I suppose it wouldn’t be the Second Sunday of Easter if I didn’t stop to tell you how I feel the disciple Thomas gets a bad rap. I say that because, as anyone familiar with my thoughts on the matter already knows, while it’s not a good thing that he doubted, he was the only one of the remaining eleven disciples asking all the right questions.

He was the only one asking to see the proof of what the Lord had already promised He’d accomplish.

Now, rather than get into that for the fiftieth time, while preparing for this morning’s sermon, I noticed something else in the text worth talking about. I won’t share all of it here because it’s intended to be heard from the pulpit. Still, one thing that tapped on my mind’s shoulder this time through the text wasn’t so much Thomas’s honest skepticism, but more so the location and Christ’s timing.

If you think about it, Jesus could have appeared to Thomas when Thomas was alone. The text tells us he wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus visited the upper room the first time. But did he really need to be? Jesus is God. He could’ve appeared to him privately wherever he was.

I’ve preached before that, in his “Well, it is what it is” mindset, because that’s the kind of man Thomas seemed to be, it was very likely he went home after the crucifixion. Knowing the Pharisees were on the hunt, he was likely just waiting to assume whatever consequences he felt he deserved for following a failed Messiah. Whether or not that’s where he was, Jesus could’ve interrupted him in his private grief, settled the matter in a moment, and spared him a week of stubborn unbelief and whatever possible embarrassment came from saying out loud what the others who’d seen Jesus must have found at least a little offensive: “Unless I see… unless I touch… I will never believe.”

But Jesus didn’t do that.

Instead, our Lord waited. More importantly, He chose to reveal Himself in the company of the disciples—when they were all together in the same place. I think that matters, especially when I know there are Christians out there who think their faith is a private thing that exists apart from the company of believers, the Church.

Unfortunately, that’s a dangerous belief brought on by modern mainstream evangelicalism. We’ve been led to think of faith as something worked out almost entirely in the private interior world of the individual, as though the threshold between belief and unbelief can only be discovered between me and my thoughts, me and my feelings, me and whatever other sensitivity may be dominating my emotions in the moment.

I’m not saying faith isn’t personal. It is. That’s why the creeds begin with “I believe,” and not “We believe.” But that right there, a creed—a public confession of what’s true in the Christian Faith and what isn’t, meant to be spoken by the community—reminds us that faith is not less than communal, either. Thomas is not restored by being left to himself. He’s restored in the midst of believers.

A week earlier, he had been absent when Jesus came and stood among them. Again, we aren’t told precisely why Thomas wasn’t there, so we don’t know for sure. Maybe it was grief. Maybe it was disappointment that had turned into detachment. But whatever the reason, what we do know is that he simply wasn’t there. And while he was gone, he didn’t see Jesus. When he came back, he did.

That should resonate for all of us.

I know there are folks out there who fervently believe they can be a Christian without being part of a gathered church. But remember, when the Bible wants us to know something, it includes the details. I think there’s something quietly sobering in this particular detail. In other words, I think it speaks volumes that the disciple who missed Christ’s appearance was the one who was absent from the other believers.

Of course, I can already hear the usual suspects saying that I’m turning this detail into a crude moralism about church attendance. Well, read it as you will. The Bible does mandate church attendance (Hebrews 10:24-25). Genuine believers, by faith, tend to try to align with what God wants. Apart from that simple fact, common sense shouldn’t lead anyone to avoid the point here. Even Saint Paul says rather plainly that “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known” (Ephesians 3:10), and by “manifold wisdom,” he meant the Gospel, both in its verbal and visible forms. This is to say that the Lord appoints the Church—the gathering of His people—as both the locale for giving and receiving the gifts of mercy He has established and desires to give.

And so, someone might ask, “Why would God do it this way?” I think a better question would be to ask, “Would you expect God to work in ways that leave you guessing?” Or perhaps better, “Would you want to go looking for God in places He hasn’t promised to be?”

