Easter responses: Thomas

It's my blog's second birthday!  So to celebrate, another post in my series on responses to Easter, this time thinking about the apostle Thomas.

Thomas is known as 'the doubter,' but is this really fair?  Although on several occassions in the gospels he is recorded as being cautious and possible sceptical about whether something really can or has happened he also makes one of the braver statements that came out of the apostles: "Let us go also, that we may die with him" (John 11, v16).  Jesus, against the advice and warnings of his friends that the religious establishment were out to get him, was determined to set out for Jerusalem and Bethany, knowing what was eventually in store for him and determined to obey his father's will.  Thomas is the one who voices the disciples' intention to stay with their teacher through thick and thin.  Perhaps it shows his trust that Jesus is the one who will save them. 

Of course, it didn't happen, and the disciples were scattered, frightened and ashamed.  The first news of the resurrection must have just confused them more, adding to the uncertainty they felt.  What were they to do now?  Were they safe?  Was they journey Jesus had led them on over?  Had he failed?

Then he appeared to them, and they believed.  He had not failed, he had risen.  Their doubts and fear were swallowed up in joy- for now.  But Thomas was not there, he missed it.  He remained sceptical.  Understandably, really.  How hard do you find it to believe that someone you have seen killed has risen from the dead?  Even if your friends tell you it's true?  If you are a Christian, think how hard you would find it to believe this if you weren't, and maybe you'll be a bit closer to understanding how hard some people find it to comprehend the resurrection.

"Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."  We often think this reprove applies only to Thomas.  Yet the other disciples also believed because they had seen.  Surely it applies to them as much as to him. 

But Thomas and his doubt perhaps can help us see how Jesus responds today to those who have real doubts.   Perhaps those of us who already believe forget quite how hard it can be to accept the truth about Jesus for the first time.  Jesus sees that Thomas wants to believe, sees what is in the way of this belief- presumably his logical thinking that no one who was dead could be walking around alive*- and reaches out to him with a personal, even physical, response. 

Today a lot of people still struggle to accept that the gospel account of Jesus' death and resurrection can be true, struggle with thinking that it's not logical, that it doesn't make sense, that it is against reason.  And it is, except for one thing; that this is God we're dealing with, and God doesn't obey the same natural laws as the rest of us. But often- perhaps always- the only way for people to realise this, to overcome their logical reasons, is for God to step down into our world, as he did with Thomas, and meet them.  Maybe not a physical encounter like with Thomas, maybe through a sense, a feeling, an experience.  Maybe through a friend, a church service, a book, or a song.  Something that makes you realise God is there, and that he's real.  Perhaps you won't understand how it's real, but you'll know it is.



*Even though Thomas had presumable seen Lazarus raised from the dead.  The disciples seem to have had quite short memories- but then would you or I do any better in the trust stakes?  I don't think I would!