John 20:19-31: Easter – Fact of Fiction? The cure for doubt.
“The Easter story is nothing but a myth,” Tom’s high school teacher announced to his class a few days before Easter break. “Jesus not only didn’t rise from the grave,” he continued, “but there’s no God in heaven who would allow his son to be crucified in the first place.”
“Sir, I believe in God,” Tom protested. “And I believe in the resurrection.”
“Tom, you can believe what you wish to, of course,” the teacher said, “However, the real world excludes the possibility of miracles like the resurrection. The resurrection is a scientific impossibility. No one who believes in miracles can also respect science.”
Then the teacher proposed an experiment. Reaching into his refrigerator, he produced a raw egg and held it up. “I’m going to drop this egg on the floor,” he said. “Gravity will pull it toward the floor that the egg will most certainly break apart.” Looking at Tom with a challenge, he said, “Now tom, I want you to pray a prayer right now and ask your God to keep this egg from breaking when it hits the floor. If he can do that, then you’ll have proven your point, and I’ll have to admit that there is a God.”
After pondering the challenge for a moment, Tom slowly stood up to pray: “Dear Heavenly Father,” Tom prayed, “I pray that when my teacher drops the egg, it will break into a hundred pieces. And also, Lord, I pray that when the egg does break, my teacher will have a heart attack and die. Amen.”
After a unison gasp, the class sat in silent expectation. For a moment the teacher did nothing. At last he looked at Tom and then the egg. Without a word he carefully put the egg back into the refrigerator. “Class dismissed,” the teacher said, and then he sat down to clear his desk.
The teacher apparently did believe in God’s existence more than he thought. Many people, like that teacher, deny that God exists, yet run from him, question him, and attack him whenever they get the chance. That teacher wasn’t willing to bet his life that God didn’t exist.
Many people doubt the existence of God. Many people doubt the resurrection. On that first Easter, many years ago, one of the disciples refused to believe in the resurrection. He had doubts. Today we are going to take a look at that man, and see how his doubts are our doubts. We’re also going to see how Jesus healed this man of the disease of doubt, and how he heals us today.
On Easter night, the disciples were together in a house, hiding behind locked doors. A number of them had seen Jesus alive, and now they were scared. What were the Jewish leaders going to do? Would they be arrested now? Would they be accused of stealing the body? Would anyone believe them if they told people that Jesus had risen from the dead? They were hiding from the Pharisees and Sadduccees – hoping to avoid confrontation.
Suddenly, Jesus was standing in the middle of them, and said to them, “Peace be with you.” Jesus always says just the right thing at the right time, doesn’t he. He tells them that they can feel peace in their hearts. He was there, and they had nothing to worry about. He showed them his hands and side to prove to them that he wasn’t a ghost, but that he was the same Jesus they had known, the same Jesus they had seen crucified just three days earlier.
The Apostle Thomas wasn’t there. When he returned, the disciples told him that Jesus had appeared to them. But Thomas didn’t believe: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” You can’t get much more skeptical than that, can you. I will not believe, unless I see visible proof.
Why does Thomas refuse to believe? Because Thomas was a practical person, and he lived in a practical world. He was shattered on Good Friday when Jesus died. But he wasn’t about to succumb to fantasy. Dead was dead, and that was it. No one in their right minds would doubt it when the Romans said a prisoner was dead. They were experts at killing! It’s not that Thomas didn’t want to believe that Jesus was still alive. But Thomas knew how the world worked. Dead was dead, and that was it.
That’s how our world sees Jesus’ resurrection today. Nice idea, but it didn’t really happen. Many people are set on proving that the resurrection of Jesus was a spiritual resurrection. Jesus arose only in the sense that his spirit goes marching on, sort of life the way the spirit of Abraham Lincoln continues to influence America.
