Belief, Doubt, and certainty - A Sermon for April 12, 2026
GOSPEL: John 20:19-31
The holy gospel according to John.
Glory to you, O Lord.
The unprecedented events of the day of resurrection continue as the risen Jesus appears to his fearful disciples. A week later, after Thomas worships Jesus, Jesus pronounces that the blessings of the resurrection are also for those who “have not seen and yet believe.”
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said 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.”
26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
The gospel concludes:
The gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
I kind of like April fools day. April 1st.
Kids try and pull a joke on their parents,
Maybe someone in your office does something silly.
You know that you’re going to run into some kind of joke.
And it is like the one day of the year
that we all become critical
of what we read on the internet and news feeds.
You know, like this super-accurate
Thomas Jefferson quote:
that April 1st is the only day of the year
that people critically evaluate things
they find on the internet
Before accepting them as true.
I hope you caught the April fools joke there.
There is hope for humanity!
At least for one day a year,
we take in information critically,
if only because we don’t want others
laughing at our expense.
Years ago, I came up with a little April fools joke
for our bible study in my former congregation.
I penned a fake letter with the logos of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
along with another Canadian Lutheran denomination.
The letter that was so outrageous,
claiming a reunion
between formerly split Lutheran denominations.
I thought it was funny,
and others around the bible study table thought so as well.
most people caught the joke on April 1st right away.
But then I saw the faces of certain individuals.
One married couple didn’t understand that it was a joke,
and they felt sheepish after falling for the rouse.
And one other person’s face stuck with me;
she was sad that the news - too good to be true -
was false.
You see,
she was and is a faithful Christian
who longs for unity in Christ’s Church.
My little joke reminded her
just how far away from unity we Lutherans are,
let alone the other some 49,000
Christian denominations out there.
Yes, you heard me right:
as of 2025 there are approximately
49,000 different Christian denominations in the world.
That is 48,999 too many.
Hear the faithful tangent
- may we strive for,
work for,
pray for
unity in Christ’s church -
Christian unity is ours in Jesus,
it is people like us who separate and divide.
But back to the April fools joke,
let alone the world we live in today,
Now it seems like we have to be
extra critical of the information we receive,
in this day and age of not just the internet,
fake news and wikipedia,
but particularly with the advancement of
and our reliance upon artificial intelligence.
Let’s have a little experiment, just for fun.
Take a look at these landscape images,
one is real,
and one is artificial intelligence.
Raise your hands to vote - who thinks image A is real?
ok, image B?
For the landscape - A is real, B is AI.
A second example - this parrot.
vote for whichever one you think is real,
A?
B?
For the parrot - A is AI, B is real.
Sometimes you can tell easily what is artificial,
and sometimes you can’t.
AI is super helpful.
We used AI to help us design our new Paschal candle,
and it is lovely.
Dare I say a faithful use of Artificial intelligence
But all of a sudden with AI
it is even harder to determine
what is truth from what is not.
Enter Thomas the Twin;.
The disciple of Jesus with a really cool nickname,
the Twin
- who is now known by a far less attractive nickname -
the doubter,
All he did was question the resurrection amidst Jesus’ absence.
after all, Jesus had just died,
and no one rises from the dead.
Well - save Lazarus, perhaps.
Thomas gets a bad reputation as a doubter,
but Thomas is all of us.
For you and I,
often seeing is believing,
and we want confirmation
of those things too good to be true.
we are all Thomas.
Another little tangent here,
I take issue with certain Christian publications
that are willing to mislead and fabricate.
There are too many books,
bible studies,
young adult videos out there,
that are intended to help people like us believe in God,
but they are filled with fabrications
pretending to be true.
For example,
“the Boy who came back from heaven”
and the “Heaven is for Real” books were fabricated.
Each child claiming to have died and gone to heaven,
their stories describing their experiences
of Jesus and Heaven,
and then later admitting they had not gone to heaven.
They made up the details.
How can we expect any non-believer
to believe in Jesus
if we Christians are proclaiming fabricated truths?
I encourage you to share your experiences of God,
of faith,
of Jesus,
for we are called to proclaim the Gospel
and to share the faith we have been given,
but let us be genuine and authentic.
Sometimes as a preacher,
I have to change things a bit.
Sometimes I will tell you a story
and I have to change certain names and details
to protect privacy.
Like today,
I did not name the people from that April fools bible study.
