This morning, I want you to think like a lawyer. I want you to put yourself in a position where you are sifting through some very interesting evidence. The question is what are you going to do with this evidence? Let’s say you are in a room of a court, and outside are people who want to find out if the evidence divulged in court is true. There will be those who invest themselves heavily in this enterprise, waiting, hoping and praying that the evidence can be verified, that the facts can be corroborated, and that the truth will come out. But there are others who are skeptical, hoping that the evidence does not corroborate the facts, that those giving testimony will be belittled, and that the truth will remain unknown.
Essentially, what is at stake is the evidence that relates to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. You know that there are people who are so invested in this, so committed, that they are passionate the evidence proves the point. But you are also aware of others hoping that the evidence does not produce conviction. You are faced with collecting the evidence: What are you to do with it? Well you turn, first of all, to a gospel, to an account, to a tangible historical book, the Gospel of John. You do so because as Clayton Schmit, who teaches media, philosophy, and theology – a wonderful combination! – at Fuller Seminary in the United States, suggests, the Gospel of John was written for the courtroom. It was written with very specific intention and purpose.
It was written with many facts and dates and times within it, aligning it with festivals in the Jewish tradition, showing the concrete nature of the person of Jesus by the use of metaphor. Of all the gospels, it was John who pulled out the language that was used to describe Jesus in the common parlance of his day: Jesus “the good shepherd”, Jesus “the light of the world”, Jesus “the true vine”, Jesus “the bread of life”, Jesus “the lamb of God” and so on. Things, concrete things, that people saw every day and understood were related to the person of Jesus. I think Clayton is right. John does an excellent job of all the gospels of bringing out what ordinary people would understand and could identify with in the life and the person of Jesus. It wasn’t that he was making it up; he was drawing out from a very rich well of tradition. He wrote this gospel for a purpose. At the very end, he is quite clear about it, transparent, obvious. He said, “I have written these things that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God, and having believed that you live in Him and that you live with Him.” He set out his bona fides. John is writing this Gospel for a purpose, because he is trying to make a case. He is trying to show the world what the life and the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was all about.
Some have criticized this methodology, and suggested that John in writing history with a purpose was walking outside the bounds of pure history. But as any writer knows, and there are some of you in this building, you usually write with a purpose, you write with a goal, you put together facts and evidence and information, and if you are writing non-fiction, then even the way that you collate your evidence is put together in such a way that it conveys a message in the way in which you do it. It is not as if you are constructing evidence; it is not as if you are always necessarily leaving out other evidence; nevertheless, you put it together for a purpose. Even over the last few weeks talking to historians such as Margaret MacMillan, a great Canadian, at St. Anthony’s College in Oxford. Margaret is a great writer and has wonderful books, but she writes with a purpose, and if there is an overarching purpose, it is sometimes just to show the importance of history itself, that history matters. But everybody who puts pen to paper for one reason or another has a purpose behind it. Why do we decry John for claiming that he is writing for a purpose any more that we would decry Matthew or Mark or Luke for writing theirs, or even literature of the same time as theirs, such as Josephus or Tacitus or others? People write history from a point of view; often they write it to convey a message.
John is clearly doing that. He has compiled the evidence and he is trying to make a case. Who is he making the case for? He is making a case for us! He is making a case for all future generations, who after the Resurrection and the Ascension of Jesus, and after the immediate people who witnessed what had taken place might know and understand and believe happened. As we look at the story unfold, and this tremendously challenging text that we have this morning – it is fitting that we gave it to an ordained minister to read - this is a passage that has been questioned and challenged and thought about and written about exhaustively for two thousand years. But look at it, it is actually all about evidence, and there are different people who are giving evidence within this story. The first group are the disciples, who have witnessed this phenomenon of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, who had appeared to them. The only problem is one member of this group wasn’t there: Thomas.
Thomas represents every man and woman, he really does. He wants the evidence himself. He wasn’t there with the disciples when Jesus appeared. He had missed out on the big event, and he was incredulous. He questioned the disciples, and they declared what they had seen. If there was one error that Thomas had made above all else, it was that he had broken off fellowship with the disciples. He was so caught up in his at the death of Jesus, so terrified about what would happen after the Crucifixion that he did not maintain his association with his fellow believers. The great problem of Thomas was not, as I am going to suggest in a few moments, that he doubted – that wasn’t the problem! The problem was that he had broken off fellowship with the disciples.
