Maybe Doubting Thomas Was The Only Reasonable One

Fr. Shannon shares a sermon exploring the story of Doubting Thomas from the Gospel of John for this episode. He delves into themes of fear, doubt, and faith, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging doubt as a natural part of faith, particularly in the face of suffering and uncertainty. May we be a little more like Thomas in the sense that it feels like he was being reasonable. And may we embrace our doubts and continue to show up for our communities, promoting peace and justice despite challenges.

 

Takeaways

• Doubt is a natural part of faith.
• Thomas’s demand for proof is reasonable.
• Historical context is crucial for understanding scripture.
• Fear can lead to isolation and doubt.
• Jesus offers peace in times of fear.
• Community support is vital during struggles.
• Faith can coexist with questions and uncertainty.
• Showing up for others is an act of faith.
• We are loved despite our doubts.
• Our actions for justice matter, even when we doubt.

 

Chapters

(03:46) Exploring Fear and Doubt  

(06:32) Historical Context of the Gospel of John  

(09:46) Thomas’s Reasonable Doubt  

(12:36) Faith Amidst Suffering and Questions  

(15:25) Benediction and Reflection on Doubt

 

Resources:

• Join our online community at  Sanctuary Collective Community 

 

If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology

 

This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

(9s):
Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello and welcome back to the Queer Theology Podcast. Today we’re gonna do something a little bit different, and I’m gonna offer a sermon based on John 20 verses 19 through 31. You’ll recognize this. This is the passage famously known as the Doubting Thomas passage, and this is a new take on it.

(50s):
So let’s start by reading John 20. It was still the first day of the week. That evening while the disciples were behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, peace be with you. After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy. Jesus said to them, again, peace be with you as the Father sent me so I am sending you. Then he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven. Thomas, the one called Didymus, one of the 12, wasn’t with the disciples. When Jesus came, the other disciples told him, we’ve seen the Lord, but he replied, unless I see the nail marks in his hands, but my finger in the wounds left by the nails and put my hand into his side.

(1m 38s):
I won’t believe after eight days, his disciples were again in the house and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus entered and stood among them. He said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here. Look at my hands. Put your hand into my side. No more disbelief. Believe Thomas responded to Jesus, my Lord and my God. Jesus replied, do you believe because you see me happier? Those who don’t see and yet believe, then Jesus did. Many other miraculous signs in his disciples presence, signs that aren’t recorded in the scroll, but these things are written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ God’s son, and that believing you will have life in his name.

(2m 23s):
I was kind of a nervous kid. Maybe it was growing up with a steady diet of people talking about the imminent return of Jesus or the threat of hell, or the ridiculousness of eighties satanic panic or growing up in a rural area where there were strange sounds at night and the darkness felt impenetrable, And I was a sensitive child attuned to the moods of everyone around me, which meant I was often afraid And I tried to overpower that fear with faith. If I could just do all of the right things, I would be okay. If I could just believe harder, believe all the right things, I’d be filled with favor. I remember distinctly hearing today’s story from the gospel of John growing up, every sermon focusing on Thomas’s doubt and saying how wrong he was.

(3m 10s):
Every sermon too, focusing on the line you believe because you have seen, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe, and the pastor would encourage us all that the writer was talking about us. We were the ones who hadn’t seen and yet believed, and so we better keep believing or else, okay. They didn’t say it quite like that, but that’s how it sounded to a nervous kid sitting in a pews. So what do we do with this story? What do we do with doubt and faith and poor old Thomas? Now, some of you might be looking around a sanctuary that you’re sitting in, which was really full on Easter and is well less full this week and patting yourself on the back because you showed up on the weeks after Easter.

(3m 55s):
You are obviously full of faith, but maybe even as you sit there in the pew or listen to this podcast, you are feeling these secret doubts nagging at you, wondering why things are so hard, wondering why you’re suffering the way you are. Wondering why it feels like there is silence from God. You look around at the world and you see the violence. You see the inequality, you see the suffering, and you wonder what good faith is and where is God in the midst of all of this struggling. But then you feel guilty for feeling those things, chastising yourself for your lack of faith, feeling like if you just believed harder or did more or prayed with more fervor, then God would show up for you.

(4m 41s):
You feel caught between your desire for faith and your very real doubt, and you worry that the Bible condemns you at every turn. So let’s look at the story from John 20. It can be easy sometimes when we know a story really well to gloss over the details. Yeah, yeah. We know this. We’ve heard this a million times before, but as we enter into a text that might be well known, let’s try to see it anew. The Easter story ends on a triumphant note. Jesus is risen, risen, hallelujah. But today’s story starts back in a place of fear. Jesus’. Friends and followers are huddled together, hiding in a locked room.

