believing

Blessed Are Those Who Come to Believe

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John 20:19-31

Just as we get the Resurrection every year on Easter, we get Thomas every year on the Sunday after Easter. I couldn’t find anything definitive about exactly when Thomas became known as “Doubting Thomas,” but Merriam Webster says the first known use is about 1883. It’s interesting to me that Thomas’ doubt may have become a cliché after the Scientific Revolution, when people may already be demanding proof of religious claims. Why was Thomas castigated for his doubts, rather than praised or at least respected as an example of healthy and even scientific skepticism? After all, Thomas wasn’t the only disciple who needed eye-witness proof of the Resurrection. According to John, all the other disciples were there when Jesus first appeared; they got to see him. Thomas is singled out merely for asking for the same proof they had.

But the point of the story isn’t Thomas. It’s us. Jesus says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That would be us, the readers of John’s gospel a couple of thousand years later, and the Church. John leans heavily on “believing” throughout his gospel, although as I have written here before, John didn’t mean what we usually mean when we say we “believe” in the context of religions. The Greek word for “believe” might better be translated as “trust,” or “to give one’s heart to.” Again and again in John’s gospel, when Jesus says, “believe,” he means rely on, trust in, live as though your life depends on it. Someone reminded me recently that Civil Rights activist John Lewis said, “If you believe in something, you have to go for it.” That’s what believing means in John’s gospel.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Our cultural assumptions about Christianity or perhaps our Sunday school indoctrination might tempt us to conclude this means we are blessed if we can recite the Apostles’ Creed without crossing our fingers. In my opinion, that is a very low bar. Rather, “If you believe in something, you have to go for it.”

What does it look like to “go for it” because we believe in Christ? It depends on who you ask. As for me, I’ll quote Melissa Bane Sevier:
“We do what we know is right. We follow Jesus.
We remember that truth is our currency. We speak, share, and write the truth. Once we shrink from telling the truth, what do we have?
We honor those who are most vulnerable: the poor, the sick, the very young and very old, those with disabilities.
We welcome the immigrant, the refugee, and the stranger as if we were welcoming Jesus himself.
We work for fairness and justice. We lift up people of all races, nationalities, religions, people of different genders.
We live in hope.
We are always listening, always aware that we may be wrong, always looking for the best in those with whom we disagree.
We say – not just to those like us, but especially to those different from us – “we have your back.”
This is what Jesus did. This is what Jesus taught.”

“If you believe in something, you have to go for it.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
https://melissabanesevier.wordpress.com/2017/01/30/be-the-light-2/

Doubting Thomas

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John 20:19-31

In John’s gospel, all the disciples except Thomas were there the first Easter night when Jesus appeared mysteriously, somehow passing through the locked doors and solid walls of the room where they cowered in fear after the crucifixion. Jesus showed them the wounds on his hands and side. We don’t know where Thomas was, but when he finally shows up at disciple headquarters, he says he’s not buying their crazy story about Jesus’ rising from the dead until he sees it for himself. Just like they did, by the way. Once he’s seen Jesus, he makes the chief confession in John’s gospel, calling Jesus not only “My Lord,” but also “my God.” Jesus takes the opportunity to bless all the disciples who believe without seeing. This is a blessing for future disciples, for the ones who will read this passage – for us.

You might be thinking, “Huh. Maybe I don’t deserve this blessing because I’m not sure what I believe.” “Believing” is a major theme in John’s gospel, but this is important: John didn’t mean what we usually mean when we say we “believe” something. The Greek word for “believe” might better be translated as “trust,” or “to give one’s heart to.” Again and again in John’s gospel, when Jesus says, “believe,” he means rely on, trust in, live as though your life depends on it. Frederick Buechner captured the difference by distinguishing between “believing IN” and “believing.” “Believing in God,” wrote Buechner, “is an intellectual position. It need have no more effect on your life than believing in Freud’s method of interpreting dreams or the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Romeo and Juliet. … Believing God is something else again. It is less a position than a journey, less a realization than a relationship. It doesn’t leave you cold like believing the world is round. It stirs your blood like believing the world is a miracle. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.”

Believing is less a position than a journey. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.

So when Jesus says, “Believe in me,” he’s not asking whether you can recite the Apostle’s Creed without crossing your fingers. He’s asking whether you will trust that God so loves the whole world that more than anything God wants us to love each other the way God loves us. He’s asking whether it affects who you are and what you do with your life. In her book, A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle writes, “A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer … asked me, …‘Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?’ ‘Oh, Una,’” she answered. “’I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts. But I base my life on this belief.’”

Jesus isn’t condemning Thomas for his doubts. He’s inviting the rest of us on the journey of trusting, of basing our lives on our belief with all our doubts. So, please: Can we let Thomas off the hook, and all of the rest of us, as well? Maybe give him a new nickname?

