Sermon for Calmar Lutheran and Springfield Lutheran Churches
Why was
Thomas not in the room with the disciples?
For me, that
question turned the doubting Thomas story upside down.
What was Thomas doing?
The
disciples are in a house with doors locked “for fear of the Jews,” John says.
The Jews—you may know—are their own people. The disciples were Jews; the chief
priests were Jews; the ones who chose Barrabas over Jesus were Jews; and Jesus
himself was a Jew. Besides Pontius Pilate and the Roman soldiers, everybody in the
crucifixion scene was Jewish. The disciples are afraid of their fellow chosen
people. What’s more, they are right to feel this way. They just crucified their
own messiah.
So, where was Thomas?
The most likely reason Thomas
was gone in my eyes probably would have been our first guess if we knew him as “Courageous
Thomas” and not “Doubting Thomas,” because I suspect Thomas had to be the one
who was out braving the streets full of people who were looking for disciples.
Thomas would have been the one in the market buying food and to the well to draw
their water, and Thomas would have been the one sniffing out whether anybody
was going to drag them off before Pilate next. Not only that, Thomas was
alone—or at least none of the other male disciples were with him.
As far as I am concerned, the
big question in this story is not about Thomas at all, but rather, why Jesus
chose that moment to appear—when there was one disciple missing?
If we were pressed to guess the kind of people Jesus would appear to post-resurrection, I suspect we would pick the faithful and the courageous. I think most people believe that in the current times as well—that Jesus shows up to people who are faithful and courageous, perhaps even to the powerful given how many of our political leaders claim to have a special relationship with God. We do not act as if God comes to the ones huddled in fear—to the lowly and the little. I also suspect we assume this is how God works because this is how we would do it if we were God and not because scripture bears witness to God ever acting this way. Consider Jesus’ ministry: Who is he always going to? The least and the lost, the lowly and the belittled—a woman at a well, a Samaritan, the unclean, the poor, the sick. Some of those folks were courageous in their own way, but none of them were heroes, all of them were lacking in some obvious way. For that matter, Jesus called the disciples from among the rejects—young men who were not good enough to continue the study of the Torah, who instead were working as fishermen and tax collectors and builders, the blue-collar men of the day. I am hard-pressed to think of a single example of Jesus showing up to the powerful. Jesus always picked the outsiders!
 |
| Backbone Cave Stalagmites |
