I just don't get it...

I am using this in the morning reflecting on questions, wrong answers and Thomas not getting it about Jesus being alive. I've had a day of it really being made to feel stupid by people being officious making me feel I don't matter. My questions, my enquiries were met with incredulity and I didn't like their attitude!

RANT OVER!

I love Father Ted, the wonderful comedy about three priests on Craggy Island. I love especially Father Dougal, who is a little slow… A conversation with a Bishop goes like this:

“ So Father, do you ever have any doubts about the religious life? Is your faith ever tested?”

“Tested?”

“Yes, anything you’ve been worried about, any doubts you’ve been having about any aspects of faith, anything like that?”

“Well, yes, you know the way God made us all, right? And he’s looking at us from heaven and everything? And then his Son came down from heaven and saved everyone and all that?”

“Yes.”

“And when we die we’re all going to go to heaven?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“That’s the bit I’ve trouble believing in!!”   

You don’t have to have it all sorted. But you have to know the basics. No wonder in another episode Father Ted turns to Father Dougal and says “How did you get into the church? Collect twelve crisp packets and become a priest?”

  

What are those things we have to know? You have to know Jesus in your heart, Thomas knew him there, that’s why it hurt.

But Jesus sticks with him and encourages the questions. To be a Christian you have to know God loves you and Jesus died for you, and Jesus lives with you, resting on that certainty, questions have a place, our faith is a journey. We will never “know it all”! 

Thomas was honest enough to air his problems and he was led to a greater awareness and commitment.  Early Methodism, remember, flourished largely because of the class meeting, the small groups, where people got support and studied the Scriptures and cared for each other, and pondered what God was doing in their lives.

I believe in such groups, and I have tried to get my churches wherever I’ve served, to rediscover them, groups that people can go to to explore the Bible and discover the excitement of discerning what God has to say today, to have discussion and debate on what the words mean and how we should live. By sharing in this way, we grow together. Thomas teaches us not to be frightened of probing into the great questions of our faith.

The resurrection power of God is beyond our understanding, his power is incomprehensible. How can we ever completely understand it? 

In a book called The Easter God, by the late Bishop John V Taylor, he has this powerful picture of Thomas looking at Jesus’ wounds and an image of him at peace having seen.

  

Bishop Taylor comments that the wounds still being there is the supreme victory we celebrate at Easter – the victory of God’s persistence in love, that even in raw pain, in the things of life we think are not reconcilable with his way, there is victory, an eternal commitment never to switch off love – Thomas wanted to be sure of it – and I don’t blame him for that.

So, I wish our Church had more Thomas’s in its company, people who live in the real world, and who aren’t afraid to grapple with finding faith in the middle of real life, rather than shying away from issues and acting like the world outside can be forgotten. We live in a challenging environment! But this is the Easter truth, even when we have doubts, Jesus invites us to confess him as Thomas did, and he will lead us forward in faith if we will trust him. Come, see and believe he says, and you will find peace, joy and strength. In your doubts, you can trust me, when all else is shaken… even when silly people at the other end of the phone make you despair, or you don't get it!!