PLAIN SPEAKING
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, California
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Text: John 20:19-31
In another season of high political drama, enacted during a time that many of us remember vividly, a journalist named Merle Miller undertook the task of recording an oral history of President Harry S. Truman, the Kansas City haberdasher and machine politician who rose to the highest office in the land. Recorded in 1962, Miller presented Truman as a passionate person with strong opinions, honestly and bluntly stated. When Miller gathered these interviews into a book, published some 12 years later, he entitled his volume Plain Speaking. At the time it was considered the definitive word on the president from the “Show Me” state, full of his candid, straight forward opinions about his friends and foes, colleagues and challengers. One reviewer says in the interviews “Truman easily discusses tough issues like dropping the bomb on Japan, the Marshall Plan, and Korea. He praises associates Omar Bradley, Dean Acheson, Herbert Hoover, and especially George Marshall. He also shows scorn for wealthy special interests, Douglas McArthur ("Mr. Brass Hat"), Dwight Eisenhower ("difficult"), Richard Nixon ("Shifty-eyed...Liar"), and sees President Kennedy as capable but too young.” Lacking a college education, Truman read widely and had deep respect for the office of the presidency. It is only in light of recent research that Merle Miller’s embellishment and fabrication of some Truman “quotations” has caused the book to be called into question as a completely accurate representation of the 33rd President.
In a political age in which political handlers, spin doctors and media magicians mold the images of political candidates, it’s hard to know where to turn and whom to believe. Merle Miller’s unfortunate dissembling notwithstanding, the image of Truman as a plain man, from common roots, who spoke his mind, seems to stand the test of time. And I would argue that such a man was Thomas, called Didymus or the twin, a disciple of Jesus and a plain spoken, practical man, capable of deep commitment and affection, who definitely hailed from the “Show Me” state.
In some ways he is a minor character in the gospel accounts, best known of course for the story we read this morning, which is the culminating story in the gospel of John. He is the infamous “doubting Thomas” whose name has become a catch-phrase for doubt and a demand for concrete evidence. Some have ridiculed his lack of faith; even Jesus gently chides him in today’s text. Of course, one might argue that the gospel writer has set him up here to make the ultimate confession and proclamation that brings the gospel full circle – “My Lord and my God.” The very Word become flesh is now recognized in the resurrected Christ; God incarnate is proclaimed in Thomas’s profession of faith.
For a minor character, Thomas actually has three significant appearances in John’s gospel and an honorable mention in the 21st chapter, which most scholars consider an add-on to the writer’s original text. There he is named among those disciples gathered by the Sea of Galilee that morning when Jesus served breakfast and commanded Peter to “feed my sheep.”
Thomas’s first appearance is during that strange and troubling scene that leads to the raising of Lazarus. Remember, in chapter 11, Mary and Martha have sent word to Jesus that their brother is ill; Jesus delays for two days going to Bethany to see about his sick friend. Finally he says, “Let us go to Judea again,” but the disciples remind him, with incredulity, “Rabbi, the [Judeans] were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” He tries to explain to them why the time is now right to go, partly because their friend Lazarus “has fallen asleep” and Jesus is going to “awaken him.” In all too-typical literalistic and simplistic thinking, their almost humorous response is, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Clearly they are not eager to return to Jerusalem to face the prospect of ridicule and stoning by their enemies, even if their friend is suffering. Again, Jesus makes an effort to explain the situation to them. Lazarus is dead and Jesus is going to use Lazarus’s demise as a means of giving them reason to believe.
Finally, Thomas cuts through all the questions and confusion, with clear courage and devotion to his teacher, if not with complete understanding. He confronts his feet-dragging, fearful companions, if Jesus is going, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Here we see Thomas as the kind of figure who, once he has made up his mind, commits himself to act on his belief. If Jesus is his teacher, the one for whom he has given up home and family and livelihood, the one on whose words and deeds he has come to rely, then he will follow him to the death, if he must. In the end, we don’t know what happens with Thomas during the arrest, passion and crucifixion, but we do know that in this moment he is ready to follow, come what may. Plain speaking – it’s time to step up, to put your money where your mouths is, to follow him right into the jaws of death, if necessary, if that’s the cost of discipleship.
