Readings: Acts 2.14a, 22-32; Jn 20.19-29
Thomas, doubting Thomas, the disciple who wants to see and touch for himself before he will believe, Thomas who seems very close to our own day to day living. He voices for us those sneaking questions we too carry around.
So what sort of doubts plague you most ? That God can perform miracles – of which the raising of Christ from the dead is simply the greatest – may not be something you have any difficulty with: if God is omnipotent then there are no limits on what God can do. Sure enough, but for many this is precisely where the questions start: if God is omnipotent, then how come God doesn’t stop all the evil we manage to vent on one another? Why doesn’t God stop us maiming and killing in Syria, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine? Why does God allow starvation and disease in Africa, appalling corruption in the government of many, perhaps most, of the nations of our world? And having asked these questions, how can we then be sure that there is a God at all? Hasn’t science shown that we can explain everything in terms of ‘laws of nature’? Creation doesn’t need an explanation, it just IS.
Well, first of all, if we believe in a Creator God, then we also believe that it is this same God who has given us the minds which ask these questions. It is healthy to doubt, for it is doubt that drives us to search for truth. And none of us has an infallible hot-line to what full truth is, in this life we will never arrive at perfect understanding. Rather, God is continually revealing intimations of the truth, God is calling us to be reaching out after truth, reaching out after a deeper understanding of our relationship with Christ. The risen Christ does not immediately respond to Thomas’ severe doubts about the miracle his friends are so sure of, Thomas must wrestle with them first on his own. Before we are able to learn anything, honest self-examination is vital. The human heart has such a capacity for kidding itself: there are always some swathes of self-deceit to cut through, hidden fears we need to acknowledge, baggage that perhaps we need to let go of. How we think, and what we believe, are as much a matter of where we are emotionally, what our experiences of life have been, as our ability to understand at an intellectual level the propositions put before us.
Three hundred years ago a growing self-confidence in human ability, and the accuracy afforded by the development of mathematics, gave birth to the Enlightenment and the Age of Science. Western thinking became dominated by the paradigm of ‘reason’. ‘Reason’ became the ‘meta-narrative’, the over-arching story, through which everything in the universe could be explained. From this point of view, it was only a matter of time before we could understand all there is to know!
Today we are beginning to appreciate the reality that ‘truth’ is far more complex than we had ever imagined.
Scientists are well aware of their limitations, aware that the universe does not simply follow all our puny laws of nature. The framework through which we understand our world is indeed, a construction of our own making, a construction which does work for all everyday matters, but one which nevertheless, has severe limitations in explaining the deeper substance of the universe.
Rather, instead of a single ‘metanarrative’ within which everything around us can be explained, philosophers now see that each area and aspect of life has its own peculiar ‘micro-narrative’ or ‘mini-story’,its own peculiar set of principles or parameters: one set of parameters explains this particular situation, but another set of circumstances needs its own, different set.
Scientists, who have long known the importance of the ‘hunch’ in scientific discovery, now talk of ’emotional intelligence’ being just as vital as the capacity to think rationally. The logic of philosophy, and our intuition born of personal experience, are just as important as each other in making sense of the life we are given.
This was something deeply understood by the Hebrews of old. The ‘truth’ of God in Hebrew thinking was revealed in God’s actions, and as those actions were experienced in the lives of men and women. The ‘truth’ thus revealed was passed on to succeeding generations in story – most notably, the story of God’s redeeming love as witnessed in the Exodus from Egypt, and re-enacted in the experience of every Israelite each year at Passover – as we have been thinking about through Holy Week. The story is told in such a way that the hearer enters into it – and then is shocked into new understanding. Truth is not, as the great scientists and philosophers of the Enlightenment supposed, simply a set of propositions to which we give our assent having seen the logic of them. That kind of knowing of course has its value, but alone, it cannot carry us into faith – and on into action. It is when our hearts are moved by experience that our lives are transformed.
So what of Thomas? He is listed in all the gospels as one of the Twelve, but we meet him in action in John’s gospel, first as Jesus and his disciples hear of the death of Lazarus. Thomas’ doubt is far from born of fear or reluctance to pay the cost of faithfulness to Jesus. As Jesus’ other disciples warn him of the dangers of returning to comfort the bereaved family in Bethany – a village just outside Jerusalem where the religious leaders are fervently plotting Jesus’ downfall, as the other disciples favour discretion as the better part of valour, it is Thomas who urges them to stay with Jesus even if they must die for doing so! John has already told us of Thomas’ questioning mind that will not simply accept things he cannot understand. In John’s discourse of the Last Supper, Jesus has just told his disciples about the dwelling places he is preparing for them in his Father’s house, and goes on to declare that they know the way! Thomas retorts that they do not know where he is going, so how can they know the way!
And as we read and hear John’s gospel, there are times when we also might want to cry out that we’re finding it hard to understand!
Be this as it may, here in our resurrection story this morning, left behind are the metaphysical pronouncements we find difficult in John, what happens is rooted in event and action! The story invites us to be there too! To engage that emotional intelligence! To respond with Thomas: My Lord and my God. To receive the Holy Spirit and power to take the gospel of Christ, and the fulness of life he offers out into our world.
Perhaps my favourite artistic depiction of the resurrection is Carravagio’s ‘The Incredulity of Thomas’. In this picture, with two other disciples looking on, a very human Jesus guides Thomas’ finger to the open wound in his side. The triangular shape their bodies make draws our thinking to the Trinity, a Trinity where even doubters are firmly included. Even we are included.
As we enter the story of Thomas and all his doubting, and experience with him, his meeting with the crucified and risen Christ, we, like Thomas, may be satisfied, we, like Thomas, are fed with the Bread of Life.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!