Today is “Casual Sunday” … of course, in this congregation most Sundays are casual Sundays.  In a number of churches, the first Sunday after Easter is called Holy Humor Sunday – in recognition of Christ’s resurrection as God’s wonderful “last laugh” over sin and evil and death.

So I thought it would be appropriate to begin with some Holy Easter Humor if you will.

A neighbor asked Joseph of Arimathea why he gave his beautiful hand-hewn tomb to someone else. Joseph replied, “Well, he only needed it for the weekend.”……. Oooooooo……

One more: On Easter Sunday, Karl Kraft of the First United Methodist Church in Mantua, NJ walked through his congregation giving them an Easter “pep talk.”

He invited everyone to sing and shout out whatever would make them joyful such as “Praise the Lord!” or “Thanks be to God!”

One small boy had his own prescription for joy; he yelled right out, “I wanna to go home.” 

After the two jokes I just tried to tell, maybe that’s what you all are thinking!   I guess we’ll stick with Casual Sunday …

If I were to mention the names of certain disciples to you and ask you to write down the first word that comes to your mind, it is unlikely you would all come up with the same words.

For example, if I were to mention the name of Judas many of you would write down the word betrayal, but not all of you. Maybe someone would write thief.

If I were to mention Simon Peter, some of you would write down the word rock, some faith.

If I were to mention the name John, some of you would write down the word beloved, but I’ll bet I’d get other words as well.

But when I mention the word Thomas, there is little question about the word most everyone would write down. It would be the word doubt. Right?  We, so closely associate Thomas with this word, that we even coined a phrase to describe him: “Doubting Thomas.”

While doing research for this sermon I found it interesting that in the first three gospels we are told absolutely nothing at all about Thomas. His name only appears once in each and only as part of a listing of the twelve disciples.

But in John’s Gospel we get to know Thomas just a bit better. Even then there are only 155 words about him.

Just what do we know about Thomas?

He was a man, like any man, woman or child, who had many sides to him. There really are few, if any, one-dimensional people around. All of us are conglomerates of anger and love, of joy and sadness, of hope and despair, of faith and doubt. And as a member of the human race, Thomas was just like that.

For example, one time, Jesus of Nazareth proposed to go to Bethany in Judea because his long-time friend, Lazarus, had died.

A lot of his friends tried to persuade Jesus not to go. After all, it hadn’t been that long ago that the people of that region had tried to stone him. It certainly would not be a safe place to go back to.

But Jesus was resolute, and so Thomas stood up and announced: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Here was a loyal friend in the face of danger. No doubt there.  Just loyalty and courage.

On another occasion, Jesus was teaching his followers about his impending death. Thomas was confused and was seeking to understand the teaching.

Of all those present, he was the one to interrupt and ask candidly: “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”

Thomas wanted desperately to understand because he wanted to follow. This loyal friend was also an honest questioner and seeker. Do we see a doubter here?  I don’t think so.

Thomas was also a man of commitment. Throughout the first 13 chapters of the book of Acts, we find his name among those who gathered in fellowship and prayer.

Thomas was among those gifted with the Holy Spirit and sent to preach. He was among those who, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, devoted the rest of their lives to teaching and fellowship in Jesus’ name.

He was a loyal friend and honest questioner and a devoted disciple.

And yet the word that comes to mind when we think of him is “Doubting.”  Not very fair, do you think?

 So what happened?  Let’s go back to the beginning of our text. It is Sunday night and ten of the 11 disciples move nervously about in the too small “upper” room.

The death of Jesus had been a cruel blow. They were leaderless. All they had lived for and hoped for had crumbled beneath them. Oh, they’d heard the rumors, the story some women told, that Jesus had risen from the dead, but “it seemed to them an idle tale.”

A couple of the disciples had verified that the tomb was empty, but that only unnerved them all the more.

It is an eerie atmosphere; no one speaks. I’d imagine that one part of them prayed that the rumors were true, that the resurrection of Jesus was not just wishful thinking, that somehow he had survived the ordeal.

But I could picture another part of them filled with fear that he might be risen. I mean how could they dare look him in the eyes again after they had failed him so miserably in the previous three days?

Would he return to them or would he go out to find other disciples, disciples, who would stand by him, and not turn and run? 

Well, suddenly, Jesus appears in the middle of the room, in spite of the locked doors and he utters four words, “Peace be with you.”

Peace be with you. No words could have meant more to those disciples, no words packed with more power for healing, and wholeness.

With a simple word from Jesus’ lips, stomachs which had been turned inside out were calmed, and minds which were raw with remorse were soothed.

It happened because Jesus did not come with angry words of judgment or criticism, or disappointment.  Just understanding and love.

Later that night, after Jesus had left, Thomas shows up.  We aren’t told why he hadn’t been with the others or where he had been.  I imagine he was off grieving by himself – oblivious to what had happened earlier. 

Is it any wonder, though, that when he returned to his friends, that he was totally unprepared for their excitement?

“We have seen the Lord!” they shouted to him.  The other disciples tell him that Jesus is risen from the dead. But Thomas cannot believe it.

It is not as if the man refuses to accept the possibility of the dead being raised; after all, he had SEEN that very thing happen with the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Nain...and he had seen it with Lazarus. But this was different.

Jesus had not died of natural causes...causes that could somehow miraculously be reversed by the intervention of the Son of God. This was MURDER...spears and nails and a cross.

A thoughtful man would have to say that THIS kind of death is not reversible...and Thomas tells the others precisely that. “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.”

