(Introductory Note) --- During Lent I have preached a series of first-person sermons called Voices Near the Cross. The first five men who spoke were the father whose son was healed (Mark 9:14-29); Caiaphas, the high priest; Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor; Judas Iscariot, the oft-accused and oft-alleged "betrayer" of Jesus; and Simon Peter, the prince of apostles. Four of those men spoke in accents of various sorts, some of which may have been somewhat recognizable. Today we come to a first-person speaker who addresses us from this side of Easter, and he is Thomas. As you will hear, Thomas will sound like he must have born within five or ten miles of Times Square. “Why not?” says I. Besides, I’m running out of accents.
Voices Near the Cross: Thomas
How'd you like to be called "Thomas"? It isn't a name, you know; it's a nickname. Well it isn't even really a nickname; it's more of a nomenclature millstone around my neck.
In Aramaic, the native language of Yudea, I am called Teoma. Those who know Greek call me, in Greek, Didymus.
Both words mean "Twin," for crying out loud! And if you were a twin, how would you like to be known only as "Twin"? It's an insult, don't you see? And apparently I'm the only one who understands that! Everybody else thinks it's dandy to be called Twin, but dandy it isn't! Don't you get it: If I am called "Thomas" (the Twin), I have been given no identity of my own! I am identified only in relationship to my confounded brother!
There were four boys in my family, of whom I am the fourth. The oldest was Avram, the next Yitzhak, and then came my twin brother and me, and they called us -- whoever would have guessed it? -- Esow and Yakov. It's biblical; right? Avram, Yitzhak, Esow, and Yakov. (You people who speak English are an odd bunch. You never seem to comprehend the king's own Hebrew. Well, whaddayuhgonna do with people like you?)
It's bad enough to be the fourth of four sons, but when you're the second of twins, it adds insult to injury. When Esow was born, he weighed in at nine pounds, three ounces. They thought that was it. My mother certainly hoped so. Half an hour later, I made my earthly entrance, much to everyone's surprise, and, in retrospect, I guess, to my parents' horror. I checked in at all of four pounds, seven ounces.
You know how you have two varieties of twins: identical, and fraternal? Well, you don't need to be a geneticist genius when you hear those birth weights to figure out that Esau and I were not identical. He was always "Big Esow" and I was "The Twin."
Most people think it would be great to be a twin. Maybe so --- for others. But not for me. I always stood in all my brothers' shadows anyway, but very much so in my twin brother's shadow. Esow was always so much bigger, and stronger, and better looking. The others boys in Zippori, where we grew up, were always much more interested in Esow as a friend than in my being their friend, and the girls showed a lot more interest in him than in me, to the degree that girls are allowed to show interest in boys at all, which is almost not at all.
Esow married well, and he has done very well in his business. He sells grain, fruit, and other produce throughout the Galil, in the ten Greek cities across the river, the Decapolis, and in Syria and beyond. He is an obviously successful merchant.
And I? Well, I have continued to be "The Twin," Teoma, Didymus, the man in the shadows, the one who has had to claw his way through life, trying to scratch out a place for himself in this world, attempting to create a distinct personality in his own right. I don't know that I have become cynical, exactly, but I'm more than a little skeptical about things. Because I have had to do everything for myself, since life never seemed to do anything for me, I have probably overreacted to people and situations.
That certainly was true in my relationship with Yeshua. When Yeshua ha-Notzri invited me to be one of his disciples, I was instantly on guard. Why would he want me, I asked myself? Nobody ever wanted me for anything.
I have often thought maybe Yeshua chose us because each of us in his own way was something of a misfit. Take Shimon as an example. Oy, what a klutz! (There isn't such a word as “klutz” yet, of course, but when it comes, it will be so useful in describing everyone who is a klutz --- which is nearly everyone, including, most assuredly, yours truly. We Jews are going to come up with thousands of wonderful words; wait and see. But then, there aren't words like "word" or "describing" or "thousands" yet either, and if I'm going to talk to you people at all, I guess I'd better use a language you can understand.)
