“A much-maligned man”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Sunday, April 27, 2025
John 20: 19-31 (Forward, p. 88) CEV p. 1129
Have any of you ever have to endure nicknames that weren’t exactly to your liking. Many of us have had to endure these, sometimes from family or friends, sometimes from outsiders. Some were somewhat accurate, being based on some incident in our lives or some defining characteristic, like size or hair colour, and while perhaps having some substance, were none the less a bit cruel and undesired.
Into this category I must put one of the folks central to today’s passage from John’s Gospel. It has to do with a disciple named Thomas, a man who has been given a most unfortunate, and to me, totally unearned, nickname, ‘doubting Thomas’.
I say ‘unearned’ because he has been unfairly singled out as the only one who doubted. And yet, all of the male disciples were described as doubting the women when they reported back that they’d found the tomb empty. They were quite sure that the women were hysterical, ‘seeing things’, or something like that. And likewise, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Cleopas and his companion, did not really believe either. And, even at the Mount of the Ascension we are told that some there in the crowd were still doubting, yes, even after forty days of Jesus’ coming and going! They were still doubting: go figure! And so, why is Thomas singled out, and given that nickname?
My guess is that because he was so public about his doubt, and so vocal in his determination to get to the bottom of things and find out the truth. Thomas was the hard-headed realist, the one who wasn’t content to just go along with the flow and simply wait to see whether the facts would later emerge. He wanted to know for sure and wanted to know now.
In fact, we own him a lot. In his hard-headed persistence and desire to know, he elicited from Jesus one of the most important things that Jesus ever said. In the Upper Room the night before His death, Jesus had told His disciples, “I am going to prepare a place for each of you. After I have done this, I will come back and take you with me. Then we will be together. You know the way to where I am going” (John 14:3-4).
In response to this, Thomas interjected, “Lord, we don’t even know where you are going! How can we know the way?” To which, Jesus replied with those memorable words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. Without me, no one can come to the Father.” For this alone, I think we owe Thomas a lot.
But this isn’t all that we owe Thomas, at least not in my estimation. Thomas opens up, broaches, the entire question of doubt, which, to me is good. I do not believe that doubt is entirely the bogie man that we have made him out to be. I believe that doubt can be entirely healthy, indeed, quite constructive at times.
Further to this, I would made two suggestions. First is that doubt can force us to think and ponder and try to come up with suggestions and solutions. It can impel us to get to the roots of things and get more information and be more fact based, which is good. And secondly, doubt can spur us on to greater faith. To me, doubt is not the opposite of faith. Doubt is the flip side of the same coin as faith. It is certainty, absolute certainty, that is the opposite of faith. With certainty there is no need for faith: you’ve ‘got it covered’, so there is no need to have faith or trust in something or something beyond yourself. It is your certainty that you can trust in or have faith in. However, with doubt on that one side of the coin, you simply don’t know for sure, and so you have to trust, to have faith. And so doubt becomes the catalyst to a stronger and more vibrant and healthy faith. And for modeling this, showing us what this is like, we can thank Thomas.
One last thing: I think that Thomas could well be the patron saint for us today. Do we too not have to ask those questions, to examine the
evidence and get to the root of things? I think so. And likewise, do we not, like Thomas, need to learn to trust, to have faith, even when all the answers are not clearly laid out in front of us. And so, we can thank Thomas for all that. Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (verse 28)
“O Thomas, you have been maligned for your doubt for two thousand years, offered as an example of failure and unfaithfulness. But you were the brave one. You were the one willing to be vulnerable and transparent, willing to risk being truly seen. We are not all truth tellers like you were.
“Your ecstatic response when you knew that Jesus stood before you was a kind of resurrection of hope, faith, and possibility. It was an encounter that changed your life—and ours—by showing us that our journeys also run on a continuum between doubt and faith, skepticism and belief.
“As we journey through Easter, I pray we might be reshaped by your experience and practice witnessing resurrections and all the possibilities Easter holds for us. May we go out this day to share the message of the Risen Christ with your enthusiasm, with the words ‘My Lord and my God!’ on the tips of our tongues, and may doubt become a necessary approach to full understanding.”
Moving Forward “Where do you doubt and confess to it?”
