This sermon is a kind of “bookend” to this morning’s sermon by Graham MacFarlane. ¹  Preaching on the Gospel that we’ve just heard, Graham pointed out, correctly, that it describes two appearances by the risen Lord – a week apart: one, where Thomas the Doubter was absent, and one where Thomas was present.

Graham also pointed out that preachers most commonly look at the second appearance, the dramatic encounter with Thomas, but the first appearance deserves very careful attention – and Graham proceeded to give it that attention.  If you were not present, in person or online, you can check it out, for that sermon is already posted on St. Margaret’s website.

But this sermon is on the more common topic: the second appearance, and the risen Lord’s encounter with Thomas.

I will confess that I was sorely tempted to speak on the reading from the book of The Acts of the Apostles, where, what could be called “Communism” became the modus operandi of the Apostles, shortly after the Resurrection. ²  But I’ll just tantalize you to say that, maybe on some future Second Sunday of Easter, I will get to give a sermon about that!

So, our task, now, is to talk about Thomas.

Jesus’ first Resurrection appearance to his Apostles was on Easter Day itself.  John’s Gospel tells us that Peter and John, upon hearing from Mary Magdalene that the tomb was empty, ran, and found it to be so, but they didn’t see Jesus.  Mary Magdalene, however, hung around at the tomb, and did encounter Jesus, after which she ran and told the disciples.  A number of them, according to today’s reading, were in a “locked room,” and were there, possibly mulling over Mary’s excited message, when Jesus himself appeared.  He empowered them with the Holy Spirit, and commissioned them to be agents of Divine Forgiveness.  The Gospel says, too, that they were overjoyed to see Jesus, and you can imagine what an overwhelming experience that must have been!

But, Thomas wasn’t there!  And, when they next saw Thomas (the Gospel doesn’t tell us exactly when and where), they told him what had happened.  And he couldn’t – he wouldn’t – believe it.  As he said, “Unless I can touch him, I will not believe.” ³

I wonder what it was like, that week – if and when they got together to plan their next steps – to have Thomas, sitting there, unconvinced, possibly sullen and grouchy….  “You guys are nuts!”

The next appearance of Jesus, a whole week later… we know the scene: Jesus appears, and addresses Thomas directly.  “You wanted to touch my wounds?  Be my guest!”  It’s kind of fun to imagine Thomas’ reaction!  Eyes popping out of his head…?

There is a painting by the 16th Century Italian artist, Caravaccio.  It’s entitled, “The Incredulity of St. Thomas,” and it depicts that moment.  It actually has Thomas touching the spear wound, although the Gospel does not say that he did; it only says that Thomas’ reaction was pure worship: “My Lord and my God.”

Full disclosure here: I’ve always felt a deep respect for, and kinship with Thomas the Apostle.  I was in university in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when science dominated North American culture.  Television, just beginning to be widespread, would advertise products, and companies would give extra impetus to their ads, if the actor was dressed In a white coat and a stethoscope.  Even cigarettes were advertised that way.  It was a world in which scientific methodology was the be-all and end-all – the gold standard of human rational thought.

And my seminary!  When I entered seminary in 1962, it was an academic environment which had total respect for disciplined and scientific study, not only of Christian history, but of the Bible itself.  The first five books of the Bible were seen as coming from quite different sources, “J. E. D. & P.” ⁴  We looked at such things as, “Where did Cain get that wife, if Adam and Eve were the first humans?”  The Manitoba Skink is not, and has never been found – there is no archaeological trace of it – anywhere near Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark ended up.  My seminary teachers taught that the New Testament material was written long after the fact.  Indeed, they said that the earliest New Testament documents would likely have been the letters of St. Paul, and the Gospels were the latest.

I’m comfortable with all of this, and I’ve lived with it through my many years of ministry, and yet without hesitation I can assert that the Scriptures still guide me.

But that disciplined, questioning, searching mindset has been mine throughout that entire time.