But William Lane Craig, perhaps the worlds’ foremost authority on the resurrection, dismisses such a theory. Dr. Craig is an English scholar with two earned doctoral degrees. Currently, he teaches at the University of Louvain near Brussels. Dr. Craig points out that it would have been a contradiction in terms for an early Jew to say that someone was raised from the dead, but his body was left in the tomb. That’s not how people talked back then. Furthermore, Dr. Craig points out that numerous disciples were executed because they would not deny the resurrection. No sane person would die for something that didn’t happen. Of all the events that took place in the first century, no historical event has better or more widespread documentation than the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And yet, we Christian today live in a sea of doubt. And when you’re swimming in doubt, it’s hard not to get wet, to have that doubt seep into your way of thinking. Have you ever doubted? Have you ever wondered about this whole business of Jesus and the cross and the resurrection? Have you ever asked yourself if your faith is really only a superstition? Have you ever wondered, “Am I a Christian only because my parents were? Often we’re afraid to face our doubts because we’re afraid of what we might find. We’re afraid of what others might think. People might find out how weak our faith really is, so we keep our doubts to ourselves. And yet, our doubts don’t go away – they’re always there, and like a cancer, our doubt slowly eats away at our faith, until we believe in Jesus less and less, and we become more and more skeptical, like Thomas, in our story for today.
What can you do to get rid of doubt? Nothing, really. There is no cure on this earth that will take away your doubts. If they find Noah’s ark up in the mountain, if they find the burial shroud of Christ, if all of your friends and family have the most amazing arguments in the world – none of those things can cure you of your doubt. Only one thing can.
That one thing happened to Thomas one week later. On the Sunday after Easter, the disciples were together, and Thomas was with them. The doors were locked again. Suddenly, Jesus was standing in the middle of them. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says again. And then he focuses on Thomas. He invites Thomas to do what he said he wanted to do – to touch the wounds he had sustained on the cross. “Stop doubting and believe,” Jesus told Thomas.
This is what cured Thomas of his doubt. Thomas responded by saying, “My Lord and my God!” Thomas had become a man of faith, a man who believed in Jesus, even though everything he knew about the world would tell him otherwise.
The only solution, the only way, that you can get rid of the doubt in your heart is to have moments with Jesus Christ, like Thomas had that Sunday after Easter. “Now wait a second,” you might say. “Jesus appeared to Thomas. How am I supposed to have a moment like that?” When does Jesus come to you, and speak to you, like he spoke to Thomas? When does Jesus chase away your doubts? When does he transform you into someone who strongly believes in him, like Thomas did after it was all over?
Today, Jesus comes to you in an invisible way, through his Word. Every time you hear the Word of God, Jesus steps into your life and says, “Peace be with you.” Every time you receive the Lord’s Supper, Jesus is right there, through his body and blood, and he chases away your doubts, and fills you with faith and hope and trust in him. Through the Word, through the Sacraments, that’s how Jesus appears to you and speaks to you, just as he spoke to Thomas.
I was reading an article from a student publication put out by the WELS, called “Lightsource.” It’s written by college students about their experiences in college. The article on the front page is entitled “Faith vs. Reason” and it’s about a student who was really wrestling with doubts about her faith in God. The classes she took had caused her to question the existence of God. She was losing her faith, swimming in a sea of doubt. Trying to rely on her reason to find proof that God exists, that Jesus rose from the dead.
But it doesn’t work that way. You don’t get rid of your doubts that way. And then, she turned to the only thing that could cure her of her doubt: “Finally, I turned to the Word of God, to find a foothold,” she said. “I needed the Holy Spirit to change me and fan into flame once more the faith in my heart.” God is who changed her, and he did that through his Word. I printed the article out and it’s on the back table – pick up a copy on your way out.
That’s how Jesus changes you today. In verse 29, Jesus says to Thomas: “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet have believed.” Jesus is talking about you. You have not seen him with your own eyes like Thomas. But you have believed. You have believed by having Jesus come to you in an invisible way, through his Word. The Apostle John tells us that Jesus did other miraculous signs that are not recorded in the Bible. “But these are written” (these stories, these accounts of Jesus and his disciples) “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Stay close to the Word of God. Take the Lord’s Supper regularly. Let Jesus speak to your heart, just as he spoke to Thomas. Let Jesus take away your doubts. Let Jesus change you into a Christian who strongly believes that Jesus is the Christ, even though you have never seen him. May God grant you the same heart he granted to Thomas, a heart that says “My Lord and my God.” Amen.
