What kind of TV do I like? You've probably never wondered what kind of TV Pastor James likes, but I'm going to tell you: many different genres. I love a good detective story. I love a thriller, space opera, but you cannot beat time travel. Now, I'm going to be a little bit controversial here. Not Doctor Who. I think it's completely lost the plot, but there we go. Now, I realise that may have deeply offended people. Let me just remind you that from the days of the earliest church onwards, the Christian church is a place where different views on many things coexist, and we eat and drink happily together and love each other in spite of those. So if you're a passionate Doctor Who fan, you still love me and I still love you, but I do not love Doctor Who.
Not so much the kind of TV time travel drama that goes back and forth from the future. More where people go far enough back in time so that modern-day people get to have adventures in a completely different period of history. I like that because it means I get to imagine someone just like me actually there, experiencing firsthand what life was like in that era of the past, witnessing the culture of a different period of history, witnessing some of the great events that have made life what it is today.
So let me ask — this is a rhetorical question — where would you go if you could? Or more exactly, when would you go if you could? Very few people would say, "I refuse to believe such and such an event in the past happened unless I can go back in time and see it. Unless I get to do that, I'm not having it." Or, "I refuse to believe that life was really like that back then." Sure, it would be fun to go back, as long as there's a guaranteed way to get back to the present day and I don't get stuck. Being stuck in Viking-era Norway would be freezing cold. So, as long as I can get home again, it would be fun to go on an adventure. But people wouldn't demand that experience in order to believe it.
You might like to think about how it is that we even have TV dramas like that. We only have them at all because the writers know enough about the past for their imaginations to do the rest. The scriptwriters believe that those events happened not because they've been there themselves, but because we have historians: the people who lived at the time wrote things down, and left a trail of evidence for their escapades, which modern historians can use to reliably reconstruct what life was like back then.
But it's easy to feel this way about Jesus. It's easy to feel that we're 2,000 years too late. If you're not yet a Christian and you're here this morning, maybe you think it'd be easier for you to believe in Jesus for yourself if you could go back and actually have those experiences. And those of us here who are Christians — which I guess is most of us — Jesus might feel more real if you could see him, touch him, hear him. And when those doubts arise, as they do for most Christian people at some point during their lives, wouldn't the vivid memories of that firsthand experience really help you to keep going? We're at the disadvantage of being 2,000 years too late.
Well, today in John's gospel, we meet Jesus after he rose from the dead. And reassuringly, the people alive at the time did not find this easy to believe. So we're going to watch and see how it is that they came to believe that this is real.
Life in his name
But before we get to whether this is true, let's be clear: we want it to be true. Let's start at the end of our reading, verses 30 and 31.
Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
John wrote so that we could believe and trust in Jesus for ourselves. But that is not the end of the road. There's a reason why he wants us to believe. He wants us to believe so that we can have what he calls life in his name. And in the second half of his book, there is a great deal of explanation as to what he means by life in his name. This means a relationship with the God who made us, which starts now and lasts into eternity. It means Jesus is with us now by his Spirit. It means that we know he will come back and that one day we will live with him forever. And all of that is for those who believe.
What we're going to do is look at the three groups of people we meet in this story and see how it is that they come to believe.
The disciples saw
First up, we have the disciples. The disciples saw.
The reading starts on the first Easter day. So we have to look up a little bit above where our reading started, to verse 19, where it says, "On the evening of that first day of the week." So it's still Easter Sunday. Jesus rose from the dead early in the morning on Easter Sunday, and now it's evening time on the same day. What happened that evening? Well, let's read on.
When the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
Now, the two key words in this passage — all the way through, we get them again and again — are the word "believe" and the word "see."
But Thomas was not there when Jesus came. He missed it. Now, as I find Thomas at this point in the story, I have to say he's my kind of man. I can relate to him. This would be me. I'm always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Some of you know that for eight years of my childhood, I grew up in East Africa. Occasionally, we would go to one of the game parks. It took about an hour to get in because we needed to try to convince the people on the gate that we were not tourists with lots of US dollars. We were locals. We lived here. Give us the residents' rate, please. Once we'd managed to talk our way in, it was great fun. But if you've done it, you know it's not like a zoo. You drive around and you look to see what you can find. And almost every time someone in the car thought they'd seen a lion somewhere distant over there, I was looking that way. And by the time I turned around to look, they couldn't see it either, and the moment was gone.
If I took a boat trip off the North Yorkshire coast, I would be looking out the wrong side of the boat when a huge pod of dolphins and a couple of blue whales surfaced on the other side, and by the time I looked over, they'd gone too. Thomas is my kind of man. I can relate to him, and I'm glad he's here.
But then Thomas does come back into the room, and this brings us to our reading. The disciples cannot wait to tell him the news. He only missed Jesus by a few minutes. Poor chap. But the disciples are overjoyed — you can just tell the tone and the excitement from the speech in verse 25.
