Friday, April 5, 2024 | Trey Comstock
From generations of people with my job title telling us how bad that we are, we don’t expect a lot of positive comparisons to the Biblical good guys. Sure, a few times a year, we get to feel super superior to Judas. We wouldn’t take an astronomical sum of money to sell out Jesus, of course not. Although, I thought about quitting my job and joining Michael Bloomberg’s fail bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President. I did not believe that the having of several billion dollars or the being a former New York major made him uniquely qualified for the White House. I have no memories of a single policy position of his. However, he did promise to pay off all of his staffer’s student loans, and for that, I’d probably have called anyone Mr. President. Apparently, I don’t even stack up as well against Judas, as I’d like.
Generally, particularly with the Disciples, we get to see a few foibles and stumbles, but they go on to do amazing things that it can feel impossible to live into their example. A group of largely working class guys from an unimportant corner of the Roman Empire, through reliance on the Holy Spirit alone, built a movement for Christ that still stands. They healed miraculously, escaped danger miraculously, and spoke miraculously well. Even in dying, they died bravely for the Good News. His amazing faith live took Peter from unknown Galilean fisherman to immortalized in some of humanity’s greatest works for art. So far, All I’ve managed is turning an upbringing of relative privilege and ten years of university education into a life as an obscure Methodist pastor, and someone made a frankly amazing Muppet of me.
So, I find the blessing that Jesus slings our way in John 20 astounding. “Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’” (John 20:29 NRSV) That’s us. We, all Christians after that initial group, have found belief without the opportunity to physically inspect the risen savior. Thomas gets a bad rap, but over the course of our text, all the disciples see and maybe poke and prod at the physical evidence of Christ’s death and resurrection. We have to make leaps of faith. They got to apply the scientific method.
In rereading this and the other post-Resurrection texts this year, I’m struck by how much proof that they all needed. Matthew, Luke, John, and the longer version of Mark’s ending give us scenes of Christ proving himself and the Resurrection to his friends. Many of the Disciples scattered and presumably didn’t witness Christ’s death, but people that they knew, such as the Mary’s, did. When presented with their now clearly alive again friend and teacher, they seem to still struggle. They need to see, or in Thomas’s case touch, the wounds. In Luke 24, Jesus goes through multiple demonstrations of how much he is not a ghost. In the longer version of Mark 16, Jesus yells at the Disciples for not believing the testimony of the women and needing to see him for themselves. In Matthew 28, just before rolling out the Great Commission, as Jesus stand there in front of them teaching, Matthew includes the detail “but some doubted.” They had it much easier than us, and Scripture lays out clearly the degree to which they still struggled to comprehend the reality of the Resurrection.
Thus, those of us who have found faith without inspection of the forensic data have got one up on our Biblical heroes. I have always found faith difficult. I’d love more empirical data, but in a post-Ascension and post-Pentecost world, we have to rise to a higher bar and believe without having seen. I appreciate too that Jesus understands the difficulty in this task. He may chide the Disciples but helps them find faith, nonetheless. We do not seem to have a savior sitting in Heaven and shouting down, like an air chair quarterback at a missed pass, “How could they miss it? It’s so easy!” Instead, He declares any of us who do find faith, “blessed.”
We should all probably adopt this approach. We should stop acting like it’s so easy to believe that a dead guy, who you never met in person and cannot now meet, came back to life 2,000 years ago and that this medically impossible moment can utterly transform your life here and now. After years of struggle, I did come to believe this, and thankfully, Jesus, unlike many of the speakers at Contemporary Christian concerts in the early 2000s, empathizes and blesses my journey to faith. To doubt is not anathema. It’s human. The Disciples had to work through it even with the advantage of literal, physical Jesus standing right in front of them. We should heed Christ’s words. Blessed are those who find faith – not cursed are those who haven’t found it yet.