Sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Easter: Courageous Thomas – preached at the Eucharist, Sherborne Abbey, on Sunday 27 April 2025 by Canon Charles Mitchell-Innes. (Acts Ch 5: v 27 – 32; John Ch 20: v 19 – 31)
Poor old Thomas: he is chiefly remembered for being distrustful and sceptical: Thomas the Doubter. We have already seen him – at the Last Supper, no less – questioning Jesus in the middle of his Farewell Discourse. He interrupts Jesus, who has just assured the disciples, “You know the way where I am going …. to prepare a place for you in my Father’s house.” The reassurance is suddenly broken by Thomas butting in with his objection: “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Well, how rude! Rather shocking in fact; one can almost hear the others gasping. Has the man no sense of occasion, no manners?
And now, after Jesus’ resurrection, in today’s Gospel reading, he makes matters worse by refusing to believe that his master has in fact risen, until he has physical proof. Jesus of course is present and is able to provide it: “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe.” (John Ch 14: v 3 – 5; Ch 20: v 24 – 27)
Jesus, who knows Thomas well, is not phased at all by his questions and demands. Indeed he welcomes the opportunities they provide for reassurance and explanation. “I am the way, the truth and the life,” he says to Thomas; he is the way to God the Father; he is, beyond doubt, risen from the dead, and physically present. The words “Do not doubt” are kindly meant – certainly not a rebuke. For Thomas, by his questions and doubts, is enabled to go forward in faith, and has asked the things we all want to ask. He speaks for us all. Here is Malcom Guite, well-known poet and priest, on Thomas’ crucial significance for us as Christians:
St Thomas the Apostle
‘We do not know … how can we know the way?”
Courageous master of the awkward question,
You spoke the words the others dared not say
And cut through their evasion and abstraction.
O doubting Thomas, father of my faith,
You put your finger on the nub of things:
We cannot love some disembodied wraith,
But flesh and blood must be our king of kings.
Faith, belief, trust all have to be rooted in reality; otherwise they become a vague (and probably vain) kind of hope. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it like this: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews Ch 11: v 1) He makes a distinction between faith and hope. If hope has no particular basis we might call it worldly optimism. Only if it has ‘assurance’ and ‘conviction’ can it become faith. Thomas had no hope that Jesus had risen from the dead: he simply did not believe it, unless given proof (which he thought he had no hope of gaining).
I am reminded of my explaining to a mixed sixth form class, years ago, Plato’s idea of the Form of the Good – a sort of impersonal Ultimate Being and Highest Reality. Suddenly from the back there was what sounded like a minor explosion gathering strength, in which the word ‘but’ played a significant and repeated role. It came from a delightful and feisty American girl (the British variety being far too restrained), which culminated in her thumping the table and exclaiming “But …. you can’t prove it!” Well, no I couldn’t. All I could do was, perhaps rather feebly, to suggest that there were many things in life, like love and beauty, which could not be explained in purely material terms, as part of our chemical make-up. To make sense of this life and its significance, we reach out towards the eternal – in our case and in Thomas’ to God Himself, made personal and known to us in the love of Jesus Christ.
Thomas is one of those first followers of Jesus from whom we can take confidence. His was a questioning faith which rejected simplistic answers. He wanted to get to “the nub of things” and would not be fobbed off with easy platitudes. Since these encounters took place over Passiontide and Easter, they concern the biggest and most important questions of the Christian faith: life in God, death and resurrection. Once again, we cannot know the full answers – not in this life. But the message of Easter is clear: Christ rose from the dead, not as a one-off miraculous occurrence but to guarantee for all time the sure hope of the resurrection and the conquering of death. In John Donne’s clarion words:
“One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die.”
(Death, be not proud: Divine Poems 10)
How that will be for us we cannot tell. But we have Jesus’ assurance to his disciples: “I am going to prepare a place for you in my Father’s house.” We need not be anxious nor fret: all is prepared. The humble faith of another poet-priest, this time of the 17th century, Richard Baxter, allays any fears of that final encounter:
Come, Lord when grace hath made me meet,
Thy blessed face to see:
For if thy work on earth be sweet,
What will thy glory be?
My knowledge of that life is small;
The eye of faith is dim:
But it’s enough that Christ knows all;
And I shall be with him.
Richard Baxter
(Lord, it belongs not to my care)
The serenity of those words shall, we trust, infuse our soul when we come in due time to stand before our Saviour, and say, in amazed wonder, like Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” (John Ch 20: v 28)