Thomas, a meditation on unfairness
Leaf
Shipmate
in Kerygmania
John 20:19-31 bible.oremus.org/
It seems unfair to me - and probably did to Thomas - that a number of disciples in the locked room on the first day of the week received two extraordinary gifts: the presence of the risen Christ, and the gift of his breathed-out Spirit of peace. Those were the two things the traumatized disciples needed most after the recent events.
There is no suggestion that Thomas ought to have been with them. Indeed, that he was out and about while the others were in a locked room for fear of the opponents of Jesus speaks well of Thomas's courage!
ISTM though that's often the move authors will make when dealing with incidents of Biblical unfairness: "they must have done something to deserve it." But no. Cain, Esau, Uriah, Joseph, and most notably Job did nothing to deserve the unfairness they experienced. I imagine that for Thomas, it was akin to being accidentally absent and for one time, missing contributing to the co-workers' lottery pool which he had contributed to for years... in the week that the co-workers win the jackpot.
I was thinking about the similarities of this story with Cain, and Karen Armstrong's idea that the Cain and Abel narrative is a story about the unfairness of love.
Thomas's story can be seen as the unfairness of different spiritual experiences. Some people are serenely confident in the reality of the risen Christ, and breathe his peace. Some people feel keenly the unfairness of the difference. Why not me? Why not now? What would have prevented the risen Christ from showing up saying, "Sorry about that, Tom. It's me!" Instead they all had to spend a mutually frustrating week together. Thomas seeing the other disciples as a bunch of smug bastards, huffing away on the peace of Christ; the other disciples grieved that Thomas wouldn't believe them, and that he decided to use gross and offensive language to hurt them as he was hurting.
It seems unfair to me - and probably did to Thomas - that a number of disciples in the locked room on the first day of the week received two extraordinary gifts: the presence of the risen Christ, and the gift of his breathed-out Spirit of peace. Those were the two things the traumatized disciples needed most after the recent events.
There is no suggestion that Thomas ought to have been with them. Indeed, that he was out and about while the others were in a locked room for fear of the opponents of Jesus speaks well of Thomas's courage!
ISTM though that's often the move authors will make when dealing with incidents of Biblical unfairness: "they must have done something to deserve it." But no. Cain, Esau, Uriah, Joseph, and most notably Job did nothing to deserve the unfairness they experienced. I imagine that for Thomas, it was akin to being accidentally absent and for one time, missing contributing to the co-workers' lottery pool which he had contributed to for years... in the week that the co-workers win the jackpot.
I was thinking about the similarities of this story with Cain, and Karen Armstrong's idea that the Cain and Abel narrative is a story about the unfairness of love.
Thomas's story can be seen as the unfairness of different spiritual experiences. Some people are serenely confident in the reality of the risen Christ, and breathe his peace. Some people feel keenly the unfairness of the difference. Why not me? Why not now? What would have prevented the risen Christ from showing up saying, "Sorry about that, Tom. It's me!" Instead they all had to spend a mutually frustrating week together. Thomas seeing the other disciples as a bunch of smug bastards, huffing away on the peace of Christ; the other disciples grieved that Thomas wouldn't believe them, and that he decided to use gross and offensive language to hurt them as he was hurting.
Comments
But as for spiritual experiences and God's unfairness in not handing them out freely like candy at the door...
Jesus implies really heavily that there are connections between suffering and humility (humiliation, I sometimes think) and obedience, and those very experiences. yes, I have them. And yes, I'm glad of them, and wouldn't lose them willingly. But are you sure (general you) that you want them? If so, would you pay the price?
Would you really, in your heart of hearts, trade your life for mine? Trade for child abuse and growing up unloved, ridicule and neglect, becoming the scapegoat of my family and hated by relatives who barely know me, because my parents who should have protected me instead blackened my reputation to other family members who saw me for no more than a couple hours every year? Trade for Ehlers-Danlos syndrome which I've had since birth, along with multiple dislocations, disabilities and constant chronic pain that requires opiates to soothe twice daily? Trade for a life spent working among the urban poor at our own cost, taking refugees into one's life, heart and home, up at all hours (until fairly recently), and then having our reputation smeared publicly by those who see only the glory of pastoral service and aren't prepared to put in the hard work, so they try for a coup d'etat so they can grab your so-called power (ha)? Trade for faceblindness and legal blindness until very recently, a life of obscurity and underemployment, and betrayal by a friend--who has just turned up to complicate my work life again, making me wonder if I'll still be employed three years from now. Trade for complex PTSD, chronic anxiety and an ACE score of seven. Would you pay that price?