He reminds me of a colleague of mine who I won’t mention by name – not one of our ministers – but who went with me to a baseball game a couple of years ago. We had been given these great tickets by a mutual friend and we sat in the front row just off first base – a brilliant place to watch a ball game! It was a marvellous summer’s day, and my friend had his smart phone with him. Through the whole of the match he was watching his smart phone! Hardly ever did he look up from this thing through the whole game. It was the moment, the really spectacular moment when the Blue Jays were down and Bautista hit a home run. Everybody rose to their feet! This was going to win the game – and my friend was still sitting there pressing the buttons on his smart phone! He then looks up and says, “Did I miss anything?”
“I mean, come on! Did you miss anything? Well yes, you missed the home run!”
“Oh, well, I guess I’ll see it on the Jumbotron.”
He waits a while and it comes up, and the game has moved on, and so he goes back to his phone again and tries to watch a replay on that as well. It was pathetic. He had missed the big event because he was looking somewhere else. Thomas was like my friend at the ball game. The game winning home run had been hit - Jesus had appeared – and Thomas missed it! He had to rely initially on the evidence only of those first disciples – those first disciples who were changed, transformed and convinced. They had seen something beyond their knowledge, their comprehension and their power to understand. It had grasped them. Huge news – but Thomas had missed it!
Fortunately, there was another one who gave evidence. The other one who gave evidence was Jesus. Thomas was incredulous. Thomas doubted. Thomas wondered. He wanted to be written back in to the story. He knew that something had happened to those disciples, and he wanted to be part of the picture again. But how do you become part of the picture when you have not been there for the big event? How do you replay it? He reminds me of another friend that I had who was a great photographer and also happened to be a great lover of Earnest Hemmingway. Anything Hemmingway, he knew! In fact, he had a collection of all Hemmingway’s books. He particularly loved The Sun Also Rises. He knew Hemmingway was a great lover of bull fighting, and because of that book and other evidence in Hemmingway’s life, he really, really focussed on Hemmingway’s love of bull fighting. One day he showed me a photograph that he had of Hemmingway with a matador. It was a really lovely photograph. As I looked at the photograph more closely, I realized that between the head of the matador and the head of Hemmingway, my friend had actually pasted his picture in the middle. I think the word is photo-shopping? There he was, grinning away between Hemmingway and the matador! He so wanted to be part of it. He so wanted to be with the great writer, to be part of history. He did it as a joke, but in many ways it is like Thomas, he missed out on the big event, so now what does he do?
Jesus feels for Thomas. He understands that Thomas doubted and is upset. But does Jesus turn on Thomas? Does Jesus say to Thomas, “Well, you missed the one big event! I am not going to show you anymore” or “Because you are having your doubts, I am going to reject you”? On the contrary, what does Jesus do? Jesus gives him the evidence: “See, here are my hands. Touch them. Here is my side, touch it. Go ahead. If you don’t believe, then just come and see and feel.” I think one of the greatest sermons that has ever been written or spoken on the Resurrection was given by Henry Drummond in Northfield, Massachusetts, in 1887. There was something about this sermon that caught the imagination of listeners, so-much-so that they wrote down what he had said and quoted him for many years to come. This is what Henry Drummond said and it is powerful:
Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can’t believe; unbelief is won’t believe. Doubt is honesty; unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light; unbelief is content with darkness. Loving darkness rather than light, that is what Christ attacked and attacked unsparingly. But for the intellectual questioning of Thomas or earlier Philip and Nicodemus and the many others who came to him to have their great problems solved, he was respectful and generous and tolerant. And how did he meet their doubts? The Church, as I have said, says ‘Brand him’ Christ says, ‘Teach him’. He destroyed by fulfilling. When Thomas came to him and denied his very resurrection and stood before him waiting for the scathing word and lashing for his unbelief, they never came. They never came because Christ simply gave him the facts.
