Wulf's Webden

This morning I got a chance to speak at St Theo’s on John 20:19-31. I’ll put the whole talk below, with a few minor alterations. There is no point, for example, in mentioning the song that is coming next! This will be quite a long post, so I may take a break from posting for the next few days! Anyway, here beginneth the message…

The focus of today’s gospel reading is John 20:19-31. Most Bible translations break this into to three main sections and, although those headings aren’t scripture themselves, they do divide things in a useful way.

Firstly, we have Jesus appearing to most of the disciples. We don’t know exactly who was there but it seems fair to assume that it included most of the core group who are named earlier in the gospel accounts. Of the twelve, two were definitely missing. Who wasn’t there? Thomas and Judas Iscariot. We can identify these gaps but there were probably also additional people present but it isn’t entirely straightforward to line up the accounts of the four gospel writers.

What was the atmosphere like? The easy assumption is that it was vibrant, excited, joyful. Easter – the day and the season – are a time for triumphant celebration of the risen Lord Jesus. However, we are very used to Easter. The gospel accounts suggest the mood on the first Easter Sunday was more fraught and fragile. In Luke’s account (chapter 24), which includes two unnamed disciples who had recently run back from Emmaus with their amazing story of meeting Jesus on the road, everyone is still “startled and frightened” when he appears. Jesus has to say to them, “Why are you troubled , and why do doubts arise in your hearts?”. In John’s version, which is our focus this morning, they are hiding behind locked doors and Jesus speaks peace to them, not once but twice.

We shouldn’t gloss over the fact that the disciples were afraid. During his ministry, Jesus often spoke about the fact he would be killed and then rise from the dead after three days. Objectively, the disciples already had all the evidence they should have needed to know that this had been fulfilled. Emotionally though, they are still broken people. Depending on your level of compassion, you may want to give them a slap or a cup of tea and a warm blanket but they can’t take in the joy of victory because they are still in shock and fixated on the terror of defeat.

We might say the same thing about Thomas, whom John distinctly remembers was missing from the room. At some point later he joins them. By then his friends have had time to wake up to the wonder of what has happened. Thomas, though, is “behind the curve” and still raw with the grief, the disappointment and perhaps even an anger that had begun to lift from his companions.

For many years, I have felt it is unfair to call him “doubting Thomas”. What most people “remember” about him is that he was a hardened sceptic. That attitude goes back at least 400 years; Caravaggio’s 1602 painting, “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas”, shows the apostle sticking his finger into the spear wound in Christ’s side and having a good old root around. We tend to forget John 14, where Thomas asks the question that prompts Jesus to respond, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no-one comes to the Father but through me.” We tend to discount the evidence that Thomas went on to play a role in spreading the gospel, perhaps as far as India or beyond. He wasn’t a doubter more than any of the others and, like most of them, he probably died a martyr for proclaiming Jesus as the Risen Lord.

Perhaps most crucially, we miss the good news for us that comes because John and others present unvarnished accounts. Have you ever found yourself so buffeted by events that your ability to think straight was impaired? It is a trivial example but I don’t think it is any coincidence that the two parking tickets I got during my years living in Oxford came just at the time when we were in the process of buying a house there. That was one of the lessons that helped me understand how stress can cloud our minds. Are there things that make you feel both bruised and confused even as you have come to our service this morning?

Let me set Easter hope before you. Closed doors are no obstacle to Jesus. He appears in your heart and says “Peace be with you”. Maybe, like Thomas, you feel doubly gutted? Things seem to have turned a corner for others but you’ve missed out again. You think you have missed him but Jesus has heard everything you have blurted out in your disappointment. He says to you: “Be not unbelieving but believing.” Like Thomas, you don’t have to be a sceptic. Like Thomas, you don’t have to poke your fingers in the wounds. Like Thomas, may your response be, “My Lord and my God!”.

My experience is that the last couple of verses of the passage often get passed over, even though they come up every year, but I promised that we would walk through all three sections together. Do you remember earlier, when I asked which of the disciples were missing from the room and you figured out that the answer was Thomas and Judas. There is one more name you should carefully consider and that is your own.

I know you weren’t even born when these events happened but we have the privilege of visiting them through what is recorded in the Bible. Even a book from the fiction shelves can transport you in your imagination but the Bible is so much more than that. We read it with the blessing and the presence of the one who has orchestrated all these events in human lives. Believe in the Lord Jesus who lives and follow him. Be filled with the Holy Spirit who has been sent to support us since Jesus ascended into heaven. Fall in worship before God the Father, who has demonstrated his love and mercy to us. Do these things and you, like me, will be a disciple who wasn’t in the room but who isn’t forgotten or ignored.

Let me finish with a prayer: merciful Father, let your word grow in our hearts and continue to shape and comfort us as followers of your risen, conquering Son. Amen.