Think carefully before you say you want the spiritual experiences. "Nothing almost sees miracles but misery," and even such minor servants of Christ as we are walk the way of the cross far more than we'd like.
And the price asked of you may be different. Will be different, because everybody gets their own cross, sucky sucky suck. Do you still want it?
If so, I've had these verses jumping out at me recently in my reading, both direct quotes from Jesus, both strongly suggesting that you CAN know--if you really want to, if you're willing to humble yourself to ask, and take the first steps of obedience in submission to Christ. Which is not a thing most people want to do, unsurprisingly. Because it means making yourself very vulnerable, and also opening the door to hope, and maybe getting hurt again...
These are the bits. Do with them what you like. I've been learning humility and baby steps in obedience for a long, long time, and I suck at both, but I must admit that Jesus is keeping his promise. Even to me.
Jesus said: "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority." (John 7:17)
and from John 14:21-23, speaking on the night before he died, Jesus said: "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. "
Not at the time of unfairness.
If God had favoured grain, Could we have a bible where Able decided to be judged for a brother as a lamb.
Or did God see that and Cain was always a murder to be before being a murderer.
Though as you point out, it wasn't (in the medium term) a fair result for Abel.
Thomas, I don't feel too bad for, his attitude wasn't irrational (by my standing),and he had the evidence he wanted (according to others)
I apologize if this is a tangent.
How many of us would have accepted the other disciples' word for it at face value? How many of us do so consistently now? Sure, he fluffed it, 'but God gives more grace.'
Did he? All 12 an arm's length from Jesus all the time? We can know this?
This, exactly.
I'm interested to see how often the conditional "if-then" construction appears in these verses, and by extension, what I understand to be your theological position. Am I understanding you correctly if I paraphrase and summarize the posted position like this: "If a person suffers - whether that suffering was imposed or chosen - then they will receive divine certainty and presence"?
Classical art tends to show them in a face-to-face stance, somewhat confrontational, with Jesus daring Thomas to touch him (in an interesting contrast with Mary Magdalene a few verses earlier!). Thomas is either standing or kneeling.
But what if they were standing side-by-side? What if the person who is the very epitome of Having Been Treated Unfairly stands beside Thomas and says, "Yep, I get it?" That makes sense to me, seeing Jesus alongside the sizeable group of people from Cain to Thomas.
I've also been thinking about this text in terms of some Shipmates. People who have been better disciples than I post about their agony of doubt, their inability to breathe in the peace that everyone else seems to have, without having done anything wrong or blameworthy. It also seems like me, and the other bleating ninety-nine righteous sheep, don't have much effect in persuasion. It's when the risen Christ comes and shows up in his own good time and sits his injured body beside them, that acceptance and peace come.
I apologize for the candy comparison. This subject goes very near the bone for me, but I should be more careful with my wording.
Okay, the if-then construction. Hell if I know. I mean that seriously. I come from a background (Lutheran) where we give credit for all good things to God alone, and downplay the human element to the point of invisibility. And by and large I think we're right to do so. Especially when we're talking about salvation. I don't feel at all comfortable with the "I have decided to follow Jesus" stuff, and please nobody take anything in what follows here as having anything to do with who gets saved. In what follows, I'm talking purely about people who are Christian, are saved, etc. already.
So in that sense we all start at the same point as far as blessedness. I mean, what could be better? But then we get into sanctification, and Christian growth, and becoming fruitful to God... and there starts to be variation among us. Some of the variation is because we are created as very different people, with different natures, and that is intended by God and is something to be celebrated.
But I can't help thinking, from the Bible and from conversations with other Christians who have honored me by telling their stories--it also looks to me like human choice becomes a factor. God does not force anyone. But looking back at my own life, I see a series of spots where a question was laid before me--sometimes a laughably small choice, but it seemed huge and even terrifying at the time--and God said, "Will you do this?" or "Will you let me do this with you?" not necessarily in a voice, but the choice was clearly set before me.
And it was clear that saying no to whatever-it-was was an option, and it was also clear that saying yes would lead to ... God knows what. That was the terror of it. It was handing over a little more of the control of my own life, into the hands of someone that I knew (mostly theoretically then) loved me, but it meant losing control... Basically I knew that through that door lay a greater closeness with God; and just as certainly, through that door lay suffering, or the possibility of suffering, and no safety was promised to me.
Not gonna lie, almost every time I answered, "I'm too terrified--YOU choose for me." Which was equivalent to a "yes," and he took it so, but at least I didn't have to squeak it out, if you know what I mean. I'm a coward by nature.
