In Defense of Thomas and Friction-Maxxing Pastor Cogan

John 20:19-31

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

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, “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.”

A 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.” 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!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

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.

Everyone seems to be maxxing something these days. If you’ve never heard the word, maxxing means aggressively improving, or maximizing, some part of your life. There are all kinds of maxxing trends on social media. For example, young men are spending a lot of time looksmaxxing - obsessively optimizing their appearance. Then there’s fibermaxxing, fixating on increasing fiber intake for better health. Or Chinamaxxing, adopting traditional Chinese lifestyle habits again for improved health.

None of these sound all that appealing to me—especially the fibermaxxing. But I did read about one maxxing I can get on board with: frictionmaxxing.

Frictionmaxxing is about adding small inconveniences back into your life, because living a frictionless life is all too easy. We can, and often do, avoid the little moments of inconvenience in our lives. One article I read recently put it this way: “Tech companies are succeeding in making us think of life itself as inconvenient and something to be continuously escaping from, [putting ourselves into] digital padded rooms of predictive algorithms and single-tap commands: Reading is boring; talking is awkward; moving is tiring; leaving the house is daunting. Thinking is hard. Interacting with strangers is scary. Risking an unexpected reaction from someone isn’t worth it. Speaking at all — overrated. These are all frictions that we can now eliminate, easily, and we do.”

Once I read this, I saw it everywhere. For instance, have you talked with someone my age or younger on the phone recently? It’s like you’re asking them to eat arsenic. That’s the friction I’m talking about. Why go out to eat and risk running into people you know? You can Uber Eats anything. Don’t know how to respond to a text? Use ChatGPT. Why actually shop for anything when you can have it delivered to your doorstep. It is easier than ever before to go home, lock our doors, and block out the world, and all the risk and all the friction that comes with it.

But that comes at a cost.

We become more fearful of others and what they might do or say. Or worse how they’ll think of us. Then, we become more anxious about simple interactions. And eventually we are depressed from all the fear and anxiety. It is a treacherous cycle.

The disciples are in the midst of that treacherous cycle on the evening of the first Easter, hiding behind locked doors. We’re told the doors are locked because they are afraid… but that doesn’t seem like a credible fear, at least not on the surface.

There’s no evidence anyone was hunting them down. In fact, earlier that day, Mary Magdalene, Peter, and another disciple had already gone to the tomb. If they were going to run into trouble, wouldn’t it have been there? So what are they really afraid of? After all, the disciples are Jews… so who is this “they” they’re afraid of?

What if they’re not just locking the world out, but locking themselves in? What if what they fear is the judgment—the looks, the whispers, the quiet scorn from people who know they got it wrong? The ones who heard them say they would never deny Jesus… and then watched them do exactly that.

And more than that—what if they’re afraid of Jesus himself? What if Mary Magdalene is right? What if he really is alive? And what if he’s coming back, not with peace, but to settle the score? I think what the disciples fear most is the judgment they’ll face—and the possibility of running into Jesus himself. So they lock themselves in.

Can you imagine their shock when Jesus shows up unannounced? Talk about friction. And it’s not shame or revenge he’s after. By greeting them with peace (twice), by showing his wounds, by giving them his spirit, Jesus is saying in ways more compelling than words, I forgive you. He wants to set them free from the fear and anxiety that held them in that locked room, and send them out into the world, “As the father has sent me, so I send you”, ready to forgive the sins of others.

And now what about Thomas in all this?

Thomas doesn’t mind a little friction. Throughout the gospels, he asks the hard questions. He says what he’s thinking. He shows up, even when it’s uncomfortable. So maybe he wasn’t in that room because he wasn’t hiding. Maybe he was out looking for Jesus, unafraid.

And when he hears the others, he says, I want what you’ve experienced. I want to see. I want to touch. He’s willing to risk being wrong. Willing to step into the awkwardness. He wants the friction, literally. And Jesus gives him exactly that, an invitation to touch the wounds and believe.

In fact, I think what Jesus gives all of us is an invitation to friction. All too often, we live behind locked doors, telling ourselves, like the disciples, that we’re blocking the world out, when really we’re locking ourselves in, away from people, away from the judgements they might have about what we do, or say, or believe.

What we’re really doing is locking away our heart, behind the closed doors of screens and apps,

shielding it from the pain of relationships and the judgment of others, but also from the connection and love we need, that our neighbors need, that the whole world needs.

And when we lock our hearts away like that, they don’t become safe. They become hardened—impenetrable even, barely beating at all. The heart of this gospel story is that Jesus finds us in our locked rooms. He speaks a word of peace, setting us free from the anxiety and fear that hide us, and sends us out into the world—into the friction we will face. And that’s what forgiveness is for.

Jesus knows what’s waiting for the disciples out there: people who will judge them, who won’t believe them, who will reject them. They’ll even turn on each other. So when they leave that room, they will need forgiveness. In fact, a life of friction requires it.

That’s the life Jesus led—one of friction—and it’s the life our faith calls us into as well. Stepping out from behind our locked doors. Forming relationships, interacting with strangers, talking with the people around you, thinking for yourself, caring for another person, serving others who are in need.

These may seem like small things—little inconveniences— and they are. But they are essential to the life we know in Jesus Christ, who sends us into the world just as he was sent. Because if we aren’t willing to face the small frictions—the awkwardness, the inconvenience, the risk—we’ll never be ready for the greater call: to love, to accompany, to show mercy, to act justly, to bear one another’s burdens.

Is this risky? A little. We risk being uncomfortable, awkward, even falling behind on our favorite shows.

And if we really do it right, the risks are much greater—just look at Jesus. His wounds came from the greatest source of friction, the greatest inconvenience of all: love. A love so great, he died and rose again, so that we don’t have to live our lives locked away in fear and anxiety.

This week—and throughout this Easter season—let’s frictionmaxx. Stop relying on AI and ChatGPT for all your correspondence. Have a screen-free night in your home. Invite someone new over for dinner. Have friends over when your house isn’t spotless. Say yes to serving in a new way.

Or, if you really want to push it, bake something and show up unannounced at someone’s home—Jesus did.

And when it’s too much—when it’s awkward, or not returned, or just doesn’t go as planned—that’s where grace meets us. We give and receive forgiveness, and we try again.

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