Anyway, to get back to Shimon, which is where we were before you interrupted me, supposedly Shimon is the most important among us. However, I swear he doesn't even seem to know how to tie his shoes. His brother Andreas is just a big puppy-dog of a man: very loveable, but not afflicted by great intelligence. He has a Greek name; lots of Jewish parents are giving their children Greek names these days; what is the world coming to? That's why some people call me Didymus, instead of Teoma. Why can't they all just call me Yakov? That's who I really am, for heaven's sake!
Then Yeshua chose Mattithyah, who was a Roman lackey of a tax collector, and Shimon the Zealot, who devoted his life to fighting the Romans before Yeshua came into his life; they were a very odd pair to pick as disciples, to say the least. Then there was Yudah Ish-Keriot, who had all the charm of a cornered viper. None of us ever really liked him, and we didn't mind letting him know it. On the other hand, we certainly didn't want it to end for him the way it did.
I always wondered why Yeshua chose me. Frankly, I think he could done a lot better. I was flattered; don't misunderstand. And I was very pleased. Yeshua gave a meaning to my life which had been missing ever since nature made me the last of the line in our family and the runt of the litter back there in Zippori. With Yeshua I felt for the first time in my life that I really counted for something. I didn't know for what, but surely for something --- or why else would Yeshua have made me a disciple? I still have many doubts about a proper answer to that question, but I am convinced there must be one, because Yeshua was a man who clearly knew what he was doing.
A week and a half ago we were with Yeshua in an upper room on Mt. Zion in Yerushalayim. We celebrated the Pesach Seder there. Yeshua was in one of his elliptical moods, where he deliberately said things in a convoluted fashion. "In my Father's house are many mansions," he said; "if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?"
What does it mean that in God's house there are many mansions? A mansion is bigger than a house, isn't it? So just what was Yeshua trying to say? "If I go and prepare a place for you," he continued, "I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going." I didn't get his drift at all, so I said, "Yeshua, we don't even know where you are going, so how can we possibly know the way?" He answered, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me."
But what does that mean? If I can't get it straight about houses and mansions, how am I to comprehend that? Was Yeshua suggesting he is the way? Was he saying that he alone is the way to God? I doubt that is either what he was saying or what he meant to say! Surely God is the way, and truth, and life! Surely God, and not Yeshua, calls everyone to Himself --- doesn't He? As marvelous as Yeshua is, as inspiring and comforting and affirming as he has been to me and to all his other followers, I can't imagine he could mean what that sounds like he meant! I am too skeptical to accept that on face value! There has to be some other, much less obvious, meaning in what he said.
After the Seder, Yeshua went to Garden of Gethsemane, where he was arrested. He was tried by the Sanhedrin, who had decided his guilt before they even saw him, and he was taken to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilatus, for sentencing. After much hemming and hawing, Pilatus decreed that Yeshua should be crucified.
You have no idea what it was like for any of the twelve of us, particularly for me, to have had the privilege of spending three years with Yeshua. He gave our lives a purpose and direction which none of us had ever known before, nor would we ever have discovered it had we not known Yeshua. He took a dozen very ordinary men and transformed us into completely new individuals.
But you also have no idea how utterly devastated we were when Yeshua died. In no way were we prepared for it: mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. It simply seemed beyond comprehension that one who had been so good and powerful and persuasive could die, and die so horribly. You might remind me that he had told us about it in many different ways, but it never registered with any of us that he really meant it. How could Yeshua, of all people, die on a cross? Others might be crucified, we might be crucified, but not Yeshua!
A week ago, on the morning of the third day following Yeshua's crucifixion, Miriam of Magdala came running to meet the disciples. "Mesheach is risen!" she shouted. They were speechless. "He is risen!" she repeated; "don't you understand?" "What do you mean?" they asked. "Yeshua is alive!" said Miriam. They couldn't believe it, which, I'm sure you will agree, is not surprising. Dead people do not live again.
I was not there when Miriam came; I was visiting my cousin from Bethsaida who also was in Yerushalayim for Pesach. Nor was I there that evening when the other ten disciples were in the upper room on Mt. Zion. The doors and windows were all shut, because they were afraid that what had happened to Yeshua might happen to them. Suddenly, (so they told me), there was Yeshua standing among them! They did not know whether to be terrified or joyous. Yeshua talked to them briefly, and then, as mysteriously as he appeared, he disappeared.
