What did Thomas want? An Easter challenge

The Apostle Thomas is surely one of the most unfairly maligned characters in the Christian stories. I have been reflecting upon his part in the Gospel narratives in preparation for this coming Sunday.
Thomas has always been a hero of mine. He has for centuries suffered the common tag of ‘Doubting Thomas’ and the extraordinary habit of otherwise great scholars to attribute all sorts of motivations and character failings to him, without any evidence. They seem to me to read into the texts their own need to put him down. I wonder why.

In fact, as I have argued in my book Wrestling with doubt, Thomas is one of the few disciples of Jesus who is presented in a number of episodes, all within the Gospel of John, and in each instance expressing a desire for authentic understanding. He has the courage to say that they (the band of followers) should go with Jesus and be prepared to die with him (exactly as Jesus called his followers to do, in Mark’s Gospel). Thomas is not recalcitrant, irresponsible, or lacking in integrity.

Nonetheless the episode in John 20 presents an interesting puzzle. From verse 19 we read of a resurrection appearance (in this chapter of such appearances). It’s puzzling enough that Jesus is said to come to them through locked doors. He speaks to his friends, greeting them with his familiar greeting, and commissions them to continue his mission‑as the Father had sent him, he now sends them to bring the life of the Spirit to all.

As the story is presented, the very first thing they do about this is to reach out to their friend Thomas, who for some reason was not there on that first occasion. Thomas says that he is not prepared to accept their story, unless he can actually touch this ‘risen’ Jesus. This is interpreted by many as an indication of Thomas’s scepticism—for which he has been labelled a doubter, and from this has arisen a crushing and cruel tradition of repudiating genuine questioning amongst many communities of faith.

I’d like to offer a different view, beginning with the question, ‘What did Thomas want?’ My conviction is that, consistent with the other episodes in which he displayed a courageous desire for integrity and understanding, Thomas wanted a faith that was more than an intellectual or emotional attitude. He wanted what is commonly called a ‘boots and all’ commitment. If he was going to believe this, he wanted to see, feel, touch, and really know this risen Jesus: and put his own body on the line. He’d seen and heard a lot, but in the last days it had all gone down the tubes. Their hopes for a local revolution, for justice for the poor and relief for the captives, all that vision and energy and popular movement that they’d seen as recently as a week before, it was all lost. Jesus had been arrested and done away with by the deadly combination of religious intrigue and political expediency. Dead.

Thomas was not going to give his hopes and hands to any more idealistic wishes. If this new story from his friends was worth anything, he, Thomas, would only go with it boots and all, or not at all.

There are two really striking things in this story. First, the response of the disciples. Unlike so many church groups I have known, this ‘prickly character’ Thomas is gathered in, not shunned or frozen out. So many authentic questioners have had that treatment, I know. Not here. Thomas is with them the next time Jesus appears.

The second thing is Jesus’ approach to Thomas. There is not a word of condemnation or criticism. Rather, his ‘demand’ is met. Thomas is indeed invited to touch, to feel, to know physically and intimately the wounds of his friend and Lord. We are not told whether in fact he did place his hand in the wound. Rather, we are told that Jesus and Thomas meet one another with a mutual acceptance.
From that moment on Thomas became the disciple who went to India and founded a ‘boots and all’ mission that surely cost him everything he considered familiar and safe.
He was given that personal request, to know the presence of the God in and yet also beyond everything he knew.

What did Thomas want?

• Not for him any merely conventional or convenient belief or value system.
• Not for him a faith that made no difference to how he lived, what he valued or hoped for.
• Not for him any purely intellectual system or emotional ‘faith’.
• Not for him a religion that fits in with what he already know and believed.

Thomas asked for and was given a life-transforming encounter with the creator of the universe, present in a single person and yet also something more than that one person or encounter: an invitation into a whole new world.

The mystery of this Easter story is this same invitation to us all: and like Thomas we may only encounter it by engaging with our selves, our bodies and minds and hopes and purposes. We bring ourselves, boots and all, to be welcomed into and transformed into this new creation.

I want, for each of us and for all of us, what Thomas wanted.