Tag: Os Guinness

Doubting Thomas Overcomes Barriers To Faith, John 20:19-31 (Easter 2 Low Sunday 2024)

John 20:19-31

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.

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Raising Doubts (Easter 6 Resurrection People 5) John 20:19-31

John 20:19-31

‘Doubting Thomas.’

In all the years I’ve preached on this story, I’ve encountered people with a variety of reactions to Thomas. There are those whose faith is so serene that they find it hard to comprehend someone with doubts. To them, faith is as natural as breathing.

There are others who quite understand him having questions, because although they believe, they too have plenty of questions for God.

Finally, there are those who think Thomas isn’t militant enough, and who would say it’s all a sham. They defer to outright unbelief.

To explore this today, I am not so much going to expound the passage as use it as an example of this theme about faith, doubt, and unbelief.

And that is going to require me to explore the subject in four phases.

Firstly, there is a difference between doubt and unbelief.

To help us see the difference between doubt and unbelief, consider the story in Mark chapter 9 when Jesus and his three closest disciples come down from the Mount of Transfiguration and encounter a father with a demonised son, whom the other disciples have not been able to heal.

Do you remember the exchange between Jesus and the distraught father?

21 Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”

“From childhood,” he answered. 22 “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

23 “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”

24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief. He has both belief and unbelief. This is doubt. A famous Christian thinker called Os Guinness wrote a book on doubt, and he defined doubt as ‘Faith in two minds.’

If we are doubting, we are struggling. We are being pulled both ways. We may want to believe but are finding it hard. It’s not that we refuse to believe.

Now while being in two minds is not a great place to be – the apostle James says that the one who doubts ‘is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind’ (James 1:6) and ‘unstable’ (James 1:7). But Jesus wants to bring stability and faith, so if we find it easier to believe, let us offer kindness and gentleness to those who doubt and give space for Jesus to bring them through to faith.

Secondly, some doubt or disbelieve because they positively believe something else.

This is a simple point to remember. If somebody says they don’t believe something, it’s because they actually believe something else that contradicts it or rules it out.

Thomas was a bit like that. He didn’t immediately accept that Jesus had risen from the dead, because like most Jews apart from the Sadducees he didn’t believe there would be a resurrection of the dead until the end of time. The Sadducees didn’t think there would be any resurrection at all!

If someone today says they don’t believe in the Resurrection, it may well be because they believe something else. That belief may be grounded in the idea that scientific laws are unchanging and unchangeable, and that resurrection is scientifically impossible.

If you tell some such people that their position is a ‘belief’, they may react negatively! For they tend to believe it’s a fact. ‘Beliefs’ are only for those deluded religious people. But it is actually an act of faith to say that you think the whole of life can be lived on the basis of scientific discoveries.

They tend to say that we can’t prove our faith beliefs, but I would say they can’t prove theirs, either. There is more to this world than science, much as we welcome its discoveries. Not everything can be tested by science. We need other disciplines, like history, which works differently from science.

There is a lot of life where we need trust and faith as well as proof. None of us goes into a marriage with the complete proof that the one we love is going to be kind, loving, and faithful to us for the rest of our lives. Instead, we enter into marriage on the basis that we have learned enough about that person to believe we can trust them.

Finally, on the specific issue of believing in unchanging scientific laws, of course it’s helpful to know that laws make for predictable behaviour. Imagine if gravity varied massively all the time.

But perhaps there is another way to see this consistency and reliability of scientific laws if you allow for the existence of God. And that is to see them, as I heard one preacher put it, as ‘descriptions of God’s habits.’ They tell us how God usually does things. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus ‘sustains all things by his powerful word’ (Hebrews 1:3). But perhaps on rare occasions and for reasons known to his sovereign will the Lord occasionally changes his habits. That would permit the possibility of miracles. And if so, then we  have to be careful about making scientific laws the ultimate standard by which we judge the truth and falsehood of other claims.

Thirdly, some disbelieve for other motives that are not logical.

I can understand someone who has been brought up on the idea of unchanging and unchangeable scientific laws using that as a test for truth, although as I’ve just said I don’t think it’s as watertight as some think it is.

