Not About the Doubt

Easter 2C, John 20:19-31; St. Paul’s, 4/03/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Not About the Doubt”

I have rarely visited the West Coast in my life.  On two occasions my uncle took me to a beach just north of San Francisco near Reyes Point. 

On the second trip I was looking forward to my return to this particular beach.  Our son Jake was with me and I wanted him to experience the beauty I had experienced nearly three years before.  We had to hike down a long trail alongside a deep ravine to get to the beach itself.  I remembered my visit to a long, crescent-shaped stretch of sand and rock which was bordered by high cliffs.  Far off to the left I knew we’d find a huge outcropping of rock – perhaps 30 – 40 feet high.  I remembered how awesome it felt to climb those rocks and just sit there for a while, watching the wild Pacific Ocean waves smash on the boulders just below my perch.

But the beach was different the second time around.  My first clue came as we reached the end of the trail.  Nearly three years prior – in the late summer – I had stepped almost directly onto the beach from the path.  On the return trip – this time in early spring – we had to scramble down a high rock face to reach ground level.  We came out from between the cliff walls to what was for me a completely different, foreign beach. 

The large outcrop of rock I had climbed once before was still there – complete with crashing waves and wild spray!  But strewn across the beach between us and our destination were smaller outcroppings of rock I did not recall, amid a field of huge boulders – some more than six feet in diameter – and a whole lot of smaller stones – with almost no sand anywhere in sight.  There were hundreds of rocks – of all shapes and sizes.  It didn’t take long for us to realize there were just too many stones, haphazardly piled against one another, for us to even try walking to the end of the beach.             

Apparently the beaches in that area change rather drastically from season to season. 

It seems that during the winter a lot of the sand gets pulled away from the shore, only to get dumped back in place by summer’s end.  The rocks that blocked our way were there three years before – just buried under tons of sand.  Though geographically this was the same beach I had visited not so very long ago, my experience didn’t bear that out – it was as if they were two completely different places.  Time, tide, and experience made it so.

That beach reminds me of the Gospel reading for today.  The Christian faith – our stories and our experiences – are a lot like my beach.  We don’t hear and experience Holy Scripture today the same way it was experienced when first proclaimed and then written down somewhere around the year100 in the Common Era.  And in fact, those hearing and experiencing this Gospel story when it was first written down and shared most likely heard and experienced the stories in a way different from those who walked with Jesus, John, Thomas and the others, some 70 years before. 

It’s a little like comparing the same beach years apart – but not just three years apart, but 70 years, and then a couple thousand years apart.  Below the surface there is something that is the reality of the beach – the reality of many different faith experiences – but on the surface life seems quite different.  Which beach – which faith experience – is the more real?

When we read John’s Gospel account – one of the four accepted Gospels of Jesus in our canon of Holy Scripture – we get a particular view of Jesus – and a particular view of Thomas.  And every year on the Second Sunday of Easter we read the same story about Thomas.  He’s the one who, according to John, was always trying to figure out what Jesus was saying, but never quite getting it right.  He’s the one who just knows in his heart Jesus is going to Jerusalem to die – well, he got that part right – and figures the disciples ought to go and die with him – though their deaths would all come much later. 

Thomas is the one who, when Jesus says, “You know where I’m going,” replies, “We don’t know what you’re talking about!”  Thomas is the one who is missing when Jesus first shows up in the Upper Room, breathing the Holy Spirit upon those gathered.  “Where was he, anyway?” is a question we might be tempted to ask, but can never actually answer.  Thomas is branded as the one who doubts – the one who demands proof – asking for what the other disciples have already received.  The picture we get of Thomas from John is less than flattering, and it is quite possible that what we have in John’s Gospel is actually evidence of a dispute between followers of John and followers of Thomas.  The author of John seems to go out of his way to paint a questionable picture of the disciple Thomas.

But you may recall that there are other stories of faith that show Thomas to be a faithful chronicler of the life and teachings of Jesus.  The Gospel of Thomas – one of the so-called “lost gospels” – perhaps as old as John’s Gospel – offers other views of what Jesus may have taught his disciples – other views of what we should know about Jesus and those of us who still follow him.  And perhaps, as Biblical scholar and author Elaine Pagels suggests, Thomas’ Gospel view lost out as the newly formed church struggled to understand and show Jesus in a totally unique light.

More so than the three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), John paints a picture of Jesus as the unique Son of God – not only One who points the way to God, though this is a real part of John’s Gospel – but One who is the divine Logos – the preexistent Word made flesh – and the only true expression of the Living God. 

Thomas, on the other hand, gives us a Jesus who teaches the fullness of God in all living beings – the Light that is within us – the Spirit who is within us and who is from God and of God.  John tells us, in many ways, that the only way to God is through Jesus. 

Thomas tells us that the way to God is found within us because the Spirit of God is within us as well.  We can even catch glimpses of this in today’s lesson from John – when Jesus sends his disciples out with the power of Holy Spirit to live out his ministry – or in other places when Jesus tells his followers, “The kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke 17:21).  Or even, “The Holy Spirit will enable you to do greater works than I do” (John 16:13).

Two theologians: John and Thomas.  Two experiences of Jesus.  Two ways of life and faith – like two seemingly different beaches that, in the end, are the same place.

It would have been easy for me to accept only one version of the beach if that was all I had experienced.  Faced with two different experiences, the temptation for me is to decide which of the two incarnations of beach is the right one, or the better one, or even perhaps, the more real of the two.  But both were expressions of the reality of that particular beach.

We, as followers of Jesus, can struggle to live with one right way of knowing and experiencing Jesus – one better or more real way of experiencing the promise of God as it’s made known to us in Christ.  Lord knows there are enough Christian groups today who say, “Not only is Jesus the only way to God; but that our way – our particular faith tradition is the only way to Jesus!” 

We can continue to say year after year, “Poor old Doubting Thomas – he just didn’t have enough faith!”  Or, we can look more deeply at the richness and diversity of the early church’s experience of Jesus – both the Jesus who walked the dusty streets of Galilee and Jerusalem, as well as the Risen Christ who came declaring “Peace be with you” to fearful followers behind locked doors.

Today’s Gospel at its best says something about the uniqueness of Jesus and the presence of God in each of us.  It tells of the importance of meeting and receiving Jesus as he makes himself known to us; and in realizing the gift of God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within each of us – making us ministers of Christ’s reconciling love – making us more and more into the image of God in Christ – allowing us to do things we once thought only Jesus could do. 

The depth and breadth of early Christian experience may well remind us that there’s more to Jesus than meets the eye or finds its way into our daily and Sunday lectionaries – and just perhaps there’s more to Jesus and God in each of us than meets the eye or gets told in the “official” stories of our faith.

Perhaps when Jesus says, “The kingdom – or the community – of God is within you,” it’s the honest-to-God’s truth.  We just need to decide what we’re going to do with that!  Amen.