Can you blame him? Who wants to be set-up twice for disappointment and hurt? Who wants to get one’s hopes up again only to have them destroyed by the reality of a cruel world?

Doubts? You bet! Honest doubts born of believing with all one’s heart in someone, in a dream, and seeing it cruelly shattered right before one’s eyes.

But one week later, Thomas was given the opportunity to climb out of his valley of despair and grief.

Jesus came to his followers again with his greeting, “Peace be with you.” And then, in that classic scene from scripture, Jesus turns to Thomas (and did you notice that he never scolded or rebuked Thomas for his doubt?  He just loved him.) …

… Jesus turns to Thomas and gives him his chance to touch the wounds. Interestingly, the scripture NEVER says that Thomas actually followed through and ever touched Jesus.

Then Thomas, in that moment of reborn hope and rekindled faith, responds with the highest confession we find in John’s gospel: “My Lord and my God!”

Thomas seems tailor-made for our skeptical age. I know a lot of folks who are hesitant to accept the Christian faith because they simply cannot accept what they cannot see. 

They have seen too many people who have been conned and they don’t want to be rubes at the County fair, walking around with eyes wide shut to the carnival magic and with wallets hanging out of their pockets. 

They don’t want to be gullible, and so they are skeptical.  “Unless I see, I will not believe,” is their credo.  But it is a normal reaction.  You or I might have felt as Thomas did. 

We all have doubts.  Woody Allen is right: Faith would be easier if only God would show Himself by depositing a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in our name.  

We all long for certainty.  A giant comet streaking through a dark winter night with its tail sky-writing in our behalf, “I love you, signed, God,” or something like that.  Why doesn’t God do that? 

It would be easy.  Of course, if that happened, immediately a group of cynics would get together and explain to us that it was just a freak accident resulting from certain atmospheric conditions. 

Before we are too quick to condemn ol’ Thomas we need to recognize that the highest confession in John’s gospel of Jesus’ divinity came from the mouth of Thomas that night. Thomas is no culprit. But rather he is us. Out of the reality of doubt, the possibility for faith is born.

And here we need a word of caution. Even the faith that is forged by despair and born anew in the resurrection is not immune to doubt.

We will always live with the paradox of faith and doubt as two sides of the same coin we call our lives.

And the reason for this is quite obvious. Resurrection faith does not come to us like a package in the mail or a gift from grandma at Christmas.

We can never possess it as such, for one possesses things and faith is not a thing; it is an experience.

Like Thomas, when our experience of God begins to wane, we long for proof to beat away the gnawing doubts. We want hard evidence, something we can cling to. Yet, faith always comes as a challenge.

We are those who “have not seen and yet have believed.” We are those who live our lives in the midst of this doubt and faith, this death and resurrection dialectic and it is there that we learn what it means to walk with our God.

The issue for us is never, therefore, one of avoiding our doubts as if that will cure us of them.

No, the issue for us is how to be good doubters; how to walk like Thomas honestly into the middle of them, no matter how scary and alone that feels, so that we can encounter the living God and have our own faith resurrected.

It is a paradox, like losing one’s life to find it, that doesn’t make rational sense -- until we live it. And then, out of the dust of honest doubt can be born the greatest expression of faith: “My Lord and my God.”

Real faith is betting your life on God when that bet seems more foolish than betting on the state lottery.  Thomas is not a villain.  He is a model for most of us. 

In his story we discover that Christ comes to meet us in the midst of our shattered and broken world of doubt and despair.  He knows our doubts, but He comes to us anyway - lovingly. 

The name of Charles Spurgeon should be known to some of you here. He was the great Baptist preacher of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Spurgeon writes of going to live in Newcastle England, which at that time was a very dirty industrial town.

As he was looking around the house that he was thinking about renting, the landlord took him to the uppermost room and took him over to a window. There, he said as he pointed out the window, over there you can see Durham Cathedral on a Sunday.

 “Sunday?” Spurgeon questioned. “Why on a Sunday?”

“Because” said the landlord, “the furnaces are not working on Sunday and there is no smoke and you can therefore see farther.”

When we come to worship on Sunday morning we come to see further, to see Durham Cathedral. When we gather in worship we come to see into the heart of God.

I want to say something to you this morning, and in doing so I say it to myself as well. There are times in our lives when we face grief, or disappointment, or pain, or depression.

There are times when these things happen that our hold on God falters. When these moments of true, deep doubt come let me suggest something to you.

If you remember nothing else about this sermon this morning, remember this: NEVER DOUBT IN THE DARK, WHAT GOD HAS TOLD YOU IN THE LIGHT.

NEVER DOUBT IN THE DARK, WHAT GOD HAS TOLD YOU IN THE LIGHT.

I say this because it is in moments of spiritual light, that God shows us true reality. These moments of spiritual light are so very important, because they allow us to get through many dark nights of doubt and despair, which come into the lives of every single one of us.

In moments of light, God has told you that he will never desert you. Don’t ever doubt that.

In moments of light, God has told you that resurrection is reality. Don’t ever let the darkness cause you to doubt that.

In moments of light, God has told you that the very hairs on your head are numbered. Don’t ever doubt that in the darkness.

Thomas got a bum rap.  He was faithful, dedicated, courageous and loyal.  But he also doubted.  And Jesus loved him through it. And he will love us through our doubt, too – if we let him. 

May each of us acknowledge our doubts and lay them at the feet of Jesus that our faith may be enriched even in the midst of our doubt.

AMEN.