It is a remarkable fact of the Gospel that Jesus did not take that unbelief and condemn it that doubt and tell it off; rather he met it head-on. He met it with love. The great Alfred, Lord Tennyson once said: “There is more faith in a serious doubter than there is in half the Creeds.” He is right! There is a sense in which Thomas was an honest person. He wanted evidence, and sometimes I think we are envious of people like Thomas. We also want evidence, don’t we? If we are really honest with ourselves, wouldn’t we also love at some point in our life to be able to say, like one of those disciples, “I touched that hole in his hands, that He rose from the dead and I can prove it!” Of course, we would. But we have denigrated Thomas, we have put Thomas down, we have called him “Doubting Thomas” for two thousand years. I would rather call him something else, and that is “Restored Thomas”. Why? Because Thomas is also a witness giving evidence. Even though he was the great doubter initially, after having had an encounter with Jesus, this man who had previously been on the outside was now on the inside. The man who had previously been one of doubt, but now one of faith, and it is he, Thomas, who makes one of the greatest statements in all of Christian history: “My Lord and My God!” It is Thomas who said it, and so people who have doubt can in fact become the ones who are transformed to be the one who gives the greatest witness.
The witness of Thomas was something that John was very clear to point out. Let’s review: We have the disciples who had an encounter with Jesus, who clearly in great number have told that they have seen Him in different places and in different times. Something clearly had happened. But we also have Jesus who comes to Thomas to give a second chance. Jesus is his own witness. But then we have Thomas, who had previously doubted, now becoming a witness to saying, “My Lord and My God!” Is that it? Has the case run dry? Is that all there is? No! When Jesus appeared to his disciples, it is very evident that he tried to comfort them: “Peace be with you.” In the Children’s Moment that Katherine did with the children this morning, she emphasized that: that Christ came to them and said, “Peace be with you.” He knew that they were upset. He knew that they were in turmoil. He knew that they wouldn’t understand the evidence that was before their eyes, and he wanted to assure them of the truth. But then he does something else.
So often, I read this text and commentaries on this text and we forget about it. Yet to me it is absolutely central to our understanding of it. What does he do after he has said, “Peace be with you.” He breathes on them with the power of the Holy Spirit. That is what he does! Why? Because earlier in John’s Gospel the Holy Spirit promised to come to the disciples after he has departed. He said to them, “I will send you another paraclete, another comforter, another advocate.” This is going to make the lawyers in our congregation happy! Another lawyer! Another lawyer is going to come, and will bear witness to the truth, and he is going to collect the evidence, and show you that what has been written in these words and in this story and in this account and in this moment is true. You are not going to be left to your own devices, nor are you left with the record of history, but you are left with the living testimony to the truth. You see, history can tell us a lot. History can present facts, and history can spell out the grand narrative. History can put together the witnesses and those who gave evidence. History can show us many things, but it doesn’t always mean that those things that we read of in history we experienced. In fact, talking to a philosopher of history at one of the colleges at Oxford a couple of weeks ago, he said something very interesting. He said, “You know, when you really think about it, most of history that has been written or nearly all of history that has been written has not been experienced by us immediately.” He gives the landing on the moon as the classic example. We have never actually ourselves landed on the moon, but we have a lot of evidence to suggest that humanity did in fact land on the moon. We rely on history to give us the evidence.
There is in fact sometimes a great gap between certain things that happen in history that are so obvious and others that seem clouded and murky and written in time of myth and legend. I understand that. Nevertheless, for most of history, we haven’t experienced it. We weren’t at Passchendaele, we weren’t at Agincourt, we weren’t at Milvian Bridge, and yet we have witnesses and testimony to the fact that the events there occurred. History helps us, shapes us, forms us, and we rely on the witnesses who gave evidence. But as Christians, when we are talking about the Resurrection of Jesus we know that we are in something of another realm. We are in the realm of theology and of a living God. We are in the realm of something beyond ourselves, and we need a witness beyond ourselves to help us understand.
All I think that God ever asks of us is that we be open. You see, the problem I often have with those who are firm in their unbelief, is that they are not open. They are not open to the possibility of the presence of God’s spirit. They are not open to the possibility of the limitations of their own ability to know. What John is asking his listeners to do is to read the evidence given in order that we might believe, but that evidence alone needs to be corroborated by the power of the Holy Spirit. I ask you this post-Easter to listen and be open to the power of the Holy Spirit, and let the evidence of the Spirit confirm the power of the Word. This is one of the great callings of our life. Amen.