Believing without seeing

Sermon for Midweek of Advent 4 – St. Thomas

Ephesians 1:3-6  +  John 20:24-31

Which of you would like to be defined by your worst moment—by that time when you really dropped the ball, behaved badly, fell into sin, by a time when your faith failed? None of us would. Unfortunately (in a way), the apostle Thomas is generally known for what we might call a bad moment. Of course, most of the apostles had their bad moments. Peter had a few of them. James and John had at least one. And if we go back into the Old Testament, most of the saints we encounter had some very bad moments, too, like Noah, or Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, Solomon, and so on. But they all are known for some very good moments, too, times when their faith shone brightly. Thomas just isn’t mentioned as often in Scripture and isn’t usually remembered for anything good—although he should be, as we’ll see in a moment.

He’s often referred to as “doubting Thomas,” though I would ask you never to call him that. The word doubt, especially as it’s used in Scripture, refers to a state of mind in which a person goes back and forth about something, when a person wavers, when a person just isn’t certain about something or someone. That doesn’t describe Thomas in the lesson you heard tonight. Thomas didn’t doubt the Lord’s resurrection. He didn’t waver in uncertainty. No, even though the other apostles gave him their eyewitness testimony that the Lord had risen from the dead, Thomas was quite certain the Jesus was still dead. And, as he told the apostles, the only thing that could make him certain in the other direction was to see the living Jesus with his own eyes, and put his finger into the nailprints in Jesus’ hands and put his hand into Jesus’ side where the spear had pierced Him through. Thomas wasn’t experiencing a moment of doubt. He was living in outright unbelief.

Jesus acknowledged that unbelief in Thomas. Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put your hand here and place it into my side, and be no longer unbelieving, but believing. So, yes, Thomas had a bad moment. A bad week and a half, really, from Maundy Thursday evening when he, along with the other apostles, abandoned Jesus, until this Sunday after Easter, during which time he remained unbelieving.

But then, after seeing Jesus, he had a very good moment that we should really remember him for: Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” That’s one of the clearest confessions of Jesus’ divinity in the whole New Testament, just as clear as the Christmas morning Gospel we’ll hear from John 1, where the Word was with God and the Word was God. It’s hard—impossible, really—to get around this verse. If Jesus weren’t God, then He should have rebuked Thomas for calling Him his God. Instead, He praised Thomas for his confession, although not for how he came to it.

“Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.” Now, for Thomas to confess Jesus to be his Lord and his God, that still required faith. What he saw with his eyes was a man whom he had seen dead and whom he then saw alive. Thomas didn’t have faith that Jesus rose from the dead. Faith is for those things we can’t see. He had faith in Jesus’ identity as God and in His authority as Lord. The things he saw in Jesus led him to believe the things he still couldn’t see.

But that’s not good enough for the billions of people who would never have the opportunity to see Jesus, people like you and I. We go about our earthly lives having never seen the Son of God, having never seen a true miracle of God, having never seen an angel. How are we supposed to believe in Jesus?

That’s the power of His word. It’s the word that brought Thomas to faith in the first place, that brought him to acknowledge that, yes, he was a wretched sinner, but that the unseen God loved him and had sent His Son into the world in a way he could see. And the Old Testament word of God brought Thomas and the other apostles to believe that, yes, this Jesus was the promised Messiah and their Savior from sin. Where Thomas fell, where Thomas failed, was in letting his eyes get the better of him, letting the word of Christ suddenly become meaningless when He told His disciples that He would rise from the dead. Thomas chose to stop listening to the Holy Spirit of God, chose to follow his own human reason rather than to believe the word of Jesus. That’s always a mistake.

It’s a mistake for us, too. More than that, it’s a sin. We have been convinced by the word of God that we are sinners. We have been called to repent and to believe in the God who has revealed Himself in Holy Scripture, the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to believe that He is who He says He is, has done what He says He has done, and will do what He says He will do. And, by God’s powerful working through His word, we have believed it. We have confessed it. We have begun to live it. Don’t let your eyes fail you now. Don’t let your human reason take over and ignore or disbelieve what God has said.

Instead, let the blessing of Jesus Himself rest upon you: Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed. And then consider how great the blessings are for those who believe! Paul mentioned just a few of them in the first lesson this evening. God has blessed us with every kind of spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. And then he lists some of the greatest spiritual blessings: he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love; He predestined us for adoption into his own family through Jesus Christ, not according to any good thing we had done, but according to the good pleasure of his will, the same good pleasure or “goodwill” He had the angels announce to the world on the night of Jesus’ birth. Why? For the praise of his glorious grace, by which he has made us acceptable in the One he loves. It’s only in Christ, the beloved Son of God, that we are made acceptable in God’s sight. And we’re only “in Christ” through faith, not by seeing Him, but by believing in Him as our Savior and Redeemer.

None of that can be seen. It all has to be believed. And you ought to believe it, because God’s word says it’s true. You may have had some bad moments in your life when you didn’t believe everything God’s word had to say. But believe it now, so that you’re not defined by the bad moments, but by the faith that God’s Holy Spirit is working in you even now.

Speaking of those bad moments, while Thomas is known by many Christians around the world for his bad moment, for his doubts, or rather, for his temporary moment of unbelief in that week following Christ’s resurrection, that’s not how he’s known by the Christians in India. Because Thomas went forward in that good confession of Jesus Christ, his Lord and his God, and took the Gospel to India, where many Christians still give the name Thomas to their children, remembering, not Thomas’ worst moment, but the faith that came after that moment, the faith that led him away from his home in Israel to their country, where he preached the word of faith to those who lived in darkness and the shadow of death, with faith firm enough to face the executioner rather than to deny that Christ was the world’s Savior who had risen from the dead. May the Lord bless us all with the faith and perseverance of Thomas! Amen.