No One Chooses Thomas...Except Jesus

 

December 21, 2024 – St. Thomas (Blue Christmas)

Habakkuk 2:1-4; Hebrews 10:35-11:1; John 20:24-29

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Video of this sermon can be seen here.

I don’t want to be a Thomas. I don’t want to be defined by my doubts. I don’t want to feel inside myself that the truest part of me is the part of me that doesn’t have enough faith to believe in Jesus. 

I’d rather be a Peter. Or, if that’s asking too much, I’d be happy to be a John or a James or even a Bartholomew. I’d welcome the chance to be a minor character in the story of salvation if it meant that I wasn’t known as the one who wouldn’t believe—who couldn’t believe. I’d be almost anyone as long as it’s not a doubting Thomas.

But we don’t get to choose who we are, do we? We don’t get to decide for ourselves what part we play in God’s great salvation drama. Like Thomas, we don’t even get to choose for ourselves whether we have faith. We either have it or we don’t. In a frustrating and exhausting way, it’s not up to us. We can search for it. We can practice it. We can try and try again. We can fake it and hope that one day our pretense will give way to something real. But faith isn’t something we can manufacture. It’s almost as if faith is something bestowed upon the lucky ones for reasons we can’t discern while the rest of us are left to wonder why we missed out.

Why are we the ones for whom all the puzzle pieces never seem to come together into a coherent whole? Why don’t we get to be the ones that other people look to as examples of how to be calm in the midst of life’s storms or how to maintain hope when everything around us feels hopeless? Why are we the ones who are always playing catch-up, running after those who have it all figured out but without ever getting any closer to them? 

Just once, we want to know what it feels like to have our burdens of grief, loss, and disappointment lifted from us. We want to feel them buoyed by a faith in a God who, we are told, is making all things right but who, as far as we can tell, isn’t making them right for us. The never-ending struggle is wearing us out. The weight of pretending that we are okay when we are nothing that resembles okay is bending us over, literally hunching our bodies, pressing us ever closer to the ground.

Surely Thomas felt that weight upon his shoulders in the week after Jesus died. I can imagine that he didn’t bother to lift his head more than a time or two during those days. His teacher and friend had been taken from him. The one in whom he had trusted—the one whom he believed had come to save God’s people—had been betrayed by a member of their inner circle, effectively indicting all the disciples for failing to see it coming. 

“Why wasn’t I taken with him?” Thomas must have asked in his unanswered prayers. Back when Jesus was still alive, when he had decided to return to Jerusalem to face his opponents, Thomas was the one who had declared that he was ready to go and die with him. But, instead of standing beside his master, Thomas had wilted in the moment of truth. He had fled in fear and shame like all the others. It’s a hard thing to be the one who keeps on living when the one you love the most has died.

Worse, still, Thomas’ friends were convinced that death had not taken Jesus from them for good. Jesus’ humiliating execution, they claimed, had been reversed by God, who had raised Jesus from the dead. “He appeared to us!” they exclaimed to Thomas, “when you weren’t there. Even though the doors were locked, he came into the room, and he showed himself to us. He is alive! Why don’t you believe us? Don’t you trust us?” But finding faith isn’t as simple as taking someone else’s word for it.

“Why couldn’t Jesus have waited until we were all together?” Thomas must have wondered. “Why would he reveal himself to all of the disciples except me? Is it because I am not worthy? Is it because I failed him? Is it because I do not know how to have faith like Peter or James or John?” 

For the longest week of his life, Thomas carried that isolating grief with him wherever he went. He was the only one in the community of disciples who didn’t feel like celebrating. He was the only one who didn’t get to see Jesus—the only one who didn’t believe. And there was nothing he could do about it.

But that didn’t stop Jesus from doing something. A week later, the disciples were right back where they started, which itself suggests that maybe even seeing the risen Jesus doesn’t fix everything all at once. Or maybe it’s a reminder that the community of faith cannot fulfill God’s commission until everyone is able to join in. Regardless, this time, Thomas was with them. And Jesus knew that Thomas would be there. Jesus knew that he could not return to his Father without seeing Thomas first.

