The Rector Writes:
Second Sunday after Trinity -2011
Thomas the Apostle Year A
I am regularly sent jokes and stories from my former secretary and this one was so brilliant I had to include it. It shows how easily truth can be manipulated and how important witnesses like Thomas are in encouraging us to have faith in the stories that have been handed down. Here is a primary source questioning the authenticity of the resurrection, requiring proof so that we may have faith in his testimony.
Judy Wallman, a professional genealogy researcher in southern California, was doing some personal work on her own family tree.. She discovered that Senator Harry Reid's great-great uncle, Remus Reid, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. Both Judy and Harry Reid share this common ancestor.
The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows in Montana territory.
On the back of the picture Judy obtained during her research is this inscription: 'Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.'
So Judy recently e-mailed Senator Harry Reid for information about their great-great uncle.
Believe it or not, Harry Reid's staff sent back the following biographical sketch for her genealogy research:
"Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honour when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed."
Thomas is one of my hero’s. I chose his feast as the day for my first Eucharist as I felt riddled with doubts, mostly about my ability to fulfil my calling but with questions of faith and concerns about the church. Thomas gave me comfort and strength. Not because he did great things, although he did - taking the Gospel as far as India, but because he like so many of us struggled with faith – it didn’t stop him having faith, that is obvious, but he struggled. He asked questions and he refused to accept hearsay - he required proof.
Proof is ultimately something that Christianity cannot give – it can provide lots of evidence, and many millions of witnesses to it’s living power, but ultimately it requires a leap of faith.
Science can provide a lot of evidence but it too requires a leap of faith to answer the big questions. Ultimate proof eludes us in all things and that is probably a good thing because people are by nature searchers, from our first few steps we need to explore to learn, sometimes painfully, sometimes ecstatically.
So who was Thomas. Thomas was a twin. That’s what his name means really. Some have supposed that he may have been the twin brother of Matthew. Earlier in John’s Gospel, when they hear the news their friend Lazarus is dead, it’s Thomas who wants to go with Jesus. Sensing danger and not knowing what’s ahead, Thomas nonetheless has the faith to say, “Let us go with the Lord, so that we may die with him.”
In another instance, when Jesus is giving his farewell discourse to the disciples, he talks about going down a road and to a place where the disciples will not be able to follow. But it is a place they know. Thomas speaks up and says, “But Lord we don’t know where you’re going.” But Jesus affirms that by knowing him, they know his destination since as Jesus says to them, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
Thomas is with the disciples when they are fishing and Jesus appears to them. This occurs in chapter 21 of John’s Gospel, a part of the Gospel that many biblical scholars think may have been added on to the original Gospel. Thomas sometimes seems more theologically alert than the other disciples, asking the penetrating question, urging Jesus to explain himself. The early church understood Thomas as the author of another Gospel possibly our earliest records of Jesus’ sayings, although not popular as it wasn’t shaped as a story, rather as a record of sayings. Tradition has it that Thomas sailed to India and spread the Gospel there. After a long life of preaching and working with the poor, he was martyred in India. Then Thomas’s body was taken to Edessa, where his relics were an important source of inspiration to the Syrian Church in the 4th Century. A father of Indian and Syrian Christianity, Thomas continues to inspire.
A more recent poet & priest, (Thomas Troeger) has put it this way:
These things did Thomas hold for real:
The warmth of blood, the chill of steel,
the grain of wood, the heft of stone,
the last frail twitch of blood and bone.
His brittle certainties denied
that one could live when one had died,
until his fingers read like Braille
the markings of the spear and nail.
May we, O God, by grace believe
and, in believing, still receive
the Christ who held His raw palms out
and beckoned Thomas from his doubt
It was not enough for Thomas to hear of the resurrection from Mary Magdalene. It was not enough for him to hear of it from the two who were on the road to Emmaus.
Thomas’s faith came more stubbornly, and had to take into consideration more information. His faith was different from theirs—what appears to others like doubt, indecision, even a lack of faith—for Thomas, it was simply HIS faith. It was his way of faith. A way that was willing to struggle, to look for truth deeply, to weigh the evidence, and only then, move forward.
Jesus had already appeared to the other disciples. He had breathed on them the very Spirit of God and they were spirit-filled. They shared in the resurrection as it brought them new life and filled them with the very life of God, and began to move them out of the locked room into the world. But Thomas had not been with them. His response was reasonable, even vital to our continuing story “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
And so, on the eighth day—the day of new creation, the day beyond the seven days of creation, the day of new possibilities and unimagined miracles—Jesus appears again to the disciples.
Peace be with you, Jesus says. And Jesus offers himself— he bares the wounds of a resurrected body, though they are transformed. The Gospel does not tell us whether Thomas actually touched the wounds. There is room for our imagination. In Rembrandt’s great painting of Thomas and Jesus, The Incredulity of St. Thomas, Jesus stands showing the wound in his side. The disciples are amazed and look on with wonder, and Thomas stands back in surprise, in shock. It is Caravaggio’s painting that is much more explicit—darker, more intimate, more shocking really, because in it, Thomas actually places his finger in the wound. As in the Gospel of John itself, some believe without signs, some need signs.
St. Thomas not only stands as the father of Indian and Syrian Christianity, he also stands as a patron for those whose faith does not come easily, with those whose faith includes a measure of doubt, a bit of suspicion, maybe even a little cynicism.
It’s ok to doubt. It’s ok to wonder. It’s ok even to be a little suspicious—especially since for one (if not more) suspicion eventually has led to sainthood.
For me Thomas’ example is particularly important at this time when images of the Church from the C of E discussing the appointment of Gay bishops, who before consecration have to repent past loving relationships; the rules and regulations that are being put in to protect people from Women bishops, the Covenant that hopefully will be rejected by the Scottish church, all these “processes” that forget the humanity of the individuals involved and deal so heavily and publicly with certainties, rather than a Thomas who would have warned against definite conclusions and warned against building barriers that separate the people from God.
After all it was Jesus who lifted women to a level of equality unheard of in Ancient times, they were among the very closest of his companions and their ministry to Jesus, dare I say it priestly ministry noted in the Gospels, is commended by Jesus and offered to all as an image of true discipleship.
Paul often misquoted through the attribution of 1 and 2 Timothy, letters he didn’t write, is blamed as a misogynist by one side and the upholder of male headship by the other, when this was an overlay on Paul by Christian Judizers some 50 years after his death.
What we do know is that Paul had women leaders who were deacons in his Churches and led churches with both male and female members and that he wrote that “in Christ there is no longer male nor female.” So then why should male headship be a true expression of Christian love.
Certainty without humility has led the Church so often to often do terrible things to people and they are remembered, and we struggle to bring our faith of love peace and justice to a world that has been bitten too often. Our message is life giving and honest we must repent of the human failures that have so misread our faith in the past, and still today. To have failed to learn the lessons from our past and to continue to advocate the exclusion or alienation of any from the love of Christ is terrible. Thomas shows us that we must beware easy pat answers, it isn’t about a lack of faith but about taking seriously questions of faith and walking gently with those who take more time to decide. Those who take their time are often some of the most committed and run the race to the end.
Let us then give thanks for St Thomas and in our own lives ponder the Gospels with freedom from fear, that by questioning we are betraying Christ—he made room for all of us and all our journeys of faith both rough and smooth. An let us give thanks that through his courageous witness Thomas helps many to consider a generous, loving and Christian way forward.
