Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side (John 20:27)

I grew up in Coventry. In the centre of Coventry there’s a statue of Lady Godiva who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of the city in protest against her husband’s excessive taxes on the people. The legend states that the whole population stayed indoors so that no one would see her, except one. A clock nearby the statue had moving mannequins on it and every hour the figure of Godiva on horseback would come out of a door and make a semicircle journey before disappearing through another. About halfway round an ugly face would appear in a little arched window - the face of Tom, the man who looked at her on her ride. The man who has name will always be preceded by the adjective by which he has become a byword: Peeping Tom.

There aren’t many people whose name gets so attached to an adjective that it actually enters everyday language; fewer still for whom this has negative connotations. Another is the man we heard about in our reading this morning. To this day you might get called a “Doubting Thomas”. Now, I don’t mind Tom getting castigated down the centuries - especially as he probably never existed. Thomas is another matter. It’s been a kind of pet project of mine for the last few years to rescue Thomas. I think that we sometimes get him badly wrong and I want to get rid of that adjective, “doubting” and replace it with one that really ought to spring from this reading.

Doubting Thomas. It sounds so negative, doesn’t it? Doubting Thomas. Bad Thomas. Faithless Thomas. Weak Thomas. That’s the way he’s sometimes been presented to us down the years. One scholar I read even thinks John only put this story into his Gospel to blacken Thomas’s name at a time when a “Gospel of Thomas” was circulating. Then it struck me, a few years ago, that this didn’t make sense. Sure, Thomas didn’t believe it when the other disciples told him Jesus had risen from the dead - he hadn’t been there when Jesus had appeared to them. We get caught up with that last verse, though, when Jesus says, “Have you seen and believed? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Hang on though. How is Thomas different from the other apostles in that regard. They have seen and they have believed - they just saw before Thomas did.

We need to understand Thomas here. Thomas only appears twice in the New Testament as anything more than a name - both in John’s Gospel. The other time is on the road to Jerusalem when Jesus says that he’s going to his death. Thomas says that he is ready to die with Jesus. We have no reason to doubt his sincerity here, any more than we should think Peter insincere when he told Jesus that he would never deny him. He meant it. Imagine how crushed Thomas must have been when Jesus was arrested and crucified. Imagine how his hopes and dreams must have crushed. If you have that much emotional commitment to a cause, imagine what it does to someone when it seems to crash and die. Can you blame Thomas for not wanting to put himself through that again on the word of others - however sincere they seem to be? Can you hear the bitterness and the grief in the voice that says, “Unless I put my finger in the holes in his hands and place my hand in his side I will not believe.”

And that’s exactly what Jesus invites him to do. The years of castigating “Doubting Thomas” have robbed us, I think, of something beautiful. This is not a sarcastic judgement on a doubting follower. It’s a tender moment of compassion, of understanding, from the risen Christ to a broken man in terrible pain. It’s a moment of love for someone who thinks he will never find faith and hope again. I want you to imagine Jesus reaching to Thomas in his pain and his need and his sense of guilt and grief and saying, “Here. Whatever you need to do, do it and be whole”. This is not a moment of condemnation, but of blessing.

We need to understand that because sometimes we know doubt just as Thomas did. Of course we do. Doubt is normal. Doubt is human. Do you think God doesn’t know that? We do terrible harm, I think, if we suggest that doubt is some kind of terrible trespass against The Faith. We can, perhaps inadvertently, cause terrible pain if we suggest that doubt is something to be condemned. A good number of years ago one of my neighbours - an active member of the local congregation - was dying of cancer. Sue and I went to visit her. She was a shrunken shadow of her former self. Alone, for a few minutes, with her, she confided in me that her experience had led her to question and doubt her faith.  Tell me, is such doubt to be condemned? Should I spend the rest of my days thinking of her as “Doubting Morag” (not her real name)?

Doubt is normal. Doubt is human. More, doubt is necessary. Doubt is a blessing. Doubt is our ability to say, “Wait a minute! Am I really sure about this?” There have been - are - people in this world who are so certain about their beliefs that they have been willing to torture others as heretics because they have questioned received orthodoxy. Or they have strapped bombs to themselves, or wielded weapons to enforce their understanding - their certainty - upon the world. What do you think? If the choice is between that kind of unwavering certainty and the honest doubt of Thomas, which do you think God embraces?

If doubt is weakness, so be it. Christ meets us in our weakness. He meets us in our flaws and our failings and embraces us in our brokenness. The same Christ who reached out to Thomas, lost in hopelessness and despair had cried out only days before, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” The same Christ who met Thomas in his own specific need for reassurance met Peter on the beach and gave him the chance, three times, to proclaim his love for him after he had, three times, denied him.

Doubting Thomas? No. Blessed Thomas. That’s the right way to think about him - just as Peter was blessed on the beach. We are not the children, in the faith, of ancestors who were perfect demi-gods, or whatever. Thomas wasn’t perfect. Peter wasn’t perfect. John, James, Paul, none of them were perfect. God doesn’t need us to be perfect - he just wants us to come to him in Christ and be blessed in our imperfection.

Sometimes I think we get this so wrong. We get the idea that faith is believing a whole bunch of things or accepting a whole bunch of doctrines. We get to think that if folk don’t believe this, that or the other - the virgin birth, the presence of God in the Eucharist, the number of sacraments, whatever - then they - we sometimes - have allowed doubt to separate us from God in some way.

Nothing can do that. Doubt can’t do that. Questions can’t do that. None of our flaws or fallibilities can do that. None of our strengths or weaknesses can do that. If we have doubts we can come to God confident that he loves us in our doubts. If we have questions and uncertainties we can come to God confident that he loves us whatever questions we may find unanswered and whatever uncertainties we may harbour. We can come to God in Christ as Thomas did and find that we are not spurned or despised, but blessed. As was Blessed Thomas.

Lord, we sometimes harbour doubts about what we do, or do not believe. In faith, though, we come to you in love and seek your blessing

Preached at Gretna Old parish church