Sunday Message
April 18, 2004
Richard L Sheffield
Text: John 20:19-31

I got an email this week with some information I needed to see. What struck me a bit funny about the email was the way it started. It said something like, "Please let me know if you don't get this." I thought, "how would I know I didn't get it, if I didn't?" I did, so I didn't have to let the writer know I didn't. But it did set me thinking. That's something like poor Thomas' quandary in the story from John. How was he supposed to 'get it," "see it" without seeing?

I don't believe the Bible counsels what has been called "blind faith" – believing whatever somebody says just because they say it – even if the somebody is Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. I looked up "blind faith" on the internet. I found a lot of links to a rock band by that name. I found an article entitled, "Blind Faith: How Deregulation and Enron's Influence Over Government Looted Billions from Americans." And I found a definition of "blind fish" – "any of several small fishes with vestigial functionless eyes found usually in the waters of caves." ¹

It was that last, the blind fish, that caught my eye! When Jesus said to Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe," ² is that what he means? Be in your faith like a fish in a cave where it is so dark anyway that you have no need for eyes because you will never see? Believe blindly what you cannot "see?" I think not.

I'm reading a new book called Jesus in America. It's not about Jesus visiting America, ala the belief of the Mormons, but about how Jesus has been part of the American scene, and how we have seen ourselves, since the beginning. It's also about how we have seen Jesus. At one point the author notes that a basic difference between early Catholic missionaries and early Protestant missionaries was that the Protestants, Presbyterians among them, expected the Native Americans to be able to read the Bible before they expected them to believe the Bible. While "faith" is more than "fact," it's still "factual," we believe. The Bible doesn't ask us to be blind; it calls us to understand, acknowledge, grasp, "get it," "to see." And it's not really so much "what" we should see as "who;" not a proposition but a person.

Earlier in John's Gospel it is said that some people came one day saying to his disciple Phillip, "Sir, we would see Jesus." ³ I'm told that as students enter the pulpit in the chapel at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA, those words are engraved on a brass plaque for every would be preacher to see before opening his or her mouth: "Sir, [Madam!], we would see Jesus! Not you. We would see Jesus up there!"

Clearly John, in his Gospel, means to say that "seeing" Jesus is important. It's practically all he talks about as he tells about that first Easter and the first reactions of Jesus' disciples to his resurrection. Mary Magdalene saw Jesus in the garden. At first she thought he was the gardener – then through her tears she saw him for who he was. And straight away she was off to where the disciples were saying, "I have seen the Lord." ⁴ That apparently didn't mean much because the disciples remained behind locked doors. No one rushed out shouting, "The Lord is Risen!" "Mary said so!" "Mary saw him!" Instead, everyone remained in hiding, it says, "for fear of the Jews." ⁵

Don't read that without remembering that they were Jews too, and so "the Jews" has a different meaning than at first sight. Most scholars believe that when John was written, about 100AD "the Jews" had "virtually become a technical term for those who reject Jesus, [reflecting] the heightened antagonism that developed in the latter part of the first century between church and synagogue, with mutual recrimination arising." ⁶

From Easter morning when Mary saw Jesus, until "evening" they hid because they were afraid. That's the point. And it was not until they saw him, until "Jesus came and stood among them ... and showed them" ⁷ that we get this: "Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord." ⁸ Seems seeing was believing that Easter Sunday.

So, Thomas gets a bad rap. Thomas asked to see no more than what they claimed to have seen! That's all. He said, I'll believe it when I see it! (Just like you.) Mary saw him. The disciples were unimpressed until they saw him. Then they said to Thomas, "We have seen the Lord." ⁹ To which Thomas said "Unless I see (like you've seen) ... I will not believe." ¹⁰

Fast forward a whole week to the next Sunday. On the church calendar this Sunday, "Thomas" Sunday, (that's why associate pastors usually get this Sunday). "Jesus disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them." ¹¹ In a re-run of last week, Jesus was too. "Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them ... and said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." ¹²

But Thomas didn't say, "I believe!" He didn't even say, "I see!" But he did. He saw better than them all. He said, "My Lord and my God!" ¹³ That's more in-sight, than physical sight. Some would call it hind-sight, saying that's not so much what Thomas saw as what John in his Gospel wants us to see. Because as John says, very explicitly, in the verses that immediately follow, "Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe..." ¹⁴

So that you, like Mary in her confusion, and like the disciples in their fear, and Thomas in his common sense approach to things may also see. Something John knows full well is impossible in the physical sense of seeing.

