Twins

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday April 19, 2009, the 2nd week of Easter.

Acts 4:32-35
Psalm 131
1 John 1:1-2:2
John 20:19-31

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

In my opinion, Thomas, or “Doubting Thomas,” gets more abuse than he deserves for being skeptical. His tendencies to speak his mind and to ask questions when he doesn’t understand are admirable. Thomas was not a man to be persuaded with words alone. In John 14[1] when Jesus says “And you know the way to the place where I am going;” Thomas is the one who says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” If we truly believe there is no such thing as a stupid question, then Thomas belongs in the hall-of-fame.

I imagine Thomas was a man of home spun wisdom. He had the “Show-Me” mentality that could make him our neighbor to the north today. He was deliberate and he was cautious. He has questions and he wants them answered. He has doubts and he wants them vanquished.

So it was the evening on the first day of the week, the day of Jesus’ resurrection; and the ten, not the twelve but the ten, had locked themselves in the house where they met. Who’s missing? Well, Matthew’s gospel records Judas’ death as an aside to the passion narrative, so he is obviously missing. As for Thomas, we have no idea where he is. Rugged individualist that he is, he is not with the others.

While the others receive the Holy Spirit; Thomas, the Marlboro Man[2] of the apostles, is out having a smoke.

So when the others got a hold of Thomas, he got an ear full. “We have seen the Lord!” they proclaimed loudly and gladly. They weren’t rubbing it in his face, I think they were rejoicing and wishing he had been with them to share the glory of the peace of the Lord and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The Missouri Mule spirit that had served Thomas so well was not about to desert him. He knew what he had seen at the crucifixion and he knows dead is dead. He might have been willing to believe some sort of apparition, a Holy Spirit, but the physical presence of the Lord in the glory of his resurrection body struck him as unlikely.

He had to see the Lord Jesus for himself. He had to touch him. He needed the experience before he could believe it was true.

Don’t you wonder if Thomas didn’t stay close to home base for a while? Sure enough, a week later, it was the eleven together for fellowship. Give him credit, he wasn’t sure about the resurrection, but he still believed and still worshiped Jesus. Then just like the week before, Jesus came into the sealed room, stood among them, and said “Peace be with you.”

Quoting John’s gospel, “Then 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.’ Thomas, answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’”

Smithsonian Magazine some 30 years ago had a story about two men known as the “Jim Twins.” [3] They were identical twins separated at birth. When they were reunited at age 39, they found a startling number of similarities between them.

Both had been adopted by separate families in Ohio, and had grown up within 45 miles of each other. Both had been named James by their adoptive parents. Both had married twice; first to women named Linda and second to women named Betty. Both had children, including sons named James Allan.[4] Both had at one time owned dogs named Toy.

Dr. Thomas Bouchard of the University of Minnesota studied the personalities and attitudes of the Jim Twins, and the resulting similarities were again astonishing. In one test which measured personality variables, the twins scored so closely that it was as if one person had taken the test twice. Brain wave tests produced skyline-like graphs looking like two views of the same city.

Intelligence tests, mental abilities, gestures, voice tones, likes and dislikes, were similar as well. As for medical histories, both had high blood pressure, both had experienced what they thought were heart attacks, and both suffered from migraine headaches. They even used the same words to describe their headaches.

The twins discovered they shared the same habits too. Both chain-smoked, both liked beer, both had woodworking workshops in their garages. Both drove Chevys, both had served as Sheriff's deputies in nearby Ohio counties. They had even vacationed on the same beach on the Florida Gulf Coast. Both lived in the only house on their block. The same patterns shared by the Jim Twins occurred time and time again.

This isn’t the only example of identical twins being separated at birth. A Google search[5] reveals over 6,000 hits on the subject. (Of course, I don’t know how many of these articles are twin articles separated by Google.) There are thousands of stories of people who were raised in different environments, different households, yet turn out with amazing similarities.

Another one of my favorite “odd” birth stories, no where near as common as twins separated at birth, is twins with different birthdays. I don’t mean twins who were born a couple of minutes on either side of midnight, I mean days or even weeks. Known as interval delivery; it’s rare, but it happens. In the case of the Rugg family from Highlands Ranch, Colorado; twins were born 63 days apart.[6]

One of the twins was born four months premature. He weighed a mere one pound nine ounces. Everyone knew this baby was in dire straights, so when the doctors said that they could stop the labor before the second baby was born, the parents just looked at each other then the doctors and asked, “you can do that?”

So while the older twin, Adam, fought for his life in the neonatal intensive care unit at Presbyterian St. Luke’s Hospital in Denver, the second, Jayson was fighting to get stronger inside his mother's womb. Doctors were amazed that his mother was able to carry Jayson, more than two months after Adam’s birth.

Despite the fact that Adam had been in an incubator and Jayson had been in utero, the day the two were reunited they were virtually the same weight and height. So while one had spent two months in the real world, and the other had the benefit of two additional months in his mother’s womb, when they met again they were virtually the same.

I share these two stories to make a point about the apostle known as “the Twin.” Separated at birth both in time and space, and born of the same womb at different intervals, we are very much like Thomas. The 20th century rugged individualism that is an American trademark is not so far from the “not ‘til I see it with my own eyes and touch it with my own hands” of Doubting Thomas.

Like Thomas, we did not receive the Holy Spirit along with the ten on that first Easter Sunday so long ago. Like Thomas at the beginning of our reading we long to see Jesus, behold the glory of his face, and touch his hands and side. Like Thomas, we can find the resurrection difficult because we have not personally seen the person of the resurrection. Like Thomas we want to stand before the Lord and worship crying, “My Lord and my God.” We want to sing out adoring God in the happy chorus begun in the morning stars.

Being separated at birth in time and space, we will not have the same benefits Thomas had seeing his resurrected Lord. We are those who will be blessed as those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Instead of the person of the resurrection, we see the fruit of the resurrection. Instead of the Lord in person, we see the Lord in works of charity and justice. We hear the word of the Lord in proclamation and in song. The promise of God’s grace is present when we celebrate of the sacraments. Whenever a child is loved, we see God at work in the world.

It’s redundant to call Thomas “Didymus” like the New International Version or “Twin” like our reading this morning because Thomas is a transliteration of the Aramaic word for “twin.” There is no explanation in scripture, or anywhere else I have found, about why he was called the Twin. So let us here and now resolve that issue and affirm that we are Thomas’ twin. We are the didymus of Didymus.

We are blessed like Thomas during the week between these two appearances of Jesus. We believe though we have not seen the physical manifestation of the resurrection. And we are blessed for we will be like Thomas and the day will come when we see Jesus again in his glory.

We read that Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, and we see around us that Jesus continues to do many other signs in the presence of his modern day disciples by the fruit of the Spirit. This so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that though believing we may have life in his name.

Additional Resource…

Barker, William P., Personalities Around Jesus. Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1963.

[1] John 14:4-5
[2] Marlboro and Marlboro Man are registered trademarks, Philip Morris.
[3] Study of identical twins separated at birth and reunited later in life, http://iris.nyit.edu/~shartman/mba0120/twins.htm, retrieved April 18, 2009.
[4] As I remember from the original Smithsonian article, one was spelled Allan and the other Alan.
[5] Google search using term “identical twins separated at birth” on April 18, 2009.
[6] Twins born 63 days apart celebrate older twin’s birthday, http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=69412, retrieved on April 18, 2009.