Acts 5.27-32; Revelation 1.4-8; John 20.19-31

If I were to run through the list of Jesus’s disciples and to ask you what you knew about each one, I wonder what you would say.

o James and John - sons of thunder, perhaps, brothers, fishermen.
o Judas - betrayer, thief, keeper of the common purse
o Peter - loyal, denial, impetuous, fisherman, leader of the Church

And
o Thomas - the doubter. Poor old Thomas, always known as Doubting Thomas.

Thomas’s doubt is what we see in our Gospel story. But this passage is not just about doubt, it also has something else at its very heart - faith.

John writes: “these are written so that you may believe”. It’s the reason for his writing his Gospel, so that those who read it - or hear it as most in the early Church would have done - would believe.

There is debate about which John it was who wrote this Gospel. But there is no doubt about the reason for the Gospel - so that people might come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Life in his name. The life that we see in the resurrection.

How do we feel if we’ve missed out on something? Jealous, maybe. Disappointed that we’ve missed something good. Sad. Wanting to know all about what happened. Perhaps even that it’s not fair we missed out.

Thomas’s reaction was to disbelieve what the others had told him. Understandable perhaps since what they were telling him clearly couldn’t happen.

A man fell over the edge of a cliff. As he tumbled down the cliff face, he managed to grab onto a scraggy little bush and hang on for dear life. He was terrified that he bush would not hold out, so he shouted up the cliff side in the hope that someone would hear him and send for a rescue team.

“Is there anyone up there?” he shouted.

To his delight, a voice floated down from above. “I am the Lord God, and I am here.”

“What should I do?” called the man.

The voice replied, “Let go of the bush and, with my protection, you’ll float harmlessly down to the beach below.”

The man glanced down and saw the drop of hundreds of metres to the beach below. He gulped and looked back up. “Is there anybody else up there?” he called.

It’s not easy to believe in something we know can’t happen. In human terms, anyone who lets go of a bush and falls hundreds of metres downwards to a beach is likely to end up smashed to pieces rather than have a safe landing.

In human terms, a man who has been crucified cannot walk and talk and reappear. It just doesn’t happen.

We don’t know why Thomas was not with the other disciples that Easter evening. Perhaps he was still grieving; maybe he just couldn’t cope with being with other people.
Perhaps he needed space to ponder what he had heard from Mary Magdalene, who had earlier announced to the disciples that she had seen the Lord. Had he cast this off as some hallucination of a bereaved companion? We don’t know.

Even when the rest of the Twelve say they have seen Jesus, Thomas can’t take it in. He’s a rationalist, who knows that the dead just cannot come back to life in such a way.

Many people today miss the risen Jesus because their rational mind can’t cope with the idea of something that goes against what we know to be the way things happen. Of course, others miss the risen Christ because they are too busy to look or not into religion so they ignore the possibility or because no one has ever told them about him.

But let’s not right Thomas off because he doubted.

It was Thomas, who back in chapter 14, John tells us, was bothered by what Jesus had said. I’m going to prepare a place for you, he had explained, so that I can come and take you there. You know the way.

How can we know the way, Thomas had asked, when we don’t even know where you are going. Always down to earth was Thomas, the one who asked what in human terms are the sensible questions.

But Thomas is also very loyal to Jesus, his Lord and Master. He is willing to risk his life. After the death of Lazarus, it is Thomas who says “Let us go with Jesus that we may die with him.”

So often we hear Thomas called Doubting Thomas because of his reaction to the other disciples’ news that we heard in our Gospel reading. But there is so much more to Thomas than that.

After he had seen the risen Jesus for himself, his response was “My Lord and my God.” That’s a response of faith not doubt. Little wonder that the Orthodox Church often call Thomas Believing Thomas.

And for most people faith and doubt go hand-in-hand. Faith would not be true faith if there was no possibility for doubt.

I think often people feel ashamed if they have doubts, but look at Jesus’s reaction to Thomas. He doesn’t reject him because he doubted, and nor will God reject us, if we are honest about our doubts. Thomas doubted and was met by Jesus’s love.

What should we do when faced with doubts? First of all, own up to them. By pushing them to one side and ignoring them, we hope they might go away - but that rarely happens. If we own up to our doubts we can then bring them to God in prayer.
We can be open with others about them - we might find that they too are doubting and we can encourage each other.

So, look at your doubts, don’t hide them. Notice that Thomas was bold enough to say to the other disciples, I don’t believe this.

Talk to God about your doubts. The worst thing to do when we doubt is to try and hide our doubts from God. You will know from human relationships that when we try to hide something from those we love, it often becomes a block between us. People may not know exactly what we are hiding but they usually suspect something is being hidden from them.

Hiding things from someone hinders the relationship. If we don’t offer our doubts to God, our prayer relationship is also hindered for we are not being truly open and honest with God. And, of course, God is aware of our thoughts anyway. So be open in your prayers.
And remember the response that Thomas received - it was one of love and not of rejection. God will love us through our doubts. God will continue to love us in spite of our doubts.

When those whom we love are struggling, we long to be with them in that struggle. God is no different. God longs for our openness and our honesty and our love. God wants us to be who we really are with him, not to try and cover up the bits about ourselves that we are struggling with. God loves us as we are. God doesn’t say I’ll love you when you believe this much. Even faith the size of a mustard seed is enough because a mustard seed will grow and grow.

And when you doubt some things, remind yourself too of where you have faith. Holding on to what you believe keeps you firm in the face of doubt. Thomas had doubts but he also recognised Jesus as “My Lord and my God.”

Doubts are a natural part of the life of faith. They are destructive only when we allow them to fester and are not willing to own them. For that is when they get in the way of our relationship with God, that is when they stop us praying. When we doubt, we need to keep on praying for that is what keeps the relationship alive in spite of doubts.

So, when you doubt, don’t be ashamed, but accept your doubts as the flip side of your faith. When you doubt, be honest about your doubts, with yourself and with others. When you doubt, don’t give up praying, for God is beg enough to cope with out doubts.

And, remember, more than anything else, the response that Thomas received from the risen Christ. It was a response of love, a response that didn’t reject him but accepted him, a response that then led Thomas to a deeper faith in the one who was his Lord and his God.