In a few Sundays time we celebrate Pentecost and we will read the account in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles written by St. Luke of how the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples and other followers of Christ. Our reading this morning from Acts comes from the sermon Peter preached immediately after the Holy Spirit descended upon him. So it’s the good stuff. The church traditionally celebrates this event as its birthday. The moment when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples is the moment when the church was born.
In John’s Gospel, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit directly from Jesus on the evening of Easter Day. He breathes the Spirit into them. And with God’s Holy Spirit within them they are given their task. To forgive the people their sins, or not as the case may be. Jesus says, ‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
How would the disciples accomplish this task? Surely only God can forgive our sins. This is correct. And it will still be God forgiving us our sins. But he chooses to do it through the followers of Christ and he enables them to do it by breathing his Holy Spirit into them. He invites us to participate in his mission of forgiveness to the world and gives us the strength to do so.
But Thomas is not there to receive the Holy Spirit with the others. He has not encountered the risen Christ. So, just as the male disciples did not believe the women who encountered the risen Christ until they themselves had seen him, neither will Thomas believe until he himself has seen.
And so the following week Thomas encounters the risen Christ. Remember, he hasn’t received the Holy Spirit. And Jesus guides his hands into his wounds. So Thomas meets the risen Christ in the wounds he carries because of his suffering and death on the cross. Thomas meets the crucified Christ and the risen Christ: the defeated Jesus and the victorious Jesus. That is where Jesus determines he will meet with Thomas.
And so to Thomas is given this special revelation of the crucified Christ and the risen Christ; the incarnation of God’s love and the incarnation of God’s power. And in this special revelation Thomas has a particular insight. He exclaims ‘My Lord and my God.’
The previous week, Mary Magdalene had been the first of the followers to meet the risen Christ and she said ‘I have seen the Lord!’ Thomas has now taken this a step further; recognising Jesus as Lord and as God.
You remember how John starts his Gospel? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And a few verses later he writes ‘He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him’.
And this is how John ends his Gospel. He describes how Thomas becomes the first person to say out loud what the church came to believe; that is to say, it is Jesus who is the word of God and because the word of God is God, Jesus is God.
Those wounds Thomas felt were God’s wounds. It was God who suffered and died on the cross. And, of course, it was God who rose again.
Jesus says to Thomas, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me?’
With this gentle comment, Jesus refers us back to Thomas’s insistence that he would only believe if he could see the risen Christ.
But these words also point to the fact that Thomas has seen the risen Christ and felt his wounds and understood who he is in a new way, in a way that becomes the path for others to follow.
‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’ We who have not seen and yet believe are blessed because we follow along that path that Thomas was first guided along by the hand of Jesus himself.
Jesus is the word of God and he is God. A God who suffers for us and yet is victorious for us. This divine revelation given to Thomas is for all of us, recorded in the Gospel so that like it says we may all come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we may have life in his name.
And life in his name is a cause for rejoicing.
This is Peter’s message in his letter. Because Jesus is risen, we can carry the hope of resurrection all through our lives. That gift of eternal life, what Peter calls an inheritance kept in heaven for us, is a reason to remain cheerful even in adversity.
He writes, “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls”.
What Peter is describing here is the implication for us of what was revealed to the world at the first Easter; a revelation that arguably find its most perfect form in the revelation to Thomas.
In his letter, Peter is reminding his readers of the reasons they have to be cheerful at a time when he knows that many of them are enduring suffering. Any congregation will include some people who are going through tough times and, of course our congregation is no different.
Today, however, on top of our normal trials and tribulations we are going through the collective experience of disruption, fear, economic hardship, illness, concern about loved ones and bereavement.
Not only that, the people we know and the community we live in are going through the same things.
So today as we gather online, through our worship together and through our prayers, let us renew our faith in the living hope that we have through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Let’s just remind ourselves of what was revealed to St Thomas.
Which is: the God that has the power to raise his Son from the dead is also the God that is so merciful and loves us so much that he gave his life for us on the cross and is, therefore, a God who will not let us down.
That is our living hope.
So let us be rejoicing in our lives even as we endure very real suffering in the midst of this coronavirus lockdown and let us bring this rejoicing and this hope into the lives of others.
I was very fortunate, just before the lockdown started, to be able to go on a trip to Atlanta and New Orleans in the United States. While in Atlanta, I visited the Martin Luther King Centre, a very inspirational place to visit. They have a gift shop, of course, and naturally, I made some purchases there; including this small plaque with an inspirational quote from Martin Luther King which I intended to put up in the vestry.
It reads: We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.
Martin Luther King was, of course, referring to the living hope we have in the risen Christ; a hope that sustained him during the suffering that he and so many others had to endure.
Little did I know when I bought this plaque just over a month ago how relevant this quote would become for us.
I invite you to join me now in standing to declare our faith in the infinite hope we have, the living hope we have in the risen Christ, standing alongside our brothers and sisters across the world and through all the ages; joining them in the words of the Nicaean Creed.