Second Sunday of Easter

All of us deal with issues of belief, disbelief, and doubt, and I’m glad we have today’s gospel passage which takes up those issues.  As we explore those issues and this passage, we’re going to focus on some key words in this passage and their meanings.

In every generation from the time of Jesus to our own, there are plenty of people who have faith in Christ, and who also have questions and doubts that coexist alongside their faith. In fact, plenty of the great saints have questions and doubts that coexist alongside their faith.  Some scholars describe this coexistence of faith alongside questions and doubts as a stage of faith, others describe it as something that continues in one form or another as long as we are in this earthly life where we see through a glass darkly, until, God willing, we arrive in heaven where we see God face to face. 

At first, we might think this coexistence of faith and doubt is what’s going on with Thomas.  However, the more closely we look at the words of this passage, the more we realize something different is going on with Thomas.  A lot of the misunderstandings of this passage come from what gets lost in translation.  The New Testament was written in the Greek language, and the Greek language has words for “no”, and “not”, “never” and other negatives, which are used in ordinary conversation and writing.  But Greek speakers also have the option to use two negatives together if you want your “no” to be twice as strong.  Using a double negative is considered bad grammar in English, although it still persists.  So an English speaker might say “no way” but if they want that “no” to be twice as strong they might use a double negative such as “ain’t no way” if they don’t care about proper grammar. 

When we look at what Thomas actually says in the Greek, we find it is “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not, double negative no way, believe.”  The emphasis of not just “no,” but extra “no”, double “no” is there.  What Thomas is talking about is not having some doubts, What Thomas is expressing is a double emphatic no, ain’t no way. 

Scholars who translate Biblical texts into English are people who use proper grammar, and since it is not proper grammar in English to use a double negative for emphasis, the double negative gets lost in translation.

We’re now going to shift to another verse, verse 27.  To understand it better, I want to point out two more things that get lost in translation.  One is that in Greek the word for faith exists not just as a noun, it also exists as a verb.  You can be “faithing”.  Faithing as a verb doesn’t exist in English, unfortunately, although I wish it did, because it’s a wonderful way to talk about how faithing is lived, and not just a static thing we have.  Since it doesn’t exist in English, the verb “faithing” gets lost in translation and is replaced with the English verb “believing.”

There’s another place where something important gets lost in translation.  There is a prefix in Greek which uses the letter alpha (the letter a) to mean “not” or “without” or “un”.  Since there are some English words that come from Greek, some of this influence carries over into English.  So we come across the word “apolitical” which means “not political”.  The word “amoral” means without morals.  We use the word “theist” which means a person who believes in God, and the word “atheist” which means a person who does not believe in God. 

When Jesus shows up to Thomas and offers him the opportunity to put his fingers in Jesus’s wounds, in the English translation he tells Thomas “Do not doubt, but believe”.  But the Greek word for doubting is not used here.  What Jesus says is a contrast between “pistos” which means “to faith” or “to believe” and “apistos” which means “to not faith” or “to not believe”.  So in Greek, Jesus says to Thomas “Don’t not-believe, but believe” or “Don’t not-faith, but faith.”  Another way to put it is Jesus tells Thomas, “Don’t become a not-believer, become a believer”.  Don’t become a not-faither, become a faither.

The answer comes quickly: Thomas exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”  He believes.  He faiths.

Jesus has an important reply.  “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  That includes the blessedness of all of us who have not seen the risen Christ and yet have come to believe. 

One commentator, Brian Stoffregen, asks, “If the blessed faith is not based on seeing, then what is it based on?”  He says, “I think the answer given in the text (and throughout [the gospel of] John) is that faith is to be based on the word. We believe through our ears more so than through our eyes. Thomas should have believed the word from the other disciples: “We have seen the Lord” (v. 25). Similarly the other disciples should have believed the word from Mary: “I have seen the Lord” (v. 18). The fact that they were still behind locked doors because they feared the Jews indicates that if they had believed the word, it didn’t make any difference in their lives….faith is not really about what we believe, but what difference it makes in our lives that we believe. Is it really faith, or trust, if it makes no difference?" 

The book The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective, is written by Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish New Testament scholar. “He is not a Christian; yet he believes that God raised Jesus from the dead. For him, the proof of the physical resurrection of Jesus lies in the changed lives of the disciples. I quote from the book: 

 

When this scared, frightened band of the apostles which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation. [p. 125]”

Back to believing the Word: The beginning of John’s Gospel proclaims, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  Stoffregen goes on: “Throughout the entire gospel, “the readers of John are confronted with the Word. First of all, Jesus as the incarnate Word, whose presence is salvation for those who believe that he is making God known to the world”

“Secondly…the entire Gospel of John is a Word that presents Jesus as the revealer of God and as the savior for those who believe and as judge to those who are blind to that revelation. Salvation is determined by the way one responds to the Word; not by what one may or may not see. Salvation comes through our ears more than through our eyes. We receive the Word and words through our ears – one of the most passive parts of our bodies. They do nothing. They require outside vibrations for them to do what they are supposed to do.

Along this line, Mary saw wrongly at the tomb….She thought she was seeing a gardener. Once she hears Jesus say the word, “Mary,” she is able to see rightly.”

Even when Thomas does not believe, Mary does not believe, the disciples do not believe, Jesus does not give up on them.  Jesus takes their “ain’t no way” and Jesus makes a way out of no way.  Jesus continues to love them through it all, and to speak his word to them.  Even when they have difficulties believing in the good news of the resurrection, it is as if Jesus says to them, “My disciples and my church”.  Jesus continues to speak the Word to us, the good news to us.  Jesus continues to say to us, “Do not not-believe, but believe.  Do not not-faith, but faith.  May we all be those who are blessed as we respond, “My Lord and my God!”