Our text from John concerns one of our Lord’s Easter appearances- not the one at the empty tomb but one which occurs LATER THAT EVENING to his disciples in the upper room and then ANOTHER appearance, a week after THAT. We’re told that they were all huddled in the upper room with "the doors and windows shut for fear of the Jews." Apparently, nobody took Mary’s words very seriously, that Jesus was not only ALIVE but he had approached her and even SPOKEN to her. After Jesus’s sudden trial and execution, his followers are now more afraid than EVER, worried that the religious authorities might be coming after them NEXT. The significance of the doors and windows being shut is that it transforms their meeting place into an impenetrable fortress that does far more than keep the Jews OUT- it locks them all IN. Hence, that room essentially becomes their PRISON CELL and they, in turn, have become its prisoners. The faith and hope and joy which once characterized their mission have vanished and they’ve now become captives to their own fears, shut up in their own despair, chained to their own disappointments. What would they now do? Where would they go? Three and half years with Jesus--years filled with so much excitement, promise, and joy--had all ended up like this!

But then, just when their fear is at its highest and their faith seems at its lowest, it says that Jesus suddenly materializes in their midst. Right at the point of their DEEPEST NEED, Christ appears to demonstrate how there isn’t a locked door or a barred window ANYWHERE that can possibly shut him out. There isn’t any situation in the world so dire, no trial so overwhelming that he can’t enter in and transform it through his personal presence, filling it with his grace and understanding. By emerging before them in all his risen glory, those locked doors and windows are suddenly flung wide open allowing now the fresh winds of faith and hope and joy to AGAIN fill their lives and revive their hopes. Unbelievably, the journey which Jesus had initiated three and half years earlier was NOT over but was about to begin once more!

But John informs us that "Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came." We’re not told where Thomas was or why he wasn’t with the others but by not being present, he MISSED seeing his risen Master with his own two eyes, MISSED hearing his reassuring words of comfort, "Peace be unto you," MISSED receiving the promise of his Holy Spirit along with the disciples’ NEW authority to forgive or retain other people’s sins. 

Rather than a doubter as history has remembered him, I would argue that if you look at the totality of what John says concerning this man, it reveals a man of rare courage and deep faith. We FIRST encounter Thomas back in chapter 11, when Jesus and his disciples are in Galilee after having just returned from the region around Judea. There, Jesus receives word that his close friend Lazarus had died two days earlier. When he informs his disciples that he wants to return to Judea in order to "awaken" him, they protest, reminding him how the Jews had nearly stoned him back there and they were lucky enough to escape with their lives. However, when Jesus persists, it is Thomas ALONE who faithfully defends his decision, boldly declaring "Let us ALSO go, that we may die with him." Here he demonstrates an unusual courage by insisting that they all be willing to follow Jesus even if it leads to their OWN deaths. 

 The SECOND time we see Thomas is in the upper room- on Maundy Thursday, the night of Christ's arrest. Following their last meal together, Jesus delivers his "Farewell Discourse," his final words of instruction before his departure. Yet, after more than three years together, they STILL don't understand who Jesus is or the essence of his mission. Among the disciples, it is Thomas who alone has the courage to express his confusion, "Lord, we do not know WHERE you are going; and how CAN we know the way?" Here he seems willing to go wherever Jesus asks him to if only he can help them all understand where it is he wants to take them. Does THAT sound like a doubter or faithless coward to YOU?

And then here in this morning's lesson, we have our THIRD encounter with Thomas in John’s gospel. The disciples are once again assembled in the upper room, but THIS time Thomas IS among them. However, just when you’d expect him to leap with joy at the news that Jesus is not dead but ALIVE, his response is anything BUT jubilant. He says, "Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my fingers into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe."

