Thomas's facts, faith, and doubts

Sermon for Easter II, 2026, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: John 20:19-31

Many years ago, the hospital lab I was working in had its three-year inspection, including a review of the operations manual for each section of the lab. One of the inspectors wanted to know where our procedure for writing procedures was. There was some eye-rolling because we had a self-explanatory template for writing procedures, so a procedure for writing procedures was not needed. That moment of defining a definition recalled conversations I have had with hard-core rationalists who claim that the only things that are true are what we can quantify. So, for example, I can measure out a pound of ground beef to make chili. How do I know it’s a pound? The scale I use tells me so. How do I know the scale is accurate? I use a standard weight to calibrate it. Who made that standard? How did they ensure that it was exactly one pound? You see where this is going, that we can go crazy trying to find the source of certainty. The uncomfortable truth is that even science and rational thought are based on faith, and we actually rely on faith to claim that the world is as we perceive it to be. This leads someone to declare “This is one pound, and all scales will use this as the definition of one pound.” And because we do this, it is hard to change our perception of the world and the truths we find in it. Just when we think we have a firm grasp on the truth, God challenges our spiritual definitions and the world challenges our factual ones.

This morning’s gospel reading brings us to that eternal dance between faith and fact, the spiritual and the physical world, one that has been a part of my life for a while now. Jesus defines faith for us as what we have not seen, yet believe is true. The important word here is “believe,” because in terms of our faith that Jesus rose from the dead, we have not seen or measured it. Thomas is stuck in rational thought and he needs to see proof before he accepts the truth that Jesus appearing in the room is not just some mass hallucination. He gets to touch Jesus, to see with his own eyes the wounds that he saw Jesus endure on the cross, and that satisfies him. But what about us? We don’t have the benefit of using our senses to assure ourselves that Jesus really was resurrected from the dead the way Thomas did. Thomas stands for us in this passage, asking what we ask naturally in our rational, technological, scientific time. Thomas struggles with what he just knows is impossible, falling into the hole of wanting to explain how this resurrection happened. I sometimes start to fall into that hole myself when reading the miraculous healings, trying to figure out medically how it could happen, and I fail. John wants us to hear that we haven’t failed through Jesus’ words, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” John adds his voice in his postlude of, “But these are written so that you may come to believe” We don’t need to be present in the upper room to see with our own eyes what we are called to believe through faith. We rely on faith to claim that Jesus lives and we do not need to prove or justify that to anyone. 

There are people around us at work, or in our neighborhood, or in our families who will challenge us on faith-based truth. They have their own reasons and needs, including ones like we need to be wrong so that they can be assured they are right. They may maneuver us to pick a side, to agree with them which truths about scripture, God, and the world are based on faith or fact, and how faith and facts proves or disproves the other. However, the Anglican tradition has a perspective that sidesteps the maneuvering by holding things together in tension, keeping together ideas or perspectives that would otherwise fly apart. This practice has allowed me to remain true to my rational side from a career in science at the same time that I keep in touch with my spiritual side by preaching the good news Jesus shared with the world. I do not give in to finding a resolution, a winner and a loser, because the tension itself allows me to understand each better, on its own terms. Thomas, and we as witnesses to Jesus’ appearance, would miss out on that level of understanding if we had to pick the “correct” truth.

But, we have been, and will be challenged by people and ideas that cannot live without a single winner. We may be challenged with this gospel passage when someone points to the words on the page and says, “See, it’s right here, Jesus appeared to the disciples, so he was resurrected. Here's your proof.” And, yes, it’s a fact that those words are printed on the page, but faith does not need proof. We’ve established the fact of what is written in scripture, but what about looking at it through faith, as John asks us to. What does this passage mean to you? How does it deepen your faith in Jesus and in God? Facts and faith can and do co-exist, and they only fly apart when we see them as antagonistic or mutually exclusive. Does it matter how we define the Resurrection, and then define the faith that justifies that definition? Or does it matter more that our faith gives us hope and a way to find peace in a broken community or nation? Or hope in the face of death? Where the facts of the world fail us, hope from faith in the resurrection sustains us. This perspective gives us the ability to say no to the power struggle of either/or and find room for both/and. We are Thomas, holding together what seems like a contradiction between the fact of Jesus’ death on the cross and faith in his resurrection. We understand both death and resurrection more deeply while holding them together in tension than letting them fly apart. Whether it is a pound or a resurrection, we know what they are to us through faith, and faith cannot be measured.