As well, it has always amused me how many pivotal figures in the life of the Anglican Church, throughout its history, have been named “Tom,” as if Doubting Thomas was the most appropriate person to give his name to an Anglican luminary!

• Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, murdered in 1170, making the city of Canterbury and its cathedral a holy site, and a destination for pilgrims.  Thomas Becket was declared to be a Saint, and the iconic book, Canterbury Tales, joins some fictional pilgrims on their journey towards the site of his martyrdom.

Then there were four people named Thomas who were pivotal in the formation of Anglicanism:

• Thomas Wolsey – Cardinal, and Chancellor of England, who died on his way to jail, in 1530;
• Thomas More – Chancellor of England, and executed by Henry VIII in 1535;
• Thomas Cromwell – Prime Minister of England, and executed by Henry VIII in 1540; and
• Thomas Cranmer – Archbishop of Canterbury, and author of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer; executed by Mary Tudor – “Bloody Mary” – in 1556.

All of these people named Thomas were not able to live their full span of life – unable to die, peacefully, at age 99 like the Duke of Edinburgh.⁵  All but one were executed on the authority of the monarch of their day (and that one, Cardinal Wolseley, would probably have been executed as well, had he not died first!).  So, perhaps it may not be all that good an idea, to have been named “Thomas”!

But these people are part of my life-blood, and I respect them… and I respect disciplined thinking.

In this day and age, I think that, more than ever, we need Thomas’ questioning spirit!  We are in an era of “fake news” – therefore doubt, and fact-checking, are extremely important!

When the Internet was just coming into use, I remember people saying, “I read it on the Internet, ha ha ha!” with the clear implication that what they had read was likely not to be true.  Being on the Internet did not automatically give it a claim to being true.  But now, more and more, there are signs that people believe all sorts of stuff that they find on the Internet – stuff about which they really ought to be very skeptical.

In late 2016, Internet allegations that there was a child sex-trafficking ring operating out of the “Comet Pizzeria” in Washington, DC, brought a man named Edgar Welch to the restaurant, with an AR 15 rifle, ⁶ who fired his gun at a locked door, but found no sign of the sex-traffickers.  He was arrested, but the allegations about sex-trafficking continued, with the additional claim that Edgar Welch himself was an actor, hired by the traffickers to deflect attention!

And now the pandemic has brought forth a host of claims, that need verifying:

• A man was interviewed on a recent edition of national television news; he was displaying a sign, in his car window, that says “COVID is a hoax;”
• There are several messages – memes – roaring around the Internet, claiming that vaccines will make the world sicker;
• Some say that COVID death statistics are inflated; that the people had died of natural causes, unrelated to COVID;
• Just yesterday, I read in The Globe and Mail that Bill Yee, a member of a B.C. government panel which has been set up to advise authorities on issues important to the Chinese-Canadian community, apparently challenged Canada’s assertion – made jointly with several other nations – that China is committing “genocide” against the Uyghur Muslims in their country. ⁷  Mr. Yee – a Chinese Canadian – said that Canada is responding to lies.  So, who’s lying?  The Chinese, about their treatment of the Uyghurs?  Or the people who have described the alarming behaviour as “genocide” (many of them being Uyghur expatriates, themselves)?

Given all this, wouldn’t you say that our world needs the “doubting Thomas” mindset more than ever?

Of course, many of these claims come from people whose sense of mistrust and doubt is in overdrive!  But, I say to them, “If you are full of mistrust – of governments, or science, or the police – don’t just accept the things you hear, simply on the grounds that they join you in mistrust.  Fact check!  Check sources!  Compare!  Consider!  A true “Saint Thomas” wants to be very sure of his facts.

I often suppose that Jesus appeared to Thomas, precisely and specifically out of respect for this disciple’s commitment to truth and fact.

But, back to the Resurrection: do we ourselves need to poke a finger in the side of the Risen Lord, in order to believe the central Christian message that Jesus is alive, and that, in Him, God, having lived a human life and being cruelly executed, has triumphed over sin and death?  After all, Jesus did say to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  ⁸  How can we believe in something as extraordinary as the Resurrection without seeing it for ourselves?

