Doubting . . .

A longer version of my sermon for last Sunday :-

The readings set for today in the Common Lectionary focus on Thomas, doubting Thomas, as we often call him. When told the good news, “We have seen the Lord!” he refused to believe. In fact he got quite belligerent about it. Unless I touch the scars, unless I know for myself that the person you say you’ve seen isn’t an impostor or a ghost, I will not believe. It’s worth noting those words - “I will not believe.” However much Thomas may have wanted to believe, he very deliberately refused to believe.

And that, I think, was because he really couldn’t stand the thought of believing, and then it not being true after all. He’d have been completely destroyed by the disappointment. For Thomas was a man of courage and commitment. It was Thomas who said, when Jesus told them he must go to Jerusalem, and to his friend Lazarus, “Let’s go with him, even if we must die there.”

Personally, I think the courage of Thomas was probably the reason why he wasn’t there when Jesus first appeared. The disciples were lying low. Jerusalem was a dangerous place for them just then, and they were best behind locked doors. But I think of Thomas as the one with the guts to get out onto the streets to see what was going on, maybe also to buy in some of the supplies they would need.

For whatever reason, though, he wasn’t in the room with the others. It distresses modern secularists, who had predicted the death of religion by the end of the last century, to think that if anything, religion is a growing force in our world today. But it also distresses me a bit, because I don’t like the look or the sound of some of the religion I see growing around me. It feels too strident, too sure of itself, and too demanding of power. And I don’t mean just militant Islam, by the way. Good religion needs a bit of Thomas in it; good religion needs a healthy relationship between faith and doubt. And good religion needs truly to know and to follow and to accept as its own, the mind of its God.

With respect to Mr Donald Trump and his comments about fake news, there’s a lot of fake religion in the world today, and some of it supports him. And Thomas, doubting Thomas, is for me the antidote to fake religion. Mr Trump, it would appear, listens to the news he approves of, which is generally broadcast on the Fox News Channel, and then he tweets copiously about what he hears there without checking any of the facts. That’s what the President’s advisers are there to help him do, but of course he’s sacked most of them.

Fake religion also involves people listening and repeating without checking; it can happen anywhere - charismatic preachers or imams of ministers consciously or unconsciously push their own agendas and the credulous accept it and repeat it, because it’s spoken in such a way that it has to be the truth. And if someone comes along with a different truth, then, rather than listen to them you stone them or burn them or shoot them or blow them up. It’s happened enough through Christian history.

That’s why for me Thomas is always a faith hero rather than a faith villain. Actually the first church I had care of was dedicated to St Thomas, so I’ve always taken a special interest in the man; but he is also where I stand, really. I think I’m not a particularly credulous person, and I certainly don’t believe everything I hear on first hearing it. But I’m not an out and out cynic either; I don’t disbelieve things just for the sake of it, and I don’t think Thomas did that, either. I like to check things. I’m one of those annoying people who’ll check what you re-post on Facebook, and either confirm it as true, or, more likely, tell you you’ve fallen for yet another scam. If you don’t use Facebook and didn’t understand any of that, frankly you’ve not missed a great deal; but an awful lot of stuff on social media sort of becomes true when it’s not, by being re-posted again and again. Religious creeds can also sort of become true when lots of people repeat them, even if those people don’t actually understand what they’re saying.

Thomas was a man who could see the alternatives. So what were those alternatives? A ghost, perhaps; a sort of group delusion, where people persuade each other they’ve seen something they haven’t; an impostor, which is why he wanted to see and touch the actual scars in the hand and the side of Jesus. I need to check this out, says Thomas - it’s too big a thing, too good a thing, too scary a thing, to just believe without checking.

So he’s given his own personal revelation of the risen Christ. Again, on the first day of the week - and I’m sure we’re being encouraged by John in his telling of the story to relate this to the practice of the early Church meeting to break bread on the first day of the week: Jesus will be with you whenever you do this in remembrance of him, we are being told. In fact, the word anamnesis, which we translate as “remembrance”, means rather more than just looking back and remembering - it has a sense of bringing into the present, bringing into the place where you are, the person remembered.

