Sermon 10th April 2016

This month, we’ll finish the Easter story as it’s told in John’s Gospel.

Today, our Assistant Minister, Gill Tayleur, preaches. 

The reading is from John 20:19-31.

A husband and his wife got up one Sunday morning and the husband dressed for church.

It was nearly time to leave for the service when he noticed his wife was still in her dressing gown. Perplexed, he asked, "Why aren't you getting dressed for church?" And she replied, "Cause I don't want to go." He asked, "Do you have any reason?" And she answered, "Yes, I have 3 good reasons. First, I don’t like the music. Second, no one there likes me. And third, I just don't want to go." The husband replied, wisely, "Well, honey, I have three reasons why you should go. First, you usually like some of the music. Second, there are a few people there who like you. And third, you're the vicar! So get dressed!”

We’ll come back to that in a few minutes.

Two weeks ago was Easter Sunday, when we celebrated Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Then last week we looked at what happened when Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, outside the empty tomb, that same day he rose. This morning we’re focusing on the next resurrection appearance of Jesus, to his disciples, and particularly on what happened with one of them, Thomas.

Thomas, also known as Didymus, the Greek word for twin. But we often refer to him as Doubting Thomas. Doubting Thomas - is that fair? Was he a doubting Thomas?

Well yes, and no. Thomas doubted and then believed, we see both doubt and faith in him! And for that reason I think Thomas may well be someone many of us can relate to. We may be sympathetic to him, as we too have our doubts. We have doubts from time to time, or maybe a lot of the time! Faith and doubt aren’t mutually exclusive; often we’re a mix of both. So maybe we can identify with Thomas to some extent. And I think we might also be sympathetic to Thomas because we understand, maybe we have a sneaking admiration for, his robust refusal to believe in Christ’s resurrection without what he considered to be adequate evidence.

Sometimes we too want to lay down the conditions on which we’re prepared to believe.

Lord, if only this happens, or that does, THEN I’ll believe!

Hmmm. Thomas was a mix of doubt and faith – and surely, we are too?!

BUT Thomas changed, he moved from more to less doubt, and from less to more faith. His faith grew. How did this happen, and how can it happen for us too?

Let’s recap on the story then. Verse 19 of John’s gospel chapter 20: “On the evening of that first day of the week (that’s Easter Sunday, the very day Jesus was raised), when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them, and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”

I bet they were! Jesus was dead, they knew that, dead and buried, and now here he is 3 days later, appearing inside the same room as them, even though the doors were definitely locked! Of course they were overjoyed!

All except one, that is. Because John says in verse 24 that Thomas wasn’t there with the others. He wasn’t there, and when they told him what happened, he couldn’t or wouldn’t believe it. He flat out refused to take the others’ word for it. So during the whole of that week after Easter Sunday, of the 11 surviving apostles 10 were believers in Jesus’ resurrection, and 1 was not. For a very simple pragmatic reason: Thomas was absent when Jesus came to the others on Easter Sunday. The first point I want to make then, is about Thomas the absentee.

Why was he absent? We don’t know. It might have been something like sickness or injury. But I’d have thought it more likely he stayed away deliberately, perhaps overcome with grief and despair and wanting to be alone. Or he may have been angry or disillusioned with Jesus, that he had ended up crucified rather than crowned. Or Thomas might have been too scared to join the others; we know they were very afraid of the Jewish authorities finding them – would they try to put Jesus’ followers to death too?

We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t there, but he wasn’t, he was absent. And he missed out on meeting Jesus.

Of course it’s not the same, but I think it is a valid point to make, that these days too, when people miss coming together with other believers at church on a Sunday, they = we, miss out too! Because Jesus promised that when 2 or more of his followers come together, he, Jesus, will be there in the midst of them. And he promised that his followers will meet with him in the breaking of bread and wine. And when some of us aren’t here on a Sunday, we miss it! We miss him!

Of course there are lots of reasons why people don’t come to church every week – some more excuses than reasons, hence the joke at the beginning. But there is still a challenge here for irregular church goers – you don’t know what you might be missing! Sporadic church attendance carries a risk, and regular attendance a blessing. Why? Because Jesus is with us when we are together. Being together we are likely to learn about Jesus, and to encounter him. In the sung worship, in the prayers, in Communion, in one another, and of course in the Bible reading and teaching.

Faith rarely emerges in a vacuum. It often grows in the context of a believing community. I was chatting with someone this week who said she started attending St Saviours not believing, and slowly but surely over the course of a year, that changed, and now she finds – rather to her own surprise! – that she does believe! It happens!

So church isn’t for already-believers only! Church is also for half believers, for doubters, for explorers and questioners. I’m sure some of us here today might identify with that! Here in church we can learn and encounter God through worship, word and sacrament.

So, the first challenge this morning, is to come to church often! On the first Sunday Thomas was absent, but on the next one he was back with the other disciples, and the blessing he missed on the first, he received on the next.

That was Thomas the absentee. Next we meet Thomas the sceptic.

It seems that all 10 of the others – and maybe more, if Mary and any of the women or others were there too, who knows – all of them said “We have seen the Lord!” in verse 25. But as we’ve already heard, Thomas refused to believe it. He said, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

I should think many of us understand this attitude, we ‘get’ this, don’t we? We might even admire Thomas for his insistence on personal and empirical proof of Jesus’ resurrection. Even though at least 10 people Thomas knew well and presumably usually trusted, all said the same thing had happened, nope, Thomas did not, would not, believe it! It can’t be true, it’s not possible! It must be a trick of some sort!

Thomas wanted proof. The others had had proof. Peter and John SAW the empty tomb and empty grave clothes on Easter Sunday morning. And they believed.

