My Lord and My God
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on 11th April 2010 by Rev Dr Jamie Walker
Readings: Acts 5: 27-32 and John 20: 19-31
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
I find Thomas to be such an interesting character!
If I were to mention the names of certain disciples to you and ask you to write down the first word that comes into your mind, it is unlikely you would come up with the same words. If I were to mention the name of Judas many of you would write down the word "betray" but not all of you. If I were to mention Simon Peter, some of you would write down the word "faith," but not all of you. If I were to mention the names of James and John, some of you would write down the phrase "Sons of Thunder," but not all of you. But if I were to mention the word Thomas, there is little question about the word most everyone would write down - the word doubt. So closely have we associated Thomas with this word, that we have coined a phrase to describe him: "Doubting Thomas."
In the first three gospels we are told absolutely nothing at all about Thomas. It is in John's Gospel that he emerges as a distinct personality, but even then there are only 155 words about him. There are three incidents.
The first is when Jesus headed for Jerusalem, and the disciples thought that it would be certain death for all of them. Surprisingly, it was Thomas who said: Then let us go also, so that we may die with him. It was a courageous statement, yet we don't remember him for that.
The second is when Jesus was talking of many rooms in his Father’s house and his going to prepare a place for them. Then Jesus adds, You know the way to the place I am going. Thomas responds, We do not know where you are going and how can we know the wa? His response was blunt, contradicts Jesus, but we do not remember him for that.
The third is what we do remember him for. It is the story that gives Thomas his infamous nickname. But it is also the story that has Thomas making an earth-shattering confession of faith.
My Lord, and my God.
Note he did not say my Teacher, my Messiah. But Lord and God! Here is the only place in the NT where Jesus is called God without qualification of any kind. It is uttered with conviction as if Thomas was simply recognizing a fact, just as 2 + 2 = 4, and the sun is in the sky. You are my Lord and my God! The words are blunt and to the point. But we do not remember him for that! (some of the above from esermons.com)
What we do remember him for is doubt – doubting Thomas! Now why is that? Why does this take precedence?
Is it that that encapsulates the attitude of a sceptical twenty-first century world, of which we are a part? Is it that with all the mockery and cynicism around, we find ourselves latching on to the Bible character who most clearly exhibits this cynicism. People such as Thomas belong four-square in our twenty-first century world.
But, they belonged too within the first century world. The writer of the gospel knows how much doubt and cynicism was around then too. The claim that Jesus rose from the dead was, to many, completely fanciful! The apostle Paul, preaching to the educated elite in Athens, was going great guns talking of Jesus – he was listened to with respect, with heads nodding, with interest. But when he mentioned that Jesus was raised from the dead, all that interest collapsed, all his hard won engagement with people evaporated. They burst out laughing and turned away, mockery and ridicule the order of the day – at least for most of them. The first century world was just as sceptical as the twenty-first century. Whether from the first century or twenty-first, we want to say, Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.
But let me explore all this further?
Besides being immensely intrigued by Thomas, I am also very intrigued by a massive statue in the north of England, near Gateshead. It is called the Angel of the North. I was hearing of it from the bishop of Newcastle recently. For those who do not know it, it is a steel structure of a graceful angel. It is 20 metres tall, with wings measuring 54 metres across – size of Chapel??. The wings are angled slightly forwards, to create, said the designer, a ‘sense of embrace’. It stands overlooking the main road between south and north, also the road into Tyneside, and also the East Coast main rail line.
The bishop was saying there seems to be a growing mystique about it. People returning to the north have a sense of homecoming once they see it. People seem to go there to pray, to think, to reflect, to gather, partly perhaps because there is no one there to tell them what to think. Some bring flowers and leave them at the foot. Some couples renew their wedding vows below it. Some come because they are bereaved. Some come because they have crucial decisions to make. There is a whole lot of stuff that matters in people’s lives, and it is as if, here at the angel, they can connect openly with these, without being scared of them, and they can lay them down, and get some comfort.
To my mind, tt seems similar to what happened when Princess Diana died, when thousands turned up and laid flowers at her home. It was if there was so much pain and heartache, so much mess and hurt, that Diana’s death somehow gave permission for people to tap into their own pain and hurt, and let that come out as they grieved for Diana. It was as if they came to lay down their own pain alongside other people’s pain, at the foot of Diana’s memory.
Easter is a remarkable time for Christians, for it is both about Jesus alive and about Holy Week. Holy Week, or is it better named ‘Unholy Week’, is where the real messiness and horrors of life come out. The week has to do with tears, with sorrow, with argument, with fraying tempers, with intrigues, with barbed comments, with scheming, with manipulation, with betrayal, with broken trust, with loss, with death, with bereavement, with pain, with loneliness, with crashed hopes, with despair, and so much more. It has to do with all the mess and disarray and horror that is around human life.
