After the Barnacles Fall
Discerning Thomas
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, 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. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
John 20:19-31
I don’t like calling him Doubting Thomas. Does he deserve the name? Maybe so; he already saw Jesus raise Lazarus, which must have been the most insane thing he’d ever seen with his own two eyes, and in hearing about the risen Jesus, still his reservations.
But he had seen Lazarus raised with his own two eyes. In the week after Easter, other disciples got to see Jesus, but Thomas hadn’t. I mean, seeing one resurrection in your life is already a lot. Seeing two? What are the odds? Call him Doubting if you want, that just sounds like Rational and Reasonable and Discerning Thomas.
But I also like what Scripture gives us as his name, Thomas Didymus, or, “the twin.” As some have pointed out,1 this means Thomas was an identical twin, and as such, he was familiar with mixed-up identity. This was a real and recurring enough problem in history that it eventually became the basis of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (which a Dartmouth College group toured here last year). So when all of Thomas’ friends insist Jesus, the woulda-coulda-shoulda-been Messiah, had risen, Thomas may not have only doubted because the impossible had happened again. Thomas probably thought the disciples had a case of mistaken identity.
Even worse, Thomas might have thought there was now an impersonator of Jesus roaming around. Thomas’ reservations aren’t just about his disbelief in Jesus, but his self-protection from scam artists. Thomas is really asking, “Is that Christ you saw, or is it just an imposter? Show me the scars.”
Forget mixing up twins, that problem—is it Jesus or is it an imposter—has been with us since the early Church. As Jesus would tell his disciples, “For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray.” (Matt 24:5) For any new people who come into our church or any church, you should check, “Is Christ here, or is it just an imposter?” Perhaps we should be as careful and discerning as Discerning Thomas.
But while critical discernment is a gift from God, and Jesus meets Thomas in his critical discernment, once Thomas is gobsmacked by awe, “My Lord and my God,” Jesus says a line that many Christians have wrestled with over the years: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” This has raised the question for generations of faithful: is it good for our faith to use our critical thinking or not? We Presbyterians have historically loved education and the “life of the mind.” Are we mistaken? And what about the imposter problem?
Complicating matters further is that not all beliefs are made equal. One of Christ’s roles is to be our great Mediator, the go-between us and God. But the problem, as the Reformers saw, is that we have too many mediators with our mediator. Too many things act as middlemen between us and Jesus. Our idea of Jesus is shaped by our culture, upbringing, class, and many other biases, and then we package them all together with Christ. Even Thomas, like all of the disciples, had a particular idea of Jesus shaped by his time. It was as direct an experience of Jesus as you can get to walk among him, yet his idea of Jesus was still not fully developed, still shaped by being a working-class first-century religiously devout man from Judea.
Sometimes, these things between us and Jesus may actually help us reconnect with Christ, like a great friend who also loves Jesus and invites you to church, or a gospel song that lifts you up, or a book that helps you rediscover and make sense of The Book here on the pulpit. But you know how a barnacle gets attached to a whale? And sometimes many, many barnacles wrap themselves onto a whale over its life? Imagine if you thought the barnacle was the whale. That’s what we can do with Jesus. Just as the disciples were, most of us were originally interested in Jesus for a reason other than Jesus himself, or at least, for a version of Jesus mediated by something else.
What do we wrap up on Jesus? For me, sometimes it’s been having the perfect theology, the correct opinions, the enlightened view of the world, and if you are cursed enough to have that, you don’t become an evangelist for Jesus, you become an evangelist for “look at how right I am.” But maybe that’s not you. For some of us, we might wrap a specific church around Jesus, a type of worship service, a favorite pastor, or even just a style of music; maybe it’s unclear whether we believe in Jesus or four-part harmony bluegrass. Again, these can all be great things that God works through. But we can still mix up Jesus and God with these human vehicles.
Another problem is that these vehicles break down. What happens if you come to God through your family and then your family hurts you? What happens if you come to God through a church, and you equate the church with God, and then the church abuses you? Or what happens, as it did for the twelve, if your Messiah dies before the revolution starts? Of course we would have doubts about whether Jesus was real. Like Thomas, we also didn’t see the risen Lord directly in front of us. To respond with discernment and skepticism in any of these cases is natural. And we should use what we know from history, sociology, psychology, and more of our rational faculties to tell a barnacle from Jesus.
