Sermon — April 16, 2023
The Rev. Greg Johnston
“Although you have not seen God, you love God; and even though you do not see God now, you believe and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9)
There’s a popular cliché that’s infuriating because it is, on the one hand, an insulting affront to everything our culture likes to believe about itself and, on the other, probably true. “It’s not what you know,” the saying goes, “it’s who you know.” In other words, what matters the most in getting a job or making a sale or closing a deal isn’t your skill or knowledge or qualifications, but your social network. And in a way this seems to go against our meritocratic culture, with all its ideas about hard work and raw talent winning out in the end. But time and again, anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s true.
And in fact it works out well, in a slightly different sense, for most of the disciples. Mary went early on Easter morning and saw the empty tomb. And she went and called Simon Peter and John the Beloved Disciple, and they came, and saw the empty tomb. So they all know the truth of the Resurrection for themselves. But the other disciples have no idea. They don’t get anything out of “what they know” about the Resurrection. But they’re very lucky in “who they know.” Because they spend the evening of that Easter Day together, Jesus appears and shows them his wounds.
But for Thomas, it’s different. This story is not about what he knows, and it’s not about who he knows. It’s about the idea that each half of the proverb can be inverted or reversed: In this story, “it’s not what you don’t know, it’s who knows you.”
We often talk about the story of “Doubting Thomas” as a parable of faith and doubt, of the difference between trusting what you’ve been told and needing it to be proved, and as a story in which all of us—who have not witnessed the Resurrection first hand, but merely been told about it—find ourselves in Thomas’s blessed shoes. And all of this is true. But I can’t help but pick apart the plot today, and wonder how exactly it is that Jesus knows that Thomas has his doubts.
Think about the story as it’s written. On Easter Evening, Jesus appears to the disciples in his resurrected body, one which still bears his wounds—which is itself a compelling image, for another sermon. He greets them with a sign of peace, he gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit, and he disappears. Later, the disciples who were there tell Thomas that they had seen the Lord. And he says that unless he sees Jesus for himself, he will not believe.
A week later, they’re all together again. And again, Jesus appears, and immediately he says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” (20:27) And I find myself asking the question— How on earth did Jesus know? He wasn’t there to hear Thomas express his doubts last Sunday. If he’d been there when Thomas had arrived, Thomas wouldn’t have had the doubts to begin with. Do we think he was eavesdropping nearby? Do we think that Simon Peter called him on the phone? Is this just another instance of the Son of God knowing all things?
Or could it be something else? Is it less that Jesus knows what Thomas has said, and more that Jesus simply knows Thomas? Does he show up, and see him, and instantly know what he needs, and offer it freely, without Thomas even having to ask? Is this story really, in other words, less about what Thomas doesn’t know, and more about the one by whom he’s known?
I think part of the appeal of the story of “Doubting Thomas” is that we all wrestle with doubt, from time to time. We all find ourselves, maybe more often than not, in the position of that disciple who is not sure that he believes—who is not convinced that he can accept all the claims that other Christians make to him—who struggles with doubt and faith, but who shows up nevertheless to be with them in community on the Lord’s Day, and who finds himself meeting Jesus there.
And it’s easy to take up Jesus’ words and pat ourselves on the back: “Have you believed because you have seen me?” he says to Thomas. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29) Good for all of us two thousand years later who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.
But the good news Jesus has is even better than that. Because as John says somewhere else, “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) We love God because God first loved us. We seek God because God first sought us. We know God because God first knew us. It’s not our responsibility to know everything, to know who we are or who God is or where in the world this is all going to end up.
God knows what each one of us needs, and God seeks us out, and the God who loves us gives us what we need. And this story is not a story about how good we are because we believe in God, even though we haven’t seen the proof. It’s a story about how good the God is who God believes in us. It’s a story that’s not about what we know, or who we know or what we don’t know, but about the One who’s known us since before we were born, and guided us all the days of our lives.
And it’s this God—the one who seeks us, and knows us, and loves us—who has promised to save us. It’s this resurrected God, who has seen the worst humanity can do, who’s offered to rescue us. It’s this wounded God, who shows up among us still bearing the marks in his hands and in his side, who has promised to heal us. Whoever or whatever we believe or don’t believe, know or don’t know, God knows us as deeply as he knew Thomas.