Sermon on St.

Thomas
John 20:24-29.

History has been rather unkind to Thomas. He was the apostle of India, he gave
his life as a martyr for Christ, yet he made one mistake, one bad move and that’s how
everyone knows him and he’s stuck with the name “Doubting Thomas”. If my name went
down in history as “Doubting John Hemer” I’d be pretty miffed. I’d like to speak up for
Thomas by saying a few words in favour of doubt.
We are all here because we have certain convictions, and those convictions have
been sharpened, strengthened, clarified because we’ve had to deal with doubt. A certain
degree of doubt is what gives us enquiring curious minds. The day we stop just accepting
everything we are told and start to think for ourselves is the day we begin to doubt. So
doubt can be a very positive things, it leads people to enquire, to search, to test the truth
of various claims.
As a missionary I’ve worked in places where people don’t have a big tendency to
doubt. Those are precisely the places where people are inclined to believe in magic, to
fall for the tricks of the unscrupulous – especially in religious matters.
When I was living in Rome in the nineties there were reports of a statue of Our Lady in
Civitavecchia which seemed to be weeping blood. People flocked in their thousands to
see it. My instinct was to doubt that there was anything supernatural at work, to wonder if
it was a hoax or if there was a natural explanations. Whenever there are claims of a
miracle like this, the Church’s first instinct is also to doubt, to test it, to subject it to
scrutiny and I’m very glad we’ve got that instinct. It comes from Christianity which is of
course the world’s greatest power against superstition and mythology.
But we know too that our modern society is riddled with doubt and hostile
cynicism about religious truth, and that it can sometimes have a very destructive effect.
Especially with regard to religious belief it seems the default setting of our age.
I once left some batteries in my camera for a couple of years, and found that the
batteries had leaked out and ruined the whole camera. The substance that leaked is
potassium hydroxide. In the right circumstances that can be a source of power and energy
and all sorts of the small devices we use depend on it. But that same substance which is a
source of energy can become corrosive and destructive. It seems a pretty good analogy
for what doubt is.
When we meet doubt in a healthy way it’s the thing that energizes us to go and
find the truth and not to be satisfied with anything less. But it can become the thing which
eats away at people’s faith and confidence in God. It can either drive us to find the truth
or, if we use it the wrong way, it can lead us to conclude that there is no such thing as
truth, and that’s what has happened on a grand scale in our western world.

Thomas’s doubt is of the former kind. He’s not going to accept the other apostles’
report on face value without investigation, but his hesitation doesn’t keep him from the
truth, it leads him to it. It’s an open, enquiring kind of doubt, not a cynical sort of doubt.
A woman once told me that she stopped believing in God because she used to lie in bed
at night and say to God: “If you exist, turn the light on.” That sort of attitude can never
lead to faith and there’s nothing of that in Thomas.

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 And what is it that he doubts? As 21st century Westerners we assume he has the
same difficulties as we have – to believe in something as unusual as the resurrection of a
man from the dead. But Thomas is a first century Jew. Three weeks or so before today’s
incident he saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. When King Herod was puzzled by
Jesus he jumped to the conclusion that he must be John the Baptist raised from the dead.
So for Thomas it was no big deal to believe that some people could rise. That’s not his
doubt or his worry.
His doubt is that Jesus could rise from the dead. Not that God could do this for
someone, but that he could do it, or would want to do it, for Jesus. The reason why Jesus
rising from the dead was more a problem than anyone else was this: Jesus had been
crucified. That meant for a first century Jew that God had completely washed his hands
of him, indeed Deuteronomy states quite clearly that if anyone dies like this then God has
cursed them. The religious authorities could have made things much easier for
themselves by having Jesus quietly bumped off in a back street, but the wanted him
crucified. Remember Pilate tells them to go and stone him themselves, but even that sort
of public execution wasn’t enough. He claimed to be messiah, he claimed to be God and
it seemed as though the whole world had gone after him, everyone thought he was
wonderful. So if he could be crucified that would be God’s definitive declaration that he
was no good, an impostor, a liar. Crucifixion would totally, finally and definitively
discredit him.
So is surprising that Thomas doubts that he could be raised from the dead? Is it
surprising that he doubts that God had finally not cursed him but vindicated him?
As Modern Westerners we have an almost inbuilt sympathy for people who are
unjustly condemned. Nothing makes us angrier than hearing of someone being “stitched
up” and we have very sensitive antennae for that sort of miscarriage of justice. The
reason - and the only reason for that - is for two thousand years the central story of
western – that is Christian - civilization is the story of Jesus, someone stitched up by the
authorities but proved righteous by God. Western history has played itself out under the
shadow of the cross, so it’s easy enough for us to believe that a man horribly shamed and
disgraced can very well be innocent.
But Thomas stands at the very beginning of the revolution worked by the cross of
Christ. He’s being asked to believe something unheard of, and he has no idea how all this
is going to play itself out. That’s why he doubts and hesitates.
And the marks in Jesus’ hands and side tell him that the crucifixion wasn’t some
horrible nightmare, wasn’t some awful hallucination he’s had. It happened, and his friend
was stood now in front of him. The only way Thomas knows it’s Jesus is through those
marks. And Jesus says Doubt no longer, but believe. The word for ‘believe’ in the
original Greek is pisteuo and that can equally be translated as ‘trust’. We could interpret
Jesus’ few words to Thomas as something like: “hesitate no longer Thomas, but trust me,
trust that it is safe to continue making me the centre of your life, as you have done these
three years.”
For three years Thomas had followed Jesus who enjoyed a great reputation, Even
a week before his death the crowds in Jerusalem had gone ecstatic over him. Now as far
as those same crowds were concerned Jesus was a total no-good. He promised people the
kingdom of God, but he failed totally. And Thomas now knows that he is alive, but
what’s it going to be like being associated with this discredited man? Does he want to

