More often than not, we are people of proof.
“I make the world’s best sushi rice!” My 10-year-old recently said to me.
“Oh yeah? Prove it.” And so he did; he carefully measured and rinsed some short-grain rice in water. He put it in the rice cooker. He climbed up on the counter and got down rice vinegar, sea salt, and sugar, measuring teaspoons and quarter-cups into the small pot on the stove. He brought it to a boil, and then, when the rice cooker “pinged,” he mixed it all together, adding some black and toasted sesame seeds on top for good measure.
World’s best sushi rice, I’m telling you.
“I can do the Griddy better than Dada!” My 8-year old also recently told me.
“Really now? Show me. Tme for a Griddy dance-off!” Now the Griddy, if you don’t know, is this dance move where you tap your heels and swing your arms, either while you’re standing in place or walking forward. Sometimes, at least for members in my house, you also cast a glance sideways down at the ground; while I tend to have rather poor Griddy moves, the other three humans who live in my house all happen to have been gifted with natural Griddy skills.
So that night, when my husband got home from work, the two of them had a Griddy-off right in the middle of the kitchen, no music required. And when push came to shove, my young son proved that he was better at the Griddy than Dada.
So, proof. We need it. We crave it. We demand it. We ask for it, over and over again, in our professional lives, in our personal lives, and in our spiritual lives as well.
In John 20, a man named Thomas demands a little proof.
After Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus comes and stands before ten of the disciples: Judas, of course, was not there, but neither was Thomas, for reasons we do not know.
“Peace be with you,” Jesus says, not once but twice, showing the men his hands and sides – those places in his body where nails had pierced his skin.
Perhaps I spend too much of my time with elementary-aged humans, but have you ever been around a young person who recently got hurt? Look at this scab, this bump, this bruise! Look at my owie, do you see my owie, it’s a big one! I can’t help but wonder if, when Jesus stood before the disciples, a tiny bit of that happened here: look at these owies, you guys, look right here! TOTAL scars, I’m telling you. We, of course, do not know what was actually said in that moment – it could very well have been a time of silence – but we also know that Jesus wasn’t above being his very human self, and sometimes our very human selves want to show off our ailments and our owies.
When he repeats the blessing, “Peace be with you,” scripture says that he also breathes on them, instructing them to receive the Holy Spirit in return. This was the “with” part of the blessing – the peace of God being passed from him to them, the very peace of God we pass to one another every week, this an accompaniment of the Spirit of God honoring the Spirit of God in you.
As John writes, though, Thomas was not there for this particular interaction, so when the remaining disciples then went to tell him what had happened – because of course they were going to tell Thomas, because he’d been there with Jesus the whole time – Thomas doesn’t believe them.
When they say, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas replies, “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.”
According to John, Jesus had just risen from the dead: Mary Magdalene looked for him in the tomb; when she couldn’t find him, she called out to Peter and the beloved disciple. (Side note: John, the author of this book is the beloved disciple. I, for one, love that John doesn’t actually write in first person – instead, his writing is entirely from the outside looking in, hence he has to refer to himself in third person, thus choosing the identity “the beloved disciple” for himself. Now that’s pretty darn fantastic. If God ever taps me to write an account of Jesus’ life, remind me to come up with a fitting, third person name as well: “she who always saw God in the garden,” “the one who taught us about the Griddy,” “she who believed in strong, red heels,”1 or something of that nature).
After Jesus appears in the flesh to Mary Magdalene (and she then becomes the first to tell the world about his resurrection: “I have seen the Lord!”), then he appears to the disciples.
But somehow Thomas misses the memo. He wasn’t there, not when Mary Magdalene shouts out and not when Jesus appears before the disciples. It wasn’t until another week has passed that Jesus finally appears to Thomas, then repeating the words, “Peace be with you.” Note how he also repeats his actions, instructing Thomas to put his finger in his hands, to place his hands on his sides.
The embodied Jesus makes himself real to the one who needed it most.
Do not doubt, he whispers, but believe. And Thomas does: “My Lord and my God!” he finally says.
I’m drawing out this scene more than I normally do and for good reason: It’s terribly fascinating and wonderfully relevant.
We too, more often than not, are Thomases. We doubt, we lack belief, we need proof, we just don’t know! We find ourselves saying, “prove it!” because why wouldn’t we need proof when proof is so often our only mode of operation?
Of course, too often, at least in religious circles, Thomas gets a bad rap. To this I can only ask, but why? Thomas is most real to our circa-2023 selves. When it comes to the life of faith, we don’t know what to think about God, when believing doesn’t feel as easy as it used to be. We feel uncertain about goodness and peace and beauty, when messiness and brokenness and turmoil reign all around us.
Believing in something bigger than ourselves isn’t as easy as hearing it’s going to rain and tuning into the weather channel to see if our hunch will come true.
Because belief sometimes takes a little bit of time. And belief isn’t always on our schedule or timeline.
Thomas had to wait a week; maybe Thomas needed to wait a week.
Sometimes, when life hands us stack upon stack of cards of uncertainty, our invitation is to sit in the silence and the unknowing. Our invitation is to be in the tension and in the wrestling, in the not-knowing and ultimately, in a place of desperation.
I don’t doubt Thomas desperately wanted what they said about Jesus – about the man he dropped everything to follow – to be true. So, when Jesus finally does reveal himself to Thomas, it was all the sweeter.
It was time.
When Jesus instructed him to not doubt but believe, maybe Thomas was ripe and ready for belief – after all, it is sometimes only through believing that we have life.
For me and Thomas, this sometimes means demanding proof – sushi rice, Griddy dance, Jesus, and all.
As for you, wherever you are in your belief and in the life of faith, know that God is there with you.
Whether or not you ever utter, “prove it.”
Much of the chagrin of my preacher-lady self, the famous red clogs are no longer with us. Our car was stolen soon after I preached this sermon, and the clogs were still in the car.