“Thomas, thoughtful though tentative, thinks through terrific tidings – takes time to trust – then, totally transformed, travels teaching truth.”
Thus a clergy
friend of mine meditated on a statue of St Thomas in the church of St
Thomas and St Andrew, Doxey, Stafford.
I think it is a very good
summary of our Gospel reading for today which, as every year, tells
Thomas’ story.
The disciples are together, hiding from
the authorities, in the evening of that first Easter Day when the
Risen Lord appears to them, and reassures them.
And then Luke
tells us that Cleopas and his wife come racing back from Emmaus to
tell them that they, too, had seen Jesus.
But Thomas
wasn’t there.
We don’t know why, but he missed it.
And
he isn’t inclined to believe the others,
thinking they must
be deceived in some way.
Well, you can understand it, can’t
you?
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
If it
were true, it would indeed be terrific tidings –
but people
don’t just come back from the dead!
Not even the dear
Teacher.
Once you’re dead, you’re dead, thinks Thomas.
How
can you come back to life again?
Surely this was wishful
thinking on the part of the others?
Surely a group
hallucination?
Surely they were mistaken, weren’t
they?
Weren’t they?
Thomas remembers the last
couple of years,
since he started being one of Jesus’
disciples.
How they had travelled together, quite a large band
of them,
with a few women who saw to it that everybody had
something to eat
and at the very least a blanket at
night.
There was the time he had gone off with Matthew, on
Jesus’ instructions, to preach the Good News,
and they had
had such a great time.
And then it had all gone sour,
and
Jesus had been arrested, tortured, and crucified.
But they were
saying he was still alive?
Not possible, surely.
It
couldn’t really be true, could it?
But then, there had been
those miracles, people healed –
the time his friend Lazarus
had died,
and Jesus had called him to come out of the tomb, and
he had come.
Or when that little girl had died, only Jesus had
said she was only sleeping.
Or that time when….
Thomas
goes on remembering all the times Jesus had healed the sick or done
other miracles.
But then, he couldn’t be alive, could he?
And
so on, round and round, on the treadmill of his thoughts.
This
goes on for a whole week.
It must have seemed an eternity to
poor Thomas,
with the others, although still cautious and
hiding from the authorities –
indeed, some of the fishermen
were talking of going back to Galilee and getting the boats
out;
safer that way –
the others, still cautious, yet
fizzing and bubbling that the Teacher was alive!
A whole
week.
A week can feel like eternity, sometimes.
I
know when the lockdowns first started, over a year ago now,
each
week felt like an eternity.
I think it’s as well we didn’t
know it would go on for over a year –
and, of course, if
things go pear-shaped again, it’s possible that restrictions will
either not be eased on schedule or else will be reimposed.
But a
year ago we had no way of knowing that,
and a week seemed like
forever.
And I don’t know about you, but I certainly wondered
where God was in all this!
Many of us had the virus, and
some, sadly, have lost loved ones to it.
Some people have barely
left their homes for a year,
and even though they’ve now been
told it’s safe, as long as they are careful,
they are still
reluctant to do so.
I personally am finding it absolutely
impossible to make plans of any kind lest they have to be
cancelled.
Even though more and more of us have been vaccinated
–
and please, do get the vaccination if you’re offered it,
it’s well worth it –
still find it hard to believe we’ll
be free again one day.
Where is God when you need him?
We
want to see God’s face, to hear the reassurance that all will be
well and all manner of thing will be well.
We want the
reassurance that God is truly there and hasn’t abandoned us.
We
have learnt new ways of being Church;
did you notice how many
people logged on for the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday Zoom
services?
Given how many people were sharing logins, it was well
over a hundred people!
Far more than would ever have come to a
Circuit service if they had to go out.
While it’s wonderful to
be together again, even with restrictions,
I hope that some
services, and some meetings, will continue to be held via Zoom.
We’ve
also learnt to livestream our services,
and to post the
recordings so people who don’t want to come to church,
or who
can’t come for any reason,
can still join us in worship.
God
has been there, leading us and teaching us over the past year.
But
it hasn’t always been easy to see the next step.
But you
see, Thomas shows us that this is okay.
He had to wait a whole
week until the risen Jesus came to him to reassure him –
and a
week can be a very, very long time!
But that’s okay.
We
don’t have to get immediate answers;
we don’t have to feel
better at once if we are taken ill;
we do, perhaps, have to be
very patient and keep remembering hands, face, space and fresh
air.
For Thomas, it took a week.
That’s why we
remember him on this day each year –
Low Sunday, I was taught
to call it –
as it’s the anniversary of the day when Jesus
did come to Thomas.
The disciples were still hiding from the
Jewish authorities –
they could easily have been picked up,
arrested, and crucified in their turn.
And this time, Thomas was
with them.
He was still doubtful, still not convinced –
but
Jesus came, specially for him.
“Here, touch my scars, touch my
side –
it’s true, I’m alive, you can trust me!”
And
Thomas’ immediate response was to fall down in awe and
worship.
And he was totally transformed.
His doubts
all fell away, as if they had never been.
He knew Jesus forgave
him for having doubted,
just as he was to forgive Peter for
having denied he knew him,
just as he would have forgiven Judas
for having betrayed him,
had Judas been in any condition to
receive that forgiveness.
Thomas was forgiven and
transformed.
As we, too, can be.
You know this and I
know this, but sometimes it feels as though that knowledge is only in
our heads,
we don’t absolutely know it with all of us.
Except
when we do –
and then we wonder how on earth we ever doubted,
why we don’t always believe with our whole being.
We
have all had those mountain-top experiences, I expect –
and we
have all had our times of doubt and even disbelief.
It seems to
be normal and human.
Thomas certainly didn’t believe that
Jesus had been raised;
it took a special touch from our Lord
himself to convince him,
as it sometimes does to convince
us.
And Thomas was totally transformed, from doubter to
staunch believer.
And, what’s more, he then travels, teaching
truth.
We have nothing in the Bible to tell us what may or
many not have happened to Thomas after his encounter with the risen
Lord.
But there are various traditions,
most notably that
he went to India and founded the church there.
They say he was
martyred in Chennai in about AD72, having lived and worked in India
for over twenty years, and some sources say his remains were brought
back to Edessa, in modern Syria, although others think he was buried
in India.
Even today, almost two thousand years later,
there are Christians in India who trace their faith history back to
Thomas’ ministry.
How much of this is factual, and how much
tradition, we don’t know.
But given that so many Christians in
India,
Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant,
all trace their
faith back to him leads me to suspect there might be something in
it.
But whatever the truth, we know that Thomas travelled,
teaching the truth about Jesus,
teaching, as did many of the
other apostles, proclaiming the Risen Christ,
witnessing that he
had actually seen and spoken to him,
being filled with God’s
Holy Spirit to proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven.
He was totally
transformed from the doubtful, worried disciple of that first Easter
Day.
Most of us have been following Jesus for many years
now.
We too have been transformed,
probably gradually over
the years,
to be more like the people we were created to be,
the people God designed us to be.
We, too, proclaim our
risen Lord, not only –
probably not even primarily –
in
words.
And like Thomas, we sometimes take time to tentatively
think through terrific truths, and we take time to trust.
And
Thomas shows us that this is okay, as long as we don’t stop
there.
As long as we can accept that our first views may be
wrong, and allow God to heal and transform us.
And then, my
friends, along with Thomas we too will be teaching the
truth.
“Thomas, thoughtful though tentative, thinks
through terrific tidings – takes time to trust – then, totally
transformed, travels teaching truth.”