And yes, suffering did come, though not the kind of suffering I was imagining--in fact, almost every time the results of saying "yes" and going through that door were nothing I ever could have imagined. But blessing came, too, and a growing closeness to God. And eventually, another turning point, another door, another choice. And now I'm here, and I'm nowhere near done yet.
So what was that "Yes" I gave God? It was plain and simple obedience--even if it was the most terrified, begrudging obedience you can imagine. And though I didn't realize it, it was also a step closer to the one who loves us, and wants to be close to us. For some reason obedience and closeness seem to go together, and I don't understand it myself. And so these last few weeks I've been asking him to teach me by setting me kindergarten-level tasks...
So, what? vulnerability, humility, obedience, trust. Scary stuff. Terrifying for me, given my background. But they seem to have led to me being where I am, useful to God in refugee service, and also someone who "hears" from God at times. Not generally for my own benefit--when he speaks the most clearly, it's to tell me to do something for someone else (or to stop!) and the things I most want assurance on, I don't get.
So back to Thomas. I doubt Thomas would complain of being left out, if you could talk to him now. I don't think God does "fair and equal". He goes beyond that, if you let him--does better than that. But it's individual for each person, I think. Much as I may grumble about my own suffering, the truth is I wouldn't exchange my life for anybody's. Neither would my husband, though the rest of our family considers us pitiable. But it doesn't feel that way from the inside, not at all. We're happy. And getting to know Jesus is worth everything.
Forgive me if I'm not making sense.
I am not aware of a single instance of a question being laid before me of any spiritual significance. Of any "will you do this?" or "will you let me do this?". Except once. And I went and did what I thought God wanted, and it turned out not to be, because despite my co-operation, willingness, and giving up of four years of my life for it, it didn't happen. Good came out of it - sure, and perhaps better than the good I was expecting, but if that was God's plan he achieved it by lying to me about my vocation. I'm not sure I want to go there.
Given that context, I'm not entirely filled with joy by the suggestion that there's a link between our choices, humility, willingness to go along with God etc and a conscious sense of his presence. My first thought, if I'm honest, was "yep. I knew somehow it'll be made my fault."
@Leaf, this repositioning intrigued me. Whenever I've thought about Thomas (who only appears in this gospel), I've wondered if he himself might have looked back in hindsight and read the encounter with the Risen Christ as giving him exactly what he needed at that moment, when he had been convinced he had missed the encounter and breath of peace given to his fellow apostles, when it all seemed unfair and meaningless. With hindsight and time, those 'unanswered prayers' we made when younger might appear very differently as sparing us from heartbreak or closing a door while opening a window. Ageing, we glimpse the pattern in the carpet or the silence that was an answer we could not hear then.
It strikes me too that Thomas asks for something unusual and specific in his initial hurt, unassuaged grief and doubt: that he might see the wounded and scarred Body of Jesus and be allowed to probe the wounds of His crucifixion, touch his flesh and woundedness. He wants to experience the Crucifixion in the Resurrection.
And Jesus responds to that need and crisis of doubt. He stands next to Thomas the twin, shows him the Body marked by suffering and death and invites Thomas to touch him. Thomas 'sees' not just the Jesus he knew in life and grieves but God ('My Lord and My God'). Jesus has met him where he is and answered his need, quelled the doubt.
Then Jesus says something else and I'm not sure I'd read it as a rebuke. He tells Thomas that the truly blessed are those who trust and have faith without needing concrete proof or this kind of 'showing'. It's possible Jesus knew something about Thomas we don't: the depth of his grief and abandonment, his inability to move forward at that time without a miracle. Or he looked ahead and saw that Thomas would always have periods of doubt and struggle with disbelief, wonder if he had imagined it all, if his memory could be trusted. Often doubt is at its core self-doubt: being unable to trust one's own instincts, intuitions, the word of those closest to us. Jesus might be letting Thomas know that he will have to journey on in faith without these kinds of 'proofs'.
On a personal note, this gospel passage made me think about how often we think of healing as restoring us to what we were before trauma or illness or divorce, bereavement etc. We don't like to think we will be healed and yet scarred and carrying deep wounds with us, that the mourning will always be there. In the same way, when we imagine being reunited with those we have loved and lost, we like to think of them as happy, younger, in good health, as they were when we first knew them, not worn down or marked by suffering. But that is the crucial embodiment of the whole person glorified, that the Risen Christ still bears his scars and wounds revealed to us here so that as doubters we might identify with Thomas.
