If, like me you’re someone who potentially spends more time on social media than is probably good for you, you might be aware of a bit of a Twitter Storm over the Easter Weekend.
Professor Alice Roberts, an anthropologist and President of Humanists UK, and someone who I have a lot of time and respect for, caused a bit of upset by tweeting on Good Friday, “Just a little reminder today. Dead people don’t come back to life”. This understandably caused a bit of a backlash, writing it as she did on one of our most holy days.
Now the 280 characters which Twitter allows doesn’t give much scope for nuanced argument but the general gist, from both believers and non-believers, was it was a bit mean-spirited to put a statement out there that was clearly only meant to disrupt on Good Friday, and that a militant atheist is as unpleasant a thing to encounter as a militant Christian- a belief that I share, because absolute certainty is something I find utterly scary, whichever side of an argument the certainty is on.
We have some magnificent, stirring hymns don’t we? I wish we could sing them I'm church at the moment! “Blessed assurance! Jesus is mine”, “no more we doubt thee! Glorious Prince of life” and in the moment when we’re belting out those words we believe it completely. But when I encounter a fellow Christian who spouts such rhetoric and certainty outside of our singing I feel quite uncomfortable, because I don't quite trust it.
It may be they believe utterly in what they’re saying, in which case they're perhaps being a bit dishonest with themselves because faith and doubt aren’t opposites, they’re siblings. They live side by side and one informs the other, they’re forever entwined within us and to deny one is deny a part of ourselves- whether we’re denying the possibility we might have doubts or denying the possibility that the world contains a spark of divinity.
This is why I like the fact that St Thomas, forever labelled as the doubter, has such a prominent place in our little church.
Some of our historians will know the background of the who commissioned the windows here at St Michael’s but I’d be interested in hearing if we know the reasons behind some of the less obvious choices of who they depict. The illustrations of episodes from Jesus’ life make sense, and probably the St George window too, but then we have saints Oswald and Aidan, the Celtic saints, hidden behind the organ loft.
And then, in the central focus of the building, above the altar and alongside our patron saint and our Lord we have St Thomas.
Why does he have such a place of prominence? Did those who commissioned him share my belief that faith and doubt must live together, is it sending a message that even before our own time St Michael’s has been a safe space to have questions and doubts?
There’s a reason why this was the community that brought me back to my childhood faith. If I’d walked into this community and been met with a series of certainties and immovable facts, such as the rejection of the science I believe is all part of God’s creation, or a condemnation of the LGBT people in my life who are all beautiful spirit-filled children of God, well I would have turned on my heel and been right out of that door again, but this community is what I long for in every faith community- a place that respects ideas, encourages debate and allows questions and indeed doubt.
The only certainty I was met with here was the certainty of God’s love, but not necessarily an explanation of what that ultimately means or any boast of having the key or knowledge to accessing anything those on the outside of the community couldn’t.
I find the centrality of Thomas reassuring and a comfort. It’s a sign of the values that have underpinned this community for generations.
But what of Thomas himself? We know so little of him; we know he’s a twin, it’s Thomas who says to Jesus “we don’t know where you’re going” leading to one of the passages most commonly read at funerals. It’s Thomas who travels with Jesus on learning Lazarus has died and in tradition it’s Thomas who took Christianity to India and we have a strong Marthoma community here in Manchester, part of those South Indian traditions.
But in the passage we hear today John is using Thomas in a very deliberate way. His declaration of “my lord and my god”, his testimony to the living, breathing, bodily Jesus, is absolutely to do with his witness and declaration of faith; “these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
The encounter with Thomas is incredibly visceral, his declaration is sparked by physical contact, the proof that this is the same Jesus who died on the cross, not a representation but the same body with the same wounds.
At Christmas the emphasis is on the incarnation and bodily presence of God amongst us, but we sometimes forget this is central to the whole of Jesus’ life and never more so than in the Easter and Resurrection narrative.
John’s is definitely the gospel to remind us of this and should be a reminder of our embodied faith, and should shred the long-held belief that our bodies and their functions are shameful in any way; God created our bodies and chose to be incarnate, chose a body just like yours. John’s is the gospel of body and blood; where the Holy Spirit is physically breathed into the apostles.
This passage shows us the body tortured and killed on a cross is the same body Thomas touches and who he then realises is both man and God. That’s why this is special, that’s why this matters.
To return to Professor Robert’s controversial tweet- Dead people don’t come back to life. That’s the point. That’s the marvellous, miraculous, central point of the entire story. This doesn’t happen, except here, and in all our faith and our doubt we choose to believe in the miracle. We choose to have faith.
Some days there may be more doubt wrapped up in that faith than others, but we still choose to come back to our faith, because there’s just something, something about this story, something about this man that’s leads us too to declare “my Lord and my God”
So yes, we will have doubts, yes we will have questions, but it doesn’t take away from our faith. It holds our faith to account, it helps it grow and change and evolve. It ensures we that like creation itself we never stand still or stagnate but keep growing and maturing, it helps our faith to become bigger and our relationship with God to become more whole.
