"Believing Thomas" - Pastor Mary Hulst

What happens when faith and doubt walk side by side?

In this message from John 20, Pastor Mary Hulst explores the story often known as “Doubting Thomas,” inviting us to see him instead as Believing Thomas—and even Brave Thomas. We were reminded that questions are not signs of weak faith, but often part of a sincere and attentive journey with Jesus.

In a world marked by uncertainty, grief, and unanswered questions, Jesus meets us with patience and grace. He makes room for our doubts, our wonderings, and our longing to believe.

This sermon is a powerful encouragement for anyone who has ever asked, “God, what are You doing?” and a reminder that even in the midst of our questions, Jesus continues to call us forward in faith.

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

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My name is Mary Holst. I serve as the University Pastor at Calvin University here in Grand Rapids. Yes. Woo! Woo indeed. We have uh graduation coming up on Saturday, so we're about to the end of our uh academic year. So if there are students who are normally here or aren't here, it's because they're studying. And if they're here, bonus points. So well done, you. Um, friends, we're looking at a story. We're in the season of Easter Tide. So Easter happened between Easter and Ascension Day. This season is called Easter Tide, and we look at the stories often that happened in that in-between space. And then after ascension comes Pentecost, and onward we go. And so today we're looking at a story that I'm sure many of you, if you've grown up in church, you've heard it before. It's from John chapter 20. From John 20, we're going to be reading verses 19 through 31. So if you have a Bible, John 20, or a Bible app, verses 19 through 31. And this is happening on Easter Day. All right, so this is what the gospel writer tells us. On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together with the doors 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. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again, Jesus said, Peace be with you, as the Father has sent me, I am sending you. And with that he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they're forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they're not forgiven. Now, Thomas, also known as Didymus, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, put my hand into his side, I will not believe. A week later, his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand, put it in my side, stop doubting and believe. Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God. Then Jesus told him, Because you've seen me, you've believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. This is the word of the Lord. One of the gifts I have in my work at Calvin University is that I have conversations about faith with all kinds of people. We have students from all over the world who come to Calvin. They come from all kinds of different Christian backgrounds. We have staff and faculty from all over the world. And I don't think it will surprise you that a lot of those conversations have to do with faith and doubt. Sometimes it's because a student is encountering biblical study from an academic perspective for the first time. And they're reading scripture differently, and they're coming and saying, why do we believe these things about the Bible? Why do we believe that it's true? Are certain passages more true than other passages? How do we think about this? Or maybe they're in a theology class and they're thinking about God for the first time, and they're thinking, how can God be full of justice and full of mercy? How does that work? How is Jesus fully human and fully divine? What exactly does that mean? So sometimes they're intellectual questions. And sometimes they're heart questions. Maybe I have a staff member who's going through a divorce and comes and finds me and says, I don't, I don't know what God is doing here. I'm doubting his love for me. Or maybe we'll have a student who loses a parent and says, I don't know how I can love a God who would let this happen in my life. There are head questions, there are heart questions, and then there are just life questions, right? If you live in this world as a follower of Jesus Christ, when you look around you and you say, God, I don't know what you're doing over here. Why is there still war? Why can't we stop this? We started it, think we could stop it. Why, Lord, what are you up to here? And we we see images. And did you know that Iran is one of the fastest growing Christian countries in the world? 20% growth year over year in the number of Christians in that country. Lord, what are you doing? What are you doing? I tell my students that if you don't have questions and you don't have doubts, it's because you're probably not paying close enough attention. Because if you live as a follower of Jesus Christ in a world that is sad and broken, you are going to encounter times when your belief, what you want to believe, doesn't measure up with your experience, with what you're thinking, with what other people are doing. And you have this conflict between faith and doubt. Which is why it's such a gift to have this story in Scripture. This story of our dear Thomas, Thomas, who has gotten a bad rap for 2,000 years. Because what's the nickname we've given him? Doubting Thomas. He does one thing where he's like, I'm not so sure. And 2,000 years