Absolutely I'm not going to make it your fault, nor do I think God is doing so. What you have going between you and God is holy and so absolutely none of my business to meddle in that I'd hesitate even if you invited me. Who am I to think I understand what God is doing in your life?
So please don't take it that way from me. This is simply the way it went for me. And I, too, made a major decision that I thought was God's will when I was younger, and looking back I'm pretty sure I was wrong about that, and it caused me a lot of pain. But I don't think it was wasted, for all of that--I don't think a desire to do right is ever wasted, or ignored by God.
If I could write like this, I'd quit my day job.
But I'm pleased to see she picks up freelance writing and translation projects.
@KarlLB - far be it from me to interfere - as Lamb Chopped has reminded us - but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been God who 'lied' to you about your vocation. I wouldn't be piously superspiritual enough to suggest you 'misheard' either. My guess would be that you were involved in circles where this sort of thing was expected - as indeed I did - and acted accordingly.
I've seen this sort of thing happen many times. Sadly.
On the divine/human synergy thing - synergia as we Orthodox call it ... I'm still a newbie but I'm finding that concept both dizzyingly scary and liberating at one and the same time.
Yes, salvation is of the Lord. I don't like the 'I have decided to follow Jesus' thing either but equally baulk at some of the apparently more deterministic stuff that comes out of more 'Western' approaches from St Augustine onwards - whilst, hopefully, retaining that sense of an active and benign providence.*
I'd need more space to unpack that.
To quote St Augustine more positively, 'Love God and do what you will.'
* And also taking on board that classic Lutheranism and Calvinism are both more nuanced than they can sometimes be caricatured or portrayed.
At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, if there were 'lies' involved KarlLB, they'll have come from The Other PlaceTM or at least our own imaginations, conformance to group expectations or suggestibility.
You are talking to Mr Suggestible and Susceptible here to some extent.
I raise the story for a couple of reasons - one to demonstrate that our imaginations are very fertile sources of ideas which are easy to misattribute, leading to the dangers you too have seen. And secondly to illustrate it's very hard to be open to God's prompting when it is a lot rarer than daft ideas coming into my head, in the same way that mermaids are rarer than manitees.
These days I'm much less inclined to look for special providences and promptings and all the rest of it. I think it's more an issue of learning to think 'scripturally' as it were- by which I mean the Wisdom literature and The Beatitudes and so on - as far as I am from attaining to either.
The Devil's a matter for another thread. I tend to see evil as the absence of good and, for want of a better term, a form of parasitic anti-matter as it were. I don't see that as incompatible with a belief in the Devil and fallen angels and so forth so long as we don't envisage them in medieval terms. Horns and pitchforks and so on.
I was using the reference to The Other PlaceTM loosely rather than making any suggestion that evil forces had led you astray.
As a side note, while they turn up in medieval imagery in paintings and such looking like that, actual medieval theology doesn't see them that way.
I hope you are okay with my edit, Nenya. It's the eventually - the uncomfortable week that the disciples spent together - that draws my attention here.
One way to see this is as an enacted version of the problem of eschatology: the already/not yet of God's timing.
Thomas
what shaped my faith you ask?
that week
the week when all the others
had seen Jesus
but I had not.
I mean it felt again
like when I was a kid
and my big brothers
Samuel and Jesse
came home from beth din
eating the dates the Rabbi had given them
while talking of the original temple
and I wanted sweet dates
I wanted to be big like them
go to beth din
and learn the law
You see I was still
locked into Joshua’s death
not sure what to make of it
and they had this sparkle
I wanted to believe their story
of Joshua being alive again
but that Shabbat eve picture
of his limp body
being taken down
from the cross
haunted me
not that I was there
but like them I had listened
to the tale the women and John
had told that Shabbat
and my dreams
had filled with horror
I am not good at stillness
the waiting around of early grief
someone had to leave the locked room
go into town to seek food to eat
salted fish is palatable only for so long
even for the grieving
so that evening
I went to see what was still for sale
leaving the others bound with grief
despite rumours from the women
When I returned
with a jar of wine
a bushel grain for the women
to make bread with
and a bunch of dates
enough to sustain us
during the immediate grief
I found a babble of excited voices
making sense of how Joshua
had been in the room
to add to the incredulity
he had not given the knock
and come in via the door
although he had eaten
some of the salted fish
typical of him really
to do something extraordinary
and then want to eat
how was I supposed to make sense of it
there words were the babble
of an underground stream
to a parched traveller
looking for a hidden well
I wanted it to
and it was that want
that drove the demand
to touch Joshua’s wounds
I wanted to see
just as old Bartimaeus had done
on the journey up for that last Passover
as we had passed through Jericho
shouting he had been
Joshua
Son of David
have pity on me
and that week that became my prayer
I wanted to see
I wanted to be like the others
enough for me to stick around
holding onto the idea
that I might just pick up
enough of their confidence
to be able to fake it
slowly the seven days wore on
and I felt further and further
from the rest of those in the room
until the next the day after Sabbath
I was planning to leave in the morning
but for one more night
I’d try
it was a quiet during supper
and they were telling again
the story of a week ago
when this voice behind me said
Peace be with you
and then
Thomas
and I heard no more
until I stammered out
my Lord and my God
Others quote the reply about
blessed are those who do not see
but believe
what they do not get
is somehow I was blessed
that week
when I did not see
and so my faith
has always had
at its core
a thirst for God
But I take your point. I hadn't given any thought to the lapse of time between the two occasions.
