It is sickening to not be believed, to not be trusted. The devastation that tears at your soul when you are aware that your words are being consigned to disbelief is unreal. It’s as though every single word is a bounced check, but you keep writing them because you can’t help it,
It’s a human need. One of the most significant things we offer to one another is trust. Belief. Faith.
As a child, learning the boundaries of truth and lying is difficult. The degree to which perception is reality can be unnerving and creates so much conflict between children and adults who “live in the real world.” I was no exception to this phenomenon, but unlike some of my peers, I was willing to contend for it. To prove it. To reconcile my perception to reality.
Thomas the Apostle was no stranger to that need. So much of his story is late in the game—everyone knows his epic doubt on that first Resurrection Sunday. Everyone takes sides—some judgmental, some sympathetic, and almost all of us think he was wrong. It’s just a question of how wrong. When ten of the apostles report an appearance of the Risen Christ in the upper room of the house, Thomas has questions.
If anyone tells you, “Here he is, in the inner rooms,” do not believe him.1
Precisely one of the twelve disciples obeys this command. “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.”2 Jesus had just uttered these words three nights before, at the table, in that very room. Weren’t any of his friends paying attention? Thomas was. Thomas had noted the teaching of Jesus about the end of everything, and discerning the true Messiah. That teaching was so fresh, it had only been delivered in the previous week.
We can shake our heads, or we can recognize that maybe it’s not the Ten—desperate to be believed—that are on the side of the right here, at least not completely. But Jesus’ Last Supper teaching offered a promise, "The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”3 And that’s exactly what Thomas gets. Love made flesh and alive again comes to him and shows himself to this loving, obedient disciple.
My struggles with perception and reality grew into more basic forms of deception—to avoid punishment. Fear is a hell of a motivator for a child of 12, and easily self-justified when you are certain that the whole story is not being told to you about a lot of things, even your own existence. The shadow of doubts over identity turn curiosity to a craving for hidden knowledge. You start searching for things you aren’t ready to know in the ways that aren’t ideal for learning well. And then you need a cover story.
But, as they say, the truth will out. And reality shatters the delicately woven threads of perception made brittle by manipulation. On the surface, a teenager crossed some lines and told some lies, and got caught. At risk of being overdramatic, my carefully curated teenage world was over. Entering reality over perception at the age of 14, when my words were deprived power to impact the world around me, was a kind of living death. I felt ghostly.
No ghost appears for Thomas. Jesus in the flesh shows up, wounds and all. “My Lord and my God!” There’s no proof or argument involved. There’s no question, no skepticism, no disbelief. Thomas’s confidence, if anything, is unhindered and unhesitating. His fellow apostles had more mixed experiences. But Thomas is attentive.
Most of what we know of Thomas in the Gospels is merely his place in the lists, always in close association with Matthew, James the Less, and Bartholomew. But in John’s account of the Passion week, Thomas is a frequent character. After the raising of Lazarus and Jesus’ decision to continue to Jerusalem, Thomas the Twin (we learn his nickname, Didymus) is the one who urges faithfulness, even to the point of death.
At the Last Supper, he is the one with the sensible follow up, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?,” prompting a revelation as Jesus answers, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
I, too, needed a revelation. I spent that whole season broken down, watching the remnants of my facade fall away to dust. You start to wonder who you are when you engage in that kind of work, massaging perceptions to avoid confronting the echoes. I had thought I had some idea of who I was. But at the end of the path, I don’t think I had a clear idea. But, with some nudges from my parents and some Spirit-directed encouragements from others in my life who had no idea, I started to dig down and pray—to see Jesus. I needed to see Jesus.
And I did. It was when I stopped narrating my life and other things long enough to be still, to be quiet, that I started to hear the Lord speak, to see the Lord act, to know the Lord who had told me, “You are Mine.” I saw Jesus. And in seeing Jesus, for the past twenty years, I have over time seen more and more of my self—the created, God-ordained, true to life, feet planted in a future reality of a new heavens and new earth, member of the family of God. And I’ve discovered how much that person, though very much an individual, is meant to look like Jesus, to be a twin.
Thomas, unlike me, seems to have understood the mission from the beginning. He remained in Jerusalem at least until the Jerusalem Council, most likely. At some point, he traveled north, following the trade routes to eastern Asia. He went further east to Parthia, proclaiming the Gospel for many years, where he ministered alongside his disciples, Addai and Mari (the originators of the liturgy of the Church of the East). In 52 AD, he took a boat and landed even further east—in Kerala, India. F
For 20 years, Thomas serves in India. By tradition, he makes a journey to China to proclaim Jesus there, and also sends Addai and Mari to Edessa, on the fringes of the Roman Empire, with a commission to proclaim Jesus and demonstrate the Spirit’s power, which is accomplished in King Agbar’s healing. At the end of 20 years, Thomas is speared by opponents to the Gospel in Chennai. The churches descended from his apostolic ministry still stand today. The Church of the East and the St. Thomas Christian communities launched monastic and missionary movements that carry the faith, the belief, and the trust in Jesus and his revelation forward from generation to generation.
Thomas bid his friends to go with Jesus, that they might all die with him. He was right—that was their call. He paid attention to the call to discipleship that Jesus offered, and knew that it would cost everything. It was a cost he willingly paid, going the furthest, to reach the ends of the world he knew, to proclaim the Gospel to India and China. For having but a few spoken lines in the Gospels, Thomas’ impact is still felt in the millions. Where we have privileged the legacies of Peter and Paul, the reality is that each disciple had their impact, and each was critical to the spread of the Gospel, and by that same token, each of us is utterly essential to the spread of the Kingdom. Like Thomas, we can be be attentive to the teaching of Jesus, even when people suspect us of abandoning it.
Matthew 24:26 NIV
John 14:21 NIV
ibid.