later, we're like, doubting Thomas. This poor guy. Because if you look at the whole of the Gospel of John, you see that there's a lot more to Thomas than this particular incident. When Jesus says, I'm gonna go to Bethany, a place that's crawling with people who are opposed to Jesus, opposed to his ministry, who want him dead. Thomas is the one who says, Let us go with him that we may die with him. When Jesus is teaching at the Last Supper and He says, You know the way to the place that I'm going, Thomas says, Um, we we don't know where you're going. So how can we know the way? Right? It makes sense. It makes perfect sense. And here in this story that we just read, everybody else is huddled together in the room for fear of the Jews. The doors are locked, John tells us. They are hunkered down. You know where Thomas is? Out. We don't know if he's getting groceries for everybody, we don't know if he's checking in on somebody's aging parents, we don't know if he's gathering intel, but everybody else is locked in and afraid, and Thomas is out. And so when Thomas, brave, bold, Thomas comes back into his little community of believers, and they say to him, We have seen the Lord. He was right here, he spoke to us. It was amazing. We saw his hands at his side, and he said these things that we're still talking about. We don't quite get it, but it was amazing he was here. You can picture Thomas in that moment, like putting the groceries on the counter, looking at his dear friends who haven't slept in three days. They got the big bags under their eyes, and he loves them, and he's looking at them, and he's like, okay, all right, you know, whatever you saw, this ghost or apparition or whatever it is, it's great. That's so great for you. Um but unless I see the marks in his hands, put my finger inside, I'm not, I'm not gonna believe. Now, what Thomas is asking here makes perfect sense. Makes total sense. It makes even more sense when you understand that in the first century, your scars were a form of identification. In a culture where people had really similar names, Mary and the other Mary, and Mary the mother of John, and Mary the mother of Jesus, when people had really similar names like that, you were known as, oh, that's Mary, who has the burn on her hand from that time she grabbed something out of the fire. You were known as, oh, that's the Daniel who has a scar over his eye where his brother hit him with a rock when they were kids. In court, you could use your scars as a method to validate who you were. And so what Thomas is asking for here in John 20 is a legitimate form of ID. He's like, until I see his ID, I'm not gonna know that it's him. Now, this makes even more sense when you understand that Thomas was a twin. The name Didymus, Thomas means twin. So Thomas had spent his entire life telling people, oh no, no, I'm Thomas. My brother is Timothy. No, I'm Tom. Rabbis calling him by the wrong name, uncles and aunts getting him mixed up. His whole life he's had to say, No, I'm Thomas. His whole life he understands you can see somebody and think, oh my goodness, I think that's, and it's not. Thomas understands this deep in his bones. He knows his friends are tired, he knows what they've all been through, and he's like, okay, everybody take a beat. Because I know what it's like to be mistaken for somebody else. Now, what's interesting is what happens next. The Christian community makes space for Thomas. They don't say to Thomas, Well, if you don't believe us, you can't hang out with us anymore. And he doesn't say to them, I think you're all a little crazy. I'm checking out. What we see is they're all together a week later, which means for a week they have been eating together and praying together and talking together. That means those who were there when Jesus showed up and Thomas who wasn't, they have been together. They have made space for the one who had trouble believing. That's what the Christian community still gets to do. Because the truth of the matter is we are all gonna have seasons in our life when we don't quite believe. I say I say to my students, I think most Christians believe about 80% of the things about 80% of the time. I've been preaching through the Apostles' Creed this semester, and we we believe some crazy things. Can we just say that? Right? Born of the Virgin Mary. Okay, ascended into heaven. All right. I mean, we believe that a man was died, dead, buried, descended to hell, and then rose again. And we kind of base everything on that. That's crazy. True, but crazy. And so if you're living life and you're going through things, there are going to be times when some of that just smacks you in the face. There are going to be questions you can't answer, and walls you can't scale, and grief that threatens to snap you into. And you're gonna say, God, I don't understand. Today is Melanie Bielan's birthday. That was a loss we all experienced almost a year ago. And it made us say, Lord, what are you doing? Laura Whaley's dear sister Susan works with me. We have walked through that journey together. And we've asked, Lord, really? Laura? Like, Lord, if you needed a list of some people you could take, we can we got thoughts. We have thoughts. Laura Whaley, not on the list. And so we have times just living life and trying to honor a God who is worthy and loving and beautiful and just and true, and we look at our lives and we look at the world and we just think, I don't quite get it all. And so the gift we