But we need to recognise that some people choose unbelief for other reasons. For some it is because they believe their faith in God let them down. They wanted God to do something in their lives or in the life of someone they love but it didn’t happen. Sometimes it’s because they had a rather Sunday School image of God, even in adulthood. Sometimes it’s the fault of the church that has told them that God will always heal.

It’s tragic, really. If people reject Christianity because they think it can’t explain suffering, they miss the fact that atheism can’t explain love and purpose in life. If all we have is evolution, then life is just continued incidents of purposeless survival.

We could help people grow into a mature faith if instead we encouraged a church where we believe in ‘the now and the not yet’, that Jesus may heal in this life but he may not. And if we combine that with learning from the Psalmists about the possibility of believing in God but still bringing our darkest problems and emotions to him, instead of having to prettify everything, and make faith always neat, tidy, and clean. It isn’t.

Another reason for disbelief, though, can be what amounts to outright rebellion against God. Certain atheists are on record as saying that not only do they not believe in God, moreover they do not want to believe in God.

Why? Because they want to be in charge of their own lives. They do not want to be answerable to someone else.

The thing is, belief in God can strike against personal pride. Whose life is it anyway? It’s my life. Except it isn’t.

In the same way, I’ve been told that surveys show that the more intellectual someone is, the less likely they are to believe in God. But this assumes that belief or unbelief is only a matter of reason and knowledge. When pride comes into play, everything gets distorted – just as Christians would expect, because it’s sin. And so the cleverer someone is, the more at risk they are from taking pride in their intellectual abilities.

And the Gospel strikes against that. They don’t like the call to repentance. We need to model what Paul said in Romans that it is God’s kindness that leads to repentance (Romans 2:4).

Fourthly, the ultimate solution is an encounter with Jesus.

What changed Thomas? It was an encounter with the risen Jesus. He appears again behind locked doors, this time with Thomas present.

And he shows himself sympathetic to Thomas’ concerns, inviting him to examine his wounds as he had requested.

But the encounter is enough. Thomas doesn’t even get as far as exercising his demands. He says, ‘My Lord and my God!’ (Verse 28)

Sometimes we come to realise that all the logical arguments, important as they are for buttressing our faith, are insufficient on their own. We need an encounter with Jesus. OK, it won’t be exactly the same as Thomas had, for we are among those ‘who have not seen and yet have believed’ (verse 29).

But he met us. That’s what matters.

It’s something to pray for when we know friends and loved ones who don’t believe. Pray that Jesus will meet them in a grace-filled holy ambush.

I was talking with an experienced evangelist about a teenage boy we both knew who felt he had intellectual reasons for unbelief. She said, ‘What he needs is an encounter with Jesus.’ I think she had a point.

I remember a story told by Bishop Festo Kivengere, one of the courageous Christian leaders who stood up to President Idi Amin of Uganda in the 1970s. Kivengere told how he was called to a football stadium where some prisoners were going to be publicly executed by firing squad. He was allowed to meet with the prisoners and pray with them.

‘But,’ Kivengere cried out to God, ‘what do I say to them? What will make sense to these men who are going to be executed at the whim of an evil dictator?’

‘Tell them about me. I’ll make sense,’ were the words he heard back from Jesus.

So that’s what he did and many of those men went to their unjust deaths knowing their eternal destiny was secure.

‘Tell them about me. I’ll make sense.’ That’s our calling.

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Sermon: Doubting Thomas, Growing Faith

John 20:19-31
Doubting Thomas: if ever anyone got a bad press from a pithy nickname, it’s Thomas. Today I want to join his rehabilitation campaign, and suggest to you that we might see some positive approaches to faith in the story of him coming to believe in the Risen Christ.

Firstly, we need to remember his context. There are a couple of previous references to him in John’s Gospel. In chapter 11, he shows himself to be a disciple who is doggedly committed to following Jesus. He encourages all of them to go along with Jesus to Jerusalem, if necessary to die with him. This is not a coward or an unbeliever: this is a courageous disciple. Let’s remember that when he is cheaply vilified.

Not only that, he was a disciple with honest question, as we see in chapter 14. Jesus says he is going to prepare a place for his friends, and Thomas honestly says, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Lord, if you don’t give me the destination, how can I sort out a route? I need the address, Lord! I think you have to applaud a man like Thomas who has the honesty and integrity to ask Jesus the question that perhaps was in other disciples’ minds, but which they didn’t have the courage to voice.