When Jesus appeared to the disciples a second time, the only difference was Thomas. He was the reason Jesus came back. “You, too, Thomas,” Jesus said to him. “I love you, too. My work cannot be finished until you know that you belong to me, just like all of the others. Look at my hands and my side. Reach out and feel the wounds for yourself. I want you to know and believe that neither my death nor your doubts have the power to defeat God’s love.” 

Jesus does not come back for Thomas because of Thomas’ faith. He returns because of his doubts. He returns because Thomas isn’t sure, because he can’t figure it out, because he can’t make himself feel what everyone else around him seems to be able to feel. If the resurrection of Jesus means anything, it means that those who have felt the sting of death rob them of their ability to celebrate the fullness of God’s love will one day be rescued by that love which cannot be complete without them. If the empty tomb means anything, it means that Jesus will come and find the Thomas in each one of us. 

Sometimes it’s hard to believe in God. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that a God who would create a world in which pain and suffering are so common will one day make all that pain and suffering go away. Most of the time, we want to believe that, but often we can’t figure out how. And that’s okay. God’s love isn’t waiting on you to figure it out. God doesn’t need you to believe in him in order for God to love you or to come and find you. That’s the real miracle of Christmas—that God’s love finds us no matter what—and we receive that miracle anew every time Jesus offers himself to us in the communion of his body and blood.

Repentance Belongs in the Wilderness

 

December 8, 2024 – Advent 2C

Malachi 3:1-4; Canticle 16; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

Did your parents ever tell stories about your birth that took on a life of their own? Maybe your mother’s labor was as difficult as Rebekah’s, whose twins, Essau and Jacob, struggled so painfully in her womb that they were likened to two nations fighting against each other. Or maybe your mother’s pregnancy was anticipated by a distant but insightful relative the way that Samson’s birth was predicted by an unexpected visitor. There’s a reason we tell these strange stories about someone’s birth, and, by the time we are old enough to hear them for ourselves, it’s hard to know how much they were shaped by the birth itself and how much belongs to the sort of person we have already started to become.

How many times do you think John the Baptist heard his father sing the song about his birth? “And you, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way.” Zechariah’s is a song about the salvation of God’s people and, from his infancy, the role that John would play in it.

This is where Luke begins his gospel story—not with the birth of Jesus but with the promised birth of his cousin, John. Luke starts with the story of John’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth. Both of them belonged to the tribe of Levi, which means that they both came from priestly families. Luke tells us that they were righteous people who lived “blamelessly according to all of the commandments and regulations of the Lord,” which is a pretty lofty way to describe anyone (Luke 1:6). But Luke also lets us know that there was a problem: they had no children.

We might not see that as a problem, but, in those days, the inability to conceive a child was understood to be a sign that God had withheld God’s favor from someone. It is remarkable, therefore, that this barren couple, both of whom had passed the age of child-bearing, were still seen by their peers as holy people—holy enough for Zechariah to be allowed to continue to serve as a priest. 

One day, during the two-week period when Zechariah’s section of priests was on duty in Jerusalem, the lot used to determine which priest would be sent into the holy part of the temple to offer incense to God fell on Zechariah. It was an especially high honor. While in the holy place, he looked and saw an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar. He was terrified, but the angel Gabriel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.” 

Naturally, Zechariah was surprised by this, so he instinctively asked the angel how this was possible, since he was an old man and his wife was also “getting on in years” (Luke 1:18). But, in response to those doubts, Gabriel struck mute the elderly priest, leaving him unable to speak until the promised birth had taken place. Sure enough, eight days after his son was born, and as soon as he had confirmed in writing his wife’s decision to name the child John, his tongue was loosed, and, with the first words he had spoken in over nine months, Zechariah declared, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free.” 

