No Substitute Jesus

Text: John 20:19-31

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            This week, as we always do the Sunday after Easter, we hear about Thomas and his disbelief at the other Apostles’ report about Jesus appearing to them. Poor Thomas is often treated as something of a whipping boy, called “Doubting Thomas,” used as a negative example of how believers should behave. And to be sure, Jesus’ words to him, “Stop being unbelieving, but believing,” should serve as encouragement for us to not demand that our Lord and our God bend to our whims and desires.

            But if we pay close attention, there’s actually quite a bit that Thomas gets right. Earlier in John’s gospel, when Jesus tells His disciples that He’s going to raise Lazarus, Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.” Thomas understood what it would mean for Jesus to go to Bethany, so near to Jerusalem and the leadership there that hated his Teacher. He also understood that Jesus would die, something that the Apostles had been told numerous times by Jesus, but many hoped He would avoid. Thomas recognized that a disciple is not greater than his teacher, so if Jesus was going to die, they could expect the same thing. He had learned that lesson from his Lord.

            And even after Jesus appeared to the other Ten after His resurrection and they told Thomas, it becomes clear that Thomas is only interested in seeing the crucified Jesus. He won’t accept any chance that it could be an imposter pretending to be their Teacher and exploiting their grief. Thomas himself was a twin and knew that one person could be mistaken for another. He won’t accept any hallucination of Jesus. He won’t accept any wishful thinking. He doesn’t want a cleaned up, sanitized version of Jesus. He only wants the Jesus who was crucified, as He had told them He would be, as His disciples had seen and heard. “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe. Show me the nail holes, the spear wound in His side where the blood and the water proved He was dead. Let me be sure that it’s really Him, that it’s really my Jesus who was crucified.”

            We should aspire to be like Thomas in that. No bloodless Jesus for us, no cleaned up, uncrucified Savior for us. We should refuse to believe in any Messiah that’s polished up to fit the sensibilities of the time, a Christ who’s turned into nothing more than a teacher who’s nice and clean and easy to tuck away in our back pocket until we want to see Him again. We should always be on our guard against any imposter Jesus, who might say things that vaguely sound like they could possibly be in the Bible, cast in the image of whatever cause the winds of the moment dictate. No Jesus invented by men for us. Instead, we should demand to know no Savior but the crucified Jesus, the One with nail marks and spear wound, who wore a crown of thorns and hung on a cross for our salvation. We should, like Thomas, look only for the Jesus who actually died for the forgiveness of sins. We should want no other Jesus than the One whose sacrificial death is testified by the water and the blood, the water of Baptism and the blood of the covenant in His Supper. No other Jesus will do. No other Jesus can save. We should be as unyielding as Thomas when we look for our crucified Lord, no matter who it is that’s telling us about Him.

            But now we get to what Thomas got wrong. He demanded to see with his eyes, touch with his hands, the resurrected Jesus. He wanted to base his certainty on what his human senses and reason could process. That was his misstep. And it’s one we know well.

            We also want to walk by sight, by what we see and feel. We want to be able to quantify Jesus’ presence in our lives, to subject Him to tests to prove that He’s really with us and that He favors us. We try to force God to play by our rules, to prove Himself to us. It may not be in the way that Thomas tried to do this, but we have our own ways that fall into that same category. We want God to make this or that happen, to grant this request, to make that situation go away or to go the way I want it to. We want Him to make things easier for us, to make it readily visible to everyone’s eyes that He’s on our side. We may not want to put our fingers into the nail marks in His hands, but we do want to be able to see something, to feel something that will prove Himself to us.

            But that’s not faith. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So yes, like Thomas, demand the crucified Jesus. Don’t accept any substitutes, no matter how slick and shiny and attractive they might be. But believe that He comes to you through His Word—through the preaching of those sent to tell you that He is risen, through the Word of Scripture that spells out how He has kept every promise, through the Word that’s placed into the water of Baptism, through the Word hidden in flesh and blood, bread and wine.

            Our confirmand this morning is continuing on her walk of faith rather than sight. She’s been spending the last three years steeped in the words of Jesus’ promises to her, reminded of how He comes to her in His resurrected life and peace. And how is it that she will begin this rite of confirmation? With a vow stating her belief in the Word of God, the Scriptures of the prophets and Apostles, written for her instruction and strengthening of her faith. It will be all about faith, as it always has been. And her vows will end with a very Thomas-like promise, that she would rather die than fall away from faith in her crucified Lord. You’ve made this vow too, maybe without thinking about it all that much, but even so, you are walking with your Lord—through life, through trials, through joy, though wonder, through crosses, through death, even into resurrection. So watch for Him in the places where He’s said He will be. Listen for what He’s giving you in those things—in Baptism, Communion, Absolution, the conversation and consolation we’re given to speak to one another. Hear Him and rejoice, for He is risen, and He’s come to be with you, with all that He won on the cross. Your crucified Lord and God lives. In the name of Jesus, the Crucified and Resurrected One. Amen.