And Jesus certainly was present that day for Thomas. See my wounds, he tells Thomas, put your finger into the marks of the nails, put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t doubt, but believe. Thomas doesn’t need to touch Jesus; he’s full of faith straight away. “My Lord and my God!” he declares - the first time in scripture that Jesus is explicitly identified as God.

So I’m prepared to praise Thomas for doubting, or, at least, for being honest about where he stood. Better that, than to just repeat what you’re told to say without really testing it. Bad religion seeks to brainwash its adherents; bad religion won’t admit to questions and challenges. Thomas stands for those who will question and challenge, not for the sake of it, not in order to oppose or damage the faith, but because to commit themselves heart and soul, they need a sure base, a clear understanding. Jesus says, “Blessed are those who do not see, and yet believe.” That could be an open door to take dubious things on trust, but it’s not.

It’s about discerning the genuine presence of Jesus in the group to which we belong. Not seeing the man, but finding the Spirit. Paul writes that we have the mind of Christ. Are we truly meeting with Jesus, allowing him to guide and direct us, when we meet together? If we are, then in how we live, how we care, how we love we’ll reflect his mind. And again, Thomas shows us the way.

Sometimes it’s the one who really struggles to find faith who, once they’ve grasped it, shines out most brightly in commitment and service and courage. When Thomas met with the risen Jesus, he offered everything of himself to him. And I’m sure it was that all or nothing approach in Thomas that led him initially not to be sceptical so much as to consciously refuse to believe. Once I do believe, he’s saying, my Lord will have all of me, everything I can give, everything I can do; so I do have to be sure, if I’m really going to give that much of me.

So that’s Thomas; and what about me, since I’m prepared to identify as a Thomas fan? Well, for me, doubt and faith go hand in hand. So much so that I once wrote a poem in which I described myself as a natural atheist. I find theology a bit on the tedious side, but when I’m told that as a Christian I have to believe this (whatever this may be), my instinct is always to look at the alternatives. And on the whole I’m more influenced by first hand stories than I am by reasoned argument; not always persuaded, any more than Thomas was persuaded by what his fellow disciples told him, but when people have a story I do want to hear it.

Doubts and questions are the natural result of our having a working brain, and since God gave us that brain I reckon he does want us to use it. Any religion that tells me I need to leave my brain behind isn’t going to get me as a member. But, like Thomas, I want to believe, and that’s the essential starting point. And belief in the end isn’t about persuasive argument - I can’t prove the existence of God any more than my atheist friend John can disprove it.

No, as we discover in Thomas’s experience and in the words Jesus spoke afterwards, belief has to do with discerning the presence of Christ. My poem, “Natural Atheist”, includes these lines -
“I don’t need you,
I tell God, I can do this on my own; trouble is,
God insists on loving me, that’s the sense I have.”

And as I look back over my life, that is the sense I have. The risen Christ hasn’t risen in order to slope off and leave me to it; he continues to be an active and often a disturbing presence and in my life, and in his Church. In Thomas, too, who may have gone on to be martyred in Persia; and may before that have travelled to India, there to found the church that bears his name - the Mar Thoma Church of South India.

Thomas seems like the kind of man who finds it tough to start believing, but having made that start was totally committed, and courageous with it. Thomas remained Christ’s man to the end of his earthly journey. And so shall I, despite a few gaps in my faith, and the doubts that will keep springing up. And I’ll go on testing, questioning, challenging the stuff I’m told to believe, because I want to be part of a real religion, in which just believing is never enough. In real religion belief leads to action - building a better world, in the name of Christ, and  according to the mind of Christ; and saying: “My Lord, and my God.”

I’d like to close with a few words that I found in a quote from a Christian minister on the BBC website yesterday, part of a whole series of quotes about aspects of spirituality, from people, mostly a good deal younger than me, some of them religious, some of them not. But this one chimed in a lot with what I think: “Doubt is important to personal development. It’s doubt that keeps you asking questions, and broadens your beliefs. Certainty closes doors. Doubt deepens faith.”