Sermon. St Thomas Revisited

Sermon. 3 July 2016. St Michael and All Angels. Little Ilford.

St Thomas

John 20.24-29

Now, here's the thing: when I reflect on St Thomas, I don't actually think of doubt, of 'doubting Thomas'. So I cannot offer you that standard Anglican sermon. You know, the one that insists that the enemy of faith is not doubt, but certainty. That faith and doubt are closely intertwined, and that doubt can bring us closer to Gd. These things are all true (and I know it). But they are not what comes to mind-and-heart for me, when I think of Thomas.

What comes to my heart and mind when I reflect on St Thomas is a question: why wasn't he there? I mean:

• why was he not with the other apostles,
• who were gathered together in secret on the first day of the week,
• who then saw the risen Lord Jesus,
• who breathed the Holy Spirit on them?

Thomas was absent from this life-changing encounter.

We are not told why.

I wonder... why?

I have a notion. A theory. Nothing more than that. But I think Thomas might have been a depressive person, someone who suffered at least at times from depression. Depression - a disability which goes beyond sadness, and even beyond normal human grief. It may be (may, I stress) that Thomas was too desperate to join the others for that crucial meeting:

• they were grieving and bewildered and so sought each other out, for mutual consolation and human warmth;
• he, Thomas, was grieving, bewildered and also depressed. So he did what depressed people often do – he isolated himself.

Why do I say this? Well, there may be hints in the only other times when we encounter Thomas. The first is when news of Lazarus's death reaches Jesus. He calls the disciples to go back with him to Lazarus's home. Thomas alone finds this risky plan acceptable. But note what he says: 'Let us also go, to die with him' (cf. John 11.16). A strange plan to make, surely? But just the sort of thing a depressed person, who may tend to see things at their bleakest, may say. He is saying perhaps: 'times are hard; they are out to get us; we may as well accept death.'

Later, Jesus tells the disciples he is going away to prepare a place for them. He adds that they know the way. Thomas replies: 'We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?' This is what provokes Jesus into saying 'I am the way, the truth and the life'. But that's another sermon! The point for now is that we are not told the tone Thomas used. Might it not have been in anxiety, even desperation. As if he were saying: 'We are lost. How can you, Jesus, not see that we are lost?'

These are the only other times we meet Thomas in the whole of the four gospels (though there are plenty of later traditions). But there is another thing we do know about him. He had another name. Do you know it...? He was called Didymus. This is just the Greek for 'twin'. Whereas his real name, Thomas comes from the Hebrew Te'om, which means... well, actually that means twin too! So Thomas's very identity is as 'twin'. He is Twin the Twin. Yet we are told not a shred of a thing about his actual twin.

• Has his twin died?
• Is his twin opposed to Thomas or Jesus and his movement - but so powerfully that the opposition still defines Thomas?
• Is there some trauma hidden in Thomas's very name?

We are not told, but it is surely possible.

I'll leave you to decide if these bits of 'circumstantial evidence' add up to a plausible account of how Thomas suffered from depression. I say again it's only a theory (though Church tradition has been known to construct interpretations of the lives of saints out of weaker bits of circumstantial evidence). I will say that, certainly, something was going on to stop Thomas seeking reassurance from being with the other apostles, soon after Jesus's death.

In any event, it's important that we pay attention to what we are used to calling Thomas's 'doubt'.

This isn't philosophical doubt:

Thomas does not say, 'It is impossible for a dead body to come back to life. Convince me!'

And it is not theological doubt.

Thomas does not say, 'The age of the resurrection cannot yet have arrived'.

For that matter, nor does he say, 'Souls and spirits belong in heaven and not on earth.'

No. What he says is very focused.

Here's my translation:

'unless I see in his hands the place of the nails,

and thrust my finger into the place of the nails,

and thrust my hand into his side,

I refuse to trust it.'

You see? Here is no general doubt about the possibility of miracles, or of comforting apparitions, or even of resurrection as such.

Rather, Thomas needs to know that the Jesus the others have seen is the same person as the Jesus Thomas had known in his moral life.

That the risen Jesus truly is the Jesus who suffered.

That the risen Jesus too still has real wounds.

Why?

Because Thomas is close to the reality of human suffering, and so he knows that only a resurrection body which still bears the wounds is one which can really make sense of and make glorious our human suffering.

But for Thomas even to be saying this means he has managed to drag himself into the outside world, into company. And note what then happens. Jesus is indeed there with them all, now gathered as one.

• He does not call Thomas's earlier absence a sin.
• He does not rebuke him for being too overwhelmed (if that's what it was) to join in with the others.
• And he does not condemn him for wanting to know the wounds.

On the contrary, 
he meets Thomas where he is. 
This is a source of our hope. 
He meets Thomas where he is.
Jesus says (my translation):

'Bring your finger here and see my hands,

and bring your hand and thrust into my side'.

Picture the scene, if you can!

Can you see how shocking it must have been?

'Bring your hand and thrust into my side.'

It is not something one says.

Almost: 'Touch my wounds. Grab, fondle, get to know my wounds.'
We don't say this. 

It is an invitation to an intimacy which breaks all convention.

No other disciple is invited to have this intimacy.

Indeed, I don't think there is anything quite like it in the whole of the Bible.

And indeed, even further: if you google 'touch my wounds' – guess what - you get referred back to this story.

So is it really surprising that

when Thomas overcomes his isolation

he is graced by our Lord with a unique encounter of intimacy and welcome

and that frees him to make a unique declaration of faith in Jesus:

he (he alone) calls him 'my Lord and my God'.

'Bring your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and thrust into my side.' We cannot quite have that intimacy with Jesus (as he himself notes). And perhaps it would never occur to us to want it. Which is fine, of course. But, if only we refuse to isolate ourselves (in whatever ways we may be tempted to isolate – there are plenty of ways of isolating yourself in company), then we can have the same certainty of intimacy with Jesus. As he says to Thomas: 'Do not doubt, but believe'.

Amen.