I gained my first experience of leading worship and preaching in a youth preaching team in my home circuit. We took services in the churches of the circuit under the supervision of a Local Preacher.
One year, we were appointed to take a service on the Sunday after Easter. The Local Preacher, a woman by the name of Win, explained to us that this Sunday was traditionally called ‘Low Sunday.’
Why was that, we asked?
Because, she said, after all the joy and celebration of Easter Day, people needed to come down a bit.
Oh, said we mischievous teenagers: Hangover Sunday!
Now I am not sure that the intoxication of Easter Day has negative side-effects at all. It’s the beginning of the whole Easter season that lasts fifty days until Pentecost. We have seven weeks of celebration!
And our Gospel reading today occurs in the Lectionary every year on Low Sunday. So what to say this year?
Well, there is so much in the reading, and given that I have been preaching on mission before Easter and will go back to that after the Easter season, I am going to leave the first half of the reading where Jesus commissions the remaining apostles to go into the world like he did in the power of the Spirit bringing the forgiveness of sins.
That leaves the second half of the reading and our good friend Thomas. Come with me as we walk with him on a journey to deeper faith in the risen Lord.
Firstly, angry Thomas:
Angry? Yes – angry. Before we ever get onto the question of ‘doubting Thomas’ we need to consider his anger.
How so? Well, part of my preparation for this week has been my regular reading of a blog by an Anglican New Testament scholar, Ian Paul. In his reflections this week on today’s passage he tells a story about how he once took a primary school assembly where he asked the pupils who their heroes were, and then told them that he had actually met each of those heroes on his way to the school that morning. The youngsters grew increasingly sceptical.
But then he asked them how they would have felt if he actually had met their heroes on the way to the school and they hadn’t. A boy shot up his hand and said, ‘I would be very angry!’ Ian Paul reflects on this incident and the Thomas story in these words:
It was an amazing insight into the things that hold us back from believing, and anger at what has happened to us and the way life has turned out seems to me to be far more common than an actual lack of evidence, even if it is evidential language that we naturally reach for.
Thomas is angry at having missed out. The other disciples are annoyingly happy, and he hasn’t had that experience. We talk today about FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out – and that’s Thomas. He has missed out, and he’s mad.
And like Ian Paul says, our anger at certain events and circumstances in life can do more to inhibit faith than our intellectual questions. I’m sure you’ve come across people who have described an unspeakable tragedy in their lives and who are angry at God about it. I’m sure you’ve met people who can’t cope with the fact that other people have received blessings that they have longed for, but they haven’t.
I’m sure many of us know how unresolved anger burns up our soul like acid. If we bury the anger, it comes out like a Jack-in-the-box in other forms. Some (but by no means all) forms of depression can happen this way. Yet if we let the anger fester, we become bitter and twisted people.
But here’s the good news. The risen Jesus appears to angry Thomas. He shows him his wounds. The Lord himself has been through unjust suffering. If anyone had the right to be angry about their treatment, it was Jesus. Yet he meets Thomas in love.
If we are struggling with anger, we have a God who can handle it. His Son has been through the most unjust suffering the world has ever seen. He understands. And he has given us the Old Testament Psalms, where so many express questioning and anger towards God about the circumstances of life. God holds us in his arms while we beat upon his chest. And in the Resurrection, he begins the work of reversing injustice.
Secondly, doubting Thomas:
It’s still true that Thomas doubts. He says,
‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.’ (Verse 25b)
Although hear the anger in those words ‘I will not believe.’
And Jesus, after showing him his wounds, says,
‘Stop doubting and believe.’ (Verse 27b)
There are some mitigating factors here. Thomas was not alone in doubting. The male disciples generally also doubted the women’s testimony until they saw the empty tomb for themselves. I have often remarked that my late father thought Thomas has been unfairly singled out in history.
Now there are some who make a distinction between doubt and unbelief. The Christian writer Os Guinness says in his book on doubt that doubt is ‘faith in two minds’, whereas unbelief is a straight-out refusal to believe. Thomas seems to oscillate between the two.
