Thomas Believed / John 20:19–31 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday April 27th 2025 / Season of Easter / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday April 27th 2025: Season of Easter / John 20:19–31 “Thomas Believed”

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the Disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the Disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you.” And 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 withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

Now Thomas, one of The Twelve, called the Twin, 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 in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe.”

Eight days later, His Disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, 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; and put out your hand, and place it in My side. Do not disbelieve, 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 believed.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the Disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends sharing the faith has always been a part of Christianity even before the name Christianity was given to the faith. And yet there has also always been a tension between telling and hearing the faith and the experience of faith. So on the one hand Saint Paul will write, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”[1] while on the other hand we’ll find in the Psalms the experiential invitation to faith, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!”

For Saint Thomas before the events of our Gospel Reading today he’d had three years of experience with Christ Jesus as one of Jesus’ Twelve Disciples and before that he would likely have had his personal growing up in the faith steeped in God’s Word and the life of that faith lived in community and even Thomas needed to have the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection shared with him.

From Scripture the only disciple of the Twelve that we know was an eye witness of Jesus’ crucifixion and death was Saint John the writer of today’s Gospel and of our Epistle from the Book of Revelation. Saint Thomas and the rest of them would have known what Roman crucifixion entailed and they may even have laid eyes upon the grizzly details in the past but we only know of Saint John among the Twelve Disciples as having looked upon the dead face of Jesus, the dead face of God, nailed to the cross of His crucifixion. So when the other Disciples told Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” and He responded, “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe,” we can know two things: 1) Saint Thomas was told of the details of Jesus’ death and Thomas believed what he was told about those details, and 2) Thomas was told that Jesus did in fact die as a result of His crucifixion and that Thomas believed the report of Jesus’ death. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” The challenge for Saint Thomas is that having believed all of that Thomas was now being asked to believe that Jesus had in fact risen from the dead.

There are people in our world today, even ones who have advanced university degrees, who the World deems by academic standards to be bright and smart who will on the one hand believe that Jesus was a living true historical figure, that Jesus was indeed crucified and that as a result of His crucifixion Jesus died but they fall short of believing that Jesus truly walked out of His tomb on that first Easter Sunday. They can’t bring themselves to believe in the resurrection of the dead let alone the resurrection of the Christ as the first fruits of that resurrection.[2] And truth be told you can’t bring yourself to this either? As Lutherans we believe, teach and confess that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has calls us by the Gospel, enlightens us with His gifts, sanctifies and keeps us in the true faith.[3] Saint Paul for his part right before he writes “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ,” quotes from the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah saying “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?”[4] So some people when they are told gladly hear the news and with open hearts embrace this wonderful Easter report of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead while there are other who when they hear the Good News of Jesus become skeptical and credulous and then maybe they even resist the workings of the Holy Spirit, and when it comes to the Holy Spirit, while He is all powerful He is also gentle and will not force the faith on one who refuses to believe.[5]

Even today there are people who want to have an experience, to see a miracle with their two eyes and not only hear a miracle with their two ears, before they believe. But this is an appeal to reason[6] without enlightenment. For us the call to “taste and see that the LORD is good,” could easily be applied to Holy Communion and even there in the experience of receiving Holy Communion there is a call to faith, dear ones remember what Saint Paul says, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.”[7] Refusal to believe leads to unbelief, and unbelief leads to judgement.[8] Saint Thomas at first pushed back on what had been reported to him, Thomas along with Peter and Saint John and the rest of the remaining Disciples had all heard from Mary Magdalene and the other women who’d gone to provide Jesus with a proper burial following what they must have thought was a rushed job done by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. These women did not find Jesus in the tomb, Jesus had risen. Thomas would have heard this from them at some point during the week leading up to the events of today’s Gospel reading and at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading we have Jesus, on that first Easter Sunday coming to His Disciples, expect for Thomas, saying to them “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you.” And [then Saint John tells us] when [Jesus] 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 withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” These men, Saint Thomas’ spiritual brothers over the previous three years, were now likewise eye witnesses of what the women like Mary Magdalene had come to them saying, “I have seen the Lord.”[9] The Holy Spirit was at work in the Gospel Good News Message that they were witnessing to Saint Thomas. Perhaps these first witnesses to the resurrection could ask along with the Old Testament prophet Isaiah “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” And when Thomas clapped back on what they were saying, even though he’s believed them concerning Jesus’ death they must have wondered ‘will Thomas believe or will Thomas walk away?’