(5m 22s):
They haven’t yet received the good news of the resurrection in their minds, in their bodies and souls. They are in a place of despair and fear. Their friend, their leader has been killed and they’re afraid there. Next, it’s important for us to start there to sit with them for a moment in that place of fear. And just a note on some historical context before we go further, the gospel of John was the last of the gospels to be written about 20 to 30 years later than the other gospels. It’s drawing not only on a large body of oral history and testimony, but also on a theological base that was still evolving and changing. It was also written in a community that was separating further and further from the Jewish communities.

(6m 7s):
It had started out belonging to as these divides deepened and conflict grew, we see more and more blame cast on Jewish authorities in John whereas other earlier gospels more rightly blamed Rome. We have to center our understanding of this anti-Jewish sentiment in its context. These stories were written by folks and two folks still who still considered themselves Jewish, but who had probably been expelled from their Jewish communities. After the destruction of the temple by Rome, these Jewish people who were now devoted to Jesus were angry at what they felt was an unfair expulsion from their home communities. So they lashed out at the religious leaders. So on the one hand, this is an intercommunal argument written by a group that considered themselves still part of the Jewish faith.

(6m 53s):
On the other hand, at the time this was, this text was written, both of these communities, the Jewish communities and this new community of Jewish Jesus followers were both marginalized communities under the occupation of Rome. So we have to be really careful when we read and speak about these texts today in our context, which is very different, and where especially in the United States, the Christian Church is dominant and Jewish communities are still marginalized and oppressed. We also come to these texts with centuries of antisemitism, often done in the name of Christianity, and using these very texts as justification of that bias. The writer of the gospel of John is writing to a very specific community with very specific concerns, and sometimes those concerns get heard differently.

(7m 41s):
The further we get from their context, the further we get from their context. So we have to tread with care. So this specific community existing a generation after Jesus’ death and resurrection, trying to keep the faith as they are isolated and alienated from the communities they once called home are also afraid. They would’ve identified with those terrified disciples locked into that room wondering where it had all gone so wrong. And let’s note too that while the women were going to the garden to bear witness and to attend to Jesus’ body, these men were hiding away. The men were giving into their fear. They’re hiding away.

(8m 21s):
They’re in a locked room, and it’s in this place, in these circumstances that Jesus appears to them and his first words are peace be with you. These are people who needed to be offered peace. Jesus offers them peace and then reinstates their mission. As God has sent me, now I am sending you, he gives them the Holy Spirit by breathing on them. It’s as if he’s saying, get out of this room, get back to work. The mission isn’t over. Jesus is telling his friends that they are to carry on What he started. Started. Then we’re told that Thomas wasn’t with them when Jesus appeared, we don’t know why.

(9m 1s):
We don’t know where he was, but he comes back and the disciples tell him what he’s missed, and Thomas basically says, unless I see him for myself, I’m not going to believe I need to see that Jesus is alive. I need to see that he’s the same person by seeing the wounds in his hand and side, I need to see Thomas gets a lot of flack for this. Here we are over 2000 years later and we’re still calling the guy doubting Thomas, and it’s easy to focus on Thomas’s disbelief, his desire to see it for himself, his demand for physical proof. It’s easy too, because of how we’ve often been taught the story to blame Thomas to say he’s being unreasonable to say he should have trusted his friends in their story to say he should have trusted God.

(9m 49s):
It’s easy to blame Thomas for his doubt and say, we would’ve been different. But as I’m reading this text, again, there’s a part of me that wonders if Thomas is the only one who’s being reasonable. Thomas wasn’t willing to just believe because he’d been told to. Thomas wasn’t willing to get swept up in popular opinion. Thomas was looking around and saying, I need to actually see. I need some proof. And it makes me wonder too, where Thomas was while the others were hiding. It makes me wonder if he was out there trying to keep things going, if he was checking on other people, if he was continuing to spread the message.

(10m 31s):
It makes me wonder if while people were hiding, he was working, he was being brave. We don’t know of course, but I wonder, And I wonder if the writer of the story felt guilty and wanted to take Thomas down a notch or two, it wouldn’t be the first time. We’ve seen a dig like that in the Bible and even in the gospels as rival communities tried to tell the story that made their founders look the best. What if we consider Thomas as behaving reasonably? How does that change how we read the story? So now it’s eight days later, the disciples are again in a place with locked doors, pay attention to that Jesus has appeared to them, given them a mission, given them the Holy Spirit, and they’re still hiding.

