Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
Last Sunday we pre-empted the Feast of St. Peter and Paul by a few days, and in that sermon I spoke of SS Peter and Paul as ‘twin apostles’ of the Church of Jesus Christ. Today we have the feast of someone who was an actual twin – St. Thomas the Apostle. In our gospel reading from St. John’s gospel, we hear of the encounter between the risen Jesus and Thomas who had doubted the word of his fellow disciples when they told him that Jesus had risen and had appeared among them. Thomas wasn’t present for that first appearance of the risen Christ. Maybe he was out somewhere with his twin brother.
St. John tells us that Thomas was ‘Didymos’ the twin. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if his twin was identical, if his twin was maybe a female, and did that twin respond to the call of Jesus as had his twin brother.
This gospel reading has its usual place in one of the Sundays of the Easter season as it contributes to the scriptural evidence of the risen Christ appearing. In many ways it is the high point of St. John’s gospel, as he begins by setting out his table by proclaiming that in Jesus the ‘Word had become flesh’ (John 1, 14). His whole gospel is a series of ‘evidences’ for the defence in his theological case; and he brings forward witnesses all the way through his gospel who become convinced of the defence’s case, and find it justified. This culminates in the defence statement made by St. Thomas ‘My Lord and my God.’ The Evangelist St. John has been leading us up to that great statement of faith.
If I may make a detour for a moment, I would like to refer to another saint – and Oxfordshire saint.
Birinus was born in the mid sixth century, probably of northern European origin, but he became a priest in Rome. Feeling called by God to serve as a missionary, he was consecrated bishop, and sent to Britain by the pope. He intended to evangelize inland where no Christian had been before but, arriving in Wessex in 634, he found such prevalent idolatry that he looked no further to begin work. One of his early converts was King Cynegils and thereafter he gained much support in his mission. He became the first Bishop of Dorchester. He died in about the year 650 having earned the title ‘Apostle of the West Saxons’.
In the lovely Oxfordshire town of Dorchester there is a very fine abbey church which is now the parish church for the small town – quite disproportionate in size to the town. In the abbey there is a shrine of St. Birinus to which pilgrims still go.
Why am I telling you this? On the 3rd July, the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, in the abbey church of St. Birinus, I was ordained a deacon by the then Bishop of Dorchester. That was 39 years ago.
So the Feast of St. Thomas is very significant for me, and for many others who would have been ordained on this date.
So – back to what matters. We do not often have Sunday readings from the prophet Habakkuk. In the short passage we heard this morning the prophet pledges to stand at his watchpost – he is like a scout, always alert, always looking, always ‘scoping’ the scene for works of God.
He is urged to write down what he sees, and especially he is asked to note the spirit of those who are proud – usually the proud are those who are not well aligned with the characteristics of God. See how out of sorts they are with themselves – there is something not right in them and they know it. They protect themselves but in so doing things are going wrong, things in their heads, their hearts, their spirit, their relationships, and their lives. Something is missing. God’s answer to the prophet is to say ‘the righteous live by their faith.’ (Habakkuk 2, 4). The antithesis of the proud is the righteous. The righteous is not one who is ‘holier than thou’ – but one who is truly aligned with the characteristics of God.
How do we know what such characteristics are? We know them, because we see them in Jesus. ‘To have seen me, is to have seen the Father’ Jesus says in John’s gospel. As I have said before, Jesus is God’s ‘selfie’ – to look at Jesus is to look at God. To have faith in Jesus as Lord is to have faith in God. To attempt to lead a Christ-like life, is to attempt to lead a Godly life – what in scripture is described rather more difficultly as a ‘righteous’ life.
St. Paul, whom we honoured last week along with his ‘twin apostle’ Peter, didn’t have a mobile phone, so he wouldn’t be asking Jesus for a ‘selfie’ on the Damascus Road, but St. Paul understands exactly and in language understood in his day, and in our own day, he declares that Jesus is the ‘mirror image’ of God (Colossians 1, 4).
In the short passage we heard this morning from St. Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus we are reminded of the difference it makes to have seen God’s face in the face of Christ (a human face, a compassionate face, a face that expresses humility). We are no longer proud, no longer out of sorts with ourselves, our neighbours, and out of step with Godly characteristics. ‘You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.’ (Ephesians 2, 19).
It is to this reality that St. Thomas assents when he says those extraordinary words of a man he had travelled with, eaten with, conversed with; extraordinary words about a man who had been tortured and hung on a cross right until death. What an extraordinary thing to have realized that everything this man is is divine – his humanity transformed in divinity, his divinity fully revealed in Jesus the man.
‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side’ (John 20,27). He is speaking to you and me – go on, do it. Don’t doubt, simply believe.
My Lord and my God.
