Blind Sight
John 20:19-31

April 18, 2004

There is no doubt that this has to be about a Presbyterian. A young Presbyterian seminary student had finished his three year degree program and was entering the process to be ordained into the ministry. The end of the process inevitably requires one of those intimidating interviews before the Ministry Committee in the presbytery where he was going to serve his first congregation.

However, he had studied at a liberal seminary, one of those schools where modern Biblical criticism is the dominant method of interpreting the Biblical text. The Ministry Committee had never heard of such a method in this presbytery.

A pinch faced Calvinist stared across the table at our candidate and without a hint of humour asked, “Do you believe in the Virgin Birth?”

“Well, uh,” the student tried to stall and think out loud, “that doctrine has a long history, a lot of different ideas about it, controversial, in fact. It’s not an easy one.”

“I don’t care about all those high faluting ideas,” the fun time inquisitor asked. “It’s simple: do you believe in the Virgin Birth or not?” “Well, it’s this way. Some days I believe in it, and some days I don’t. But today I BELIEVE!”

Fortunately, the Virgin Birth is not included in the Lectionary readings for today.

I imagine most of you understand that what the old Presbyterian inquisitioner wanted from his victim was not really faith or belief or even doubt. Faith does not consist in the affirmation of an intellectual proposition, accepting as ultimate truth something for which one has no context or experience. Thomas is not the patron saint of doubters. He is the exemplar of how one lives faith.

Thomas is one of the most subtle characters in the Gospels, who insists upon reality not dreams for his faith. For some reason he was not with the cowering disciples that evening of the first day of the week, and when he heard their excited, inarticulate reports of the risen Christ standing in their midst, he actually gave the correct response. “I won’t believe it unless I see and feel the scars that are uniquely Jesus’.” No faith built upon hearsay; it has to be really experienced to be valid. There was no blind faith, for Thomas had to see.

A week later Thomas was now with the other disciples, and again Jesus was in their midst. Jesus offered the feel of his scars for Thomas’ faith, but there was no need anymore. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe,” concludes Jesus. This is no back-handed slap at Thomas, for Jesus’ words cover just about every Christian since that evening.

Thomas is not Everyman, for he is above average in his courage and truthfulness. The other time Thomas appears on the Gospel stage is back in John 11:16 when Jesus was informed about the serious illness and death of Lazarus.

Jesus dallied for two more days before gathering his disciples to head back down to Judea. This could be no casual excursion, for as the disciples are quick to caution Jesus, the religious authorities had tried to stone him to death, to execute him. While he speaks at first in the customary euphemism - “He has fallen asleep, so I need to go awaken him” - he finally has to spell it out clearly. Lazarus is dead and now he is really going to show the disciples something so that they may believe. Thomas then rouses his hesitant and obviously fearful companions, “Let us go also with him, that we may die with him.”

Thomas is not afraid to see the big picture. This wasn’t to be just another miraculous healing, but an encounter with death - his own death, for that matter. Certainly, he had doubts about the journey, and he had the faith to spell it out. And he still decided to go with Jesus - to bring back to life and perhaps to lose one’s life.

After the crucifixion, Thomas was nowhere to be found until a week later. The account reads that the other disciples were hiding for fear of the murderous power of the authorities. Yet when Thomas was with them he knew you couldn’t keep going on with euphemisms. No, Jesus hadn’t passed away, or bought the farm. He had not been raised from the dead in spirit. Thomas, like the others, was overwhelmed by the death of it all, and only new real life would count. No dreams, no illusions of grandeur, no sweet bye and byes. Scars on a living body, doubts in the flesh of faith and hope, were the signs he needed to touch physically.

I used to be asked about the hypothetical, yet all too real case, of the simple faith of a person unencumbered by intellectual concerns. This person simply believed, and if you got them to think about their faith, if you raised certain doubts about the enterprise of the Bible and Christianity and Jesus, you might well destroy their faith. Wouldn’t that be wrong? I have known many such people, and so was cut to the heart by such a possibility. But their faith is not real faith, and never was. Faith is never the absence of doubt, so-called blind faith. Faith not only must include doubt, but authentic faith that moves mountains must carry doubt on its back.

When I say that I believe in the peace that Jesus brings to this troubled world, I cannot shut out all the exceptions to peace that overrun our world. The chaos in Palestine and Iraq, the kidnappings and murders in our own country, the conflicts steeped in oppression and hatred among ethnic groups, are part of my faith. It’s not just that I believe despite these contradictions to peace, but in the midst of them my soul declares, “there is a real peace coming that will one day do away with all this violence and hatred. Today, in the midst of hatred I live in love.”

I believe in another person, have faith in her, not because I see no faults, but because I see through the faults to a life and love that is far more precious than the power of the faults. I believe in the love of that person, not in the fragility of her failings.

It all is really about Easter. Place aside for eight months more the gentle shepherds and majestic Magi worshipping the adorable babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, born in a cave manger. It’s about a man who left his final swaddling clothes, the linen burial cloths, lying around unused in the cave that was his tomb. Faith is looking the ultimate doubt of death in the eye, and proclaiming with fear and trembling, to be sure, I believe that death no longer has any real power. I am going to live to the fullest so that the forces of death no longer set anyone’s agenda.

Thomas did not show us that it was all right to have doubts. He demonstrated that faith prevails in the midst of doubt, carrying those doubts with us all, and living life with every ounce of love you can muster.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan