13^th May 2011

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Sunday 1 May 2011

Lessons -- Psalm 16:5-11; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

Thomas said, 'Unless I see . . . I will not believe.' . . . 'My
Lord and my God.'

Generally speaking, 'doubting Thomas's ' are not well liked. They challenge popular wisdom, unsettle accepted norms and undermine public confidence. It is not a good thing to be a 'climate sceptic'! Such people are negative, gloomy and backward looking. We prefer people to be positive about the future, to know where they are heading and to 'look on the bright side'. We may be uncertain about many things, and even wonder whether life has ultimate meaning, but we do not like cynics.

Committed atheists are likely to understand doubting Thomas better than the positive thinkers. They know what it is to seriously doubt God. The first part of the story should appeal to them. But their scepticism stops them joining Thomas in his adoration of Jesus: 'My Lord and my God.' They do not see that it is a story of hope for all who have experienced severe doubt because of the absence of God.

It is a story of hope! When every door seems 'closed' -- as it was for the disciples after the crucifixion (vv19, 26) -- and we are deeply sceptical about the endurance of love and goodness, the story of 'doubting' Thomas who comes to faith is a source of hope.

Hope is not the same as wishful thinking. It is not easily won. It comes unexpectedly only after Thomas confronts reality. He is unlike some sceptics, who could not care less about God's existence, do not wrestle with reality and doubt everything except themselves. Thomas suffered doubt because he believed that God's goodness and mercy had been displayed supremely in the remarkable life and ministry of Christ.

Thomas was one of the twelve disciples called by Jesus to share in God's mission to preach, to heal and to forgive (v23). Because his high hopes had been dashed, he cannot easily accept improbable reports of a crucified man being restored to life. In view of the depth of Christ's love for people, in which he had glimpsed the very being of God, Thomas thinks that talk of resurrection is wishful thinking or shallow optimism. He refuses to be consoled by glib or pious answers. It is not enough for him to be grateful for the memories or to try to keep Jesus' teachings alive.

That is why he issues a fearsome challenge to the other disciples -- and to God. 'Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.' (20:25) Prove to me that God has not been overwhelmed by evil!
Show me that God's goodness and mercy, embodied in Jesus' words and actions, has defeated the dread powers of sin and death.

All of us can identify with Thomas' scepticism. In a world in which people often suffer terribly because of the effects of evil and death -- a world in which Jesus was crucified -- it is very hard to believe in the enduring goodness of God. In such a world, as Thomas knew, it is foolish to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. He does not shrink from drawing the logical conclusion from the horror of crucifixion. Hope is dead!

In his scepticism, however, he is not completely 'closed' to the possibility that God has defeated evil. Instead of resigning himself to fate, Thomas demands proof of the crucified One's presence. He reasons that, if God has destroyed the powers that crucified Jesus, it could be known only by seeing the marks of crucifixion. Any other kind of 'presence' -- say, a ghostly vision -- would be too flippant. It would not take seriously the dreadful power of evil which had ended the life of the One in whom God's power over evil in all its forms had been so clearly demonstrated. 'Unless I see I shall not believe.'

There is much to admire in Thomas, not least that in doubting the resurrection he risks becoming a hardened cynic. He does not do what many of us do: push his doubts to one side and just get on with life. He demands answers.

If there had been no answer to his ultimatum, he would have been justified in turning his back on God. If Jesus were only a courageous moral teacher who came to an abrupt and tragic end, there would be no hope. Evil would have defeated good -- and God!

But evil does not win and his cynicism is overcome. He is so overwhelmed by the unexpected presence of the crucified Jesus that he exclaims, 'My Lord and my God!' (20:28)

He does not call Jesus 'teacher', 'friend' or 'prophet'. He does not say that 'Jesus' values live on' or that 'the human spirit triumphs over adversity'. Unlike a minister writing in the April Crosslight, he does not say that hope is to be found in denying that God's love is incarnate in Jesus. Unlike recent comments by a leader of the misnamed 'Progressive Christian Network', he does not see hope in Jesus as a teacher of one of many ways to experience the sacred.

No! In the presence of the Risen Christ Thomas exclaims 'My Lord and my God!' He credits Jesus' resurrection to God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe whose goodness and mercy are displayed in him. At the same time, he affirms his faith in the God of Resurrection: 'My Lord and my God.'

What are we to make of this encounter? Many church leaders and members, vainly imagining that they are more enlightened than Thomas, dismiss such stories out of hand. It certainly does not fit our ideas about what is possible. It flies in the face of our narrow beliefs about what is factual, real and rational. Assuming a God who is 'too small', we think that we decide what is fact and what is fiction -- and that resurrections are not real.

But what if our narrow perspective on 'the facts' blinds us to the reality of this remarkable event? What if we miss the word of hope in this incredible story because we refuse to look outside the scope of what we think is real, factual and rational? If we think like this then should not we be brutally honest and admit that evil and death have the last word:
that God may be good and merciful and Jesus may be a wise teacher but neither is stronger than all that bedevils our life together? Would not it be better to try to forget the unpleasant things of life and get on with our lives -- even if it means being cynical, despondent or superficially positive?

If tempted to follow this path, we need Thomas' bracing realism! If we want to be people of hope, we must face the awfulness of evil. Only then can we be open to the reality of his resurrection and embody hope in some small way in our own preaching, teaching and pastoral ministry.

When we do see things, not in the light of our small world of fact, but in the light of the large fact of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, then the world is seen in a completely different light. Hope shines in the midst of darkness, faith in the midst of doubt, love in the midst of hatred.

The resurrection of Jesus is an astonishing event: the reversal of everything we have come to expect in life. This is splendidly expressed in Together in Song 649 (Troeger, 1983). The hymn is gritty, earthy and sensual. It is not pious. It does not spiritualise what happened. It portrays Jesus' humanness, the horror of the cross, the grimness of the burial (v1). It conveys the incredible change in Thomas from blindness caused by 'the vision of his sceptic mind' (v2) to the vision that came to him when 'his reasoned certainties (were) denied' (v3). And in verse 4 it speaks to all mentioned in John 20:30,31 and 1 Peter 1:8 who, unlike Thomas, have not seen the crucified marks of the Risen Lord.

These things did Thomas count as real:
the warmth of blood, the chill of steel, the grain of wood, the heft of stone, the last frail twitch of flesh and bone.

The vision of his sceptic mind
was keen enough to make him blind
to any unexpected act
too large for his small world of fact

His reasoned certainties denied
that one could live when one had died,
until his fingers read like Braille
the markings of the spear and nail.

May we, O God, by grace believe
and thus the risen Christ receive,
whose raw, imprinted palms reached out
and beckoned Thomas from his doubt.

May we, like Thomas, exclaim, 'My Lord and my God,' and so be a people of hope in the midst of many dark forces in the Church and the community that are hell-bent on demolishing the magnificence of the Gospel of the Resurrection.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.