Well, with all my care for accuracy and fact-checking, I myself believe that Jesus is alive, and is here with us now.

And this is why: if He didn’t, then somebody made up the story.

Our current world very readily believes that people make up stories all the time!

Did the apostles say to one another, “Jesus’ message about love and forgiveness is so important that we really need to spread it around!  Let’s just say that Jesus rose from the dead; that’s he’s alive, and helping us to spread the word… because his message must not be ignored and forgotten!  Okay?”

But, several of the apostles themselves, are said to have been killed – for proclaiming that Jesus was alive:

• James, brother of John, was the first of the Apostles to die – he was formally executed by sword stroke, by order of King Herod Agrippa, in AD 44.
• Peter is said to have been crucified upside down, and Andrew, was crucified in an X.  Crucifixion – always one of the most barbaric of execution methods – was made even worse in these cases.
• Bartholomew: there are different accounts, one of which combines them all!  He is said to have met a mixture of gruesome fates: crucified; taken down alive; whipped; skinned; then beheaded.
• Thomas, “the doubter,” himself – having carried the Gospel all the way to India – was apparently speared to death in that region.
• Stephen, who, although not one of the “twelve” himself, is listed in the Bible as the first martyr.  He was killed by having people throw rocks at him – “stoned to death.”
• And, there is a lot of indication that Paul – Saint Paul, author of the early epistles – was beheaded.  He certainly expected that the authorities in Rome would take his life.  ⁹

Now, my logical mind puts a question this way: If you knew that you were going to be executed because of a story that you yourself made up, would you be willing to die for it?  As the spear, or crucifixion nails go into you, would you still shout, “He is alive!!” though you know that he isn’t?

To me, this is more impossible to believe than believing that someone could rise from the dead.

How do I know about all these deaths of the apostles and early church leaders?  I read it on the Internet! ¹⁰  But I back-checked, and double-checked.  I found sites that are careful, saying, “We are not certain how so-and-so died, but a huge number of sources say that it was this way….”  Then there are websites with a worldwide reputation for authoritative scholarship, such as Encyclopaedia Brittannica.

Heck, we even have a copy of a letter, written by someone who says that he himself had not believed the Jesus story, and then he personally met the Risen Lord!  We have a letter, that says, “as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me.”  As you may recognize, I am quoting Saint Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, ¹¹ where St. Paul, who had initially organized the repression of Christians, suddenly felt that he was encountering the risen Jesus.  Acts tells us that what he encountered was just a voice, but there are several places in Paul’s letters where he says, “Jesus told me such-and-so.”

Here’s just one example: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,” he writes, “that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks…”

Quite clearly, Paul asserts that he got this directly from Jesus.  Then we read tonight, from the 1st Epistle of John – and my teachers in seminary said that this epistle was probably written long after John himself had departed this world; but maybe not, ¹² for it is in the voice of someone who says, “We declare to you… what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands….” ¹³  (maybe John touched Jesus the same way that Thomas was invited to do!).

So, we actually have contemporary testimony that says Jesus is alive.

Thus it is that I stand before you, more than two thousand years after the birth of Jesus, and I say, “Jesus is alive!  And he is guiding us, and calling us to be his ambassadors in the world; to love, and to forgive, and to heal, and to bless… and to be one with one another, inviting the whole world to accept that… ‘Jesus loves me, this I know…’”

C.S. Lewis once wrote a very simple line, and I use it as a “footer” on some of my emails.  It goes, “I believe in Christianity in the same way that I believe that the sun has risen; not because I see the sun, but because, by its light I see everything else.”

I see the world in the sense that Jesus is beside me; I try to see it through His eyes, and I have every expectation that when my last day comes to a close, I will meet Him face to face.

And nothing – not even something like a painful and uncomfortable death – can dissuade me from that now.