But at least he is honest. He doesn’t play pretend. He doesn’t suppress his doubts and pretend to have more faith than he does.
However, ultimately, Jesus wants to bring him to a point of faith, a place of believing.
And what is faith? Contrary to what some of the ‘New Atheists’ say, it is emphatically not believing in something that you know to be untrue.
No. Faith is knowing enough in order to trust. When we have faith, we have enough evidence about Jesus and his Resurrection in order to trust him. We do not have complete knowledge, but we have enough to say, yes, we will entrust our lives to him.
We do this in other parts of life. The point at which I proposed to my then-girlfriend, now wife, was when I knew enough about her to trust her and believe that entering into life together would be a good enterprise. Of course, I will never know her fully: what man ever understands a woman like that?
As Jesus says to Thomas, most people will not get the benefit he does of a personal appearance to lead him to that place of faith. I did have a church member in my first appointment who had become a Christian when Jesus had appeared in a vision to her at the bottom of her bed one night, but for most of us, something like that doesn’t happen.
Instead, we have enough evidence about Jesus in order to trust him. We have the testimonies of the four Gospel writers. As John writes,
31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
We have good historical evidence for the Resurrection. I don’t have time to go into that now, ask me afterwards, but it’s good. We have the testimonies of our friends.
We may not know everything about Jesus. We may still have questions. We may wobble in our faith from time to time. But we have enough in order to stop our fundamental doubting and believe.
Thirdly and finally, humble Thomas:
28 Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’
Now as an aside this is one of my favourite verses to quote to Jehovah’s Witnesses when they deny the deity of Jesus Christ. They try to say that Thomas is at this point addressing heaven, not Jesus, despite the fact that the context is a conversation between him and Jesus. That’s an amazing piece of grammatical gymnastics on their part.
But having said that, it struck me this week what a humble statement this is. After all his anger and doubt, Thomas responds to the evidence and the overtures of love from Jesus in the right way. Humility.
Not everybody does. I have heard of some atheists being asked, if you were given convincing evidence for God, would you then believe? Some still said, no, because they did not want to be answerable to anyone but themselves. Their problem was not intellectual but one of spiritual pride and rebellion.
Thomas has none of these. The right and proper response to Jesus is to bow in adoration and make an oath of allegiance to him. He doesn’t waste any time in doing the right thing.
For pride is another of the barriers to faith, but the gift of humility enables Thomas to respond to the mercy and love of Jesus. The only way we or anyone else find our way into the kingdom of God is by humbly receiving what God does for us in Christ.
I find that some of the people who have the worst problems with pride are intelligent, educated people. They point to surveys that show the higher you go up the scale of intellect, the less people believe in the existence of God. They draw the rather simple conclusion that more intelligent people think belief in God is not plausible, and therefore you should not.
But these people make a fatal mistake. They fail to see that our minds as much as any other part of our lives are affected by sin, and they have fallen victim to the temptation of pride, one of the key things that prevents belief in God. Beware that if you debate with an intellectual whose mind seems hardened against the idea of faith, pride may well be an issue.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not against intellectual endeavour. I have done post-graduate research at university and hold two Theology degrees. I believe Jesus when he said that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength.
But at the bottom line, I believe the only way to avail ourselves of God’s blessings in Christ is humility. It is to say, I cannot get to God by my own beliefs, merits, or actions. I can only hold out the empty hands of faith to receive. And when I do, I honour Jesus as my Lord and my God. What he says, goes.
Conclusion
I think we can say, then, that Thomas has shown us some of the major barriers to faith and how they are overcome.
We can bring our anger into the arms of the loving God who has embraced suffering and begun the work of destroying injustice.
We can bring our doubts to the testimony of Jesus and learn that he is trustworthy.
We can reject the pride in our own abilities that prevents us receiving from God and in humility receive his grace and mercy.
Let us remember these things in our own lives and also in our witness to people beyond the church that the risen Jesus is this world’s true Lord.
Big Circumstance 