John 20:19-31

Missing Thomas
Sermon preached April 18, 2021

Opening

Maybe you’ve seen them on Facebook. Maybe you’ve seen them stapled to telephone poles.
They’re heartbreaking. A picture - of a child - of a teenager - with the words, “Have you seen
me?” With the contact info for the frantic parents, family of the person who’s missing, who’s
lost.

I don’t know about you, but when I see one of those notices and it’s local - I look hard at the
picture, in case I might have seen, or I might see, the missing person. I imagine what it’s like to
be that parent, desperate to find their lost child. Is there any heartache greater, is there any pain so
deep, as when someone we love is missing? We’d do anything to find them.

The Scene

It’s the evening of the day Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Mary has told the disciples she
has seen their risen Lord. But they don’t know what to make of that or of the empty tomb that
Peter and John saw. The doors are locked, they’re afraid for their lives, and they’re huddling
together, befuddled and wondering what’s next.

What’s next, is that Jesus shows up, like he was beamed into the room by a Star Trek transporter.
One moment it’s just them and pow! Jesus is there with them. He’s come to show them he has
risen from the dead, he’s come to show him that he’s beaten sin and death, he’s come to show
them that nothing in all creation will now keep him from being with the women and men he
loves. The Lord shows them his pierced hands, his wounded side (more on that later) and they
believe- really believe - the impossible, the incredible - that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.

Thomas is not there

But Thomas is not there. He misses seeing the risen Christ. When he comes back the other
disciples tell him, Jesus - he’s back! But he doesn’t believe them. Second-hand testimony is not
enough - he wants to see what they saw - Jesus himself, his pierced hands and wounded side -
and more than just see - he wants to physically touch the wounds of Christ - or else, he declares,
he will not believe.

Last week you heard Gene’s sermon - delivered by Steve Jaczun after Gene was hospitalized -
Gene is doing better, and thank you to Steve for stepping up - and Gene made the point that
Thomas is unfairly maligned as “Doubting Thomas.” I mean, Thomas earlier was a loyal,
courageous follower of Christ, says earlier in John’s gospel when Jesus is under threat, let’s stick
with him even if it means we die too.

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We need another nickname for Thomas. Maybe, “Thomas-whom-Jesus-loved-and-Jesus-comes-
back-just for him.” Little long for a nickname - how about just “Missing Thomas.” And it’s apt.
Because that, my friends - is the point of this account in John - not that Thomas was a hard-
headed doubter and no, no, no, don’t be like him - the point of this, is that Jesus comes back, just
for him. Jesus comes back - shows Thomas his wounds - and says, now, believe. And Thomas
makes the greatest confession of faith in Christ in the whole gospel of John - an amazing thing
for a Jew to say - “My Lord and my God!”

Now, I don’t claim this is shatteringly brilliant insight about Thomas and Jesus. Searching for the
missing, the lost, is what Jesus did. It was his whole mission - for God so loved the world...a
world populated entirely by lost, broken people like you and me - that whosoever believes in him
should not perish but have everlasting life. We’ve got accounts in John like Jesus going through
the hostile territory of Samaria and scandalously talking to a outcast Samaritan woman to lead
her to faith and life. We’ve got the parable of the lost sheep - the good shepherd leaves the 99 to
search for the missing one sheep. The parable of the lost coin - of a woman who stops everything
and searches high and low until she finds the lost coin and rejoices. The parable of the Great
Banquet - all the invited guests make up bogus excuses and the host of the banquet sends his
servant out to the worst neighborhoods in town to pretty much drag people into the party. Jesus
said of himself, “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”

Jesus searches for the missing and the lost

Frederick Buechner writes of the time he went to Rome at Christmastime and on Christmas Eve
he went to St. Peter’s to see the Pope celebrate Mass. St. Peter’s is absolutely enormous but the
place was packed with pilgrims from all over the world. People were milling about, elbowing
each other to try to get closer to the papal altar to where the Pope would be.

Finally the Pope entered and Buechner writes this:

“I can still see his face as he (went by me)...that lean, ascetic face, gray-skinned, with the
high-bridged beak of a nose, his glasses glittering in the candlelight. And as he passed by me he
was leaning slightly forward and peering into the crowd with extraordinary intensity.

“Through the thick lenses of his glasses his eyes were larger than life, and he peered into my face
and into all the faces around me and behind me with a look so keen and so charged that I could
not escape the feeling that he must be looking for someone in particular. He was not a potentate
nodding and smiling to acknowledge the enthusiasm of the multitudes. He was a man whose face
seemed gray with waiting, whose eyes seemed huge and exhausted with searching, for someone,
who he thought might be there that night or any night, anywhere, but whom he had never found,
and yet he kept looking.

Face after face he searched...was it this one? or this one? And then he passed on out of my sight.
It was a powerful moment for me, a moment that many other things have crystallized about since,

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and I felt that I knew whom he was looking for. I felt that anyone else who was really watching
must also have known.”1

You get the point, I suppose. Christ has gone looking for you - Christ is looking for you - and
like Thomas he wants to give you faith, everlasting life.