Mary had proof too. She too saw the empty tomb and empty grave clothes, and later she HEARD Jesus’ voice, calling her name, and SAW Jesus himself! And she believed.

And that Easter evening, the other disciples SAW Jesus, as we’ve just read, when he appeared to them, coming through a locked door, and showing them his hands and his side, and other evidence of the crucifixion on his resurrected body. And they believed.

All the others had seen with their own eyes, or heard with their own ears, the resurrected Jesus. Was it not reasonable for Thomas to demand to see, to hear, to touch, for himself? To demand proof?!

Jesus did graciously accede to Thomas’ demand. Jesus gave Thomas what he asked for, although some commentators interpret Jesus’ words to “Stop doubting and believe” in verse 27 as a gentle rebuke. I’m not sure if it was a rebuke or not, but either way Jesus then went on to pronounce a blessing on those who don’t see (or hear or touch) Jesus’ resurrected body for themselves. In verse 29: “Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed;  blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’”

Jesus blessed, and commended – not faith without evidence, but faith without sight. Jesus didn’t commend faith without evidence. He commended faith without sight. Throughout the New Testament, faith and evidence, or faith and reason, are NEVER contrasted with one another. They’re not contradictory.What is contrasted is faith and sight, which is different.

Let’s think about this. There are 2 main ways you and I come to believe in anything. One is our own experience, through our own senses, our own sight, or our own empirical investigation.

The second is the testimony of others, of credible witnesses. I might have seen something for myself, or I might believe someone else’s word on it.

We’re very familiar with the idea of eye witness testimony, from our own experience of legal situations or maybe from detective or police dramas on TV. In court, a lot hinges on the testimony of witnesses, and the jury has to decide whether or not they are telling the truth, whether or not it rings true.

Do I believe that the world is round? Yes I do, we all do! Not because we’ve been into space and seen the earth’s curvature for ourselves, but because astronauts have, and we’ve heard their words and seen their photos. In everyday life, we constantly take other people’s word for something. We believe in something because we trust the person who tells us about it. We believe their evidence. But Thomas didn’t believe the word of the other disciples. He insisted on seeing and touching for himself.

But if everyone did that, if everyone insisted on seeing or touching the resurrected Jesus themselves, there would be no Christian believers in the world today! It’s not possible to see or touch Jesus, bodily, now! And of course there are millions of Christians today, who believe on the eye witness testimony of those disciples of Jesus.

Our faith is not based on our own experience of seeing, hearing, touching but on the word of eye witnesses who knew Jesus, who saw the resurrection appearances take place.

By the way, if you’d like to see a dramatised story of the risen Jesus, I do recommend the film Risen, in cinemas now, 12A, with Joseph Fiennes, Tom Felton and Peter Firth. It was on at Peckham Plex this week but finished on Friday, but you may find it elsewhere.

We’ve looked at Thomas the absentee, and Thomas the sceptic. Finally we see Thomas the believer.

In verses 26 to 28, Thomas had his second chance to see and encounter the risen Jesus, and he did. His response was immediate. As soon as he saw he believed. And as soon as he believed, he worshipped, crying out “My Lord and my God!”

“My Lord and my God!” Now Thomas believed alright, and he also worshipped. He probably fell to his knees, maybe to his face, prostrate.

Tradition says that Thomas not only became a believer, and a worshipper, he also became a preacher. There is a strong tradition going back to the 4^th century or earlier, that Thomas became a preacher and missionary, going to Parthia, Persia and on to India. He is said to have taken the good news about Jesus to India and started the church there, on the shores of Kerala in the South West. And it is said that he was martyred, on St Thomas Mount in Chennai.

Whether or not that is certainly true, wherever he preached, surely Thomas must have urged his listeners to believe, and have urged them not to make the same mistake he did: not to demand empirical evidence when it’s not available. He would have urged them instead to believe on HIS testimony, as someone who had seen the resurrected Jesus with his own eyes.

The Christian faith is based on the testimony of the disciples. We believe not because we have seen, but because they have. Here we are reading the account of one of them, John, and in a letter he wrote probably 40 or 50 years later, in the book of 1 John chapter 1, he says, “We write to you about the Word of life, which has existed from the very beginning. We have heard it, and we have seen it with our eyes; yes we have seen it and our hands have touched it” And so on.

The New Testament is the witness of the disciples to Jesus Christ. Fortunately in our society, it’s available to all. And we have the opportunity and responsibility is to expose ourselves to it, to read it, to listen to it, to those people who said “We have seen the Lord”.

For this is what will bring US to faith and worship.

And if, or when, we are unsure, when we doubt, we’re to return to the eye witness testimony of the New Testament.

To conclude, in our Bible passage in verse 30 John tells us why this is so important. He says that “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Why does it matter that we believe, that we have faith? Because that’s the way to life! Life with God, with Jesus. We can go through life on our own, facing all its challenges and pains as best we can, or we can go through life with God, believing in and knowing for ourselves his love and forgiveness and presence with us, now and forever. We can go through life with his son Jesus  as our Lord and our God – the one we follow, we live for, we worship.

As Thomas did.

Let’s each think for a moment about where we are in terms of faith and doubt, and what step we might need to take next, to encourage faith to grow.Might it be helpful to commit to coming to church more often? And/ or to listen  to the testimony about Jesus in the New Testament by reading and studying it more often? Here in church, at home on our own, or in a small group that meets in someone’s home during the week? To declare for ourselves, for the first time or the thousandth, My Lord and My God!

As always, feel free to come and chat with me or Cameron after, or get in touch in the week, if any of this is  something you’d like to explore more. Do go for prayer with others after the service if you’d like to respond in that way.

But now let’s all pray, as we sit…