Thomas Sermon #3: Believing Thomas

Read the TEXT, and the previous posts.

So V26 – One week after Easter Sunday– hence we read it this morning (At Church April 15). They are all together with Thomas this time. Jesus appears and says: "Shalom Aleichem" (A point made previously). Then he turns to the First item of business:

Thomas.

Says Jesus, V27:

Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.

We don’t know if Thomas took up Jesus request. Did he reach out to put his hand into the bloody wound (as depicted above in Caravaggio's Doubting Thomas')? I suspect not. Half his dare has been answered (he’s seen the 'marks'), and that is enough.

And then you get this Climatic moment in John:

Spontaneously, outrageously, shockingly, appropriately, insightfully Thomas blurts out the truth, v28:

He answered: 'My Lord and my God'.

So personal: My Lord and My God. So Messianic: My Lord. And so Trinitarian: My God – this person standing here is God himself. God enfleshed.

If Thomas was wrong, Jesus would have corrected him as others do in the Bible . But no. V29:

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.'

We tend to think of Thomas as blessed for getting his request. I kind of wish that I was blessed the same way. But Jesus says that the one even more blessed is the one who doesn’t have this royal treatment. They simply come to believe without this proof.

Now Thomas is an understandable cynic. I’d be just like him if I were there. But Jesus has given him a way out of cynicism.

More comin'...