The Second Sunday of Easter

Sermon

The Second Sunday of Easter

7 April 2024

The Reverend Canon Richard Ames-Lewis

John 12.21

“Have you believed because you have seen me?

                                                                 Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

What is it like to be a twin? Some members of our congregation can tell us what it’s like because they are a twin. Most of us can only vaguely imagine the experience of having been conceived in the same womb as your twin, of growing up together with your twin, even of being indistinguishable from your twin.  We hear how twins, before they can talk, often share their own private language; how they often know what each other is thinking, of sharing joys and sorrows even when separated by long distances.

Today, a week after Easter, known here traditionally as Low Sunday, is known in the Eastern Church as Thomas Sunday. Thomas, in Aramaic, means “twin” and it is onto him that we cast our resurrection gaze today. St John, as we shall see, has a particular affection for Thomas. Twice he mentions that Thomas was known as “didymus”, Greek for twin, but curiously we never meet his twin. There has been much speculation who his twin might have been. Was he Peter’s twin?  Was he Judas’s twin? Was he even Jesus’s twin? St John never gives us an answer, and this is interesting because John usually has a reason for leaving out information that you might expect him to include.

But he takes us in some detail along Thomas’s faith journey, and I propose we follow this this morning and perhaps surprise ourselves by uncovering the unknown, unseen twin.

Thomas was fired by the resurrection to become a missionary apostle. He travelled well beyond the Roman Empire to preach the gospel. He followed the trade route down to the Red Sea and across to South India. By tradition he landed in AD 52 in Muziris on the Kerala coast and was martyred 20 years later in Mylapore near Madras. During his mission there he built seven remarkable churches in Kerala, as a result of which he has become known not only as the patron saint of India but also the patron saint of architects.

And this is the so-called “Doubting Thomas” of whom we heard in today’s gospel reading, a man whose diffidence, anxiety and faithlessness were turned upside down by meeting the risen Jesus.

Thomas has three appearances in St John’s Gospel. In each case, St John places Thomas at a crucial point in the narrative, opening the way for a profound theological reflection.

We hear him speaking first in chapter 11, when Jesus’s friend Lazarus has recently died. Jesus proposes to go to Lazarus and the apostles do not wish to. They can’t see the point, and anyway there’s a risk of persecution. Thomas speaks up and says, “Let us also go that we may die with him.” He voices the unspoken feelings of all the apostles confronted with the horror of a combination of death and shame. “Let us also go, that we may die with him,” is not exactly inspiring encouragement. But it leads on to Jesus’s most powerful sign - the raising of Lazarus, with those amazing words of Jesus, “Lazarus, come out,” the pre-figuration of the resurrection itself.

Thomas speaks again in chapter 14. This is a passage frequently read at funerals. “Do not let your hearts be troubled”, says Jesus. “Believe in God and believe also in me. I go to prepare a place for you… You know the place to which I am going.”  Thomas says, “Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”  Here are words uttered by Thomas the agnostic.  The phrase “We do not know” gives voice to our own agnosticism in the face of death. But in St John’s narrative, they are the words which lead on to one of Jesus’s most lucid and lambent sayings, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

Thomas’s third appearance comes after the resurrection in chapter 20. We heard it in today’s gospel. On the evening of the first day of the week, although the doors were locked Jesus comes and stands among the disciples and shows them his hands and his side. He passes to them his peace and breathes on them his Holy Spirit. But Thomas is not with them. He’s missed it. What an extraordinary thing. It is as though St John has deliberately written Thomas out of this first evening in order that he might use him to make a particular point later on. So when the others say to him “We have seen the Lord,” he says the dark and doubting words “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

So the scene is set for a repeat one week later (i.e. today, the First Sunday after Easter, Thomas Sunday). Once again, the disciples are in the house. This time Thomas is with them. Once again through the closed doors Jesus comes, stands among them and passes to them his peace. Then he offers to Thomas his hands and his side, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” This encounter leads on to the unforgettable response of Thomas, as incredulity gives way to faith. From the bottom of his heart he utters a prayer of awe and worship, “My Lord and my God” – “My Lord and my God” - a prayer which we might use as we kneel at the altar.

But now we hear Jesus summing up this encounter with twin phrase which is both a question and a statement, a question for Thomas, and a statement for us:

“Have you believed because you have seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

This twin phrase is the punch line of the whole gospel. This is what we have been leading up to all the way through. It’s all very well to believe because you have seen. But the blessing from Jesus falls upon those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. In other words, you and me.

So here we have the secret of the identity of Thomas’s twin. Thomas believes because he sees; Thomas’s twins are blessed because they have not seen and yet have come to believe. We are all, in other words, twins of Thomas, Didymus, the Twin.

Thomas’s life was turned round by what he saw. Filled with resurrection zeal, he travelled to far-off South India to proclaim the good news. We, his twins, need not travel so far. But our hearts, like his, are filled with good news. In our disordered and broken world, where and how shall we share this?