The Show Me Saint

April 18, 2004 (Second Sunday of Easter)

By The Rev. Kevin R. Hackett SSJE

- Acts 5:12a, 17-22,25-29
- Psalm 111 or 118:19-24
- Revelation 1:1-19
- John 20:19-31

I come to you this morning from the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, an Episcopal monastic community for men in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It has always been a great joy to worship in this great cathedral church, with its fine tradition of music and preaching. And it is a privilege to be preaching here again, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity.

I grew up not far from here and attended Kansas City public schools, where as a freshman at Northeast Junior High School, I learned the history of the state of Missouri. I confess that I remember only a few of the high points—that the state was part of the Louisiana Purchase, that Lewis and Clark began their legendary expedition to the Pacific Northwest. I remember that the Missouri Compromise—an accommodation to the hard reality of slavery—was key to Missouri’s becoming a state in 1821. I remember that that the Pony Express made postal service possible from St. Joseph to Sacramento in 8 days. I remember that Missouri has either produced or nurtured a glittering roster of statesmen, scholars, scientists, writers, artists, outlaws, and entertainers including President Harry Truman, Senators Stuart Symington and John Danforth, George Washington Carver, Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Thomas Hart Benton, Walt Disney, Jesse James, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, and most recently, Brad Pitt.

I remember, too, that the state bird is the bluebird, that the hawthorn is the state flower, that the dogwood is the state tree, that the state song is The Missouri Waltz, and that the state’s nickname, enshrined on current license plates, is “The Show Me State.” Show me—another way of saying, “seeing is believing.”

Missouri does not have a patron saint, but if it did, it would have to be Thomas. Thomas is the consummate show me saint. He embodies a kind of hands-on pragmatism that is more than a little familiar to Midwesterners generally, and to Missourians particularly. It was Missouri Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver who said in 1899, “…frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me…you have got to show me.” That sounds strikingly like Thomas, “All this talk about Jesus coming back from the dead …show me the wounds,” he says, “then I’ll believe.” And for such a practical request, he earns the unfair nickname of “doubting Thomas.” Now it’s true that he doubts, but it’s not a simple question, either.

Thomas has only three scenes in the gospels, all in John. In each one, he shows himself to be nothing if not eminently pragmatic. The first time we encounter him is when Jesus announces that he plans to return to Bethany where his friend Lazarus has died. This sounds like a very bad idea to the disciples because Bethany is a short stone’s throw from Jerusalem, the city where Jesus has recently been run out of town by angry religious leaders with stones in their hands. They were ready to kill him when he was last there, and not much time has passed. Tempers are still hot, and the disciples are rightly concerned that if Jesus goes to Bethany, he’ll be a sitting duck. So it is Thomas who says, “OK, guys, let’s go with him. There’s strength in numbers, so if we all go, it’s a lot less likely that anyone will mess with Jesus.” Thomas here is sort of like a biblical D’Artagnion—you know, “one for all and all for one.”

The next time we hear from him is at the last supper when Jesus begins a convoluted after-dinner speech about going and coming, dwelling places that are not here but there, following where he’s going, about knowing the way. It’s pretty opaque, so Thomas interrupts and says, “Wait a minute. We don’t know where you’re going. How can we follow if we don’t know the way?” For Thomas, faith has to be doable. Faith for Thomas is not some kind of intellectual assent to a system of theology; faith is a hands-on matter of doable practice.

Which is how we encounter him this morning. Recall from the gospels on Good Friday and Palm Sunday, that when Jesus is arrested, the disciples—the men, anyway—all scatter. The women and the men alike are shattered with grief and confusion and guilt. The man they have followed for three years, whose teaching and promise of a new world has fueled their hope for a better future, is dead. Then three days later, there are rumors flying around that he’s alive again, except that he looks a little bit different (most people don’t seem to recognize him at first), and he seems to appear and disappear at will, and he can walk through locked doors. I don’t know about you, but I think I would have been a little skeptical, too, and I don’t think it’s simply because I am from Missouri.

But if we read the gospel carefully, we find that Thomas has more than ordinary reasons for questioning the reliability of the reports of resurrection. Whenever Thomas is mentioned by name, it is almost always with the qualifier, “who was called the Twin,” or in Greek didymous, the same root from which we derive the word ditto, meaning identical. Thomas, John is telling us, is a twin, an identical twin, so he is more than a little familiar with the phenomenon of mistaken identity. As a twin, he had no doubt been mistaken for his twin brother on many occasions. Probably, he thinks to himself, the women and the others have seen someone who simply looked like Jesus. He has good reason to doubt, and with the guilt and grief and hope that was rife among the other disciples, Thomas the pragmatist simply wants to do a reality check. I don’t think he is testing God. That he says he needs more information indicates, I think, that Thomas is at least willing to believe. And it is his willingness to believe that is important for us today.

Think about it: Thomas is still engaged with the community of the disciples—he hasn’t written them off as sentimental wish-mongers. There is something sufficiently convincing about their story that he keeps coming around. I suspect that some of us here this morning are not so different. After all, it’s the Sunday after Easter—which means either that you really believe in the resurrection or, even if you have serious questions about your faith, the fact that you are here today indicates that you are at least willing to believe.

Belief is a funny thing. Most of the time, when we say we believe something it suggests some kind of intellectual agreement or concurrence. But the word is actually much more nuanced than that, especially when we read it in John, and I would say, when we read it in or from The Book of Common Prayer, as we will do in a few moments when we stand to recite the Nicene Creed. We will say in the most sweeping terms possible, “we believe” three times. Many of us here this morning will be able to say those words without any qualms. And that’s great. But for some of us, on some days, it would be truer to say that we doubt as much as we believe. This is where Thomas is helpful to us, especially at a time when so many of the things we have believed about our world, our nation, our church, and even our own lives have been called into question, casting long shadows of doubt.

Doubt is not the opposite faith. Unbelief is the opposite of faith. And belief, as we Christians use the word, suggests a kind of prayerful engagement. Our English word creed derives from the Latin credo, which in turn derives from the Greek cardia, meaning heart. So when we say “we believe,” it is more a matter of the heart than the intellect. It is a matter of inclining our hearts towards that which we believe to be true and good and lovely. When Jesus urges us to believe, he is asking us to set our hearts towards those things.

I suspect, whether we are aware of it or not, most of us have come here this morning motivated by a desire for resurrection, for larger life, for life with a capital L. That we are here the Sunday after the resurrection suggests at least a willingness to believe. I suspect that most of us have heard rumors of resurrection—and we are desperate to know they are true because our lives are littered with more than a few corpses, things that were once alive and lively but now seem dead. Perhaps it is the deceased remains of a fondly held image of how God could and would and should work in our world and in our lives. Perhaps it is the dead body of an understanding of what the church was and is. Perhaps it is the lifeless vestige of a ruined self-image. We, like Thomas, need to be shown that God’s resurrection power in Jesus Christ is real, that it makes a difference in our lives, in the church, and in the world. We, like Thomas, want to see and know for ourselves.

And so we shall if we are at least willing to believe. Like, Thomas, however, our encounters with the risen Lord are likely to be different from what we have expected, and they are likely to come at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways. Our encounters are likely to come in the company of other Christians who have known devastating losses and personal defeats, and they are likely to bring us face to face with gaping wounds that are in fact the means by which we know we are face to face with the one who died and who now lives.

There are rumors of resurrection going around—new life for this cathedral, new life for your families, new life for our individual lives. I’m willing to believe those rumors are true. I hope you are too because it’s a move toward life. If you want that resurrection life, then join Thomas in his pragmatic prayer and simply say, show me.