The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

When we gather round the font in this baptism service, I shall be asking everyone here to join with Lauren and Ella’s parents and god parents in professing the faith of the church.  I shall be asking whether you believe and trust in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and you will reply, ‘I believe….’  In a very different context those are the words the disciple Thomas found so hard to say.
Thomas is an interesting character. He has often been portrayed as ‘doubting’ Thomas – the patron saint of those who desperately want to believe but can’t quite bring themselves to do so. But nowhere in the gospel story is there any evidence that he was like that. He is more like what we would call a hard nosed realist. And that perhaps explains why he was not in the room with the other disciples when they first became aware of the presence of their risen Lord. Thomas the realist prefers to keep to himself, to get on with doing other things; he doesn’t want to stay with the other disciples, to share their grief and fear. He is perhaps preparing to go back to the old life before he knew before he met Jesus. So when the other disciples tell him they have seen the Lord, he answers with a combination of anger and mockery; ‘Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the marks of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ It is a grim and gruesome statement.
This is a statement not of anguished doubt but the determined unbelief of a realist – or at least someone who likes to think of himself as a realist. When he does subsequently meet his risen Lord, Thomas does not stretch out his hand to touch – he falls to his knees in worship, ‘My Lord and my God.’ But then he is challenged; ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen yet have come to believe.’
There are two things to remember about that famous statement. The first concerns what it is Thomas has come to believe, and what those who have not seen are yet to believe. It is not primarily a belief in the resurrection. It is a belief about who Jesus is. It is not a belief about one final moment in Jesus’ life; it is a belief about the whole of that life. Thomas doesn’t say, ‘Gosh now I believe that you are alive again.’ He says, ‘My Lord and my God.’ He recognises in Jesus what was true all the time he had known him, but he had never been able to see.
There is a curious story of a violinist playing recently at a metro station in Washington DC. About 2000 people walk past him, some throw money in a hat without stopping, children tend to be more attentive than adults, only 6 people stop to listen for any time. He collects 32$ in an hour. He has been playing Bach. The violinist was Joshua Bell playing some of the most intricate violin music ever written on a violin worth three and a half million dollars. This curious experiment proved perhaps that we do not see the real thing in unexpected contexts.
Jesus was the real thing in an unexpected context – the real thing in his life and teaching, the real thing on the cross; but a realist like Thomas needed something extraordinary for him to appreciate the real thing. And that was more or less true of all those who accompanied Jesus on his ministry. They did not see until the very end that he was the truth about God on earth, the human face of God, the one in whose company they could find the real thing about their humanity and their life in this world. Jesus set them an example of love and taught them about loving and breathed upon them the spirit of his love. He taught them about courage and self sacrifice and generosity and non violence and the meaning of true wealth. He taught them to pray. And he forged a community in which this learning and this love might still go on if they could open themselves to the power of the spirit to remind them of his teaching and lead them into the truth.
And that leads us to the second implication of what both Thomas and those who have not seen, are to believe . He has come to see the true meaning of Jesus life in company. By not being with the other disciples he nearly missed the crucial moment. Growth in faith is a communal experience. The extraordinary degree of sharing and mutuality which Luke describes as the experience of the early church in Jerusalem, only arises out of those who believed, being of one heart and soul. Out of that oneness people’s needs were met.
Today then is a good day for a baptism. Ella and Lauren are being baptized in the season when the church celebrates new life not just for children but for everyone. They are being baptized on a day when the gospel shows us that faith and belief grow out of our being together, worshipping, praying and learning together. When you are baptized you become part of a community of faith. And that faith is built up by the slow but steady nurturing of trust in Jesus Christ as the human face of God. That is a faith which can be both taken for granted and neglected as well as dismissed or ridiculed. As practicing Christians even we have to be alert for the presence of Jesus and the call of faith in unexpected places. Much of our lives can be spent in a hurry, and the rest in distraction. We rush through the station and fail to hear the music of the great violinist. We  have the experience but miss the meaning. We know about Jesus but we do not see who he is. The purpose of baptism is that one day we shall see for our selves in love and trust and gratitude, who he is. Amen