The other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
The unthinkable had happened. The Jesus they thought they had lost forever just 48 hours earlier is back. He's alive. And they've seen him. They believe. Why? Because they saw him.
Thomas heard
Next up, meet Thomas. Thomas heard.
Verse 25 goes on: "But Thomas said to them, 'Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.'"
Thomas can't believe. Thomas won't believe, because he did not see.
Happily, Thomas is not left in his unbelief. Verse 26:
A week later his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though 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. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
Notice two things about that description. Firstly, notice that Jesus gives Thomas the exact same experience as the others. It was again a Sunday, exactly one week later. Again, the doors were locked. Again, miraculously, in spite of the locked doors, Jesus came and stood right in the middle of where they all were. And again, his greeting: "Peace be with you." Thomas gets exactly the same experience as the others.
But notice also: Thomas may not have been there when Jesus had appeared before, but Jesus was there when Thomas spoke before. Jesus knows the evidence that Thomas had just demanded. He doesn't arrive, say "Peace be with you," and then say, "Hello Thomas, you've seen me now — do you believe?" Instead, he says, "Put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand. Put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
Now, fascinatingly, John does not record Thomas actually doing that. It would seem that when Jesus actually appears, there is no need. Thomas just knows. Verse 28:
Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
Now, just as an aside, this is a great passage to turn to when people come to you and claim that Jesus never said he was God. Maybe you have some friends who are not Christians yet — we pray — and they say to you, "Well, Jesus never said he was God." Maybe you're talking to some Jehovah's Witnesses on the doorstep. They don't believe Jesus is God. Well, here's a really good passage. All faithful Jews knew the first commandment: you shall have no other gods but me. You worship God and God alone. Well, here's Thomas. He says to Jesus, "My Lord and my God." And Jesus does not correct him.
In fact, you could paraphrase verse 29 as Jesus saying to him, "You're absolutely right, Tom. Well done." So you cannot say that Jesus was just a great teacher who happened to do a few miracles as well. He would be a pretty rubbish teacher if the one thing he was wrong on was his own identity as God. His credibility as a teacher is blown out of the water if he lets Thomas worship him as God.
So Thomas came to see too. But Jesus had something to say about that. This is verse 29:
Jesus said to Thomas, "Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
Thomas heard before he saw. So seeing shouldn't have been necessary. Jesus says the blessing of life in all its fullness is for those who believe without seeing first.
You might wonder: how can people believe without seeing Jesus? Because of the testimony of those who did. Thomas heard the other ten tell him. And that was all that Thomas needed to believe and trust in Jesus for himself.
Some people today would say, "I can't believe in Jesus — I've never seen him," and, "My approach in life is only to believe in things I have seen." But we believe in things all the time that we haven't seen, because somebody else has seen them and can tell us.
I have a friend who likes jumping off mountain ridges with a paraglider on his back, and he tells me that the furthest he has flown from a start like that is over 100 kilometres, in the Alps — on the map on the screen. Sorry, that is the map of that particular flight of which he's most proud; that is not a picture of his glider. His has a bright pink canopy, but we won't talk about that. His wife's is blue. It's kind of his-and-hers, we tell him.
Or I've heard from somebody who said that they've been in a hailstorm where the hailstones were the size of golf balls. Put your car inside or the roof will be pitted and the windscreen smashed. I've never been in a hailstorm like that. The most I've seen is like the contents of a beanbag when it bursts open. But I believe it, because these people tell me.
I love good coffee — I hate bad coffee — but knowing I like good coffee, people like to recommend coffee shops to me. Well, whether I think it's good or not I'll find out after I've been, but I'm willing to say, "Because you say it's good, this has to be worth a try. Let's go and find out." Great recommendation. Thank you.
And I've never been to the top of Mount Everest. In fact, I've never seen Everest. In fact, I've never been to Asia. But I believe Everest exists. I believe it's very big. And I believe the air is very thin at the top. I've never seen the risen Jesus with my own eyes either. But Jesus's eleven disciples saw him. So I believe that he lives because they say so.
So: the disciples saw, Thomas heard.
We read
You see, verse 29 is not the end of the chapter. The chapter ends with verses 30 and 31 — the familiar verses I've already referred to — but to feel the force of those two final verses, we need to hear them in the context of the rest of the chapter.
Reflecting on this, I'm amazed how many times I have preached on Thomas coming to meet the risen Jesus but stopped at verse 29, and the number of times I've quoted verses 30 and 31 — why John wrote his gospel — but without thought for verse 29 and what comes before. These are really important verses, but they come in the flow of the chapter. So I'm going to read from verse 29 — notice the flow of thought here:
Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
You see the progression here? Because you've seen, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen yet have believed. These are written that you — the readers of John's gospel — may believe.
We are one stage further removed from Thomas. We don't get to see Jesus. We don't get to hear the other disciples in our ears telling us about him. We are 2,000 years too late for that. We have to rely on the fact that they wrote down what they saw, so that people in our day can believe it. What a wonderful provision. How kind God is, to ensure that these eleven didn't just experience it — they wrote it down, and then those documents are preserved so that we can read for ourselves.
