"Thomas, Authenticity & Facing Doubt "
John 20:19-31
April 11, 2010

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.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and
his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again,
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this,
he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins
of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But
Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus
came. 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.”

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.” 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.” Thomas answered him, “My
Lord and my God!” 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.” Now Jesus did
many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 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.

I was recently sent a short article about the growing shortage of ministers in the
pipeline, especially the number of ministers under thirty-five, which has dropped
dramatically since the 1970’s.  I remember hearing those rumbling in the late eighties,
so it’s no real surprise to me, and when I was seminary in the mid-nineties, we had a
large group of second or even third career people where then seeking to serve the
church, and yet we also had a lot of young people who were actually planning not to
serve in a parish setting—for these young women and men, seminary was a place to
explore what they believed about God, and not necessarily a place to be trained to
become ministers.   One of the interesting things is that a lot of these folks who decided
against going into pastoral ministry were often people of deep personal faith, faith they
lived out in their lives and their justice commitments.  And yet, they didn’t want to
become part of the institution of the church, they didn’t want to do what I do, which is to
pastor people, and become part of the institutional church.  A lot of my generation
distrusts institutions, especially religious institutions, though this growing mistrust has
been going on for quite awhile, probably since the mid-sixties.  We know statistically
that liberal churches, conservative churches, and everyone in-between, are having
trouble keeping and attracting young people to church, and even when they do
eventually come back, these young people often don’t have the same level of
emotional and spiritual and even financial commitment to a congregation that earlier
generations had.  Why is this the case?  Why do our young people, people my age, so
mistrust the church, so doubt the need for a place like this place, a place and people to
go on a journey of faith with?

Well, there a lot of reasons, and there a lot of reasons why young people, people
under 40, are not flocking to serve the church, but I wanted to name a couple of things,
a couple of things that have lead to a culture of doubt about religious institutions, about
whether places like this church are really needed in order to have a fulfilling spiritual
life, and a deep connection to God.  Obviously, right now, the most pressing reasons is
found in the current news, something that remind us why the people in general, but
young people in particular, are skeptical about organized religion is the way that
institution seem to care more about the institution than they do the people they
supposedly are spiritually caring for.  You only have to look at the recent headlines in
the news about the pedophilia scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church again to
see why people have such deep cynicism about religious institutions.  Some of the
language that has been used by the people on top, the bishops, the Pope, reflects a
belief that what really matters is protecting the institution from scandal, or from large
financial payouts, or whatever.  I mean, if you receive complaints about priests
molesting children, and you do nothing about it, aside from moving them around from
one parish to another, or make these priests take a two month “healing” program, and
then send these psychologically sick people back into another parish, you really are
just protecting the institution, protecting your fellow insiders, not taking seriously the
harm that has been done to the children, young men and women whose lives are
scarred by this breach of trust.  And the very fact that you didn’t report it to the police
certainly implies that you think you and your fellow priests are above the law—it’s not
just a sin, but it’s a crime as well.  

Now, please don’t think I am just beating up on the Catholic Church about this issue.  
We in the United Church of Christ had our own issues around this issue, and predatory
ministers, some with children, but mostly having to do with male ministers preying on
especially vulnerable women, in the early eighties, during which we had to confront our
own demons with our willingness to sweeping things under the rug.  People see that
kind of behavior, whether in the Catholic Church or in the United Church of Christ, or
any other 100’s of denominations out there, and they are cynical, perhaps rightly so,
because it often seems as if institutions, even small institutions, only care about
perpetuating themselves, rather than sharing the good news of God’s love, or helping
the poor, or whatever.  They doubt whether or not anything good can come out of
places like this, or any organized religion, for that matter, and so they stay home, and
they do their spiritually informally, usually without intentionality, though often with great
passion and an open heart.  And the worst heartbreak is seeing those who have been
sexually or emotionally abused by members of the church and the clergy, and witness
their anger, rage, and bitterness at the priesthood, the clergy, the institution, a people
and place they had been told to trust, people and places that were found to be
unworthy of that trust.    

We wonder why it’s so hard to get people to come to church, and it really goes back to
a deep doubt about whether places like this are even relevant anymore.  Of course, I
think they are, which is why I am here, and which is why I am part of an imperfect
institution that so many people my age have given up on, understandably so.  But I
want to go to our text today, so that we can maybe can get some hint about how to
respond to the deep doubt that not only plagues our young people, but a lot of people,
doubt about whether or not organized religion is worth the time, or simply a waste of
time.   In today’s text, you have this moment when Thomas is expressing his own doubts
about the resurrection of Jesus, expressing his doubts about the validity of the other
disciple’s experience of this risen Christ.  Thomas had been out of the room when
Jesus appeared to the other disciples, when Jesus had greeted them, and gave them a
blessing of peace, and breathe on them—in some profound way, this is the Gospel of
John’s version of Pentecost, a moment when they were given Holy Spirit, God within
them.  
























But Thomas, Thomas isn’t buying what the other disciples are selling—he wants proof,
folks, he wants to see and touch his risen Lord, and the eyewitness of others, well, that
is not enough for him.  Frankly, I don’t blame him—I mean, if someone had come to me,
and said what his friends were saying about someone they had just seen murdered, I
too would have a hard time believing my most trusted friends—frankly, I would wonder if
they were smoking something or taking something!  And so Jesus gives Thomas the
very same experience that he gave the other disciples, the ones that were the first time
he appeared, and so he shows up, he appears to Thomas, and he invites Thomas to
do the unthinkable, in many ways, which is to put his finger into his side and into his
hand, his nail pierced hand.  The picture on your bulletin today, the painting by one of
my favorite artists, Caravaggio, of this famous event, really captures, in all the
fleshiness that Caravaggio is known for—you see Thomas inserting his finger literally
into Jesus’ side, his finger inside the skin of Jesus, with two other disciples watching
spellbound as this incredible thing, this proof that Jesus was indeed in front of them.  It’
s an incredible scene, a profoundly human moment, something, again, Caravaggio
does so well in his art.  

