A sermon for Decorah Lutheran Church
I want to talk with you this morning about
Thomas and courage. I realize courageous is not the usual adjective given to Thomas.
He is the “doubter,” they say, because he asked for proof—the same proof the
other disciples received a week before. But just because he is no more a
doubter than the rest of them certainly does not make him courageous, so what I
am I talking about?
Let’s step back for a moment. “The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews,” the scripture says. I remember in church growing up how our pastor was very careful to remind us that everybody is a Jew here—the chief priests and the Pharisees who wanted Jesus killed, the disciples; the women who discovered the tomb empty; and Jesus himself. All Jews. Everybody of import in the story except Pilate is a Jew. My pastor made this point so that we were careful not to drift into some form of anti-Semitism, claiming that the Jews killed Jesus, as many Christians throughout the centuries have done. Nonetheless, this week it struck me that the reason the disciples are hiding is because of fear of their own people. They had every reason to be afraid, because their own people had done this to Jesus and now Jesus was gone. They had every reason to believe they were next
