First thoughts are often best, and the saint who originally compiled the Gospel of John wanted the story of doubting Thomas to finish his Gospel, not the story of Peter and the Beloved Disciple which was tacked on to the end later as an extra chapter. Why was Thomas’s to be the final story? Because of these words: My Lord and my God’. The Gospel begins by telling us that the Word was God and became flesh and dwelt among us; it was to end with the full recognition by Thomas of the divinity of Jesus. But, like a Michelangelo nude veiled by officious nuns, art was obscured by piety, the piety of those honouring the senior disciples. I am glad they did not allow their enthusiasm to eradicate the original ending; they just added on an extra chapter, but left Thomas in, saying for ever My Lord and my God’.
This, then, is the summary of Christian belief, in, say, 90 AD, that Jesus was divine. Two thousand years and millions of sermons later, I am inclined to lay stress on the other half of the story: that Jesus was human. Our current trouble may be that we have seen the halo too often; I think it my duty to try to convince you that Jesus was real, that his limited diet gave him digestive problems, that wandering about Palestine involved difficulties in keeping himself clean. This is the complement to the message of the Gospel-writers, who want to persuade you that he was God incarnate, though only John thought through what that meant, and it took Christian theologians three hundred years to catch up with him. I talked about the eternal Jesus a couple of months ago; since you can look the sermon up on the internet I will not repeat myself. Today I will concentrate on the fact that these words of Thomas: ‘My Lord and my God’, are said to have been addressed to a human being.
According to this story, what convinced Thomas was the resurrection. There was no doubt in his mind that this was the familiar person, and the body, he had seen dead on the Cross only ten says earlier. What makes us human, as distinct from the angels, is that we die, not that we can die, but that we must die. In our Lent Group, we talked about the difficulty that if Jesus was a sinless human being, as academic theologians like the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tell us, then he was not a normal human being. Was he real? I replied that it would not affect my faith to learn that Jesus was not sinless. Another answer I might have given is that Jesus must have been a normal human being because he died. What impressed Thomas was the evidence before him that the body which had suffered on the Cross was alive again, like the disciples at Emmaus when Jesus lifted his wounded hands in blessing. Of course, Thomas had been familiar with Jesus for a long time, but it was not the ministry or the preaching of Jesus that overwhelmed his doubts; it was the evidence that the man before him was the man he had seen die.
I have already remarked that the New Testament is aimed at teaching us about the divinity of Jesus; the Church concentrates on this too, so that our thoughts of him are continually obscured by clouds of glory. I believe that the message of his love for us would be easier to hear if we also talked about the fact that he was actually one of us. I believe that we would see the Cross in better perspective if we occasionally saw, not the Deity, but a man dying there. I believe the Blessed Sacrament would mean more if we thought of it more often, among other things, as the offering of a human body and human blood.
We are far too inclined to treat our Christian religion as a spiritual matter, shut off in its own compartment from the rest of life, and ignore its basis in the history of a real human being. We are told that young people to-day are interested, not in religion, but in spirituality. I want to persuade you not to pursue the wisps of New Age philosophy and mysticism which pass for spirituality, but the hard historical facts which constitute the Christian Gospel. It is easy to feel, to feel moved by celestial images. It takes more effort to believe, to believe that a human being was first tortured to death and then actually rose from the dead and startled poor doubting Thomas in the upper room. The difference between Christianity and other religions, other spiritualities, is that Christianity is based on a historical narrative, which you can either believe or reject; others are not, or not in the same way. When you get down to it, and making all the allowances permitted to us by Biblical criticism and theological speculation, the basic question is: Are the claims of Christianity true? Is Jesus our Lord and our God?
If not, why are you wasting time here which could be better spent at Sainsbury’s or on the golf course? If it is true, are you doing enough about it? There are plenty of questions to ask oneself on the assumption that Christianity is true. I do not want to imply that there is anything wrong with the way you are living at present. Unlike some, I do not think it is the Church’s job to appoint a Grand Inquisitor. I do think it is our job to suggest that you examine your conscience. When you do so, I have no doubt that you will feel inadequate. That is natural, but I am not trying to upset you, only to start you thinking,
Poor Thomas! Remembered throughout eternity, not so much for getting it right as for being too slow to do so! Later, according to legend, he travelled beyond the known world to India, to preach to the poor and to found a church which lasts to this day. But that is not what gave him the crown of sanctity. It was seeing that his friend, an ordinary human being, was divine, and accepting the consequences. Amen