St. Thomas/ Advent 4
Dear friends in Christ. Today, as the Advent season winds down, we remember the blessed apostle of our Lord, St. Thomas. Thomas may have been a fisherman from Galilee like Peter, James and John because after Jesus’ resurrection He appears to a group of disciples, including Thomas, who were fishing but were not catching any fish until Jesus told them to put the net on the other side of the boat and so they were blessed with a huge catch of fish. When Jesus gave that most beautiful and comforting statement [John 14.5-6]: I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me, it was in response to Thomas’ question: Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?
Also, in Scripture, Thomas gets the nickname Didymus, which is the Greek word for “twin.” If he had a twin brother maybe people were always getting him and his brother mixed up—which in part might explain what he says in today’s Gospel: “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” He wanted to be sure—people can be easily confused. Toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, a messenger comes to Jesus telling Him that His friend, Lazarus, was sick and near death. Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, asked Jesus to come and heal their brother. The apostles knew this would be a dangerous trip for Jesus because of His many enemies around Jerusalem. At this time, Thomas said to his fellow disciples [John 11.16]: Let us also go, that we may die with Him.
We don’t know for sure what happened to St. Thomas after Pentecost. In any case, we do know that the Holy Spirit blessed him in the faith and strengthened that faith—not only when Jesus appeared the second time and said, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” but also with the great catch of fish and the other times the risen Christ appeared. Thomas’ confession of faith in Jesus and of who Jesus is, was shown to be correct: “My Lord and my God!”
Tradition puts him with Sts. Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Jude, the five Apostles of the East, and that he made his way, preaching Christ as far as India. From the 6th century Thomas was commemorated in the Eastern Church and from the 9th century he was commemorated in the Western Church. Why today was chosen as his feast day is unclear, but it is a good thing to remember St. Thomas today, at the end of the Advent season, because what we hear about him in today’s Gospel reading is a very Advent type of thought—and one which is really a picture/ description of each of us because in St. Thomas we see a faith that is agonized, questioning, seeking and a faith that finds rest in Christ and is strengthened and jubilant.
1. The very nature of Advent is one of hopeful longing—one that places us in the shoes of the OT saints as they waited for the long-promised Savior. Not only, in Advent, do we wait for and long to hear again that most glorious announcement of our salvation [Lk. 2.11]: There is born for you this day…a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, but we are also looking forward, on “tip-toes,” for that “completed salvation” for the Last Day when Jesus will bring us soul and resurrected, glorified body into heaven.
That means that now, in the meantime—and for all the saints in heaven, it was their entire life—our faith is so often tried, in agony; that we question and seek.
The thing to remember is that our faith is a glorious gift of God to us. The very fact that we are Christians is not because of something we have done or desired; it is not because we are better and more “worthy” than other people. It is simply God’s gracious gift to us—without any merit or worthiness on our part. He gave us that gift, He created that faith in us by the work of the Holy Spirit in the word—be it as it was for most of us in the visible word of the waters of Holy Baptism, or for some later in life through that word that was heard or read. In any case, the very fact that we are Christians is because God, in grace, gave us the gift of faith—that faith that knows the true God rightly; that faith that says “yea and amen” to His promises to us in Christ; that faith that receives all the gifts and blessings Jesus won for us on the cross. But, the very nature of the Christian faith is to hold to God’s word of promise, to hold fast with firm trust to what is not seen or experienced—in fact, what is seemingly the opposite to the present appearance. That’s why the Holy Spirit says through the apostle [Heb. 11.1]: Faith is being sure of the things we hope for, being convinced of the things we can’t see.
But what do we so often experience? Our faith is agonized, questioning, seeking. That shouldn’t surprise us, after all, as Christians we are the devil’s sworn enemies; he tries to destroy our faith and so rob us of forgiveness of sins and eternal life; he uses the sinful world around us to lead us away from/ destroy faith; he uses our old sinful nature as his ally to lead us to doubt, despair, reject that faith. Long story short: when God gives you the gift of faith, expect that that faith will be attacked and tried by the devil and his allies. But remember—you are our Lord’s dear Christian and He is the almighty God who loves you and gave you that most precious gift of faith to start with. Because He is almighty, that means that He is in control of all things; and because He is gracious and loves you, He will only let the devil and his allies do what they do in so far as it will benefit you and be for your spiritual good. In other words, He lets your faith be exercised.
