John 20:19-31
Jesus Appears to the Disciples
19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Jesus and Thomas
24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
The Purpose of This Book
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Just this week I finished reading Brene Brown’s most recent book called Atlas of the Heart. Brene is a scholar who has been doing research on shame, vulnerability, resilience, and human connection for decades. She has Ted Talks, and a Netflix series, and podcasts. Her work has changed the landscape of how people understand shame and vulnerability.
In this latest book, she goes through and helps define over 100 different human emotions according to the research her team has done through hundreds of interviews and the reviews of other research.
What she found is that language matters. How we speak about emotions and feelings matters. The words we use to describe how our bodies are reacting and how our minds and hearts are interpreting events are so vitally important to our ability to connect to one another.
In the story we heard this morning, emotions are running high. Jesus has appeared to the frightened disciples and Jesus imparts on them the Holy Spirit through his own breath. But Thomas wasn’t there— so he doesn’t believe what the other disciples are saying to him. And a week later, they were all in the house again, but this time Thomas was there.
So when Jesus came in and stood among them, Thomas believed that Jesus had risen from the dead.
What is so interesting about this story is that the word “believe,” which is repeated several times between Thomas and Jesus, would probably be better translated as “trust.”
And at first glance, perhaps these two words do not seem to be very different. But in English, belief is more cognitive. Belief is focused in our brains. I hear this with my students a lot, especially as they move from more fundamentalist faiths into the college atmosphere— how can they believe in the church or God when they see all of the suffering in the world. Or how can they believe the stories of Genesis when they have studied the science behind what those stories try to explain?
Trust, on the other hand, seems to be more relational. It also exists on a spectrum. For belief, it is more binary— you either believe something or you don’t. But trust… you can trust something a little bit, or you can trust something or someone more. Trust exists on a spectrum because trust exists in our hearts.
Trust is about a relationship. When Thomas says that he will not trust until he puts his hand into the side and sees the mark of the nails in Jesus’ hands, I think he is saying less about whether he believes that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and more about the trust he has with the disciples.
He is also confessing that he did not trust Jesus when he said he would be resurrected. It wasn’t about his mind being unable to wrap around the resurrection, but the distrust he had for his friends and his Lord. It was about their relationship. It was about his heart, not his brain.
But trust doesn’t happen without risk, or as Brene Brown would say, vulnerability. That is what Jesus offers to Thomas in extending his hands and his side to him when he came into the room the second time. Jesus gave Thomas the opportunity not only to believe in the resurrection with his brain, but to trust in God who fulfills his promises— God who did, indeed, raise Jesus from the grave. And in that, a deeper relationship forms between Thomas and Jesus.
“My Lord and My God” he proclaims.
This new trust that the disciples and Thomas have with Jesus and with God through the Holy Spirit opens the door to the next chapter of what God is doing in the world.
In a way it LITERALLY opens the door to the place where the disciples were hiding out. Trust allows the disciples to leave the room. Because they know and trust in their hearts that the God who raised Jesus from the dead is also the God who will keep them and be with them as they travel.
It is the disciples’ relationship with Jesus, their trust in him, that allows them to move from place to place, proclaiming the gospel, knowing that even when they are persecuted, God is with them in the Holy Spirit.
It is their relationship with Jesus, their trust in him, that carries them into this next chapter, a place where they create community and trust with one another, the people who will eventually become the first church. They know that they can proclaim the gospel because they have seen it, they have witnessed it themselves, and they can trust in their own resurrection, which Jesus promised to them.
…
In times of transition and uncertainty, trust is even more important— trust in ourselves, trust in our community, and trust in God. While our belief seems to be somewhat static— I’d imagine that most of us would say that we have always and will always believe in God. Trust is more dynamic. There are times in our lives we have had more or less trust in ourselves, our community, and our God.
Here at Redeemer it seems as if we have been in a time of transition for the last two years. We can thank COVID for that a little bit, but there has been a sense of change and forward motion for as long as I have been here. We are moving toward becoming a different community within this diocese, God is creating something new here— something good and something holy.
That doesn’t happen without trust. And trust doesn’t happen without some risk and vulnerability. I don’t think we are strangers to any of those things— over and over again I have seen this community be vulnerable with one another and take risks for the sake of the gospel.
We might say that we believe in God and believe in the resurrection, but how much do we trust in those things? How much do we trust in the resurrection of the dead? How much do we trust that death has been defeated?
Do we have enough trust in the resurrection for it to make a difference in our lives today? Do we have enough trust in Jesus to proclaim him as “my Lord and my God!” to everyone we meet?
Amen.
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