You see there was another line-in-the-sand-critical-moment earlier when in the synagogue at Capernaum–well before Jesus’ cross and passion–Jesus had taught a hard thing about Himself being The Bread of Life. Saint John records Jesus teaching those who followed Him the differences and similarities between Himself and the bead (the manna) that the Children of Israel had received from the LORD in the wilderness of their exodus, saying “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus said. “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” (As an aside, here Jesus has foreshadowed His death upon the cross, where He gave His flesh for the life of the World) Jesus continued saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on The Last Day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on Me, he also will live because of Me.” … Then Jesus says, “This is The Bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this Bread will live forever.”

[Now here comes the part that fits into Saint Thomas’ dilemma as he’s been told about Jesus’ resurrection: Saint John continues his account of this teaching at the synagogue at Capernaum writing,] “When many of [Jesus’] Disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His Disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see The Son of Man ascending to where He was before? It is The Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray Him.) And He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

After this [Saint John tells us] many of [Jesus’] Disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. So Jesus said to The Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” [And] Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that You are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, The Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for [that Judas], one of The Twelve, was going to betray Him.[10]

Dear ones when the grumbling Saint Thomas pushed back against Peter and the Disciples when they said “We have seen the Lord,” were they worried that Thomas would be like one of those who walked away from Jesus when Jesus had said of Himself, “I am the living Bread that came down from heaven.” Would Thomas’ faith falter? Would he become like Judas, one who walked away from the Lord right at the very end even though the Lord had given everything to save him and all the rest of them? What would happen if Thomas refused to believe this amazing thing? Had Thomas not heard with them time and time again Jesus say, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”[11] Would they not lament over their brother asking, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” Would Thomas not believe? Would he still be their brother?

Now mercifully you know what happens next, Jesus does come again as He had on the evening of that first Easter Sunday and although the doors were again locked, when He comes this second time, 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; and put out your hand, and place it in My side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus the “the Alpha and the Omega, … who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty,” stands before Thomas and the others and Thomas does not walk away, he remains, Thomas keeps the faith,[12] by the work and power of the Holy Spirit Thomas believes.[13] Thomas becomes one who has been called by the Gospel, enlightened with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, sanctified and kept in the one true faith, the Christian Faith.

Dear ones Jesus knows that this struggles is not unique to Saint Thomas, that this promised resurrection from the dead is not easy to believe, that there are times when we like Saint Thomas says ‘I won’t believe it until I can see it, until I can touch it!’ Jesus knows that there are always going to be those among the church who wrestle with doubts over what they hear regarding Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, ones who were brought up in the faith like Thomas, ones who were close with Jesus and yet when the rubber hits the road, when fears and doubts and disappointments in life come they push back on everything they have heard from the Lord, push back on everything they had previously experienced in the faith. When this happens it is frightening, it’s alarming, it’s a great concern. We witness and share Jesus with them, and we are left asking, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 

Yet what does Jesus say to Thomas and the rest of them, “Have you believed because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” And then Saint John writes, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the Disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” Dear ones you are blessed to believe what you have heard from us, don’t give up on sharing this good news with others, the Disciples didn’t give up on their dear brother Thomas when he at first pushed back against what they had told him, and remember we like Thomas, like every Christian, need to hear this Good News of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection weekly, daily, because, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ,” and believing this opens our heart to the blessed invitation “taste and see that the LORD is good!” Yes in Christ, for us, hearing is believing! With hearts of faith we can now cling to what we receive in God’s Word and what is put in our hand and placed in our mouths at the communion rail trusting these words: “Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” Yes, blessed in the man who takes refuge in Jesus. Take refuge in Him, for Jesus alone has “the Words of Eternal Life.” Amen.   

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Romans 10:17
[2] 1 Corinthians 15:12-28
[3] Third Article of the Creed, Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, Page 17.
[4] Romans 10:16
[5] Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-30, Luke 12:10; John 14:15-17; Hebrews 6:4-6; Galatians 5:22-24 
[6] First Article of the Creed, Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, Page 16.
[7] 1 Corinthians 11:29
[8] John 3:18
[9] John 20:18
[10] John 6:49–51, 53–58, 60–71
[11] Luke 9:22
[12] 2 Timothy 4:7
[13] Ephesians 2:8-9

Photo Credit: Main photo colour tinted trasparancy of illustration using canva with question mark of Jesus and Saint Thomas from rawpixel.