I left out plenty of details,
and that’s ok
But - how could you possibly trust my preaching
if you knew I was just making it all up?
We are stewards of the mysteries of God
- when it comes to what God actually does -
that’s the kind of stuff we can’t make up,
and frankly, we don’t have to.
The world hungers for good news,
but with authenticity.
My friends,
don’t simply trust whatever you see:
on social media,
on the TV news,
in the local paper,
the gossip over coffee
or where ever.
Get familiar with snopes.com
or other fact checking websites.
Seek the Truth.
Treat every day like April Fools day!
Doubt what you read.
Question what you hear.
Be critical of the claims you see.
When they are too good to be true,
When they don’t align with your beliefs,
and perhaps especially when they do.
Be like Thomas. Doubt. Poke around.
A little doubt can do a lot of good.
But don’t just stop at doubt.
Trust in God and move forward in faith.
We often think of doubt as the opposite of faith,
but doubt is the companion of faith.
The opposite of faith is certainty.
God does not give us certainty,
God gives us faith.
Yet we strive for a certainty of faith.
We dwell in God’s Word,
we worship in community,
we receive God’s gifts at the Table and Font
and we trust that God’s Spirit leads us into truth together.
This happens when we do faith together,
when we study theology together,
iron sharpens iron,
and God brings us truth by God’s Word.
Alone we stumble.
God’s Word bears the truth of the resurrection of Christ,
not something we can prove with evidence,
but there is truth in the witness.
The empty tomb is not proof that Jesus is risen,
but there is no denying,
no doubting,
that the disciples,
and hundreds of followers of Jesus,
were so convinced that they saw the risen Lord,
that they changed their whole lives,
and were willing to die for faith,
for Jesus,
for the truth of the resurrection.
No one dies for a fabricated faith.
Maybe one - but not everyone.
You can doubt the resurrection,
but there is no reasonable doubting
the witness of the resurrection.
So share your own witness of the resurrection,
and do so with authenticity.
One final thought for today:
Sometimes we lock doors,
like the disciples did after Jesus’ death.
The disciples were fearful.
Their Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth
had just been brutally tortured and killed,
and they probably thought they were next.
We have just spent the past few weeks
dwelling in the story of Jesus’ passion,
and the Jewish religious officials were ruthless.
The Romans were ruthless
against anyone who opposed the empire.
The disciples were justified being afraid
locked behind closed doors.
But Jesus still showed up,
somehow,
through their locked doors,
amidst their fear,
amidst their doubt,
and Jesus brought them peace
and sent them out
to be people of God’s peace and forgiveness.
We come up with plenty of reasons to fear.
We come up with plenty of reasons to lock the doors
to our hearts.
We lock the doors to our hearts
when we have been deceived.
We lock the doors to our hearts
to avoid being hurt.
God sends us to be disciples in the world,
but we keep quiet.
Sometimes we think we’re not
capable or knowledgeable enough
to be disciples of Jesus,
worried that we might say something wrong
or do something wrong.
Sometimes we think we know what is coming next,
so we stay put.
Sometimes we get stuck and can’t be vulnerable.
We might doubt the future of a congregation.
We might read the posts about church decline
and think we’re next.
We might not believe that the church has a future.
And when I see the list of some 49,000
Christian denominations,
I wonder too what hope there is
amidst our separation and division.
Yet the truth of the Gospel is nothing can separate us
from God’s love.
My dear family in Christ,
amidst your doubts - have faith.
Do not doubt God’s ability to resurrect
and to invite people like us into the resurrected life.
Do not doubt God’s work of taking that which is dying
or broken or dirty or dead
and bringing about new life in it.
This is what God does.
Believe it.
Doubt the slant and the hate and the fear.
doubt the stuff that’s too good to be true.
A little doubt can do a lot of good.
But don’t just stop at doubt.
Doubt motivates us to find the truth.
Thomas received the truth from Christ
and Thomas believed.
The truth set him free.
Thomas went from doubt to Apostle
simply by the invitation of Christ.
God’s love for you is so strong that
even when we believe the things that are false,
that go against our God,
God gives us peace,
God welcomes us back into the truth.
Let us pray,
God - you are the way, the truth and the life. Thank you for your resurrection, thank you that we too may have life in your name. Make us a people of your truth. Give us the gift of faith amidst doubt, help us to challenge assumptions. By your Spirit, help us to witness to the resurrection with truth, authenticity, and love. We believe, Lord God. help our unbelief, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