(11m 17s):
They’re still behind locked doors, and we’re gonna say, Thomas is the one dropping the ball. Thomas is the one who’s doubting. These other guys have seen Jesus. They’ve heard him give the continued missing mission and they’re still hiding. So now Jesus enters again. He again offers peace, and he offers Thomas the proof he asked for, and here’s what I find striking Thomas said before, unless I put my finger in the wounds, I won’t believe Jesus says, here you go, touch away. And Thomas doesn’t. He simply says, my Lord and my God. Now, this too is important because calling someone Lord in the time of Rome meant something.

(12m 2s):
It was a treasonous slogan If you were calling Jesus Lord, it was because you were saying Caesar wasn’t. So, Thomas not only immediately believes, but also offers a statement of belief that is stronger than anyone else. I also find it striking that Jesus was willing to give Thomas what he needed in order to believe He didn’t tell him. He shouldn’t have asked Jesus’s statement, do you believe because you see me happier? Those who don’t see and yet believe, while some people read it as sarcastic, it could just as easily be a statement of fact or a later addition to provide comfort to a community, a generation after Jesus’s time on earth, people who definitely hadn’t seen, and yet were still believing sometimes in our rush to move past hard feelings.

(12m 49s):
We intentionally or not shame people for being reasonable. I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I look around at the world, it’s easy to feel despair. It’s easy to feel hopeless. It’s easy to feel doubt when we see wars and threats of wars, when we see children getting sick and dying, when we experience the death of people close to us, when we see attacks on the vulnerable, when we see people filled with hatred, it’s easy to look around and ask, where is God? Where is God in all of this? Where is the hope? Where is the promise? In fact, to look squarely at the pain of the world and simply shrug our shoulders is the antithesis of being reasonable.

(13m 31s):
And yet, that’s what so many want to ask us to do. Just keep going. Keep your chin up. Keep the faith. God is in control. What if the reasonable thing to do, the faithful thing to do is to ask for some proof or at the very least, to acknowledge the pain and the suffering? Thomas waited for eight more days to see Jesus eight more days without the proof. But you know what? He stayed. He didn’t leave. He didn’t run off. He didn’t abandon them. He stayed in the midst of not knowing. In the midst of waiting for proof, in the midst of the questions, in the agony, he stayed. And that to me feels like the most faithful act of all to stay when it’s hard to show up when you don’t know how it’s going to turn out to keep doing the work, even when it doesn’t seem to be making any difference, to love to do justice, to promote peace, even in the face of all that’s hard, and sometimes it’s going to seem unreasonable, and sometimes we’re going to want to ask for proof or encouragement or a sign, and that’s okay.

(14m 38s):
So no matter what you’re feeling today, no matter what doubts you carry, no matter what despair you feel, no matter what situations, feel hopeless, show up like Thomas, filled with doubt, filled with questions, and willing to be there with your community. Anyway, we are not condemned by our doubt or shamed for our questions. We are loved in the midst of them, and still we show up still. We follow in the way of justice still. We follow in the way of the justice of Jesus. Still, we are given peace and we offer that peace to others still. We believe that nothing we do for the benefit of others, no matter how hopeless or unreasonable it seems, goes unnoticed or undone, it all matters.

(15m 25s):
So let us show up in all of our messiness with all of our questions, with all of our frailty. Let us show up and do good as best we know how. Amen. I offer today as a benediction, a prayer for our wounds from the Reverend Mike abuse. Thomas gets a bad rap, holed up in that room, hiding from harm. Everyone knows you shouldn’t believe everything you hear. So why do we dismiss his doubt? Trust but verify worthwhile rumors. Don’t mind being investigated. Justifiable. Faith doesn’t mind being substantiated. Not everything deserves your, not everyone deserves your vulnerability, but you still deserve to be touched no matter the depth of your skepticism or the depth of your pain.

(16m 17s):
Don’t preach, reach out and in the story isn’t over for worse and better. Let it stretch you like the scar you are. Perhaps we don’t need a solid savior, but rather a salve that simply tells the truth about the trauma and leaves room for us to hear the healing happening in the heartbreak. Amen. May you go in the peace of God, the love of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The Queer Theology Podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for BTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters. To dive into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com.

(16m 59s):
You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. We’ll see you next week.

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