Dear Folks,
The disciple Thomas in John’s Gospel is what educators call a concrete thinker. Imagination is not his strong suit. He’s a realist, someone who calls a spade a spade. If Thomas was in late middle school or the early years of high school, and I asked him to analyze Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” he would write three sentences instead of the three pages assigned. His reflection might go something like this: “Mr. Frost went on a walk one day. When he came to a fork in the road, he chose one. He didn’t go the other way.” The end. Attached, to a similar offering I once received, was an asterisk and a note. “Dear Mr. Ware, I don’t like poetry. It seems so roundabout and vague. Why don’t the authors just say what they want to say? Do they even know what they are talking about? How do I know what to believe?”
Thomas has the same questions. He doesn’t believe in fairy tales. He is the one in our lives who cries “Humbug!” and points out the little man standing behind the curtain who calls himself the wizard. His questions are direct, exposing, even jarring, yet his guilelessness is a gift. When the stakes are high, the uncomfortable, straightforward question is the one that saves the day.
Like in the scene at the disciples’ final meal with Jesus. Supper was about over, most of the dishes had been cleared, and Jesus picked up a scrap of bread and starting talking about his death. “Little children,” Jesus said, “I am with you only a little while longer… Do not let your hearts be troubled. Give your heart to God, give your heart also to me. In my father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that 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.”
No one else said a word, but Thomas couldn’t hold back. “Jesus, I have no idea where you are going, and I don’t know the way to get there.” “I am the way” is what Jesus told him, perhaps one of the most difficult pieces of poetry ever spoken, hard to understand and harder to know what to do with. You can imagine Thomas’ internal dialogue—Jesus isn’t a way. He is a man. Why is he talking in riddles?—yet Thomas’ voiced struggle conjures a metaphor from the Holy One that has made all the difference. “How can we know the way?’ Thomas asks. “The way is about human thriving,” Jesus suggests, “about choosing life over death and violence, about loving everyone without regard for tribe, about aiming for right action instead of right belief.”
The story goes that later Thomas was not around at the time when Jesus appeared to the other disciples after his death. They were crowded in a room with the door locked and the shades drawn, scared sick that they’d be the ones to get it next, when suddenly Jesus was present. No writer tells us where Thomas was at the time. I wonder… One good thing about being a concrete thinker and having not too vivid an imagination “is that you are not apt to work yourself up into quite as much of a panic as Thomaas’ friends had.” (Frederick Buechner) Maybe he had just gone out for a walk or a cup of coffee? Or maybe he was running an errand or sitting on a rock some place? Thomas’ reaction to the news of Jesus’ presence was what I would have expected: “I need to see Jesus, too,” he said. “I need to see his wounds and touch them.”
Fair enough. And Jesus comes to Thomas, and the two touch each other, doubts and wounds and all. And Thomas realizes that this is God.
So really, Thomas and his friends are not so different. Each of them is locked up in one way or another, scattered and scared, perhaps playing a role, worried that someone will pull back the curtain of their lives and see how much their knees are shaking. Us too. To be human is to question and wonder, to shine and to struggle, to be weary and wounded and full of promise, at once. The surprise for Thomas is that God is wounded, too, and that running away from our own brokenness is to hide from God herself. In the place that we are most hard-headed, most scared or angry, most shut down and locked away, most stuck and self-righteous is the place where God is reaching out to touch us.
What is the way, Thomas? Through the wounds…
Love, David