2026-04-12 John 20:19-31
“Close Enough”
I want to issue a correction to last Sunday’s sermon.
Sometimes preachers say stuff that’s wrong.
Shocking!
I was taught the origin of the word “worship” is Old English for “workship,”
as in, you come to church to do the work of worship.
I said Jean and I and the choir are like directors, prompters, but YOU’RE the REAL actors,
like Nicole Kidman,
performing worship for the audience of One –
God.
And God goes, “Yay!” or “Boo!”
(Footnote: Google “Kierkegaard’s Theater of Worship.” Not now!)
Last week I found out by accident, the true origin of “worship” is the Old English for “worth-ship,” as in finding your “worth” in God.
And that IS your Sunday work.
So, in typical male fashion I won’t say I was wrong;
I was “misinformed.”
My advisors gave me bad intelligence.
And THAT becomes the intro to this week’s sermon about another time a bunch of preachers --
10 of them –
did a bad SUCH a bad job
that Jesus HIMSELF
had to come down and correct their mistakes.
They weren’t wrong.
They were close.
Close Enough.
–
If I asked you to explain God…
If I asked you to explain God in your own words –
Without fancy-theo-talk,
without quoting some great theologian or your preacher (not necessarily the same thing)
If I asked you to explain God using only what you know, personally, could you do it?
On a five star scale, how would you rate your performance?
Immediately after Easter,
the disciples discovered
that sharing the good news that Christ is alive indeed –
sharing this most basic news with someone who wasn’t there,
sharing even with people you know and love…
explaining Jesus is hard.
BELIEVING in Jesus is one thing.
But EXPLAINING your belief, that’s a whole different ballgame.
For the disciples, explaining the risen Jesus was their very first problem in this brand-new Christian faith.
And they failed.
THEY FAILED.
They couldn’t even convince the Apostle Thomas.
And he’s an APOSTLE!
Talk about preaching to the choir.
Words fail us.
People are frustrating.
Communication is hard.
WE can do a bad job.
Just ask Jesus.
–
Have you ever said this to someone, or has anyone ever said it to you?
“I feel like you and I aren’t speaking the same language –
“Dear.” “Motherrrr.” “Daaaad.”
You ever heard that?
The disciples did.
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them… (dot, dot, dot).
He didn’t understand.
That DOUBTING Thomas.
–
We’ve all heard someone get called a Doubting Thomas.
It’s not a compliment.
“Don’t be such a Doubting Thomas.”
It’s from scripture.
It’s a sweet-bible way of saying, “What is wrong with you?”
A biblical way of saying,
“Don’t be such a pain in the neck.”
“Would you just LISTEN to me?
“Would you just believe me?”
Apostle Thomas is a synonym for denseness.
For Doubt.
And maybe because we’re in church,
where everybody’s supposed to believe
and believe the same thing,
without question…
Doubt is bad.
We make doubt into the diabolical arch-enemy of faith.
We call him Doubting Thomas
but truth is, he just as easily could be called,
“Thomas, the Absent Without Excuse.”
“Thomas the Chronically Late.”
“Thomas who’s always losing his keys.”
“Thomas who can’t work his phone.”
“Thomas who thinks he can remember stuff without writing it down.”
Anyone married to a Thomas?
In my marriage, Kristen’s the one who writes down EVERYTHING.
And what’s even more amazing is that she KEEPS the little scraps of paper – and then FINDS them.
To my mind, THAT’S an honest-to-God miracle.
I – on the other hand – I maintain that God made me smart enough to keep it all in this divinely ordained filing cabinet in my head.
And I can!
Or, at least I could.
You believe me, right?
You bunch of Doubting Thomases.
Thomas is so much more than his doubt.
Jesus didn’t call him “Doubting.”
Jesus’s nickname for Thomas –
and Jesus was always giving people nicknames,
like St. Peter was The Rock, Rocky.
Jesus’s nickname for Thomas was, “The Twin.”
That’s a weird nickname.
What was his twin’s name?
The Other One?
I think of Thomas a little differently.
Because I don’t think doubt is necessarily a bad thing.
I think Thomas’s doubt propelled him to greater, deeper discovery than anyone else in the world had ever had.
Don’t believe me?
Read your Bible.
Let your doubt drive you to the evidence.
—
After 30 years of preaching, I refuse to dump on Thomas any more.
I think of him now as
“Thomas, the Kid Who’s Always Raising His Hand.”
You know the one.
Like, Hermione in Harry Potter.
You may be a Thomas or Thomasina.
Or his twin. (Twinning!)
You might be the one with the non-stop inquiring mind.
The one always challenging the teacher.
The one who drives her parents crazy asking, “Why?”
“Why? Why? Why?”
And the parents say,
“Can you please go play with your iPad?
“Mommy needs her medicine.”
Maybe YOU’RE The Twin of Thomas.
You want the real explanation.
YOU want the TRUTH.
You want better explanations of the WORLD and better explanations of GOD than the average Joe, Joseph, or Mary, or Preacher Jimmy is giving you.
Better than the disciples gave Thomas.
Bless the disciples’ hearts.
This was – after all –the first time they had to explain the risen Jesus to anybody.
You wouldn’t expect them to be very good at it yet.
To those of us who feel like Thomas’s long-lost Twin, the Bible says, in so many words,
“Don’t worry.