If you are a person of faith - I want you to know that you are a person sought and found by
Christ, the risen Lord of all creation. Your identity as a child of God is not dependent on your
flickering faith, your haphazard obedience, it depends solely and entirely on the will of Christ to
make you his. And earlier in John Jesus - all that the Father give me shall come to me, and no
one shall snatch them out of my hand.

In times of doubt

But what if you can’t sense Christ? What if you are trying to believe this but just can’t? What if
you can’t say “Yes, that’s Jesus, looking for me”? Well, I tell you he’s there, in ways you did not,
do not realize, seeking you, guiding you, preparing you.

Did you notice that when Jesus came back for Thomas, he invites Thomas - “Put your finger here
and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” As Tim Keller notes, can you
imagine the impact that had on Thomas - those were my exact words - how did he know? He
knew, because he was with Thomas, all along. Heard every word he said, knew every wondering
of his heart.

There is a great scene in one of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books - The Horse and His Boy.

It’s the story of a boy named Shasta, who lives in a in far-off country and hears about the
wonderful country of Narnia and its king, Aslan the Lion - a Christ-figure.

Shasta wants to get to Narnia, tries to escape his country, all during the time he’s trying to
get to Narnia everything seems to be going wrong. And he’s muttering about this, saying
I’m trying to get to Narnia, and to Aslan and everything is going wrong and then one day
in a fog a voice speaks to him - it’s Aslan but the boy doesn’t know it and Shasta talks to
him about how hard it’s been and at one point the boy says “Don’t you think it’s such bad
luck that I keep running into lions?”

“Oh, there was only one lion,” said the voice. “What do you mean?” “I was the lion.”

And as Shasta gasped, the voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with
Erebus. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion
who drove the jackals from you as you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new
strength of fear for the last mile so you would reach King Lune in time. And I was the
lion you do not remember at all who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death,

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 so it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”2

You see, this is what Jesus does, to guide us to himself, to life. And there are probably some
people listening today - you are on the outside like Thomas was, in the sense that you know
people who seem to have faith and you’re still wondering, and you want to know that there is a
God and that he cares at all about you - and I’m telling you that if you’re even asking that
question, God is already in your life and Christ is there like Aslan was for Shasta and he’s
nudging and guiding you and getting you to the point where you can believe. He’s there - ask him
to reveal himself - to reveal how he was there in ways incognito like Aslan was for Shasta. So
you can believe.

In times of unworthiness

“Put your finger here...reach out your hand and put it in my side,” the Lord said to Thomas. Jesus
invites Thomas to know him through his wounds.

Now this is curious - Jesus was not a resuscitated corpse - he was raised into what the Bible calls
a glorified body - free from aging and disease and death - a perfected, immortal body. Wouldn’t
you think the wounds Christ suffered on the cross, would be gone? Those signs of pain and
suffering?

But they’re not - Christ still bears his wounds - and he searches for us, he saves us, as a wounded
Lord. The Bible says, by his wounds we are healed. The Bible says of Jesus, that he was a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief, struck down and afflicted. And by showing his wounds Christ
reminds Thomas, and us, that the Risen One is also the Crucified One.

And Christ saves us, as we are, with our wounds, our sin, our failure and shame. Some of you
bear in your bodies and hearts the wounds of abuse and trauma. Some of you carry the wounds of
what seems to you like failure. Some of you are wounded by betrayal. Some wounds were self-
inflicted, some caused by others. Sometimes our wounds say to us that we’re unlovable,
defective, flawed, worthless.

But we are sought by the One who suffered the ultimate woundedness - the disgrace of dying
naked on a cross, jeered and mocked. And he knows us and loves us and pursues us.

Some of you as old as me may remember the movie The Fisher King starring Robin Williams.
Williams plays a homeless man named Parry who saves a character named Jack played by Jeff
Bridges from mugging and maybe being killed. Jack decides to help Parry get his life back
together, turns out that Parry’s wife had been murdered and that had left Parry shattered and he
ended up homeless. Jack tried to help Parry find love again.

Robin Williams’ character meets an awkward, klutzy young woman played by Amanda
Plummer, has no friends, doesn’t like herself but Robin Williams sees her and falls in love with

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her. Jeff Bridges cleans him up so he can go out with her and they do and have a wonderful time
but as soon as the date is over Amanda Plummer says to him, I never want to see you again
because if you get to know me you won’t like me. I had a wonderful time but it’s too painful

And Williams says to here, You don’t understand, I’ve seen you, I know all about you, I know
you’re clumsy and don’t have friends and keep messing up relationships, I know you don’t like
yourself, I know all this - but I still love you. I’ve seen it all and I still love you and I’ll never
leave you.” And she reaches out and touches him and says, “You’re real?”3

We touch, so to speak, a wounded Christ who knows us completely, in all our woundedness, and
loves us only as One who was wounded himself could love us.

And what does he ask of us? What he said to Thomas - stop doubting and believe. Stop doubting
that he wants you, that you are worthy of love. And believe in him. Trust him. Accept his love.
Amen.

Endnotes

1. https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2016/12/24/search-for-a-face

2. From Tim Keller’s sermon on this text, “My Lord and My God.”

3. Keller again. It was a tough week.