We next encounter Thomas during the discourse on things to come, following the Passover meal in the upper room (John 13-14). “Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me…[but] ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’” This time Peter is the spokesperson for the simplistic and literalistic, “Lord, where are you going?” “Where I am going you cannot follow me now; but you will follow me afterward.” “Lord why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” “Very truly, I tell you before the cock crows you will have denied me three times.” As the days darken, courage begins to fail and promises to follow to the death turn pale.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he tries to reassure them. “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so would I have told you I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Well, this is too much for Thomas. He is confused, befuddled and does not hesitate to say so, “Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” It’s Thomas’s turn to sound simplistic and literalistic. “I know the region around the lake and I now know the way from Galilee to Judea and back, whether we go on the other side of Jordan or cut straight through Samaria, but I don’t get what you’re talking about, where you’re going, or how you’re going to get there. I knew how to follow you this far, all the way to Jerusalem and the threat of death, but now you’ve lost me, Lord.”
Is this more of Thomas’s plain speaking? “I’m not going to try to pretend that I understand all this; I’m just going to put it out there. I’m lost.” Is it the author using Thomas again as a set up for Jesus famous response? “I am the way, the truth and the life, Thomas. That’s what I’ve been trying to teach you all along. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him, because you know and have seen me. I am the way to God and along that way, I offer you truth and life, my friend and brother.” Set up or not, Thomas’s plain and simple question sweeps him more deeply into discipleship to Jesus.
And so we come around once more to the upper room, on the eve of that first Easter, where some disciples were gathered, locked away in fear for the lives, uncertain about the strange events and reports of the day, trying to figure out what to do next. Does it sound at all like any church gathering of which we are aware? Suddenly and mysteriously Jesus stands among them, locked doors not withstanding. How can this be? We can only speculate how and in what form he appeared, but the story says there he was. In this brief, memorable and all-important encounter, Jesus gives his disciples four gifts. First, he gives them peace – “Peace be with you” but this peace is not just the absence of violence or passive contentment; this is health and wholeness, this is good-will and fulfillment; this is the peace that passes human understanding.
With this peace comes a second gift – a mission, a story to tell the nations, a life to live for God, peace to share – “As the God has sent me to you, I now send you into the world.” The Word has become flesh and dwelt among them full of signs and wonders, full of hope and faith, full of love and life, and now they must become the living word themselves for the sake of the whole creation.
In order to fulfill their mission, he gives them a third gift, one he has promised to them as he has walked with them and taught them. “…he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.” He does not send them out without power. “I will not leave you comfortless.” “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst...” “…lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” As God breathed the breath of life into the first creation, so Jesus, Word of God Incarnate, now breathes the breath of the Spirit into the new creation, empowering the disciples to fulfill their discipleship.
Finally, he gives them the authority to forgive and retain sins. This is a difficult passage to understand. Clearly, only God can forgive sin and pass judgment, so what is Jesus saying here? Tom Wright suggests that what Jesus is saying is that “They are to pronounce, in God’s name and by his spirit, the message of forgiveness to all who believe in Jesus. They are also to ‘retain sins’: to warn the world that sin is a serious, deadly disease, and that to remain in it will bring death. They are to rebuke and warn – not because they do not like people or because they are seeking power or prestige for themselves, but because this is God’s message to a muddled, confused and still rebellious world” (Tom Wright, John for Everyone, Part Two, pp. 150-1.) As people of faith, Jesus’ disciples are given responsibility to speak and model forgiveness wherever it is needed and to point out that need wherever it is hidden or denied or ridiculed. In order to engage in such activity they will have to draw on their other gifts of peace, sense of mission and Holy Spirit; they will have to act in humility and compassion and wonder. (See Robert Krysar, Preaching John, pp. 159-60.)
Unfortunately our friend Thomas is not present for all this wondrous gift giving and so it is not surprising that he finds it a little unbelievable. We don’t know why he was absent, where he had been, what he had been up to. Perhaps he just wanted to be alone with his grief, his pain, his anger, his disappointment in himself and even in Jesus. Maybe he had been so out of the loop that, when he returned, all that the others had been experiencing and buzzing about was just too much, too strange for a plain spoken, practical man with a broken heart. So he resorted to the sort of plain speaking he knew best. What else was a man like him to do? “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my fingers in the mark of the nails and my hands in his side, I will not believe.” “No way! Not me! Show me, then maybe…”
A week later and the mysterious appearance recurs, only this time with simple, practical, plain speaking, doubting Thomas present. Before the invitation to touch the hands and side is fully out of Jesus’ mouth, Thomas is on his knees. “My Lord and my God.” Have plainer words ever been spoken? It only takes a moment in the presence of the Holy One to evoke such a response. But there is also plain speaking in Jesus’ response to Thomas’s great confession and proclamation; it echoes down the ages to us today and draws us into the continuation of this drama begun so long ago by a Galilean lake when God walked among her people in the flesh. “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Plainly speaking, that’s you and me, friends. So “these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” Amen.