After being asked by his editor to write an article on April Fool’s jokes in sports, Plimpton just decided to make up his own story about this curious Sidd Finch. 

Plimton gave old Finch quite a story.  He wrote that Finch was an aspiring monk who spent much of his orphaned youth in England, went to Harvard, dropped out after one semester, moved to Tibet, and learned to pitch in the mountains there, flinging rocks and meditating. (New York Times, “An Old Baseball April Fools’ Hoax, April 1, 2005)  He was discovered by a New York Mets minor league manager, and so they decided to bring him to spring training.  (Why a Mets manager is looking for a pitcher in Tibet, I don’t know!) 

Now at this point, Plimton needed someone to pose as Sidd Finch because they needed to shoot the pictures for the magazine.  So his photographer asked his pal Joe Berton,  an art teacher at a middle school outside of Chicago, to play Sidd Finch. 

Many of the Mets officials were in on this April Fools’ Hoax, and so they issued Berton a uniform, gave him all access to their spring training facilities, and even let this gangly 6 foot 4 Chicagoan hang out with the team. 

When the issue hit the newsstands, the baseball world was shocked.  But within a few days, the jig was up.  Reporters came looking for this guy named Finch and spotted the pitching prodigy back in Oak Park, Illinois, teaching art at the junior high.  Besides that, people also discovered that the first letters of the article’s secondary headline was, “Happy April Fools.”

I can understand how baseball fans everywhere might be delighted at this April Fool’s prank; to believe (even for a moment) that Finch was part of baseball’s eternal dreaminess with a pitching arm anointed by God.

But being a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, when hope springs eternal every year about this time, I can also sympathize with those frenzied Mets fans who became furious (perhaps depressed) at being duped; deceived; played like a fool! 

You get the sense that Thomas will not play the fool for anybody.  He skips out on Sunday night meeting (which we also are given to do!) and the first thing his friends say when they see him is, “Thomas, we have seen the Lord.” 

And Thomas, knowing it was too close to April Fool’s to take them at their word says something like, “Yeah right.  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 is not timid, here.  There is matter-of-factness to his words and a hint of an edge we might hear in his voice. 

If he is going to experience Jesus for himself, these are the terms of agreement. Thomas resists allowing his expectations to get the best of him lest he suffer more disappointment. “I can't take Peter’s word for it or Mary’s word for it or anybody’s word for it.  We all trusted him once and we saw how it ended.  So if he is who you say he is, then I've really got to see for myself. ” 

I wonder if Thomas might say of himself, “It’s not that I doubt, I just don't believe anything anyone tells me.” 

These aren't the words of a cold-hearted skeptic who has never known what it is like to be in the company of Jesus. These are the words of someone who knew Jesus to be so much more than what the world saw of him condemned to a Roman cross. This was the same Thomas who had been part of Jesus’ band of brothers, one of the twelve who followed Jesus from the beginning of his ministry.  Thomas and Jesus have a history together.

Of course, Thomas’ reputation precedes him in the history of the church, too. He has this doubt spasm in the Gospel of John and suddenly it becomes all he’s known for. But for those of us who see struggle as a sign of life, Thomas really becomes a trusted friend; a soul mate even. In Thomas we find someone who has a need to know, to be certain, even to be right, just as we do. We like him because we don't want to be gullible or naive and neither did Thomas.

Now doubt need not be worn as a badge of honor nor need it be condemned as a fraud to faith.

But if we are breathing in and out, we are all prone to spasms of human doubt from time to time.  And there are even those of us who have chronic bouts of doubt.

Concerning ones who are prone to chronic doubting, G. K. Chesterton offers interesting advice: “. . . it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself." (G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Wheaton, Illinois: Harold Shaw, 1994, pp. xii-xiii).

Notice how Jesus deals with patience and warmth and openness when he says: Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.  Do not doubt but believe.

Jesus didn't engage Thomas in a head trip.  He didn't enter into a long, probing conversation about why it was Thomas did not believe. Jesus didn't have to shame or trick or con Thomas into believing. Jesus simply said, “Shalom, here I am,” and he showed Thomas the scars from his wounds. Thomas said I've got to see the marks if I'm going to believe.  Jesus gives Thomas the benefit of the doubt and invites him to touch his scars.

But really, when Thomas sees the scars of Jesus, I wonder if it were his own wounds he really felt were being healed.  The wounds of his own unbelief that kept his heart closed to love after loss and new life beyond the death of the way things used to be.

And in that holy, almost ghostly moment, his confession comes in a shocked whisper no doubt, “My Lord and my God.”

Doubt and unbelief can be easy doors to hide behind; we don't have to commit to much, we won't get our expectations up and therefore we believe we can't be hurt or disappointed.

But when our hearts are broken open to the Risen Jesus, we see his scars that remind us of healing beyond our own wounds.  We're still confused, but we're not so confused with our confusion.  We still have our little anxieties and fears, but we're not so afraid of them.  We still experience weakness but we're not so weakened by our weakness. (Rohr, Richard, Everything Belongs, Crossroad, 2003, p. 141)

For some people belief is a boom (fast and dramatic); for others it’s more of a blossoming (gradual understanding over time). Thomas, among the worshiping and doubting disciples after Easter, was a late bloomer. 

Anne Lamott was, too. In her book Traveling Mercies, she describes her coming to faith as a series of staggers rather than a single leap. Resurrection happened for her very slowly she says. She found herself drawn by the sound of Gospel music to St. Andrew Presbyterian Church one day. This was a big step for her because most of her life, she felt most Christians seemed almost hostile in their belief that “they were saved and you weren’t.” But St. Andrews seemed to radiate kindness and warmth to her.  She began going about once a month because she loved singing about Jesus. But she didn’t want to be preached at about him, so she always left before the sermon.  Well, in April of 1984, living on a steady diet of Bushmills pints, codeine pills, and cigarettes, she crawled into bed one night shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or a sleeping pill.

But somehow in her own Sunday evening of the soul, she felt the brooding presence of God in the room with her. “I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus,” she says.  She was appalled, seeming it an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. One week later, she went back to church, this time staying for the sermon.

“I just thought it was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape.  It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling---and it washed over me. 

I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home . . . past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams. . . this was my beautiful moment of conversion. (Lamott, Anne, Traveling Mercies, pp. 49-50)

With resurrection as with love, the heart has reasons that reason cannot know.

If, like Thomas, we want physical proof of the resurrection of Jesus, it is in the flesh-and-blood lives of those who come to follow his way in the world; with staggers and stutters.

This ragtag group of worshipers and doubters is the church, at its best bearing the scars of the One sent from God; breaking the bread and drinking the cup of Christ’s presence.

Time cannot make a relic of the Resurrection as some cryptic meaning of the past, locked away in the memory of duped disciples. Resurrection can only be doubted for so long until it somehow happens to Thomas and to Anne and to you and me.

Jesus gives Thomas and us the benefit of the doubt. He gives us the benefit of the doubt when he says to Thomas, “You have seen because you do believe. But from now on, blessed are the ones who have not seen and yet believe.”

And, you know, people like Anne Lamott have to give the church the benefit of the doubt sometimes. Maybe it’s our turn to give God the benefit of the doubt, even during our own Sunday evenings of the soul.

Giving God the benefit of the doubt is about trusting that there is no stone standing between us and Jesus, blocking the way to God.  The truth of the Easter God, is that the same Spirit Who in the tomb of Jesus said, “Let there be Life,” is the same Spirit moving and speaking inside of you . . . daring you to come out of whatever tomb you are living in.

Believe it or not, Christ is Risen.  He is risen indeed.  Blessed are all of you who have not seen and yet believe.  Amen.