These are more so intellectual questions, I know. Thomas’s problem was more than intellectual, by far. He was away from the fellowship into which the news of the resurrection was first promised and had, even then, already come—and he thought that was best.

But now, keep reading. Thomas didn’t vanish from the narrative after his doubting episode. He didn’t make his separation permanent. That’s something else I really like about him. Too often, people get angry with me when I come to them, wondering where they’ve been for so long. Of course, I never come without an invitation. Still, it’s becoming more and more common for folks not only to lash out with something like, “Who the h*#% do you think you are telling me how to live my life?” or “I’ve been gone for a long time and no one reached out. What an unloving church!” as if the responsibility for faithfulness has nothing to do with them. But both of these are usually followed by the worst kind of response—a doubling down on the idea that they can maintain a healthy faith apart from the fellowship, apart from the Means of Grace that Christ gives to actually serve and sustain that faith.

With that, here’s another very important detail.

Thomas didn’t get angry when the others invited him back. He was at least willing to entertain his fellow believers’ invitation and return. And as a result, he’s there the next Sunday. He’s back in the room. However unconvinced, however guarded, he has returned to the company of believers. That’s no small thing.

I suppose I should’ve also added “however bruised” to the list, too. That’s another ready excuse today.

To that, I’ll simply say, we all know what it feels like to be let down by someone. The Church is made up of people, and people do fail each other. But is that really a sufficient reason to stay away altogether? I once heard someone say that McDonald’s can get a person’s order wrong fifty times and they’ll still keep going back. But then, someone at church makes one mistake, and they’re gone for good. I’ve also heard it said that anyone looking for the perfect church shouldn’t join it if they find one, because doing so would ruin it.

These sayings are more truthful than most would admit.

We all get offended. And we all cause offense. That’s what sin does. But we have bigger problems when we let sin decide our location relative to Christ. The ordinariness of life that comes with living among sinners is never a valid reason to abandon faithfulness in worship. Besides being trapped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a deserted island, one of the only reasons a person should remain apart from a congregation and its worship life isn’t even on the list of the most common reasons people actually do it. The biggest reason should be false doctrine, and even then, a person should only leave after fighting to correct it, if only for the sake of concern for other Christians being infected by it (Romans 16:17 and Titus 3:10). That said, a person also doesn’t leave a church teaching false doctrine to never end up in a faithful one. That would bring into question the person’s own understanding of faithfulness.

I’m already wandering further than I planned. The point is that Christ has already shown us by His Word how much wiser it is to remain where we are best sustained: near that same Word and among the people of Christ born from and immersed in it (Romans 10:17 and 1 Thessalonians 5:11). This is true even when the Christian heart is struggling to find value in being there. Thomas, for all his confusion, even when it seemed like there was no good reason to return, at least had the honesty to bring his confusion and concern into the place where Christ had promised to be with His own, ultimately seeing his concern eventually become joy—or better said, his unbelief become belief.

And by the way, the rest of us can take a hint from the other disciples. Notice, they invited Thomas, and then they didn’t shame him when he actually returned, as if Christ had made and kept promises to them that He wouldn’t keep for Thomas.

That’s probably the best part of the whole narrative. Jesus knew the foolishness in Thomas’s behavior just as much as he knew it among the others in that room. Do you remember what Peter did? Jesus did, and still He came. He knew exactly what Thomas said, too. In fact, he repeated the words back to him almost verbatim. He knew every condition Thomas had set, every demand dressed up as an excuse. Still, the Lord came to be with Thomas.

So, yes, Thomas gets a bad rap. And much of it is earned. He is usually only remembered for the first half of the story rather than the second. Not only was he asking all the right questions, but he also returned to where those questions could be met with answers, the kind that sustain a living faith.

There’s a reason John included this story of Thomas in the account. It wasn’t to embarrass his friend. At the very least, it was to show the rest of us an important pattern. At its maximum, it was, as John himself said, that we might also believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing we might have life in His name (John 20:31).