And that human moment, the moment we are witnesses to in this Scripture, with
Thomas fiddling inside the very wounds of Christ, I think that is one of the clues on how
to reach my generation, and the generation behind me.  People of my age and
younger, we crave, we want authenticity, we want people to tell us the truth, to have
people be real with us, and with each other.  The advent of reality shows, as off putting,
and contrived as they can be, they are perfect lens with which to see young people—
they want the really real, they want to see with the eyes within the eyes, the ears within
my ears to be awakened, as ee cummings said in that poem that began our service
today.  Really, we all kind of want that deep down as well, all of us do, to quite playing
the games and “get real” with each other.  I think the way to address doubt about our
institutions, about organized religion, is to show our wounds to the world, to put our
fingers into those wounds, in order to show their realness, to maybe aggravate them a
bit, so that the body can get on with the work of healing itself.  Instead of pretending
that the church is perfect, or organized religion never gets disorganized, and never get
destructive to spirit, soul and body, I think we need to name the truth of it, which is that
this place, like the place next door, and every other place where people get together
and worship God together, we need to admit that we are as wounded as the Christ was
on that day, the day after his resurrection, the day after he was given new life.  

But that’s not the way institutions work, usually.  That’s not what the Catholic Church is
doing right now, or has done recently, and it’s not always been my experience in the
churches I’ve served.  Most places and people aren’t willing to show us their wounds,
the mistakes they’ve made, but if they did, if they trusted us enough, what a difference
it might make!  I once served as an associate pastor in a congregation where hiding
things, covering up things, being ruthless in the defense of the church, were seen as
reasonable in order to protect the institution, to protect the leader of the institution.  It
was wrong, and yet, when you are within the institution, you think it makes total sense, it
seem reasonable to you, UNTIL the collateral damage keeps showing up, in the lives of
the disappointed people, until you look into your own soul and you see how you’ve
betrayed yourself, your congregation, your God.  

But authenticity, being real, is one of the only things that can meet real doubt in this
world, the real cynicism that pervades young and even old alike, about organized
religion.  I was once a member of a Presbyterian Church in college, and the minister at
that church, one that was mostly connected to my college, and served the university
community, for the most part, my minister cussed like a sailor—he truly had the most
filthy mouth I had ever heard.  No, not in the pulpit, but once he was out of it, wow!  And
I think the reason he had the mouth of a sailor was because he knew that college kids,
young people, wanted realness, wanted authenticity, wanted to see your wounds,
maybe mess around in them a bit, fingers and all, just to check to see if you were for
real. I was reminded of my former Presbyterian pastor the other day when I was leaving
a phone message for Maurice, and I finished the message, but couldn’t get my phone
to stop doing some crazy stuff, and I just exploded in a rage, because this cell phone
has been giving me so much trouble lately, and I cussed up a storm at it, while not
making sure that the recorded message to Maurice hadn’t been shut off.  Maurice, did
you get that message? It wasn’t directed at you, I promise.  

I don’t tell you that story because I want to be necessarily viewed as authentic, but I do
want to point out that my immediate fear was that I had been found as a secret cusser,
a closeted foul mouth spewer, especially when I get frustrated.  And what would you
think about that, this congregation, if they thought their minister, could have the mouth
of sailor, at least at certain moments?  But you see, that is what drives people away
from the faith, from our Christian faith, because it seems like ministers and other
Christians in our churches are playing games, putting up a fake fronts, and actually not
being real about things, big things and little things, things that matter and things that
don’t really matter, not in the great scheme of things.  We think that in order to attract
people to our churches, we need to be perfect—the Catholic Church thinks that in
order to keep its people, it can’t tell the truth about the horrible, horrible mistakes it
made, mistakes that seemed to have even been made by the guy at the top.  And yet,
people know that other people, and even well-meaning institutions make mistakes, but
we don’t trust each other with our wounds—the cover up, the vacillation, the fakery, the
inauthenticity, is often worse than the crime, the shadow, we think we are hiding from
the rest of the world.   

I just want to point out something, something we sometimes miss in stories like the one
before us today, the post-resurrection stories.  I want to point out that when Jesus rises
from the dead, when he is resurrected, he doesn’t come back to the disciples with the
perfect body, a body without wounds, without imperfections, and the very way he shows
Thomas, and the other disciples that it is him, that it really is him, and not a ghost, and
not someone else, is by showing them his wounds, the scars.  They knew it was Jesus
by his imperfection, they knew that this was the real Jesus before them because of the
flaws in his flesh, the cut on his side, the piercings in his hands.  If he had come to them
in perfect condition, they would have never recognized him, and they would have
known that this was not the real Jesus, that this was not the authentic Jesus.  Jesus
meets the doubts of the disciples by showing them his real self, his wounded self, that
days earlier had been tortured on a cross.  There is a lesson to be learned here,
friends, about who God wants us to be with each other, and how to respond to the
cynicism, the real, authentic cynicism, that is out there about the church, about
organized religion—but it’s going to be hard work, to do the work of letting down the
masks ourselves, to be able to admit our own shortcomings, the failures of this place, of
all the places where people awkwardly and imperfectly gather together to follow the
Christ who shows us his wounds, only days after his greatest moment.  Amen.