Believing Fingers
John 20:19-31

April 7, 2002

It happens a lot in families. Two sisters shared a brother who could be described as slow. Six months he would stay with one sister; six months with the other. Marriages and all, that was the covenant and commitment.

One day, however, the brother did something he regularly did: he took the trash out back of the house to burn it. Somehow he had spilled gasoline on to his clothes and he caught on fire. He panicked and instead of “stop, drop and roll” he ran back to the house. The sister saw him coming aflame, rushed out and put out the flames with her hands.

An ambulance took him to a hospital in Winnipeg, but it was too late. When the sister returned, her hands and lower arms were burned and scarred fairly severely. It would take them a long to heal along with her heart.

These were not scars of tragedy and pain, but scars of love, a kind of stigmata. Not really different from the wounds Jesus bore.

We hold something in common which is even more essential to the faith than our material goods. The story in the Gospel of John right after the resurrection tells us what that common something is. Thomas is our guide.

Thomas is one of the most subtle characters in the Gospels. He is a man of great faith, but one 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.

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 for his fingers to believe.

Nevertheless, I have always found this sudden conversion of Thomas from skepticism to this advanced faith to be a little too facile. Thomas, who was willing to lead all the disciples into the valley of the shadow of death with Jesus (John 11:16), was a tougher sell than this.

There was this young Presbyterian minister telling war stories of his ordination interview. We all have to endure something like it. This Presbyterian had graduated from a liberal-thinking theological college, but the presbytery into which he was being called was notably conservative.

Our hero knew it was going to come from one older unhappy looking Calvinist inquisitor the other side of the table. “Do you believe in the Virgin Birth?”

“Well, it’s like this: someday I can believe it, and other days I just can’t.

“But today, I believe in it!”

Thomas was not so ambivalent and wishy-washy. After all, one’s ideas and theories are often confounded by an encounter with a real person.

There was even research conducted as far back as 1934 by Jerome Brunner, a Harvard psychologist, which showed that one’s explicitly stated beliefs often did not match with one’s everyday action.

Brunner, a Caucasian professor, took two Chinese graduate students on a tour of the U.S., staying at about 60 motels and eating at over 100 restaurants. Only rarely were they turned away from a motel and never from a restaurant during an era and area where there was significant prejudice against Asians.

Brunner then wrote back to each of the motels and restaurants and asked if they would service Chinese customers. Overwhelmingly, the institutions replied that they certainly would not. Sometimes our actions are better than our words.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe,” concludes Jesus. That covers just about every Christian since that evening.

Thomas is not Everyman, for he is above average in his courage and truthfulness. The Christian Church in every place and time has held in common two things which bind us deeply together. What we have in common is our scars and our doubts. These sound like weaknesses, but the wisdom of God, after all, is foolishness to those who are perishing. God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Thomas wants to see the scars in the hands and feet of Jesus, but it is our scars which mark us as brothers and sisters.

We are not the church of the perfect saints, saved and unblemished, but the gathering of those who bear the scars of our wounds. What makes us the church is the moment we recognize our own scars, as well as the those of our brothers and sisters. Then we are not only united with one another, but are united also with Christ, the wounded healer.

When I recognize my own scars and wounds, my own failings and shortcomings, I can no longer pretend to be aloof from my brothers and sisters who are scarred in the same way. I cannot be judgmental or arrogant when I see their scars and recognize my own in them: compassion and understanding are the only authentic responses possible. You know this from your own experience: find someone else with the same scar and you have found a soul mate.

Tradition has labeled Thomas the Doubting one, as if he were the only disciple ever to have doubted. What makes Thomas different is that he owned his own doubt, and was willing to accept the truth when it came before him.

Doubt is not the opposite of faith, but its necessary partner. There is no such thing as “blind faith” - belief in something or someone untrammeled by questioning and investigation. Blind faith is simply a veiled cynicism waiting to be unmasked. Doubt makes certain that our faith is real, ready to weather the storms of adversity and tragedy.

The deep fallacy of so much which passes for Christianity today is that caught in a world with so many ambiguities and unending problems, many just want to hide from doubt. They are told if they have the right kind of faith, they will be at journey’s end. You and I know that that kind of faith is spiritual death, for our pilgrimage never ends.

As human beings we can never totally, finally, completely understand God, but that is no excuse for stopping, for giving up. Our greatest joy as Christians is realizing that as we continue to doubt, as we keep on seeking to understand, God is there with us on our journey, revealing herself a little bit more each day.

What really unites us in our doubts is that we doubters know there is something out there to seek, and we have discriminating tastes - only the truth will be acceptable.

Those who clutch their faith and deny they ever feel any doubt are those who are afraid to lose their faith, because then there will be nothing there. These people are never good risk-takers.

But those who doubt know that the only thing they have to lose is their doubts. Doubters are great risk-takers; only when we risk do we discover great things. Just like Thomas, willing to risk death, now he was able to find life. And so our motto has to be Paul’s self-description, “I believe; help my unbelief.”

What binds us together as the continuing church of the Apostles - whose Acts are not yet finished - is not our commonly held property and money, but our commonly held wounds and scars and doubts, the things no one else wants to hold on to, but in our healing one another and our encouragement of one another on the long journey, we embody the inexplicable strength of God’s wisdom. If God is for us, who can be against us?

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