Thomas Was a Good Man: The Top 5 Reasons to Believe

a sermon on John 20.19-31
by David C. Mauldin


Flannery O’Connor was a good Southern writer. I particularly like her story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” It is a tragic tale of a family on vacation that meets up with a desperate escaped convict. The central figure in the story is the grandmother of the family. She is a chatty old lady who knows how things ought to be. When the criminal, who is known as The Misfit, is about to harm her family, she tries to talk him out of it. “I know you’re a good man,” she says. Later she tells him to pray, “Jesus will help you.” Their conversation turns theological.

“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead.” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if he didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can.”

By this point in the story, it is obvious The Misfit has taken the latter route. He attributes his lack of faith to the fact that he didn’t witness the Resurrection, so he cannot be sure.

“I wished I had of been there,” he said, hitting the ground with his fist. “It ain’t right I wasn’t there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady,” he said in a high voice, “if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn’t be like I am now.”

Does this character make a good point? Is it unfair that we do not have the overwhelming evidence available to the apostles? Or is that just an excuse for people who do not want to believe? The Misfit blames God, who could have made life different for him with just one unmistakable sign. When I read today’s scripture, I always think of this story.

Both stories raise the question of belief and the grounds for believing. The message I hope to convey with this sermon is that knowledge of Jesus and relationship with him are not limited to his first followers. Two ideas give shape to the sermon. One: belief is important. Two: belief is not automatic.

Consider the first, belief is important. That is certainly the position of our church. Constitutionally, the only reason to grant or deny people membership in our church is their profession of faith. Do they believe in Jesus Christ and the promises of scripture? Do they trust God and want to live like it? Nothing else matters when it comes to being part of the church. The insight that belief is important is also the position of the Gospel of John. In fact it is one of the most important contributions of that Gospel to the whole witness of scripture. In this book, more than in any other perhaps, the importance of belief is highlighted. John 1.12 says, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” You know John 3.16, “…everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The end of today’s reading is another example. Our relationship with God depends on Jesus and what he has done for us, but an important element is our belief and trust.

I would add that belief is important because what we believe shapes who we are and what we do. People’s actions nearly always make sense given the logic of their particular worldviews. We cannot live as if Jesus rose from the dead if we do not believe it. Conversely, if we really believe and trust God, the world begins to look different to us.

So belief is important, but it is not automatic. Many struggle and wrestle with what they can believe. And what we believe gets refined in the crucible of our experiences. We hammer out our faith over the course of our lives. Many of you know that better than I.

In John’s Gospel, Thomas is an occasion to talk about belief. We are expected to believe on the basis of … what? Well, not a personal visit from Jesus. Thomas takes a lot of heat for his lack of faith. History remembers him as doubting Thomas. But really he is no worse than the other apostles. Mary Magdalene saw Jesus and told the others that he is alive. No one seems to have believed her until Jesus showed up. Thomas gets singled out because by accident he was not present. Let your imagination play with this passage. Imagine Mary Magdalene during that week between Easter and the Sunday following when Jesus appeared to Thomas. I imagine the disciples trying to convince Thomas, using the same arguments Mary had tried on them. They are genuinely surprised and indignant at Thomas’s stubborn attitude, and Mary rolls her eyes.

When Thomas’s big moment comes, he does not need much convincing. Jesus appears just as he did the week before, but this time he addresses Thomas specifically. Thomas’s response is one of the most profound expressions of faith in scripture, “My Lord and my God!” Instantly he believes and understands. Jesus’ reply is a blessing on all those who believe without the benefit of Thomas’s firsthand experience—that is, a blessing on those who read the Gospel and believe.

