Retirement has meant I could do something last weekend I hadn’t done for over forty years - take Easter off and not have to take a service anywhere. So Ann and I went to Hereford, checked in to a very nice little hotel on the edge of the city, and attended the Easter service at the cathedral. Easter communion, at 10 o’clock, was attended by - I would guess - mny hundreds of people of all ages, and was beautifully sung, though the clouds of incense around the church might not have suited everyone. The choir was then back in action for choral mattins, billed as 11.30 but not actually starting until close on midday, a traditional service with some wonderful singing, and a very inspiring sermon from the dean. And then we had lunch at the Green Dragon, also very good.
It was lovely to celebrate Easter in the presence of so many people, young as well as old, and to think that Easter and the triumph of love over death, the place of our redemption, the tomb empty not as some kind of one-off but as a demonstration for everyone that the power of death is broken - that this message is still heard and received and acted on.
But then we have today, traditionally Low Sunday, and in many churches (including this one today) we hear about doubting Thomas. Low Sunday when traditionally our churches are not very full at all, and when the certainties behind the alleluias sung a week ago perhaps begin to fray a little, so that we’re no longer quite as sure as we were.
As it happens, the very first church of I had care of as a young curate was dedicated to St Thomas. So I’ve always had something of a soft spot for him. It’s a bit of a shame I think, the way he gets labelled as “doubting”. For the most part the Gospels portray Thomas as a man of firm and quite courageous faith. Still, though, Thomas missed seeing Jesus with the rest of the Eleven, and didn’t really cope with that. It sounded to Thomas something too good to be true, and too much therefore to believe.
That’s how I see it, anyway. I don’t see Thomas doubting in the way a sceptic would. For me, it seems that Thomas very much wanted to believe what the others were telling him. But he hadn’t seen it for himself - so what if they were wrong? What if this was some moment of collective madness, what if his friends had imagined seeing something they really couldn’t have? I find it interesting that Thomas didn’t say, “I can’t believe.” He said, “I won’t believe.” In other words, it wasn’t so much that he found belief impossible, but that he refused to do it. And I think he refused to believe because he couldn’t face the pain there’d be if his hopes were dashed, if it turned out after all not to be true.
And I think that partly because I’ve met a few people like Thomas in my time. I mean, people who find the idea of faith and belief attractive, but don’t feel able (or perhaps, prepared) to take the risk. What risk do you mean, you might ask? Well, for people like Thomas faith is always a risk, because when they say yes to something they give it everything they’ve got. Heart and soul, that’s how I see Thomas. It’s not too big a risk just to give up an hour on a Sunday and put something on the plate. But for Thomas faith meant surrendering the whole of himself.
Jesus knew very well what kind of a man Thomas was. So he appeared to him and showed him the wounds. Jesus appeared so as to convince Thomas of the reality of his resurrection. Touch the wounds in my hands, place your hand in my side, he said, allowing Thomas - who in the end didn’t need to do either of those things - to say the big “yes” of faith, calling Jesus “My Lord and my God.”
And of course, Jesus went on to say, “Blessed are those who have not seen me, and yet believe.” How can those who can’t see Jesus come to faith? Only if they can find the love of Jesus alive and active in the things his Church is doing and saying. Only if the Christians they encounter are saying, like the apostles in our first reading from Acts: “We must obey God rather than men.”
Let’s think about that story for a moment. The Jewish Council, the Sanhedrin, had ordered the apostles not to teach out on the streets and in the Temple precinct. Specifically, they were not to even mention the name of Jesus. And in fact they’d been arrested and locked them up, only to be miraculously released, so that next morning at day break they were straight back on the streets, and back inside the temple, still preaching.
How dare you, say the Jewish elders. How dare you contravene the orders we’ve given. It’s Peter who speaks up on behalf of them all. We are witnesses to what God has done, says Peter, so how can we not speak out? We must obey God rather than men.
Well, that was then, so what about now? All those people in the cathedral last Sunday, and many more besides, since we saw plenty of other people heading into church or chapel as we travelled in and parked up our car - what did Easter mean for them? What will Easter mean for them - not just as a day to celebrate, but as something genuinely life-changing, something that leads them to give themselves, to rearrange their priorities, to truly say, “I will obey God rather than men”?
We are living through testing times - of war, of deep divisions, of the bending and twisting of truth, and stuff that is true and needs to be heard getting labelled as “fake news”, of huge and growing divisions between rich and poor, of the planet itself being changed in ways that may soon become unstoppable. And so often it seems that religion is part of the problem, especially when religion becomes loveless and rigid and divisive. “God is love,” wrote St John, “and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” Easter is the time when we see that love for what it truly is. Love that gives without requiring response; that calls a blessing on enemy and friend alike; that offers us a way home, to the place we should be, to the way we should live. Put simply, the love of God is like Jesus.
And like Jesus, and in Jesus, it breaks for all people and for all time the power of death. Easter calls the Church, whatever it looks like, wherever it is, whatever songs it sings, to see with the eyes of Jesus, to love with the heart of Jesus, and to respond with the blessing arms of Jesus to the very real and urgent needs around us, to the people who are struggling and suffering in our world, with a compassionate desire and readiness to care that mirrors that of our Lord. If your religion excludes, if your religion ignores, if your religion is not Christ-like, then think again, come back to the empty tomb, see for yourself what love is really like.
Thomas met the risen Jesus in the upper room, and was privileged to be given a one-to-one encounter. Today, if people are still to meet the risen Jesus, they will need to find his love shining in a Church that is forgetful of itself, and that recognising the truth of true religion - that the Church has no use or purpose on earth unless it is genuinely there for others, that the Church has no use and purpose on earth unless those who are its members are obeying God, and not men.
We are called to be Easter people - not just at Easter-tide but always. Perhaps, like the apostles of old, never to shut up talking about him, whatever people tell us to do. Although I do quite like the instruction Francis of Assisi is supposed to have given to his friars: “Preach at all times, and where necessary, use words.” We preach with actions more persuasively than we do with words, and I have met the risen Christ on my journey, in some quite remarkable and brave and Spirit-filled people. We know that Jesus challenged, forgave, welcomed, befriended and healed, so where people find these things in his Church today, we know that they’ll also find Jesus, alive, risen, love at work. But sadly it’s also true that where they don’t find them, then perhaps, like Thomas, people who are in their hearts searching and striving for faith, will continue to say, “I will not believe.”
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