“Jesus loves you,
“even though everyone else thinks you’re annoying.”
“You be you.”
It says, “Keep asking your questions.
“Keep demanding to know more.”
After all – it got Thomas a visit from Jesus himself.
So, even though the apostles tried to tell Thomas all about their encounter with the risen Jesus, Thomas didn’t get it.
Nobody really spoke this brand-new language of faith.
But no matter who you are – even today –
when you’re trying to speak the language of God,
best of luck to ya.
—
I went to seminary a couple of times
– not that I had to repeat –
I got several sets of abbreviations to put after my name.
I learned from some of the best and brightest theologians.
These people write BOOKS.
With big, long words.
Pro tip –
If someone with a beard – man or woman –
Is describing God, gird up your loins
because you’re going to hear a lot of big words.
Especially the ones that start with Omni.
Omniscient — (God knows everything)
Omnipotent — (God has super power)
Omnipresent — (God is everywhere, watching you, probably angry)
There’s also:
Omnibenevolent — God’s all-good or perfectly loving
Omnificent — all-creating or having unlimited creative power
Omnitemporal — (outside or across time, maybe in other dimensions)
Omniscious — which to me sounds like God sneezing.
“Omnicious!”
“God bless you, God.”
The problem with describing God with Omni’s is that now you’re not just explaining God, you’ve also gotta explain the words.
Personally, I prefer the Old Testament, the Hebrew ways to describe God.
“God is a Rock.”
I like rock.
Rock is good.
Rock’s a metaphor I can wrap my head around.
I get rock.
This church has really latched onto the book we’ve been reading, Sailboat Church.
I think it helps that you live on the Gulf Coast.
If it was Snowskiing Church, it probably wouldn’t have caught on.
Maybe in Utah.
Which takes me back to the question of language.
If you’re talking about God, you’ve gotta start by listening.
Start by listening to the language the people you’re talking to understand.
If you’re explaining God AND teaching them a new language, then by the time you get to God they’ll want to be atheists.
God is so great, SO great, that God defies all words.
The harder you try to explain God, the dumber you sound.
The language of God is the language of metaphor.
God is a rock.
Church is a sailboat.
“Omnicious” isn’t a metaphor. It’s a medical condition.
–
Thomas didn’t get the memo about the meeting with Jesus.
And so the other 10 disciples –
the other 10 tried to tell Thomas what he’d missed.
And 10 out of 10 FAILED.
FAILED.
Thomas believed in Jesus.
He just didn’t believe THEM.
They weren’t speaking his language.
Thomas – the OG Christian Scientist – wanted verifiable proof.
He wanted to put his fingers in the nail holes and his hand in his side –
I mean, Thomas wanted the certified autopsy report.
Or, in this case, the Un-autopsy report –
And wouldn’t you?
And that – for us, for church – that’s the problem.
for evangelizing Christians who want to share the good news of Jesus like we think we get more points for doing –
That’s the problem.
Because you can’t prove a metaphor.
God isn’t a rock.
The church isn’t a sailboat.
You take a hammer to a rock, you won’t find God –
You get dust.
You disassemble a sailboat, you’re stuck on the dock – singing Jimmy Buffet and drinking margaritas watching other people have fun –
Which is still pretty good –
But you lose the thread of your ultimate goal.
We can’t say in any compelling way what God IS but we CAN say what God is like.
God is LIKE a rock.
God is LIKE a sunset.
God is LIKE the feeling you get when you hold your newborn baby in your arms
It’s not scientifically precise but as so many of us learned to say at the office, it’s “close enough for government work.”
Close enough for God work.
The language of something you can’t see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or photograph is the language of close enough.
Close enough works for God.
And that’s the amazing grace of being a person of faith.
Notice, we aren’t persons of FACT;
We’re People of FAITH.
We may not be able to cure your cancer.
But we can squeeze your toes when they slide you into a CT scan.
We can’t remove a tumor,
but we can sit by your bed and have a prayer with you,
and cry with you,
and laugh with you.
And hug your grandchildren for you after you’re gone.
Close enough.
—
I think most of us fail when we read the story of Thomas.
We fail.
Not because we ARE Thomas
But because we aren’t ENOUGH like Thomas.
I think we read just enough of the story to say, “Oh, he’s doubtful.”
Tsk. Tsk.
“Silly, sinful Doubting Thomas.”
That’s not the point.
We fail at the story because we make it about him.
We fail at the story because we make it about those other people
The they’s and the them’s who don’t believe right enough, or strong enough, or the way we tell them to.
The story is NOT about Thomas.
It’s NOT about Thomas.
It’s about his Twin.
Because we’re Thomas’s surviving twins.
The story’s about US.
Jesus said to him, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
And then it goes on:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.
But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
What we read today is just the start.
It keeps going – to today.
There IS no ending.
Thomas is a metaphor – for YOU.
Thomas is the stand-in for US.
Thomas is hope,
Thomas is amazing grace that saves wretches like you and me who weren’t there,
who don’t have physical proof,
who can’t explain Jesus,
We who barely understand how rocks and sailboats – much less how God works.
We just know God’s there.
We just believe God’s with us.
Beside us.
INSIDE us.
All around us.
And blessed are we who HAVEN’T seen, and yet have come to believe.
I don’t know if that satisfies you.
But for me,
it’s close enough.
[eos]
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