Immediately after Jesus blesses later generations of believers, the Gospel turns the tables on the reader. We go from interrogating the witness to answering tough questions ourselves. “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.” Whoever wrote this Gospel was motivated by a desire to inspire faith. The writer also presents us with a present Christ. Jesus is not far away somewhere, but rather very close to the reader who believes. There is a sense of immediacy throughout this Gospel. At times we are almost there. Whatever Jesus does for or promises the people in the story, he also does for and promises the reader. This is an aggressive piece of writing. It forces the reader toward a decision, so if the options seem tough—belief that Jesus is the Son of God—and the promises almost unbelievable—life in his name—that is part of the strategy. With today’s reading, the Gospel is almost over; in fact, some scholars think this was the original ending. It is time to weight the matter carefully and decide because this Gospel forces us to chose a side and stick to it.

But we know faith is not that easy. It wasn’t for me. I went through a period in my life when my own beliefs were put to the test. I grew up in church, and for the longest time it never occurred to me to question what I had been taught. When I did, things started to come unraveled. I discovered new ways to understand the world that made a lot of sense. One by one the things I had been taught began to drop away. I was on the verge of abandoning my faith, but one thing stood in the way, the Resurrection. Anyone will agree that if Jesus rose from the dead, then there is something to Christianity, no matter how you sort out everything else. The question is, did it happen? Do you believe? Can you believe? I spent some anguished days and nights in study, and the matter came down to my belief in God. I could do away with the Resurrection easily enough if I could say with confidence that there is no God. But if I were willing to admit the possibility of God, then Resurrection was possible too. Without compelling evidence, I could not conclude there is no God. After all, who was I to decide such a thing—that there is or is not a God? I had to allow for the possibility, and once that door was open, the Resurrection brought me to a deeper, stronger faith.

I would be interested to hear your faith stories too. Believing is important, but it is not necessarily easy. We need faith that is credible. We cannot suspend disbelief when we enter the church the way we can when we watch a play. And although doubt is a part of faith, we must be convinced in our own minds if we are going to, in the words of The Misfit “throw away everything and follow [Jesus].” Therefore, in the spirit of the fourth Gospel, and by way of strengthening and inspiring faith, I want to share with you the top five reasons for believing Jesus rose from the dead. They are in no particular order.

1. The witness of those who encountered Jesus after his crucifixion. One might question whether they were right, but one cannot doubt that they were sincere. These people suffered persecution and sometimes death for their belief. If they knew they were making it up, would they have taken such risks? What did they stand to gain? In
1 Corinthians, Paul lists a number of witnesses, including himself at the end. He says many of them are still alive, so if the Corinthians were so inclined they might question them. That option is of course not open to us. Nevertheless, we have their witness recorded in the scriptures.

Sometimes they say more than they mean to. In all the Gospels—Mark’s simple outline being of the greatest historical value—women are the first to find the tomb or encounter Jesus. The Gospels, especially John, are quick to rush men on to the scene. Women were not taken seriously as witnesses in the first century. Paul does not mention them at all. Yet they remain in the Gospels as the first eyewitnesses. Would such stories have been invented? Would they have been preserved without some historical basis?

Whether male or female, the first believers were sincere and paid a high price for their commitment to Jesus. Their testimony should be taken seriously.

2. The empty tomb. The fascinating point here is that everyone agreed the tomb was empty. Enemies of the faith sought alternative explanations for why it was empty; they did not contend Jesus remained buried or that he was never buried at all. Those suggestions originated in the 20th century, a long time after the events in question.

Again, the Gospels give us indirect clues. The story about the guard at the tomb, which appears in only Matthew’s gospel, is intended to refute the main alternative theory about the Resurrection—namely that the disciples stole the body. This is what Matthew wants to disprove because it is the case his opponents are trying to make. Those who wanted to stop the Christian faith had to contend with an empty tomb.

When we contend with it, we must ask ourselves, how might it have become empty? We must allow the possibility that someone moved the body. But who? And why? The Romans had opportunity, but what motive? For a long time they couldn’t tell Jews and Christians apart, and they had no dog in that fight. The Jewish leaders probably also had opportunity, but what motive? If they could have produced Jesus’ body when the apostles started preaching, they would have. Christianity would be over before it started if anyone could have located the body. Those who wanted to stop it could not. Finally, the followers of Jesus may have had opportunity, but again what motive? Being first century Jews, they probably expected God to raise the dead at the end of time, but no one expected an individual to be raised alone, ahead of time. As I will explain a moment, they had other ways to remember Jesus and other ways to carry on his tradition if they were not ready to give up completely. I expect most would be ready to give up. Jesus’ mission had ended in complete disaster. Faced with the failure of the cross, why would they steal the body and proclaim him as alive? No scenario for a stolen body makes sense, yet the tomb was empty. That certainly raises interesting possibilities.

