April 27 – John 20:24-29

Main focus: Believe in the King

Typically we start a new sermon series after Easter, but we’ll keep at our Easter series for one more week to discuss how we respond to Jesus the King through belief. In John 20 we’ll look at Jesus’s encounter with Thomas, his patience with Thomas’s doubts, and Jesus’s similar patience with us.

Scan your eyes up the chapter and you’ll see this follows closely on the heels of Jesus’s appearance to Mary at the tomb (20:11-18). The evening of Resurrection Sunday, Jesus paid a visit to the disciples, showing them his scars likely to prove he wasn’t a ghost of some kind (much like he ate some fish in front of them in Luke’s account, cf. Luke 24:38-43). But, as our text this week points out, Thomas wasn’t among them, and when he hears about it he utters his infamous challenge to their testimony: “Unless I…place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

Thomas has historically been known as Doubting Thomas, and you can see why; he doesn’t merely disbelieve; he says he will never believe unless his conditions are met. However, we don’t get much of a window into Thomas’s reasoning here. Perhaps he was deeply skeptical, or influenced by the Sadducees’s disbelief in the resurrection, or so grieved over Jesus’s death that he couldn’t risk hoping in something that seemed so unfathomable.

Whatever his reasoning, he threw down the gauntlet, but Jesus was up to the challenge. A little over a week later Jesus paid the disciples another visit, and this time he pointedly called on Thomas to test his doubts against living proof. But note how patient he is with Thomas—rather than scolding Thomas for his doubts, Jesus makes himself accessible to Thomas, quite literally, by inviting Thomas to poke and prod his crucifixion wounds.

To Thomas’s credit, he didn’t need to do all that. Upon seeing Jesus he immediately traded his firm doubt for firm belief with the remarkable confession, “My Lord and my God!” In fact, he’s the only person in the Gospels to call Jesus God, which is pretty remarkable for so-called Doubting Thomas. In discussion, we’ll focus on this turning point for Thomas, his faith-filled response to Jesus, and Jesus’s gentle willingness to entertain Thomas’s need for proof.

By the end of discussion we’ll connect this to our experience with Jesus, to find reassurance in Jesus’s gentleness towards us and realize we too can bring our doubts to him. It’ll be important, as we invite people to share about their doubts, to see ourselves in Thomas and to recognize that doubts and disbelief are common companions on the Christian’s journey. We will do everyone a service if we normalize both having doubts and having those doubts resolved in the person of Jesus.

As we consider our experience of doubt and disbelief, pay attention to Jesus’s word to us in this passage: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” It’s common for Christians to think that the disciples had it easier than us since they could see Jesus and interact with him. Perhaps that’ll come up when you ask folks, “what doubts…do you struggle with the most?” Either way, we’ll use that question as an opportunity to vocalize our doubts in community, which is an excellent resource for actually handling them, as we’ll discuss in the last question.