If our understanding of when John's Gospel was written is at all accurate John wrote more than half a century after that first Easter Sunday. John was writing for a church full of people like you and me. To encourage people like you and me with the words of Jesus, spoken to Thomas, but recorded by John for us all: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." ¹⁵

Blessed are those who have come to the realization that the slave trader John Newton did that led him to write words we can all sing from memory:

"Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see." ¹⁶

Newton didn't just get new glasses! You can "see" and not "see" a thing.

Certainly the apostolic witness to what they could see with their own eyes is an important and necessary witness to the risen Christ, but just as important and necessary is our coming to see without seeing.

Helen Keller was once asked whether there was anything worse than being unable to see. She replied, "Oh yes, much worse than losing your sight is losing your vision." ¹⁷ I think Helen Keller, blind almost from birth, would paraphrase Jesus' words to Thomas: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have seen." I've seen that happen. Sometimes I've even gotten credit for it!

Sometimes, after a service, when I've preached a sermon I knew going in would not have passed muster in Donald Macleod's preaching 101, much less the dictum of that little plaque in that seminary pulpit, someone has come out saying, "Pastor, what you said, about such and such, it was something I needed to hear, or it helped me see something more clearly. It helped. Thank you." And then the line moves on and its back to Good Morning, great to see you. How are the kids? I'll see you on Tuesday at that meeting. It's good to see you! All heart felt. All meant.

But then, later, back in my study, I'll remember the "Thank You," and maybe the look in that person's eyes that said, "I see something now I didn't see before." I see something about myself, I see something about my God, – what you said helped me see. But for the life of me I can't remember saying what they say I said. It wasn't in my prepared text. It isn't on the CD recording. It wasn't me he heard; it wasn't my insight that helped her see. In those moments this preacher can only surmise that someone who needed to saw Jesus.

That early church needed more than anything to see – to have a vision bigger than themselves, and their problems. Jesus, resurrected and in the flesh, was something perhaps only a few, remained to say they had seen. And for sure there would soon be no one left to say as Mary said, "I have seen the Lord." ¹⁸ What should the preacher say then? What did people need to hear then? Jesus' words to Thomas: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." That's not a put down of Thomas for doubting. Nor is it a promise of extra credit in heaven for "blind belief." It simply says, "Blessed are those who have not seen, yet see." In the context of that e-mail, "Blessed are those who 'get it.'"

Sometimes I think we don't see because we don't look. Sometimes I think we don't get it because we don't want to.

In an article published in The Reader's Digest, Helen Keller wrote: "Now and then I test my seeing friends to discover what they see. Recently I asked a friend, who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, what she had observed. 'Nothing in particular,' she replied." ¹⁹ Helen Keller goes into say that from her point of view that's a waste of "seeing." To see "nothing in particular?" To pass by that which we can see and not see it?

Jesus didn't say, "Blessed are those who can see." He said, "Blessed are those who do see."

What do you see? Who do you see?

As you look around this room; as you walk around our church neighborhood, or just walk to your car after worship, and return to your neighborhood; as you drive through parts of our town where common sense says keep your windows up and your doors locked even on a nice spring day like this; what do you see? Who do you see? Do you see? "Blessed are those who have not seen yet see."



1. http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=blindfishes
2. John 20:29b NRSV.
3. John 12:21 NRSV.
4. John 20:18 NRSV.
5. John 20:19 NRSV.
6. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 124nt.
7. John 20:19-20 NRSV.
8. John 20:20 NRSV.
9. John 20:25 NRSV.
10. Ibid.
11. John 20:26 NRSV.
12. John 20:26-27 NRSV.
13. John 20:28 NRSV.
14. John 20:30-31 NRSV.
15. John 20:29 NRSV.
16. The Presbyterian Hymnal, 280.
17. Tom Tewell, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.
18. John 20:18 NRSV.
19. http://www.bpfrommer.com/Three_Days_To_See.htm