Billboard Jesus Can't Save You

For so long, Thomas has been portrayed as doubting, as dense, as somehow lacking in faith where the other disciples had managed to figure everything out. In John, where faith and belief are everything, where the response to Jesus reflects whether someone is in or someone is out, Thomas seems to situate himself on the fence, not indifferent, not ambivalent, just not sure. From the time we are children, we are taught about belief, not to worry and not to doubt. Even church billboards present us with messages like, “Worry = temporary atheism” or “Why pay for GPS. Jesus gives direction for free” or along I-35: “Heaven or Hell?” We have been taught that anything that raises a question mark of God, of Jesus, of belief, ought to be made into an exclamation point as soon as possible. Believe? becomes Believe!!! Yet here is Thomas, right there in the Gospel of John, raising the question mark. Is he really risen? Is the story real, or is it just another ploy to make gullible people feel better of themselves? Is it the opiate of the masses? Is it a projection of our psychological need for the world to make sense, for a father figure who won’t let us down?

            Thomas often asks the questions that everyone else is thinking. When Jesus is telling the disciples that he is going ahead of them, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in 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 will 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.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Is there a map, Jesus? Is there a way to know for sure where you are going? Is there a way to know for sure that you are who all these stories say you are? Jesus doesn’t rebuke Thomas. Jesus doesn’t castigate him for asking a stupid question.

            And yet, Christians so frequently fear asking these same questions. We fear that we are supposed to know the answers, that everyone around us has managed to figure this faith stuff out, so we busy ourselves with making our question marks into exclamation points, boldly stating things of which we are not – and cannot – be sure. All around us, we receive messages that faith is some sort of bold confidence in otherworldly claims. It is never wavering, never doubting, never looking to the left or to the right. We receive messages that if we don’t believe, if we don’t trust, if we falter, the consequences are eternal. Thomas is an inconvenient question mark, refusing to be straightened into shape by religious jargon or platitudes.

            Faith has been placed in a straitjacket of certainty, its doubts removed to make it more palatable. But when we place faith under such constraints, it loses its power to transform us. It becomes a reflection of our capacity to figure it out for ourselves, a testament to all that we can accomplish on our own, all the ways that we can proclaim with our lives that we don’t need Jesus, that we can figure out the way by ourselves – thank you very much – and that we don’t need help from anyone. And so when real doubts come, when cancer threatens not only the old but also the young, when an unexpected car accident leaves us with more questions than answers, when we’re pretty sure God didn’t need another angel because we could have used the angel here among us, we have no recourse but to act as if it all makes sense. Thomas is a reminder that it doesn’t all always make sense. Thomas is a reminder that faith cannot fit onto a billboard with an 800-number to call. Real faith comes with real questions, and it is in these questions that our faith is borne out. It is in the questions that we are drawn into relationship. When we are trying to figure it out for ourselves and trying to do it by ourselves, where God fits in is, if anything, an afterthought.

            But Jesus, where are you going? How will we know the way? Thomas has the courage to ask the questions that the rest do not dare ask. Thomas asks real questions of faith and of belief. Thomas is never demoted from being a disciple for his questions. So when the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." Thomas says to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." Thomas tells the truth about the difficulty of believing in the resurrection. Thomas tells the truth of how difficult it is to believe that a crucified person could be the object of faith. Thomas tells the truth of how difficult it is to believe in power made perfect in weakness in a world in which the powerful become more powerful at the expense of the weak.

            Thomas is never praised for his courage. Centuries of him being presented as lesser because of his doubts has clouded who Thomas is. Faith has been painted as the absence of doubt, made synonymous with confidence. So faith becomes a decision, stripped of doubt, stripped of question marks, as if we can decide once and for all and forget about the matter after that decision has been made. Believing once and for all is a little like trying to eat for once and all: we cannot digest all of this all at once. If someone thinks she can, she ends up forcing Jesus into something small enough to understand, small enough to digest, small enough to believe in without too much trouble or too much inconvenience. So the entirety of our faith ends up small enough to fit into a pithy slogan on a billboard. Faith becomes a “simple” decision between heaven and hell.

But what if Jesus is less a decision and more of an invitation? What if this is an invitation to be in relationship, with all of its questions and doubts and complexities? The once-for-allness is not so much in our “decision” to believe, but in Jesus’ continual invitation to relationship, the continual invitation to say “yes” to the uncertainty, to say “yes” to power made perfect in weakness, to say “yes” to beleiving the unbelievable. And this yes is a simultaneous “no.” It is a “no” to faith that is small enough to fit onto a billboard. It is a “no” to faith that ignores or avoids difficult questions, to a faith that has to pull itself up by its own bootstraps. This faith is acknowledging that Jesus’ “yes” to the cross, his “yes” to loving a humanity with doubts, fears, and questions, this faith is the resounding “yes” to believing the unbelievable. It is a “yes” with open eyes, that lives in the real world that proclaims power is made perfect in weakness, and that the power of Christ is most fully revealed in the Cross. Martin Luther, in his Heidelburg Disputation, says:

Now it is not sufficient for anyone, and it does him no good to recognize God in his glory and majesty, unless he recognizes him in the humility and shame of the cross. Thus God destroys the wisdom of the wise… true theology and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ. A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is. This is clear: He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil. These are the people whom the apostle calls “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18), for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works. Thus they call the good of the cross evil and the evil of a deed good. God can be found only in suffering and the cross…

It is a yes to a savior that is the undoing of death in a world full of death. It is a yes to a savior that is the undoing of hatred in a world full of hatred. It is a yes to a savior that allows our question marks to remain question marks. This is the faith that has the courage to ask questions, to walk with Thomas in his doubt and also in his confession: “My Lord and my God.” Thomas reminds us that faith is not the opposite of doubt and courage is not the opposite of fear. Faith is life in the midst of doubt, and courage is life in the midst of fear. Faith is confessing that we cannot find the way by ourselves, that we cannot save ourselves, it is the recognition of abundant love that continually invites us into relationship with Jesus, who has death has made its mark on you, once and for all, naming you, once and for all: “Beloved of God.”