And we should be glad he did, because it leads to Jesus’ famous reply, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.” Would we have heard those words, but for the honest, questioning faith of Thomas?

As well as these two previous references to Thomas in John’s Gospel, one other piece of context is to compare him with the other disciples. It’s all very well that the others tell him, “We have seen the Lord!” (verse 25), but it isn’t that long since they too doubted. When the women returned from the tomb, the male disciples didn’t initially cover themselves in glory. Why believe a woman? But they had had a personal encounter with the Risen Christ, just as Mary had in the garden, and just as Thomas is about to have.

So setting everyone else’s faith against Thomas’ doubts is unfair. He simply hasn’t had the experience of meeting his risen Lord yet that they have had. Perhaps today we can appreciate a dogged, honest disciple. It isn’t enough to say to some people, ‘Be quiet and just believe’. God is big enough to cope with our questions. We have a Bible filled with books like Job, and with plenty of Psalms where ancient Israel sang her painful questions in worship. If Thomas is an example to us, it is about church being a safe place for people with their questions, not one where they are shouted down.
In suggesting this, I’m not advocating unbelief, because unbelief is very different from doubt. Unbelief is a refusal to believe at all, but Jesus says Thomas was ‘doubting’ (verse 27). Os Guinness has a helpful definition of doubt: he calls it ‘faith in two minds’. Doubt isn’t the absence of faith that unbelief is, it’s faith in two minds.

There’s one other context to Thomas that I haven’t mentioned, and it’s not in the Bible. There is a strong early tradition that Thomas is the apostle who took the Gospel as far as India. There is even a Christian denomination in India called the Mar Thoma Church, which claims to trace its founding to him. If that is the case, then is it not a good thing to give someone the space to wrestle with their questions? If like Thomas they come through to a deeper faith, who knows what they might achieve in the name of the Risen Christ?

Secondly, then, I invite us to remember his questions.

“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 25)

What is Thomas’ problem, apart from the fact that – unlike the others – he hasn’t yet met the Risen Christ? As I said, he isn’t an unbeliever. He is far from being a sceptic. In fact, you could say that he was deeply biblical. Like most pious working class Jews (but unlike the wealthy Sadducees) he believed the ancient prophecies that one day, at the Last Judgement, God would raise all people from the dead – some to the reward of eternal life, and some to judgement. He would likely quote Daniel chapter 12 in support of this view.

What they didn’t expect was that God would interrupt the middle of history with a resurrection. You get a flavour of that in John 11, where Jesus turns up at the tomb of Lazarus, four days after the death, and speaks with Mary and Martha. They say they are waiting for the great resurrection at the end of time.

However, Thomas’ willingness to state his question baldly sets the stage for another appearance by Jesus, this time for his benefit. John sees this next appearance, a week later, as a follow-up by Jesus. Again it is in the midst of locked doors because the disciples who are so full of enthusiasm about the Resurrection are still nevertheless afraid, so this isn’t just for Thomas. This is to bless them all.
But in Thomas’ case, his devout biblical faith is now stretched and expanded by meeting the risen Christ. And often, that is what God wants to do through an experience of doubt. It’s not there to destroy our faith, but to expand it. In a profound talk he gave last year on the place of doubt in Christian faith, an American Old Testament scholar called Peter Enns said this:

When you go out into the world and say “it’s not working,” maybe that is a signal. It’s not God who no longer works, it’s your idea of God that needs work. Maybe you are for the first time being called, as C. S. Lewis put it so well in the Narnia books, to go “further up and further in.” That’s where doubt plays a powerful role.

But where does Thomas have his doubts expanded into greater faith? It’s in a context of fellowship. He is with the other disciples this time, and I think that makes a difference. Classically, one of the ways Christians have defended the truth of the resurrection against charges that the disciples experienced hallucinations is to point out that hallucinations are rarely group experiences. They are more commonly solitary in their nature. So by Thomas having his experience of the Risen Christ in the presence of the other disciples there is an assurance here that this is real and true, not a fantasy.

