“Seeing is believing!” We’ve said it a million times ourselves, or heard others say it. “I’ll believe it when I see it with my own eyes!” We’ve been known to use that expression too. We tend to suspend our judgment on whether a something is true or false until we have, in fact, seen it with our own eyes or had it proved to us. Someone tells us her new boyfriend looks like Tom Cruise. Right. A neighbor tells us the watermelon in his backyard is bigger than the wheelbarrow he tries to lift it into. Uh uh. A friend calls to say that she just ran into Martha Stewart at K-Mart. Sure. The “C” student in your family tells you he is getting all “A’s” on his report card this semester. Oh really. That heavy-set cousin of yours leaves a message on your machine that she just bought a size 8 dress. Umm…

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” we reply to just about anything that is a stretch of our imaginations. As human beings, we really do like to see things for ourselves. We don’t like to accept things at face value but rather, like to come to our own conclusions for ourselves. We like to judge the evidence for ourselves, rather than take someone else’s word for it.

All these may be reasons why we like the story of Doubting Thomas so much. Like Thomas, many of us would have been incredulous at the disciples’ reports that they had earlier that day seen Jesus, no longer dead but alive. Like Thomas, maybe we too would have said, “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.” We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t with the rest of the disciples on the evening of Easter Sunday – but we can all too well understand his disbelief later when the rest of the disciples told him they had “seen the Lord.”

The passage we read from John’s gospel today has everything to do with going against our natural inclination of needing to see something to believe it, as opposed to believing something in faith. It’s critical for us to wrestle with this because as Jesus himself points out, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

One of the important things to note in this Easter evening story is that the other disciples had been slow to believe in the resurrection of Jesus too. Mary Magdalene had come racing back from the empty tomb announcing that she had seen the Lord, and nobody believed her. It wasn’t until that evening, when Jesus suddenly appeared in the midst of them, even though the door was locked and said to those gathered, “Peace be with you,” that they did, finally believe. The disciples needed to see to believe, just as Thomas would need to touch the wounds in order to believe.

When we think about the word “belief” – it can be defined as “trusting or having confidence in.” That, I think, enlarges our whole understanding of what it means to believe something. Think, for example, of the words of the Nicene Creed. Instead of saying, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” we could just as easily use one of the synonyms for the word belief and say, “I trust in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Or the next line, “I have confidence in Jesus Christ, his Son our Lord…” To believe means to have trust or have confidence that something is so.

Note also that Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” What that says to me is that believing in Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior is, for most of us, a process rather than a once-for-all event. In an anthology of spiritual quotations that I refer to often, the editor, an Anglican priest and Chaplain of University College, Oxford, writes: “My belief started off as a belief in God the creator. In my teens I went one stage future and found I could assent to a belief in the contents of a creed. In my early twenties belief focused mainly on the person of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. At the age of thirty a big step forward was taken when I came to believe in ‘the God within’ – something of the Father, Son, and the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. A constant unfolding of belief has led to an extension of life both in breadth and depth.” I really like that last statement, because I think that’s exactly what Jesus was getting at when he said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Note also that Jesus never chastised the disciples for not believing the news of the resurrection when Mary Magdalene announced it and he never criticized Thomas who needed physical proof in order to believe. The point and purpose is exactly what John wrote at the end of the passage for today: “…these (events) are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

I think sometimes people stay away from church because they assume that everybody in church “gets it” in the way of beliefs and because they themselves have questions or doubts feel that they couldn’t possibly find a place here. And yet without doubts, our faith doesn’t have an opportunity to grow. A faith that is alive is one in which sometimes we struggle to believe, in which sometimes we doubt, in which sometimes we question, and in which always, always, we ask for the guidance of the Spirit to keep learning. You and I are people who are growing in our faith, through the power of the Holy Spirit. We are not people who have figured it all out and who have every answer to every question. Doubters, like Thomas, and questioners, like the disciples, and learners of all ages, like us, are truly welcome here.

The theologian Paul Tillich said that “serious doubt is confirmation of faith.” The writer Frederick Buechner said, “Whether you believe there is a God or believe there isn’t, if you never doubt the certainty of your position, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they liven things up and keep us from falling asleep.”

“The interesting feature of the Thomas story is that Jesus did not turn away from Thomas because Thomas had doubts. Instead Jesus met Thomas at his point of need. God can handle our doubts. And if we have the courage to stick with our doubts long enough, God will provide us with what we need to move along on our faith journey.”

Perhaps you are like Mary Magdalene, who believed when Jesus, looking like a gardener, called her name. Perhaps you are like the disciples, who didn’t trust news given by others, and needed to see for themselves. Perhaps you are like Thomas, who needed physical proof. The bottom line is that all the doubters and questioners came to faith and grew in their faith. They gained confidence and trust in the reality of a Risen Lord, one who continued to be with them even after they could not longer see him. So it is for us who have come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. So it is that as we grow in our belief, our trust and our confidence we too find abundant life in his name.

Amen.