
Have you tried asking?
+ Jon Foreman, 2024 A.D.
Yesterday's tomb, tomorrow's womb.
The dark is long but the dawn is soon.
The light that you seek
Is seeking you.
Let the dead seed go
And watch it grow brand new.
I'm a desert in bloom.
Bonus post:
Next post:
May God's Kingdom come, His will be done.
Que le Royaume de Dieu vienne,
que sa volonté soit faite.
愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。
Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.
Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino!
🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇
que sa volonté soit faite.
愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。
Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.
Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino!
🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇
With anticipation and joy,
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