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continue with someone who everyone still thinks is no good? That’s his doubt, his
hesitation.

This all sounds remarkably like what we are living through as Catholics at the
moment. We’ve always been a bit suspect in this country, but we were known for
charitable institutions and great schools and our dedication. We were often admired. But
in our own time huge efforts are made to ridicule, discredit, to destroy the good name of
the Catholic Church. The Church in general and the Pope in particular has been blamed
for most of the evils of mankind.
The comedian Frank Skinner, who is a practising Catholic in an interview with
Eddie Izzard – a transvestite comedian, pointed out that it’s probably more socially
acceptable in Britain today to be a transvestite than to be a practising Catholic. You may
agree or disagree with that, but he has a point.
So what’s happening to the Church is to some extent what happened to Jesus. The
powers that be did all in their power to cast Jesus in the worst possible light. Many of
those who have influence over public opinion today are doing exactly the same thing to
the Church.
So to give your life to this organisation which many people think is balmy and
some think is downright evil is not the easiest thing. Even some practising Catholic
parents are very wary about their sons going for the priesthood. We may well doubt or
hesitate, but let those words of Jesus speak to us as they spoke to Thomas: Doubt no
longer but believe. That applies whatever the Lord asks of us – priesthood, religious life,
lay life.
And it’s good to remind ourselves that despite the best efforts of the most
aggressive anti-church secularists, some three million adults a year are received into the
Church, because for all its faults, Christ founded it.
Thomas then responds My Lord and my God. Now Jesus either is or isn’t God,
and once we are convinced that he is God, in a sense, that’s that. It’s not something we
have to revisit or re-examine every day. Two billion people call themselves Christian, so
at least nominally recognise Jesus as God. But to really allow him to be Lord, that isn’t
something you just decide once and for all. That’s a daily effort, a daily choice, to really
let him be the one who rules my life. Calling Jesus Lord and meaning it is probably much
more difficult than calling him God and meaning it. Making him truly my Lord, separates
real followers of Christ from the surrounding culture.
I began my priestly life in Pakistan. I was sent to one group of Hindus, but while I
was still learning the language got friendly with another similar group called the
Megwars. None of these had heard the gospel at all and the asked me to come and tell
them about Christ. I did my best with my rudimentary Gujarati, and very soon I found
some of them telling me that the believed Jesus was God. I was delighted at first, but
soon realised that although they genuinely believed he was God, they believed the same
of Krishna and Vishnu and Ganesh and Hanuman and all the other myriad Hindu gods.
Hindus very easily accept another god into their pantheon but were nowhere near to
making him Lord. They were certainly not going to stop worshiping all their other gods.
Jesus says Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. God is not less
visible today than he was in the past, but society and culture used to help us more. When
I was born to be an atheist was to be a bit odd. Now almost every media personality,

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every comedian seems to rush to tell us how they are atheist. Many of the most witty and
entertaining people are atheists.
But we are all here because we have tasted something of the blessedness that
belief in Jesus can give us. When Thomas truly makes Jesus his Lord, it doesn’t make
him safe, but it does make his life blessed and rich and happy.
I’ve been a priest for 27 years and like everyone else it’s been extraordinarily full
of all sorts of things, expected and unexpected, great joys, terrible sorrows, real dangers
from bullets and poisonous snakes, and all the other Boys’ Own stuff that missionaries go
on about. I’ve known wonderful love and kindness from some of the poorest people on
earth. For the last 14 years I’ve worked in seminaries and had the joy of preparing men
for the priesthood, and teaching the Sacred Scriptures. Every day at the elevation of the
Mass I look at the host and say with Thomas My Lord and my God. People ask me would
I do it again, would I be a priest again? And with all my heart I can say yes, I’d do it all
again a hundred times over.