Joanna Adams tells a story I could have told. She writes, “There was a time in my early 20s when I was a full card-carrying member in the circle of Doubting Thomases. My doubt simply got the best of my faith, and I left the church completely, thinking it was for good. I had such a difficult time making sense of it all. I stayed away until my longing for God became too much for me. I sought the council of a minister at a Presbyterian church near our home. I walked into his office and sat down, saying, ‘I’m not exactly sure why I’m here. I don’t know what I believe about the virgin birth, the resurrection, the lordship of Christ.’

“The minister answered, ‘I accept that. I wonder if you would like to try to figure these things out with people who are on a similar journey.’

“’O yes,’ I said, ‘I would like that very much.’

“And he answered, ‘Well then, you are welcome here.’

Adams writes, “Those words, ‘Well then, you are welcome here,’ have been the pivot on which my entire life has turned. I was welcomed in love and invited to grow in my knowledge and understanding of the revelation of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’”

That sounds like Resurrection to me.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

The Whole World

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John 3:14-21

Some of us are old enough to remember the man known as “Rainbow Man,” who held up signs that said, “John 3:16” at sporting events during the 1970’s and ‘80’s. You can find the verse on bumper stickers and neckties, and there’s even a John 3:16 Nascar, a bright yellow racing car emblazoned with “John 3:16” on the doors and the phrase “Victory in Jesus” on the hood. Obviously, John 3:16 is a big deal. But what does it mean? There is a traditional interpretation of this verse that most people believe is a literal interpretation: if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and our Savior, you will go to heaven and not to hell when you die. This is a source of great comfort to many people, but a source of anguish to many others.

The problem with a so-called literal translation of these verses is that it really can’t be done. What does “condemned” mean? Condemned to what? By whom? What does “perish” mean? What does “eternal life” mean? Is it something that happens now, or after we die? Does “eternal” refer to time or quality? What does “believe” mean? Is it intellectual assent, or is it more like “trust” or “follow”? You can’t read this passage without answering these and many other questions and as soon as you attempt to answer them you’ve quit being literal and started to interpret. You’ve started to put a spin on it. The typical spin answers all these questions as though Jesus is referring to life after death, as though “believing” means what you think about something, and as though Jesus is intending by his words to create a small circle of insiders who are “saved” while the rest of the world can go to hell, literally. That interpretation works only if you define those crucial words in a way that plays fast and loose with the original Greek, the context of these verses, and much of what we know about Jesus and God from the rest of Scripture.

The context is a conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus. Nicodemus visits Jesus in the middle of the night, plagued with questions about who Jesus is. Nicodemus is so concrete that he’s confused by Jesus’ metaphors. When Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be “born again,” Nicodemus says, “Can one enter a second time the mother’s womb?” And so Jesus pushes him gently: This is about newness, Nicodemus. This is about letting go of old truths, old definitions, old traditions, old theological certainties, and allowing God to lead you into a new and open-ended, hope-filled future.

And then Jesus says the most remarkable thing. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world…”. The single most important thing to notice about this verse is that God loved the world. God deeply loved the world that God created, and God longs for this creation to live; this whole world, this whole creation. And this is the way God loved the world: God loved by giving the son that the world might be saved. God wants to save the world; not individuals, not souls, this entire world.

All of John’s gospel has an urgency that often comes across in either/or terms. John draws sharp divisions between believers and non-believers, saved and condemned, those who do evil and those who do good. This either/or approach made sense for John’s minority community, which was trying to define itself not only against non-Christians but against other Christians. It doesn’t make sense for us today, when Christianity has been the dominant religion in the Western world for centuries, and we have the power to marginalize, exclude, and persecute. If we ignore this part of the context, then, in our hands, the gospel of John, and John 3:16 in particular, could do serious harm. And they have.

We don’t throw out this passage, however, because life can feel black and white at times. You take that drink or not, put the needle in your arm or not, walk out on the abuse or not, despair or hope, lie or speak the truth. No shades of gray. Some people come to faith because of a crisis, and John 3:16 feels like a lifeline. I once was lost. Now I’m found. I was blind. Now I see.

We also don’t throw out this passage because even those who have never felt driven to their knees before God are included in the rescue God intends for the whole world. What we know is that “God so loved the world . . .” The whole world. These familiar words are at odds with any interpretation of this verse that would exclude, demean, or minimize any part of the world, or any person in it, regardless of what they believe.

Frederick Buechner wrote, “The greatest miracle that Christianity has to proclaim is that the love that suffered agonies on that hill outside the city walls was the love of God himself, the love of God for his creation, which is a love that has no limit, not even the limit of death.”

The love of God for God’s world has no limits. No limits. How else are we to respond, but to cherish the world and every creature in it? And to live that love by throwing out a lifeline, to rescue, in very real, literal ways, whatever and whomever God so loves – which is everyone, and everything?

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
John Stendahl, “The Beginner’s Gospel,” in The Christian Century, March 19, 2009, http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2009-03/beginners-gospel.
Marilyn Salmon, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/18/2012