Yet eventually, trying to understand Jesus through those human academic vehicles will fail too. You may have (and you may yet) walk through many other failures of people and ideas and things you’ve been attaching to Jesus without even realizing it. An understanding of Scripture, a theology, and most often, other Christians. These will all, on some level and at some point, fail. What is our hope? Can we fix it with better theology, a new interpretive understanding, a new program? These may not be bad. But they aren’t what saves us. What if I suddenly became a world-class preacher? Sorry, though it may make your Sundays better. What if we discerned even harder in the “life of the mind”? No, this does not save us either.
Most Vermonters know margarine is not really a substitute for butter. There is also no substitute for the only thing that can actually jump the gulf between Jesus and us: faith. True faith, a gift from God, received in the heart, mind, and soul, which lets Jesus transform your life.
And faith is a grace, a gift, not a work. When we hear this story, we might think Jesus is admonishing Thomas, as if Thomas just wished harder, he would be a better person. But one of the mysteries (and frankly frustrations) of faith is that it doesn’t come from us. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” (Eph 2:8) It’s grace all the way down from Christ. When we remember faith is a gift, I hear Jesus less rebuking Thomas than giving a loving ribbing from a friend, “So now you believe, huh? Blessed are those who don’t need to see.” It’s less “favored are you” and more “genuinely, you are fortunate if you don’t need to see the wounds.” Blessed are those who already have the gift of faith in Christ.
If doubt keeps us from God, underneath doubt are true gifts of discernment that are from God. Thank God that we have enough critical thinking and skepticism to keep us from cults and idols. I personally know how they wreck lives. But the gift of reason and discernment that God gave us to keep us safe will also break down, like all human vehicles, if we try to drive ourselves in them across the bridge to God. The gift of discernment was Thomas’ vehicle for knowing God and protecting him from an imposter. But it also broke down when Jesus actually was risen and was in front of him. Jesus sees this and doesn’t wait for Thomas. When he sees Thomas in his broken-down car of skepticism, Jesus stops and helps him on the side of the road. Thomas couldn’t save himself from his own doubt. Jesus did.
Faith is not something we can just produce in an AI chat. We can’t just manufacture faith, for it comes from God. It’s also why it is pointless to think of ourselves as better than anyone for having faith. This is not our own doing. If we are blessed to believe, this is one of the greatest gifts we could possibly have—a real, living, authentically true connection to the real, living, authentically true Jesus Christ.
But we still have a big problem: how do we know we have faith in the real Jesus, and not just an imposter in Jesus’ clothes?
Thomas said, “I need to see the scars. I need to see the wounds.” And I think that was the right question to ask. Because that’s how you know. In case you forgot what we heard a week ago, God bleeds with you. The same forces that oppress you oppress our Lord. The same things that bear down on the world bore down on Christ and bore into his skin. If you doubt whether you are dealing with Jesus Christ or an imposter, look into your own wounds. Look into your own pain. I promise you Christ is there.
If you’re ever asking yourself, “Is this church really Jesus, or just an imposter? Is this movement that calls itself Christian really Christian, or an imposter?” Test them: show me the wounds. If a church, movement, thing, or whatever it is is not able to show you the wounds, or worse, protects itself from the wounds that it causes, that’s how you know it is not God, but an imposter. If something claims Christ but can’t deal with wounds and can’t show you the scars and doesn’t care if it gives you more scars, it needs the real Jesus. And if we protect ourselves when we cause wounds, we need to repent of our barnacles and turn back to the real Jesus.
When Thomas finally placed his hands in the wounds, it was undeniable. He knew. “My Lord and my God!” You are blessed if you do not need to see the wounds. But Jesus doesn’t want your doubt to keep you from him. When you don’t have faith, his grace will move to you first. Instead, he will use the gifts underneath our doubt—our skepticism, our guardedness, our reason—bringing them into his arms of belief, so that they can be used in service of life-giving faith. These are gifts not to keep for ourselves, but to help any of our neighbors who need it.
God told us in two beams of bloodied wood that there is nothing he can’t use towards the flourishing of life. When all the barnacles we’ve attached to Jesus fall off, and when the impostors expose themselves—and it’s often us who are exposed as impostors—Jesus will always be there, drawing our hands to his scars and placing his hands on ours. May you then believe. Amen.
Yale Divinity School Dean Andrew McGowan’s Substack: “Thomas and the Body of Jesus”