Not only will our almighty and gracious Lord allow your faith to be exercised but He does so, so that in the end your faith will be all the stronger as it is driven to Him and to His word and promise.
It’s not just via the devil and his allies our faith is exercised—instead, our faith is often vexed and agonized by God Himself; that is, He doesn’t act the way that we think He should. Think of Thomas and the rest of the disciples—although Jesus told them clearly on any number of occasions, certainly they didn’t think that Jesus, the Messiah, would die such a miserable death but He did. Is it any surprise that the disciples that first Easter Sunday were huddled, in fear and confused? Is it any wonder that Thomas said, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” God so often does not act the way we would expect Him to—and when He doesn’t that’s when we question Him; that’s when we wrestle with Him as Habakkuk does in our text.
At first Habakkuk cries out to the Lord because the Israelites were so full of sin and corruption. The Lord then tells Habakkuk that He will send the Babylonians to punish the Israelites. But then Habakkuk questions/ wrestles with God: the Babylonians are even more wicked and corrupt than the sinful and corrupt Israelites. How/ why can God allow that? That’s the point where our text comes in. Habakkuk waits for the Lord’s answer to his question: I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.
When we see God acting in a way different than how we think He should act, isn’t our faith being tried and tested? At the same time, isn’t it a sin of arrogance on our part that we hold God up to our standard, what we think He should do? Isn’t this, our judging God, really placing ourselves in God’s place? Making ourselves gods? To be sure, enquiring minds want to know, but holding God to our standard and expecting Him to act how we expect/ demand is sinful arrogance and a sin for which we must repent and seek His forgiveness. Like we saw with Thomas, faith is a very easy thing and faith is seemingly strong when things go well; that’s why he could say [John 11.16]: Let us also go, that we may die with Him; but when God does not act how we expect Him to, when faith is “stressed”, then with Thomas we say things like, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” When God does not act how we expect Him to—like Thomas, Habakkuk and all Christians, including you and me, experienced—faith is agonized.
But when God acts contrary to how we would expect, let us follow the example of Habakkuk in our text: I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint. In our perplexity, let us not turn away from the Lord in unbelief but toward Him and watch and wait for His response. That’s Advent! –Watching and waiting for the Lord; that’s faith in action. By watching and waiting—going back to our Lord’s word and promise and searching it—faith is strengthened. Faith is humility—humbly receiving from the Lord His answer as by our struggles and questionings He drives us back to His holy word. There in His holy Word His Holy Spirit is mightily at work strengthening our faith. There in the midst of great trial we run to the Holy Supper and taste and see that the Lord is good; there receiving strength of faith as we receive Jesus’ very body and blood—the very pledge and token that we sinners are reconciled to God, that our sins are forgiven us and that we are, in Christ, His dear children and heirs of heaven. The Lord does not expect us, when our faith is in trial, to rely on our own strength—we would collapse—but He drives us to Himself, to His holy word and sacraments. There we watch and wait and will receive in a most glorious way a blessed answering and strength.
2. In humbly and patiently watching and waiting on the Lord, our faith will find rest in the Lord and in the end be strengthened and jubilant. Our text: And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. Here it is good that at the end of Advent we hear Habakkuk telling us that the Lord is faithful to His word and promise: it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.
In a few days, we will hear the announcement that our Savior has come/ has been born of the virgin. That’s what we need to hear when our faith is in trial—we have a Savior from sin! With that, we have it all! Our hearts and faith can be at rest and happy because we have a Savior from sin and things are now right between us and God—no matter how we may judge it, no matter how much we may be asking “How? Why?” Faith is not a leap into the dark but it is trust in the promises of God that He is in control of all things, working all things for our spiritual and eternal good—even when we don’t understand them and question it. But with Christmas’ announcement that the Savior has come, with Easter’s proclamation that the Savior has paid for the sins of the world and we are forgiven, our consciences are quieted and at peace. That’s because faith, which receives the word and promise of God, receives the forgiveness of sin. Now our hearts and consciences are at peace in and because of Christ—even though we may not know/ understand all the hows and whys of God’s workings. We may still have questions, but in faith we go back to Christ and there our faith finds rest and true joy because in spite of how contrary everything may look/ seem to us we are God’s dear children and heirs of heaven and He is working all things to bring us through our earthly lives to Himself in heaven. Truly, as the Lord says in our text: the righteous shall live by his faith. INJ Amen