3. Jesus’ friends had other ways to remember him. Those who were unwilling to write him off completely did not have to resort to passing him off as the risen Lord of all creation. He might have been remembered as a prophet. Prophets were often persecuted and sometimes killed. He may have become a figure in the tradition of Jeremiah. One who speaks for God, calls for reform, and engenders hostility from the establishment. Many thought of Jesus in just that way during his ministry. This scenario seems more probable than followers inventing the Jesus we meet in the Gospels. The early Christians made incredible claims about Jesus. He is Lord of all, judge of the living and the dead, the Son of God, the Messiah—they even had to redefine that word in light of what Jesus did. The Messiah was supposed to be a military deliverer. Jesus reinvented that job. Would such things have occurred to his disappointed and disillusioned friends? If they knew he was dead, what would be more natural, to worship him as the Lord of life or to venerate him as a fallen prophet? Assuming a handful remained loyal even after the crucifixion, how can we account for, not only the strength of their faith, but the form it took. Their beliefs about Jesus are among those things in history that cannot be foreseen until they happen. Something remarkable must have occurred to move them from the theology of first century Judaism to the theology we find in the New Testament.

4. The fourth reason is related to the third. Their faith in Jesus as Messiah is almost imaginable, but their faith in Jesus as divine is practically beyond belief. Judaism was, and remains, ferociously committed to monotheism. There is One God. They were forbidden to make an image of God in any form. God’s holiness and majesty were unassailable. Particularly because they lived in a world in which many gods were worshipped, Jews were die-hard monotheists. For such people to worship a human being as divine was the worst sort of horror and blasphemy. In fact, Judaism is the last religion in the ancient world that we would expect to give birth to Christianity, with its insistence that Jesus is God. And yet it happened.

It seems that very early, from the very beginning, in fact, Jesus was recognized and worshipped as divine. This was not something Greek culture added to the Christian faith. Rather, it was there from the start. In the ministry of Jesus, particularly his forgiving sins and his stance on the Temple, he assumed for himself prerogatives belonging exclusively to God. The claim that he made, explicitly and implicitly, was that God was acting decisively through him to bring about God’s kingdom. This claim could be tested, and seemed to be proved false, by his inglorious death on a Roman cross. What could make dyed-in-the-wool Jews worship a crucified failure as the Son of God? If Jesus rose from the dead, such a thing is possible. Apart from the Resurrection, how can we account for it?

5. Finally, I offer a reason that is not historical but religious. A famous hymn ends its chorus, “You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart.” If the Resurrection happened, then Jesus is alive and well today. If the Gospel of John is right, knowledge of Jesus and relationship with him are not limited to his first followers. We might know him today, in a manner of speaking, through the Holy Spirit.

This reason is an argument from religious experience. For the person who has the experience, nothing carries more weight. For the outsider, few things are less convincing. But we should not discount it. After all, the Christian faith is not a historical argument; it is faith that Jesus loves you. Christian faith is a kinship to Jesus and to the community of people who bear his name and follow his teachings. We need the scriptures to understand our experiences of Jesus, and by themselves our experiences may not be wholly convincing. But they are necessary, and they serve to confirm our suspicions that Jesus rose from the dead. This simple belief was the foundation for the hope and message of the first Christians, and it remains the foundation for us today.

Some of you came to terms with what you believe a long time ago. Others will settle that matter in the future. All of us need a faith that is credible and strong. I believe that when we are humble and use sound judgment, our grounds for believing are convincing if not compelling.

I close with words of wisdom from O’Connor’s character The Misfit: “If [Jesus] did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if he didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can.” What you believe makes all the difference in who you are. Amen.