Seeing with the Eyes of Community
April 27, 2025
Poor Thomas gets a bad rap. He is always being called Doubting Thomas. But he isn’t alone in doubt. In fact, he is just the last and a long line of doubters. Let’s break it down. Last week on Easter Sunday we heard that Peter was the first doubter. He looks in the empty tomb, and where the grave clothes have been set and yet he does not understand. OK, not understanding isn’t really the same as doubt, but he certainly doesn’t believe that Jesus has risen. The same goes for Mary. She sees Jesus with her own eyes, but her eyes or heart cannot accept that he is risen so she supposed him to be a gardener. It takes Jesus saying her name to change that. So, Mary has to hear, his voice, see him and then cling to him, before she believes. This is less than what Thomas was asking for. Later that day she tells the rest of the disciples that Jesus is raised. But they don’t believe because they haven’t experienced the Risen Christ. We know this because in the beginning of the scriptures today, it tells us that the disciples were hiding behind lock doors. The doors were locked out of fear of the authorities. So, their fear of the authorities that had killed Jesus is stronger than their faith that Jesus lived. In other words, they doubt Mary. Thomas, as you can see only wants what Mary and the other disciples had experienced. The only one who believes is the Beloved Disciple and he does so without seeing and touching the Risen Jesus.
The theologian Rev. Dr. Nancy Claire Pittman says that doubting is not Thomas’s real problem. The real problem is not in doubting but in rejecting the disciples, good news about what they have seen. He rebuffs the very friends with whom he has shared life for so long. In fact, throughout John’s gospel and the epistles that grow out of it, love and trust within faithful community are ‘the’ significant expressions of the work of Christ in their midst. Unlike the other doubters, Thomas says, that there is no way that I will believe unless I see it for myself. It is this tendency toward truth as being only what I experience and myself being the only authority in my live, that breaks up community. In other words, the disciples witness is not enough. Their eyes and their fingers are not enough for him. He must see and touch for himself. Thomas’s skepticism attacks the very heart of what Jesus has been trying to do in his ministry, which is to build a community of love and trust. This kind of radical suspicion of his companions and their faith tears at the fabric of this early community. And the same thing is true for the larger community today. It’s OK for us to hold differing opinions about things. But when we begin to attack political or church leaders because we have a bad feeling, or we don’t trust their witness then we are in trouble. The question is, can we love and trust each other even when we come at issues from differing places.
I don’t know about you, but I see this war on what is truth all the time on the internet. There are biblical scholars and medical professionals and physicists on the internet that feel compelled to tackle the latest ‘click bait of suspicion.’ Do you know the term click bait? Basically, it is some headline that is so outrageous, or enraging that folks just have to click on it to see what the claim is all about. For example, Robert F Kennedy Jr is outraged at high sugar fructose in baby formula and then lots of social influencers get on board decrying, “How can the American Food and drug administration allow this travesty? So, in response a doctor posts that yes high sugar fructose is bad for developing baby which is why no baby formula sold in North America has it in it. So, a truth was spun into a lie for click bait. I wish that all this was just academic but like the doubting of Thomas this kind of conflict based on half-truths, and lots of lies, tears at the fabric of a social society. This election cycle in Canada demonstrates that we are immune to this kind of internet behaviour. The question that comes to my mine is “does the faith have anything to offer society in these trying times?”
This morning I think we can hear an answer in the passage from the Acts of the Apostles that was part of our Call to Worship. It is a powerful story where the disciples refused to do what they’re told. They were told by the religious leaders to stop preaching about Jesus because that preaching was not what the established religious leaders believed. But the disciples were so filled with faith in his resurrection and the power of his message that they would not stop even on threat of being beaten, tortured and imprisoned. This week I read a theologian by the name of Dr. J. Michael Krech who explores the response of the disciples to the religious leaders and the religious leaders to the disciples. He basically says look at the measured response by a Pharisee named Gamaliel. He said, “leave the disciple alone. If what they say is not of God, then it will die out but if it is of God then we can do nothing to prevent it, and we might actually be fighting God.” In a sense he doesn’t even question the content of what the disciples are saying because he has another goal. Which is the health of the community and faithfully listening to God. He doesn’t argue with Peter’s passion nor the desire by the leadership to silence him. He simply makes the point that truth will win out. So, the goal of the Christian community is to seek truth but also reconciliation and love. I take as my guide the Respectful Communication Guidelines in the Holy Currencies program which is an acrostic for RESPECT.
R – Take responsibility for what you say and feel
E - use empathetic listening
S - be sensitive to differences in communication styles
P - ponder what you hear and fell before you speak
E - Examine your own assumptions and perceptions
C - keep confidentiality (Share Constructively to uphold the wellbeing of the Community)
T - trust ambiguity because we are not here to debate who is right or wrong.
This is actually the opposite of click bait, and designed not to enrage but to engage in conversation and reconciliation. Truth is not just in what is said but how it is said and why. The Risen Jesus blesses the disciples three times with the words, “Peace be with you.” For us to accomplish the living in peace and the sharing of peace we are called to patient within community and to seek the wisdom of the whole community, trusting that with God the truth will win out and the community will survive until it does. Amen