Low Sunday, 15th April 2007
The Easter eggs have been consumed and even if we are not sated with chocolate some of us are also feeling spiritually satisfied, even a little smug, after having stuck it out during Lent without some luxury that we normally enjoy.  
After the build up to Easter,  this Sunday, Low Sunday, is, I have to say, a bit of an anti-climax.  But I shouldn’t be because in the Resurrection of Jesus and his appearance to the disciples, a frightened, confused group, we have the most vivid affirmation of what Christianity is all about – the triumph of Jesus over death.  
Our New Testament lessons appointed, the one from Acts, the other from St. John, I confess to a bit of confusion about what conclusions I should draw.   Let’s consider first Thomas Didymus, Doubting Thomas.  He’s had a rather bad press.  
We like people to be definite. Dithering is a tar baby epithet that our leaders try to avoid at all costs.  Newspapers that shout loudest in their headlines, attract the most readers.  The Christian denomination that accepts the infallibility of the Bishop of Rome is the largest one.  Those preachers, particularly in America, who attract the largest audiences are those declaring what, on the face of it, the Bible says. 
But there are dangers in certainty.  They can lead to intolerance.  “Our way, and no other”, is a dangerous and  potentially divisive idea. 
For doubt is a very human emotion, even a virtue if properly applied to received wisdom.   As a schoolboy I was encouraged by my teachers to question and to doubt all kinds of propositions.  Was King John a Bad King?  Was the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absentmindedness ?   The generals of the First World War were generally stick in the mud donkeys etc etc. Mr Gordon Brown is a prudent Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
It’s the British way to challenge and question  rather than, say, the Japanese way where age and status count for more.   Many scientists have been  proved justified in doubting the certainties of their times from Galileo and Copernicus to Jenner and Darwin and in our own time Marshall and Warren the Australians who by drinking helicobacter pylori showed that they could give themselves gastritis.
So I think we can have a good deal of sympathy for Thomas, asserting that he would not believe until he had seen the print of the nails on Jesus’ hands and put his hand into his side.  It was hard to believe that the Lord had risen. No one had ever done it before after execution. 
Is there anyone here who does not have doubt about what is said in some part of The Bible ?   There is plenty of doubt after all in the Old Testament.  I love the story, but I doubt that God created the Heaven and Earth in seven days or that the serpent gave Eve an apple.  
There is doubt about God Himself.  Take Psalm 13 “How long wilt thou forget me O Lord? “  Or  Jeremiah “Why did I come from the womb to see only sorrow and toil and to end my days in shame? “ and perhaps most graphic of all in Job.  And then our Lord Himself  “ My God, My God why have you forsaken me” .
We need to let doubts and confusion surface in our religion.  It’s one way to faith, I was taught.  I can’t explain why a loving God allows so much death and destruction.  But I believe, as an article of faith, He is a loving God.
But if you re-read Thomas words as quoted in St. John’s Gospel they are not those of a doubter, but rather those of someone who was a disbeliever.  “Except that I shall see”   Seeing is believing.  Or is it?  Ask different people to describe events they have seen and you will often get differing explanations or interpretations.  Football supporters may see a famous victory for their team, whilst the opposition’s supporters feel that they were robbed of victory. 
But there are plenty of things we are prepared to believe without seeing.  We believe the TV will work when we switch it on, without necessarily knowing how it works. 
We take a lot on trust, not least in the doctor’s surgery.  
Our instinct is to believe, to trust.  Sometimes we are let down, of course.  But if someone doubts us we often get annoyed.  Didn’t I tell you that we haven’t got any milk left? So why look in the fridge? 
 
So the way you read the words of Thomas can show him to be not doubting but disbelieving, incredulous, belligerently pessimistic.  Unless I see, Unless I see.  Looking  at Thomas in this rather unfavourable light, however, makes the conclusion to the story good news indeed.   For eight days later when the Risen Jesus comes back, Thomas is in a better frame of mind and back with the disciples.  “Here you are, says Jesus, see for yourself.”   But Thomas does not need to see the nail holes or put his hand in Jesus’ side.   Without more ado, he makes the ultimate Christian profession of faith  “My Lord and My God”.  
And the story concludes with Jesus commending those who will believe in Him without seeing, and whose faith is based on the testimony of the Apostles, now over  2000 years old,  and whose own experience of Christ’s presence in their lives is as real to-day as it was then.  I hope that includes all of us. 
Which brings me to our other reading to-day, from The Acts of the Apostles. They had been released from prison by an angel and went out to teach in the temple, and had been brought from there to meet the High Priest who asked them why they had disobeyed his order not to preach. They defied him with the words “We must obey God rather than men “ . No doubters there.  They got a beating for their pains but went on to preach undaunted facing death for that. Then  Paul carried the word around the Mediterranean to the Gentiles and the rest, as they say, is history.   
The movement that began that day with an affirmation of faith by the apostles in the face of unrelenting hostility from the Jewish establishment, has brought us into this building to-day.  Yet we know so very little about the personality of Jesus himself.   As one commentator has put it, the New Testament writers all want us to accept Jesus as our Saviour and the Messiah; but by stating his theological attributes they tell us almost nothing about him as a human being.  Almost in spite of the theologians Jesus has survived in the hearts of millions.  His ideas, as propounded in the gospels, have not been influential. The course of world history has not been conspicuous for meek rulers of the earth, nor for the oppressed blessing their persecutors.  There has not been much reluctance to lay up treasure. Churches have distorted his vision. To-day Christianity espouses pacifism; not long ago it was into the theory of the Just War.  
I cannot explain to you why the personality of Jesus, so elusive, so insubstantial in many ways, a man whose ideas have been so often ignored by those who profess to support them, is such an important part of my life.   
Yet for all the Gospel’s contradictions and assertions that stretch credibility, Christianity’s great message is clear: we all have a sense of worth from the teachings of Jesus that can inspire us not only with the prospect of eternal life, but in our own lives in the here on earth to make the lives of others better.  
No Wilberforce, Fry, Mother Teresa.  Each in his or her own way.   
  