Here in that week can be found in some measure all the messes and chaos and horror that life in our twenty-first century can be about. What is going on in that week is about stuff that matters to us, matters deep down. It is a time when we are set free to think about the things that bother and trouble us – the anxieties, concerns, fears, hopes. Permission is given, so to speak, for us to lay all these down at the foot of that week, or as the old hymn has it, to lay them down at the foot of the cross.
The resurrection in not about there being ‘no pain’ – it is not about a happy, clappy time. It is not about jumping out of the real world into a make-believe idyllic world. Easter and Holy Week belong together. And the Church is where is it is ok to have these two together. What the resurrection is about, is God bringing together the messiness of life with the risen Jesus. We have the risen Jesus coming alongside his disciples and bringing his life to bear on them. We see this in the story of Thomas.
One way to see the story of the appearance of Jesus to Thomas is of Jesus obliterating his doubts, overriding his objections, forcing him to put them to one side, forcing him to accept the agenda that Jesus was alive.
But there is another and better way to see this appearance. The most effective way for Jesus to reach Thomas was to listen to his stuff, to the doubts that really troubled him, to his misgivings, his qualms, his scepticism. This is where Thomas was. This is what mattered to him, deep down. This is his agenda. And Jesus does not ride roughshod over it. Jesus does not dismiss Thomas’ doubt. He takes it seriously, but ever so gently brings himself into the picture too. Jesus brings together the stuff that really mattered to Thomas, and his own risen life, so that Jesus begins to illuminate Thomas’ stuff.
All of us have the stuff that really matters to us deep down - our own struggles and messes, our own hurts and hesitations, our own doubts and scepticism – and we find here in the Church is ok to have these. But here – together - is a place where we can let Jesus bring his story alongside our story and let him illuminate it.
I wonder if what is really happening at the Angel of the North, is people bringing the stuff that really matters to them, to some sort of symbol of God, to an angel that, in its design, seems to embrace them and the stuff that matters. People may not verbalise it in the way I have just done, but I wonder if that is in fact what is going on. It is a bringing together pain and comfort, bringing together steps for renewal and hope. And at that place, so much of the doubts and scepticism of the modern world about the resurrection or comfort, seem to die off, or fade into the background, as the stuff that really matters comes to the fore.
But, we may say, it was ok for Thomas. He saw the risen Jesus and so he believed – we cannot see the risen Jesus as he did. That is true. He did indeed see the risen Jesus. He did have an advantage over us. He could see the marks of the nails, though there is no hint that actually he put his fingers there or his hand into the wounded side. But for Thomas there were things that he grasped that he did not see.
If he was merely going by what he saw, his only response would have been, My Lord, or my teacher, or my messiah. Jesus had been called The Lord often enough before. To have called him Lord would have to recognise that Jesus was in fact alive. But Thomas sees more than this. He says to him My Lord and my God. Where does this my God come from? What is he seeing, to take him in this direction?
Is it that he senses that Jesus takes his doubting completely seriously, honours it, and meets the difficulty, by bringing his own presence alongside? Is it that Thomas feels his disbelief is ok in the presence of Jesus, where it is not ridiculed or mocked or swamped? Is it that whatever is going through his mind is brought into direct contact with Jesus, and so is transformed. Thomas’ real seeing is the my God bit – and for this Thomas has no advantage over us. He could not see this with his eyes, but sees it inwardly, inspired by Jesus himself in his Spirit. We are in the same position. We are here today because we feel, or are searching tentatively after, that same inner sight. We echo within ourselves the words my Lord and my God. We allow, here in this Chapel, the story of Jesus to come alongside where we are – our messiness, our hopes, our fears, who we are. We are taken with utmost seriousness by Jesus, given utmost respect for where we are and who we are, and he connects our story up with his story. We find that all the stuff that matters to us is brought alongside his story, and we are different because of it – we sense Jesus alive, and we are alive too somehow in the way he is alive. Thomas is the bridge between the world of seeing and the world of faith – in the end it is his faith that says, my Lord and my God, and Jesus responds with Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who had not seen and yet have believed.
Thomas is the climax of the gospel of John, in the sense that here is someone brought into a living relationship with God. This was the whole intent in God becoming human, in the Word becoming flesh. This is the whole intent of God’s arms being wide open in ways that the Angel of North can only so dimly portray. This was the whole intent of the inextricable link between the unholy week and Easter morning. It is about a living relationship with God. Is it any wonder then why John, after relating the story of Thomas, the final story in his book that began with the incarnation, says, These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may life in his name. Thanks be to God that we too can say, My Lord and my God, and so sense in ourselves Jesus is alive, and that we share in his risen life.