Second Sunday of Easter 2012 ( Low Sunday).  Hollowell & Guilsborough. 15 April 2012.

Our New Testament reading today is one of the best known of, for want of a better phrase,  the  human  interest stories in the Gospels.   Jesus appears to the disciples,  a frightened little group locked away from everyone in the upstairs room.  He shows them his hands and his side pierced by nails and spear.    Thomas, known as Didymus, meaning the twin, was not there and when he does arrive and is told that Jesus has appeared, expresses doubt.   As a result Thomas has had a pretty bad press ever since. 
These days we are all pretty sceptical, far more so than our ancestors were, with little scientific knowledge or 24/7 access to news.    It's a paradox that he greater the amount of news flowing in our direction, the more sceptical we become about hidden agendas, spin etc.   
"It must be true I read it in the tabloids"  is the title of a column in a weekly news magazine, we read at tome.   When actually what we mean is that we don't believe what we read in the newspapers.   And looking at that from the opposite angle, whilst usually being proud of our own hard headed, sceptical, no nonsense approach to life,  we love it when one of our friends falls for a tall story or a prank :  the Swiss Spaghetti harvest, the flying penguins, hawks fitted with speed cameras.  Those April Fools  are looked forward to  every year.   
It's worth bearing in mind, however, that many great discoveries have been made by those who bravely doubted the received wisdom of their time :   like Galileo and Copernicus, proposing that the Earth goes round the Sun; Darwin on the origins of man, and in our own day the two Australians, Marshall and Warren, who postulated that bacteria were the cause of some stomach ulcers and, to prove it,  infected themselves. 
As for religion, Tennyson had it that   " There lies more faith in honest doubt , believe me, than in half the creeds. "    So at first glance we ought to have some sympathy for "doubting Thomas" as he is known,   hesitantly saying   " Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails.....And put my hand into his side I will not believe."    Doubt and the questioning of God are, after all,  regular features of The Bible. 
Take Psalm 13 " How much longer O lord? Wilt thou forget me for ever?    Or  here's Jeremiah " Why did I come from the womb to see only sorrow and toil to end my days in shame?    
"  God's onslaughts wear me down ",  laments Job.  
 Our Church needs to let doubts and uncertainties surface.   It's Ok; it's Biblical,  and may be courageous to doubt.   Most famously and poignantly Jesus himself on the cross   "My God,  My God why have you forsaken me? 
"Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails....and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. "
That's not doubt, however, that's disbelief.    Now here's a footnote in history for you.  The rather euphemistic  phrase "doubting" Thomas was,  I discover, a phrase coined by a Victorian parson in 1877 and was then picked up by Harper's magazine 5 years later. . So for nearly 130 years we've been led astray.  But even before that Mrs Gaskell, the Victorian writer wrote in one of her novels about "unbelieving"  Thomas.
It would be easier to defended Thomas if he'd only doubted.  After all,  much of religion is about doubt.  I doubt that God created the world in 6 days or that the wall of Jericho fell down when the trumpets blew, or that Methuselah lived for 969 years.  But that does not undermine my faith in the Bible's message. 
What Thomas appears to have had was a closed mind.   Doubting Thomas ?  No: distrusting Thomas, disbelieving Thomas,  dismissive Thomas. 
He says  "Unless I see....."  Yet we all know that seeing is not necessarily believing.   Each of us can see the same  event and believe something different about it.   Too often it's an issue of what we want to believe.  It must be true I saw it in the tabloids.   In The Sun's a famous headline claimed,   "Freddie Starr ate my hamster".  
Unless I see  . Well that's not true to the way we actually live is it ?    We do take a lot on trust.  We won't refuse to vote on 3 May because the candidate has not come to our door.   We take it that he believes in what he says in his election address etc .and we agree or disagree and then we make up our minds.  
We don't examine the structure of a chair before we sit on it: we trust that it won't let us down with bump.  Yes, we are let down sometimes. People deceive us.   But our default position is one of trust.   And we react adversely if someone distrusts us. 
Unless I see for myself.  We don't like that scepticism in other people.   Or if we put the emphasis on Unless  -  UNLESS I see:  that brings argument and threat with it.   It almost a threat that Thomas is going to break with the others unless..........
So these various ways of looking at the gospel's story show  dissenting Thomas doing so with some self importance, denying Thomas  -  standing back from the others.
Doubting Thomas one can sympathise with.  Distrusting, disbelieving, defiant, disputing Thomas  -  as we can read it into the story -  is not a pleasant person.  I don't like him. 
But  to be honest with myself I am like that.   Being a diplomat by training I'll leave it to you to decide whether you are also.  
" I'll believe that when I see it".  How many times have we been dismissive of someone's change of heart?  Or dug ourselves into an intransigent position.  " Unless I get an apology......." 
Thomas was perhaps the cussed disciple all along with his vigorous disbelief, his belligerent pessimism.  But he rejoins the group on that Sunday after Easter.   Jesus stands among them " Peace be with you ".   
 " Here you are" says Jesus to Thomas  and offers him, his wounds to examine.  But there was no need for that.  This is the Gospel's defining moment.  For Thomas makes his profession of faith " My Lord and my God".    
And that of course was not just his profession of faith it's needs to be profession of every Christian in the presences of Jesus in our lives.   So doubting Thomas becomes defining Thomas.
I pray that that will always be the case for all of us.  Peace be with you. 


    



  