When I got there later that evening, they told me what had happened. I will tell you the truth: I laughed at them. "You have had too much wine," I said, "and your brains have become pickled by it." "No," they insisted, "it is just as we told you. It is just as Miriam told us. Yeshua is risen, Teoma; he is!"
Have you ever run into people who are gullible, people who desperately want to believe something, and so they do believe it, regardless? Well, that's what I thought when I heard about Miriam's report, and that's what I thought when the others told me what they saw and heard. "Unless I see him myself," I said, "and touch him, and can inspect the wounds in his hands and feet and side, I will never believe what you have told me. Please understand, it isn't anything against you, but I simply cannot -- and will not -- believe it."
Would you? Would you? I am not the easiest person in the world to convince, I will freely admit --- but I'm not the hardest either. But this was too incredible, too literally unbelievable, for someone such as I to swallow it. They meant well, I don't doubt that, but it was just too much.
What I now am going to tell you I can hardly believe I am telling you. You will probably react as I did when I heard what Miriam had told the other ten and what the ten told me. An hour ago all of us were in the room on Mt. Zion: the eleven remaining disciples, Miriam of Magdala, Yeshua's mother Miriam, Joanna, and a few of the other women who were also disciples. We had locked the doors and shuttered the windows, because by now word had spread throughout Yerushalayim that Yeshua was alive again, and we didn't know what either the governor, Pilatus, or the high priest, Caiaphas, might do to prevent the news from spreading any farther.
We had several conversations going throughout the room. I was facing the east wall; I shall never forget exactly how it happened. I was sitting on the floor, talking to Shimon and Andreas. They looked up behind me, and both their faces lighted up. It was a look I had never before seen on anyone, and both of them had it at exactly the same moment in exactly the same way. "Turn around, Teoma," said Andreas.
I turned . . . and -- this memory shall live as long as I live -- there he was!!! It was Yeshua!!! The door was still locked! The windows were still closed! But there he stood!
At first I was speechless. I couldn't move. Then, as though I was hearing my own voice from very far away, a soft word pass my lips: "Yeshua!"
"Teoma," he said, "you didn't believe it, did you? You couldn't believe it. For you it was too hard; I know you, Yakov." (It was the first and only time he ever used my real name.) "Here," he said, "put your finger here, and see the wound. Put your fingers here, and touch the wound in my side. Don't doubt, Teoma; instead, believe."
I fell to my knees. "Yeshua!" I exclaimed, "Master!! My Lord!!!"
Yeshua smiled at me. His eyes danced. His countenance lighted up the whole room. Then, without another word, he vanished.
* * * * * * * *
I have no idea how long I shall live. I have no idea what shall become of me. But I know this: Yeshua ha-Notzri is ALIVE!!! I saw him! I spoke to him! He spoke to me!
But listen, for this is important: I did not touch him. I could not. I realized with a painful and crushing awareness that it would be presumptuous to do so, a terribly prideful thing to do so. Who was I to demand that he prove to me that he was alive again? When I knew he was raised from the dead, what more did I need to know?
But how did I know it, you will ask? Before an hour ago, I too would have asked the same thing. I did not know it here (in my eyes), or here (in my ears), or even here (in my head), although my eyes and ears and head all registered his resurrection; I knew it, and I know it, here (in my heart).
It is all very new to me, of course: almost immediate. But I think I have discovered something I never understood before, that we cannot know God or His Son as we know other things, that that kind of knowledge comes to us by faith alone. I had faith before; how else would I have spent three years with Yeshua? But the faith I have now is of a different sort. God gave it to me; that is all I can say. When I saw Yeshua, when I knew him to be raised up from the tomb, then -- and only then -- did I really have faith.
I hope, and pray, that I shall have faith like that for the rest of my life. And then, at the end, as I have just seen Yeshua face to face, I shall then see God, face to face.
Historical Note: We learn another small detail about Thomas in the book of the Acts of the Apostles (1:13). Tradition declares that he became a missionary to Parthia (south of the Caspian Sea) and Persia, both of which are in modern-day Iran. The Mar Thoma Church of India traces its origins to "Doubting Thomas." If the traditions are valid, the disciple who seemed the most timid in the earliest stages of the Church became the most adventuresome, in that he went farther than any of the rest of the apostles to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.