Blessed
are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” says Jesus
to Thomas. We’re doing a lot of “not seeing” at the moment. We’re not seeing
our loved ones. We’re not seeing familiar places, like our church building. We’re
not seeing the congregation. As you listen to this, you’re not seeing me.
Far more painful, of course, many
people haven’t been able to see those they love when they are in hospital or in
a care home, and maybe haven’t had the chance to see them to say goodbye if
they have died.
Seeing, touching, being in the
physical presence of one another matters to us. We’re physical beings, built
for flesh and blood relationships with one another. A letter, email, phonecall,
videocall are good, but they aren’t the same. Virtual reality isn’t real
reality, and we know the difference.
So maybe we can sympathise with
Thomas. Why should he believe that Jesus has risen from the dead when he hasn’t
seen him with his own eyes and touched his wounded flesh? He needs a real
experience of his own, not just a second hand report.
And that’s what he gets. Jesus
appears, just for him, it seems, and invites him to reach out and touch him. That’s
when the penny drops for Thomas, when he realises not only that Jesus is alive,
but that this risen Christ has transformed and changed him too, and will
continue to do so. He doesn’t say “So you
are alive! Fancy that!” he says “My
Lord and my God”. He calls him Lord; he gives Jesus the authority to direct
and guide him. He calls him God ; he recognises in Jesus the source of life that
overflows into his own life.
Thomas doesn’t just find that Jesus
has come to him in that locked room; he also finds that he has come to him in
his own locked heart.
That’s what the Gospel writer wants
us to pay attention to. “Blessed are
those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”. Blessed are those
who discover Jesus at work in them and around them. Blessed are those who
discover the reality of his resurrection because their own dead hopes are
raised to life.
John’s Gospel was written towards
the end of the first century, sixty or seventy years after the events it
describes. There can have been very few, if any, people still living who could possibly
have known and seen Jesus in the flesh. He was writing for all the generations
who came afterwards, including us, who would have to believe “without seeing” unlike
Thomas and those first disciples, or perhaps would have to learn to see in a
new way in order to find the risen at work.
Over many decades of ministry, I’ve
had countless conversations with people who’ve experienced God, who’ve felt his
presence with them, maybe just in an odd moment, maybe repeatedly. I’ve known
it myself too. No one has ever reported seeing Jesus appear miraculously in a
locked room, but they’ve found him in the words of the Bible or the stillness
of prayer in ways they can’t deny or ignore. People
have often told me that they’ve encountered God in others too, when
they’ve received love and welcome that they didn’t expect, or when they’ve
given help to others and found that they have come away feeling blessed themselves,
knowing that something holy has happened. They might not be able to explain it,
and it certainly doesn’t mean that all their doubts and questions vanish, but the
penny has dropped. Faith has become real. It has taken root, in ways that
change them forever.
That’s what happens to Thomas. His
faith takes root in him in a new way, changes him, makes him look at the whole
of his life differently. We don’t know for sure what happened to him after
this, but early Christian legends tell of him travelling eastward and taking
the Christian faith to South India where he was eventually martyred. That’s not
at all unlikely; there were important trade routes between the two countries,
and Jewish
settlements in India, and there’s is a group of churches, the Mar Thoma
churches, which claim to have been founded by Thomas, and which still worship
using ancient Middle Eastern Syriac rites.
Whether those legends are true or
not, though, it’s certainly the case that it was people like Thomas, ordinary
people, who were the ones who spread the word about Jesus, often at great cost
to themselves. They lived out the faith they professed in such a way that
others wanted what they had too. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here. They
found the courage to rise to the challenges that faced them, and they found it because
their faith was real, personal and deeply rooted. It wasn’t just an idea, or a
nice warm fuzzy feeling, but something that permeated every fibre of their
being.
The challenges for us may be very
different, but living out our Christian faith is always demanding too; that’s
why we are often so bad at doing it! Loving others when it’s difficult to do
so, speaking and acting for justice and peace when we are tired of doing so and
it seems to be pointless, putting others before ourselves when it would be so
much easier not to, keeping going when the road seems long and tough; these
aren’t things we can do for long in our own strength. We need to know that
beyond and above and beneath our own resources we have the strength of God to
draw on.
At the moment we can’t look for God
in our church buildings. We all miss that, but perhaps it’s a good thing to be
deprived of it for a while, because it reminds us that God isn’t, and never has
been, imprisoned in walls of stone. He can turn up wherever he wants – in our
private prayer and reflection, as we read the Bible, as we serve others, and
allow ourselves to be served by them. All we need to do is make sure we turn up
there too.
Thomas missed Jesus in that upper
room the first time because he wasn’t there. And if Thomas hadn’t turned up the
following week he’d have missed him again, and maybe missed him forever. Turning
up is an underrated discipline – just turning up, to pray, to reflect, to read,
to serve – but this story reminds us of its importance. Developing a faith
that’s real and deep rooted doesn’t happen by accident. It grows in us as we
deliberately look for God at work in us and around us, day by day.
That might mean just taking 5
minutes a day to sit still, to be aware of ourselves and what we are doing and
how we are feeling about it, and put it in God’s hands. Or it might mean taking
a moment before and after some task we are doing – another Zoom meeting, or home-schooling task, or phone
call to someone we’re concerned about -
just to say, “Where are you in this, God? What do you want to say to me about
it?”
“Blessed
are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”. In this
Easter Season, when we’re reminded of the risen Christ’s tendency to turn up
unexpectedly, may we also keep turning up, day by day, so we’re ready to meet
him, quick to recognise him, open to receive the gift of his love, prepared for
what he calls us to do in the world. Amen
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