get to give to each other is to say, that's okay. And I know sometimes we may be tempted to hide that, and we think, well, I can't tell anybody that because I lead worship. I can't tell anybody that because I'm an elder or a deacon. I can't tell anybody that because I'm a parent. I'm trying to rear these kids to love Jesus, and I've got so many questions, and we try to hide it, and that doesn't help. One of the beautiful things about being in a faith community is that you get to have people who help you. Sometimes at Calvin, I'll run into a student who grew up in a Christian community where doubt was considered a sin. And then they come into Calvin where we're like, hey, that's a good question. Let's talk about that. There are 2,000 years in which Christians have been talking about that question. Let's look at that. Let's study that together. That's the space we get to make for each other. That's the space that the disciples made for Thomas. But of course, it's not just the response of the disciples that shapes how we interact with people who doubt. It's the response of Jesus. Jesus shows up again a week later. He greets everybody. Hey, hey, y'all, and then zooms right in on Thomas. He goes right to Thomas and he says, Go ahead. Go ahead, touch, go ahead, look. Jesus shows up and he goes to Thomas to say, I'm not afraid of your questions. I'm not concerned about your doubts. I'm not rejecting you because of them. I want you to have them and I want you to search and I want you to look and I want you to touch. Jesus doesn't think if Thomas gets too close, he's going to see something he shouldn't. He doesn't think if Thomas gets too close and he touches, it's going to crack his faith. He thinks, I want you to get this. He says to him, Stop doubting and believe. And he doesn't say this because Jesus is like, I really need you on my team here, Thomas, although he does. He doesn't say this because he's feeling a little insecure. Jesus knows who he is. Jesus says to Thomas, stop doubting and believe because he wants Thomas to get it. He wants Thomas to understand the power of resurrection. He wants Thomas to know that death does not win. He wants Thomas to know that there's more to this life than this life. He wants Thomas to understand the good news of the gospel includes life after death. Jesus comes to Thomas and says, Thomas, I want you to believe. And Thomas says, My Lord and my God. The first person in the Gospel of John to call Jesus God. And church tradition tells us that Thomas was so inspired by everything that he had experienced with Jesus that he became a missionary to India. To India. Brave Thomas, bold Thomas, believing Thomas. All the way to India. More than the other three Gospels combined. John talks about it over and over and over again about belief. And this person believed and they had belief. And then here at the end of this section we read today, he says this. There are lots of things I could have written down. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that you may have life in his name. Because John knows how hard it is to believe. John wrote his whole gospel because he thought this is going to be really hard. There are a lot of things in here people are not going to understand. And let me tell you, I am going to write it down. Like, look, this is why I wrote this. I wrote this so that you can believe. Because I know how hard it is to believe. And at the end of the story that John wrote here in chapter 20, Jesus says to Thomas, you believe because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe. And this may sound like Jesus is being a little snarky. Like, oh, you believe because you've seen me? You know, there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna believe and they're never gonna see me, Tom. So that's like a C. But think about the times when Jesus says, Blessed are those. Blessed are those. We have a whole list of them in Matthew 5. We call them the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are you when people persecute you and revile you and utter all kinds of false things against you on my recount. Rejoice and be glad. Whenever Jesus blesses someone, he's blessing them because they struggle and still stay the course. Blessed are you who have not seen and yet come to believe. Jesus knows it's hard to believe. So he says, Blessed are you who struggle and still come to believe. Blessed are you, Madison Church, for walking the streets and praying for people, even though you have no idea if it's making a difference. Does it make a difference? Sometimes. Sometimes it's just hot and sweaty. Blessed are you, elders at Madison, for meeting together and staying up late and praying with each other, even though you're not quite sure if you're doing a good job or how this is all gonna work. Blessed are you. Blessed are you, mom, who keeps reading that same Bible story over and over and over again because your kid loves it, or you keep playing that same worship song over and over and over again because your child loves it, because you are shaping your child into someone who has deep roots of belief that will help them during the seasons of doubt. Jesus comes to us today and he says, I am not afraid of your questions, I am not scared of your doubt. I understand how hard this all is, and let me say to you, blessed, blessed, blessed are you. Blessed are you, Madison Square Church. For you have not seen, and yet you have come to believe. Thanks be to God. Amen.