I absolutely love this. And passing over the more awesome stuff, which i can't do justice to--this part made me laugh out loud:
typical of him really
to do something extraordinary
and then want to eat
That's him, all right.
A few thoughts I’ve been mulling since church on Sunday, but haven’t gotten a chance to post about yet:
First, this bit really jumped out to me when the Gospel was being read (my added emphasis): How had I missed before, or why didn’t I remember that Jesus showed the other disciples his wounds (without being asked?), and that Thomas was only asking for the proof (sign?) that the other disciples had been given?
That did perhaps highlight the sense of unfairness might have felt, but it also provided context for Jesus saying: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That he’d already shown his wounds to the others made it hard to hear his words to Thomas as chastisement.
And about that, our minister suggested that those words from Jesus weren’t really meant for Thomas at all. Rather, they were meant for us—that in what he said to Thomas, Jesus was circling into the conversation all of us who came into the picture after the Ascension and don’t get to see or touch his wounds. The distinction drawn wasn’t between Thomas and the others, but rather between those first disciples and the rest of us.
The thing is, I suspect Jesus didn't really like the miracles. He did them. He had to to establish his street cred. But the miracles are not the point of his teaching. I suspect he wishes he could have just taught without the showy stuff, without the miracles. Because God probably (in my estimation) does not want us to rely on miracles to get by. He wants us to function without miracles. To care for each other, look out for each other with no need for any divine intervention. To love each other as he loves us.
I think the story of Thomas is Jesus trying to get that across, again. We shouldn't need miracles. We shouldn't need to see somebody rise from the dead. That was not God's plan when he created us. Jesus certainly was not criticizing Thomas, but it was what we would now call "a teaching moment." To get us to understand that God's existence is not in the miraculous, but in the ordinary.
@Nick Tamen I'd forgotten that line, or to be more accurate, I'd always thought of the scene with Thomas as being unique in the showing of wounds. After reading your post I went back and looked at the appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection and am rethinking a great deal! There is much more misrecognition, delayed or deferred recognition, doubt and reluctance to believe the testimony of others than I have considered.
Mark 16: 12-13 12
Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either.
Or Luke 25, for example: "The disciples told their story of what had happened on the road and how they had recognised Jesus at the breaking of bread.
They were still talking about all this when Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you!’ In a state of alarm and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he said, ‘Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have.’ And as he said this he showed them his hands and feet. Their joy was so great that they still could not believe it, and they stood there dumbfounded; so he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes."
Those forty days after the Resurrection must have been bewildering for the disciples and experienced as a time of -- I wouldn't say 'unfairness' but uncertainty mixed with joy at finding themselves thrown into the unknown, some catching on faster than others, some needing more time to figure out how to move forward in this completely new and unprecedented reality.
Fair. Thank you.
Agreed! Thank you, Jengie Jon.
The common greeting, plus the connection with eating, can be compressed: Jesus in the locked room nodded his chin up to the disciples and said, "Sup?"
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted..
Thomas doubted since he had not seen. Some of the disciples - having seen, even while seeing - still doubted.
It's a wonder that the church ever got off the ground.
In this context, unfairness is in the eye of the one experiencing it.
Some catching on faster than others might feel very unfair to those for whom, despite their best efforts, cannot catch on as fast as the others. Why them and not me? Some needing more time to figure out how to move forward can be a very painful time, without having done or not done anything to merit the pain of the delay.
I noticed that in the initial appearance, Jesus could be seen and heard by the disciples. But it was only after he showed his wounds that they rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Somehow they couldn't 'see' him before that.
Yes! There is something about brokenness, woundedness, that makes it possible for disciples to see him.