 In light of these OTHER texts in John, I’m convinced that Thomas didn’t REALLY need any evidence or proof that Jesus was alive but rather he was registering disgust and disappointment with himself for not having been where he SHOULD have been that night. Consider for a moment the tremendous guilt and shame he must have felt for having abandoned his brethren in their time of greatest need. Think of how by his absence, he must live with the suspicion that the others now him a coward and how he could possibly be disqualified from any future ministry with them. And even if he were allowed to remain part of the group, he would forever feel like a second-class disciple for not having seen his risen Master FIRST-HAND when all the others had. Thus if Thomas HAD been a doubter, I’m convinced it was not about Jesus but rather disappointment with himself, with the SELF-doubt and SELF-disgust he felt over his decision to be somewhere else the week before.

What is MOST amazing is that Thomas rejoins the group AT ALL. Instead of giving up on ministry entirely, instead of giving in to self-hate and chronic regret, he returns to be with the others and picks up where he had left off. Woody Allen once said that 80% of life is just showing up. Well the same may be said of faith, that REAL faith manifests itself, not so much through amazing acts of healing or in mind-boggling miracles, but by simply showing up and regularly attempting to do the right thing, by trying to remain obedient to the will of God- ESPECIALLY in those small and routine decisions each of us has to make day-in and day-out. That’s how and when REAL faith manifests itself!

But the story’s not quite over. As suddenly as he had appeared the week before and in the very same manner, Jesus materializes in their midst AGAIN where he offers his followers those same words of consolation, "Peace be with you." However, THIS time, he had not returned for the benefit of the GROUP but rather for the benefit of THOMAS ALONE- to calm his fears and erase his doubts. If Thomas required proof, then Jesus would give him it to him. He tells him, "Reach here your finger, and see my hands; and reach here your hand, and put it into my side; and be not unbelieving, but believing. Touch me, Thomas! Don't be afraid." 

What’s TRULY remarkable is that Thomas NEVER even touches him as he had thoughtlessly demanded, even when Jesus ENCOURAGES him to. That is because Thomas understood that it was for him and him ALONE Christ had returned to that room. Jesus knew of his brooding doubts and self-recrimination and so he would make a special appearance just to minister to him and restore his confidence. By appearing to him that night, even as he had to the OTHERS a week earlier, Jesus was assuring him that he was STILL a beloved disciple and a vital part of his future plans. For Thomas, all fear and self-doubt evaporated at once, replaced with his unending gratitude and undying love. Falling down before him, he thus makes that simple yet profoundly personal confession, “My Lord and my God.”

Of course, we no longer have the benefit of having Christ stand before US as those disciples did that evening. No, the truth is that we now have something BETTER. FIRST, we have his Spirit—Christ’s OWN spirit--who not only lives in our midst, he inhabits our HEARTS so that wherever we go and whatever happens to us, Jesus is both BESIDE us and WITHIN us to offer us his guidance and his comfort. SECOND, Christ is present to us in and through the Holy Scriptures which testify of him. When the WRITTEN word is properly proclaimed and Jesus—the LIVING Word--is presented in all his love and humility, then the presence of Christ’s own Spirit within us convinces us that that proclaimed word can INDEED be trusted, that Jesus is in fact a living entity who is as real today as he was two thousand years ago. And then THIRD, people are moved to belief and confession when they see Jesus manifested in and through the faith and love of his Church. As “the Body of Christ,” we become the incarnation or living embodiment of Jesus in the world. We are summoned to serve as his hands, his feet, and his voice with the result that we become his visible presence and the greatest witness there is as to his grace and to his love. 

 By relating this account, John wants us to know in the strongest possible terms that just as Christ made a personal visit to calm the fears and to dispel the self-doubts of one “Doubting” THOMAS, so will he come for each of US. We are assured that he’s not only WILLING but he’s also ABLE to burst into the midst of OUR upper rooms, into OUR most private prisons--whether they are prisons of fear or prisons of guilt, prisons of hatred or prisons of sorrow, prisons of loneliness or prisons of despair, prisons of addiction or prisons of shame--transforming them with those very same words he greeted his DISCIPLES with, "Peace be unto you." The fact is that NO prison can ever be so large or so strong as to keep him out. Christ will open wide the doors, he will remove all the bars, and he will unlatch all the windows so that the fresh winds of his love and his joy, his peace and his hope can freely flow through them with the result that we will never have to DOUBT or DESPAIR or BE DISAPPOINTED ever again.