It's a great provision from God, but it might be a tad disappointing for you. Today, most people in this country are not great readers. Now, I know — because I've been to lots of your homes — that some of you have houses that are full of books: books turned upside down, back to front, and inside out to try and fit a couple of extra books into an already overstacked bookcase. But if that's you, you are in a minority. When we were looking for a house to buy and looking around houses, very few have more than one bookcase in, if they've even got that. And it's probably got three cookery books on it that they don't even refer to, because they look it up on the web. Books are out.
Christians read because we want to read God's truth. But these days, if someone wants to read a book, often they don't read the book — they listen to the audio book. Got no problem with that, by the way. I love audio books. It just shows the way things have shifted. Even better, watch the TV series. Even better, wait for the 3D surround-sound version of the TV series and immerse yourself in the world of it.
More people have watched Lord of the Rings than have read the books. I did a little experiment at the first service — the numbers were about even, actually. Interesting. This proves that Christians read, I think. So, hands up: who's watched the three films of Lord of the Rings? Read the books? Slightly fewer, but comparable. The books are crackers, by the way. Read them, or listen to the audio book.
Go to a museum these days: you don't want a museum that just has a little display board with writing on to read. I mean, that's okay, but better is to get the audio tour from the gift shop, or to find a little QR code on each display that you can scan, and then the museum's app magically transports you into this magical world of wherever these things came from. We are much more influenced by what we see, hear, smell, and touch than we are by what we read.
In the old days — and I'm talking the 1950s, before I was born — if you wanted to buy a new vacuum cleaner, the travelling salesman would come to the door of your house to demonstrate the latest model. They would basically clean your floors for you, and the idea was you would be so impressed that you would go on to order one and he would get his commission bonus. I don't think, unfortunately, there were enough different manufacturers around that you'd get away with ringing up for a different demo every week and get your cleaning done for free. But nice idea.
Today we don't have travelling salesmen in the same way. What do we have? We have reviews. It turns out we do make decisions based on what we read from other people. Every shopping website has a reviews section. You want to buy a piece of clothing? Check the reviews to see if it's going to fall apart within three weeks. Want to buy a bit of tech? Let's check it does what it claims to do. If you want to change your brand of teabags in your supermarket online shop, you can read reviews of the latest teabags. Everything has reviews. You might not buy a car without taking it for a test drive, but I bet you'd read the reviews before you got to that stage.
What we have here in John chapter 20 are five-star reviews for the truth that Jesus is alive. On Easter day there were ten five-star reviews, and Thomas left one star, claiming the whole thing was fake. But a week later Thomas logs back in and changes his rating. He has seen Jesus alive, and now he changes to five stars as well. And we get to read their reviews, but also read the story of how Thomas came to change his review from one star to five. And so he too came to believe.
Conclusion
Maybe you wonder, as we bring this to a close, if we will ever see Jesus alive. Well, let me read a couple of verses from earlier in John's gospel.
John chapter 14 verse 3 — Jesus says, the night before he died: "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."
And then chapter 17 verse 24 — this is Jesus praying to his Father later on that same night: "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me, because you loved me before the creation of the world."
The day will come when we will see him. All doubt will be gone. We are not consigned for all eternity only to read about him. It is just a question of timing. I said earlier that you might wish you hadn't been 2,000 years too late. That is not the problem. We're not too late. We're too early. The day will come when we will see him.
But John says, and Jesus says, that the blessing of eternal life comes by believing in him now and not waiting for the day when we see him. What the experience will be on the day we see him depends hugely on whether or not we have believed and trusted Jesus in this life. That day will be a terrible day for those who have not believed in him in the here and now.
You see: the disciples saw, Thomas heard, and they wrote it down so that we can believe. But how awful to wait until we see him and only then realise we left it too late.
One of my favourite hymns was written by Charles Wesley in 1758. It's called "Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending." Traditionally sung at Advent — that is, the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Not the same as the calendar month of December. Don't let the calendar manufacturers trick you, but that's for another day.
Here is verse two of that hymn:
Every eye shall now behold him, robed in dreadful majesty. Those who set at nought and sold him, pierced and nailed him to a tree, deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see.
What a wonderful day it will be for those of us who have believed on the basis of their testimony. Finally, we see Jesus face to face. All doubt will be blown away like the sun burns off the mist at this time of year by mid-morning. The day will come — we will live with him forever. Full of joy, full of certainty.
So here's verse three. As I read this, just understand one word that's archaic, which is the word "rapture." It simply means delight — it's like the word "enraptured," something that you are so enthralled by that you cannot take your eyes off it. And as I sing these words — I'm not going to sing them now, don't worry — as I sing these words in corporate worship, this verse brings a tear to my eye every single time. It is profoundly moving. What a day it will be.
Those dear tokens of his passion, still his dazzling body bears, cause of endless exaltation to his ransomed worshippers. With what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture, gaze we on those glorious scars.
"Put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."