And in doing so, I believe it points up the importance of fellowship when we have our doubts. What do we do when we face a crisis? Some of us, like me, restore our energy from within ourselves. Others gain energy from being with others. However, much as I renew my energy from within and generally alone, if I spend too much time just on my own at a time of doubt, it can all become morbid and increasingly negative. It becomes a downward spiral.  I have seen people facing a crisis of faith take a major step away from church and fellowship for a period of time, and all that really happens is that the negative thoughts are reinforced.

Now, granted, the other disciples may not be the most helpful to Thomas in his doubt, but the fact that they had met the risen Jesus and that he appears to them in that context, is a sign, I believe, that it is worth persevering with Christian fellowship when we have our doubts. Our faith is not solitary. It involves being part of God’s people. Even if at times all our brother and sister Christians give us is a set of trite answers to our questions, nevertheless that is a major arena where we experience Christ.

So I would counsel people facing doubts to stay within the fellowship of the church, to find it a safe place to ask the hard questions, and to be encouraged that in that very place God may well expand and deepen your faith as a result.

Thirdly, I invite you to remember his confession. The other disciples had to see Jesus alive before believing in the resurrection. Thomas wanted that, and more: to touch the wounds. And Jesus offers Thomas what he says he wants. I think he just wants to know for sure, and he expresses it in this black and white manner.

But when the risen Lord stands in front of him, I’m not sure Thomas takes him up on the invitation to touch his hands and his side. Just meeting Jesus is enough, and he says to him, “My Lord and my God!” (verse 28)

‘My Lord and my God.’ That’s the point to which Jesus wants to get Thomas, and us. And yes, this is one of those Bible verses the Jehovah’s Witnesses can’t explain, because Thomas clearly attributes full divine status to Jesus.
But it probably also had huge implications for the first readers of John’s Gospel. If, as most scholars think, John’s Gospel was written towards the end of the first century AD, then it is quite possible that the emperor ruling the Roman Empire was Domitian. He wasn’t the nicest of chaps. He may well have been responsible for the persecution of Christians that is reflected in the Book of Revelation. And what did he require of his subjects? That they worship him as ‘Lord and God’[1].

The confession of the risen Lord at which Thomas arrives through his doubts is not just intellectual. It is one that has practical consequences for daily living and, indeed, dying. Later followers of Jesus who read these words will be those who have sufficiently come through their doubts that they are prepared to make a confession that puts them in opposition to the prevailing values of the society in which they live.

And perhaps this is a major reason why Jesus wants to meet us with our doubts and expand our faith – to make us strong in faith to stand against some of the major forces at work in our world today.
Last week we sang Stuart Townend’s Resurrection Hymn, ‘See what a morning’. It contains the lines,

One with the Father, Ancient of Days
Through the Spirit
Who clothes faith with certainty

Do we have certainty – a certainty with which to face the world? We have a certainty that Christ is risen. We have an assurance of God’s love. To quote U2 for a second consecutive week,

It’s not if I believe in love
But if love believes in me
(from Moment Of Surrender)

Whatever our doubts may be, the Resurrection means that love believes in us. And in the light of that, our confession of faith in our risen Lord and God can be a rock to stand firm in the face of a world that is devoted to values vastly different from his.
Perhaps one of the most notable Christians for steadfastly not bowing down to the values of the world in the last century was Mother Teresa. Her care for the poor and those generally thought not worth bothering with and her freedom from wealth and acquisition made her admired by many, as we well know. After her death in 1997, reports emerged about the severe doubts she expressed in her personal journal. In the lecture on doubt by Peter Enns that I mentioned earlier, he quotes this story about her:

There is a wonderful story of Jesuit philosopher, John Kavanaugh. In 1975 he went to work for three months at the “house of the dying” in Calcutta with Mother Teresa. He was searching for an answer about how best to spend the remaining years of his life. On his very first morning there, he met Mother Teresa. She asked him, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. And he answered with the request that was the very reason he traveled thousands of miles to India: “Pray that I have clarity.” Mother Teresa said firmly, “No. I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh said, “You always seem to have clarity,” she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity. What I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

Jesus brings us to a confession that may or may not have clarity. But at its heart is trust. That, it seems, took Thomas to India, and the effects of his faith are still felt today.

What if we had trust – deep trust – in our risen Lord? Would he take us ‘further up and further in’? Where might the effects of our faith be felt?

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