Imagine how many times John heard the Song of Zechariah while he was growing up. Imagine how tired he became of hearing his father declare that one day he would become the prophet of the Most High. Imagine how awkward it was at John’s teenage birthday parties to have his father interrupt the festivities to proclaim yet again that his little boy would one day give God’s people the knowledge of their salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. It’s one thing to grow up knowing that you will inherit the family business, but it’s quite another to hear from before you can remember that you have been filled with the Holy Spirit and set apart by God for a special purpose.

Should it surprise us, then, that, by the time the word of God came to the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, it found him not in the temple, where his father had received this prophecy, nor in the local synagogue, where the Torah was read and preached every sabbath, but out in the wilderness, where the only creatures who could hear what John had to say were the hyenas, wolves, and leopards?

Luke wants us to notice that. Luke wants us to be as astonished as Zechariah was when he heard that he would become a father. It’s not an accident that Luke introduces the ministry of John the baptizer by precisely dating it according to the timelines of the political and religious leaders of his day. This was the fifteenth year of Emperor Tiberius’ reign. It was when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, when Herod was the ruler of Galilee, and when Philip and Lysanias were in charge of Iturea, Trachonitis, and Abilene. Luke even grounds John’s ministry according to the time when Annas and Caiaphas were serving as high priests—a reckoning that would have meant something to his parents. 

But John isn’t found anywhere close to those people. He’s out in the wilderness, in the region on the other side of the Jordan River, where civilization stops and the unkempt wilds of God’s unbridled power begin. That’s the place where the prophecy that John’s father had spoken on the day of his naming would unfold. And that’s where we must go if we are going to be a part of it.

We see in the story of John the Baptist that God is doing something strange and unexpected—something which cannot begin among the institutions of power because they are precisely those institutions that John has come to reform. As we will hear more about next Sunday, John’s baptism of repentance draws out into the wilderness those people who dare to believe that God’s will for the world is not being fulfilled by the politicians or priests of their day. John comes to announce that, instead of helping God’s people, those institutions have become stumbling blocks that inhibit their relationship with God and that anyone who wants a fresh start must leave them behind, venture out into the wilderness, and be washed clean in the waters of baptism.

God’s vision, announced generations earlier by the prophet Isaiah, is of a world in which God’s people can return to God as easily as driving down a straight and level highway. Perhaps because he had grown up so close to those institutions, John recognized that all the twists and turns and potholes and speedbumps that got in the way of the people’s relationship with God had been put in place by the very authorities that were supposed to help them. John knew that, once those impediments had been removed, the Anointed One of God would come and establish God’s reign among God’s people without any hindrance. John’s job, therefore, was to help the people see what it takes to remove all those stumbling blocks so that, when Jesus came, they would be ready to receive him. For John, that is what repentance was all about.

Two thousand years later, the nature of repentance hasn’t changed at all, but I wonder whether we’ve spent so much time in the temple and in the corridors of worldly power that we’ve forgotten what it sounds like or where we must go in order to hear it. These days, words like “repentance” and “sin” have become associated with religious leaders and institutions that make us want to run in the opposite direction. But repentance isn’t bad news. It’s how we leave those institutions behind and make space in our hearts to receive God’s salvation. 

Any call to repentance that effectively strengthens an institution’s grip on power is not of God. Anyone who uses shame, fear, or guilt to promote morality or religious behavior is not of God. Those are the very people and institutions whose existence have made it harder for us to know the saving power of God’s love. John calls us to leave them behind and go out beyond their reach in order to receive a fresh start. 

The story of John’s birth, the forerunner of the messiah, begins with a priest in the temple being silenced by an angel of the Lord. That irony is not lost on me. This might be the spot where your participation in the story of salvation begins, but St. Paul’s cannot be the place where it finds its fulfillment. That’s because we are not saved by any preacher or by any church but only by the grace of God. 

Hear again and respond anew to God’s call to repentance—a call that we might hear in the temple but one that always draws us out into wilderness, beyond the reach of those institutions that seek to domesticate the Almighty One. That’s where the power of God runs wild and free, remaking the world in God’s image, one repentant sinner at a time.