If we had to choose from among the Apostles, one Apostle for today, one with particular relevance to today’s world, who might that be? I think it might well be the Apostle who features in our Gospel reading this morning, it might well be St Thomas, Doubting Thomas as he’s often called.
I say that because, in our Gospel reading today, we see in St Thomas the kind of attitude that’s so prevalent in today’s society. St Thomas didn’t believe what he was told, and he wouldn’t believe unless he could see with his own eyes and touch with his own hands. And isn’t this just the kind of attitude we find in so many people today? So many people today are doubters and sceptics, they want absolute proof before they’ll believe anything they’re told, and if they can’t get that proof, they’ll simply come up with their own ideas to explain what they’re being told. And we see this in quite a few different ways.
One way we see this is in the priority people today give to science over religion. Science is observable and testable. A scientific theory is one that can be tested by many people to see if they can reproduce the same results and draw the same conclusions. A theory that can’t be tested in that way, isn’t scientific. So science is concerned with the search for facts. Religion, on the other hand, is concerned with truth and faith. Religious truth and faith aren’t necessarily unreasonable, but, as the Letter to the Hebrews says,
‘…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’
We could say that the difference between science and religion is the difference between knowing and believing, and these days, it seems that people want to know before they’ll believe.
Another way we find this kind of attitude in today’s world is in the mistrust so many people have of what they might call the official version of things and of perceived wisdom. So many people today are so mistrustful of any kind of officialdom or authority that they don’t believe anything they’re told. So many people today seem to believe that any kind of official statement must be a lie because those who are making the statement, those in authority, have a vested interest in keeping things as they are and so they don’t want people to know the truth because that would threaten their authority and their grip on power. So people prefer to find out the truth from other sources.
As one person once said to me, he’d never been to university, but he was far more intelligent than anyone who had been because he knew things they don’t teach at university. At university ‘they’ brainwash you into believing what ‘they’ want you to believe. He’d found out the way things really are by teaching himself the truth about things. The things you only find out about if you know where to look for them on the internet.
And that mistrust of officialdom leads to one of the most common ways this kind of attitude is revealed in today’s world, the conspiracy theory. So many people today seem to believe that, if there’s an official version of events, it must be a lie, or at least involve some kind of conspiracy to hide the full or the real truth from people. But have you ever noticed that conspiracy theories are often so complicated and would need to involve so many people, all of whom would have to keep silent both about the truth and the conspiracy to cover up the truth, that they’re often more unbelievable than the official story? One thing I’ve also found about conspiracy theories is that they often seem to be rooted in a lack of understanding; a person doesn’t, or can’t understand how something can have happened so, therefore, they won’t believe that it can have happened and there must be another explanation which is what really happened, the real truth.
We don’t know why St Thomas wouldn’t believe that Jesus had risen from the dead, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least some of these ways of thinking I’ve just spoken about were at work in him. St Thomas was no doubt a rational person, he knew that when the Romans crucified someone, that person died, the Romans made sure of that and were very good at that sort of thing. He would also have known that the dead, don’t come back to life, get up, and walk out of their tombs. So his disbelief, his scepticism when he was told that is exactly what Jesus had done, is understandable.
And this is one way St Thomas is relevant to today’s world because it leads us to one of the ways in which, over the years, people have tried to explain away Jesus’ Resurrection. Some people have agreed that Jesus was seen, alive, after his crucifixion but only because he didn’t actually die on the Cross. Some people have claimed that Jesus had only passed out and was taken from the Cross unconscious, but alive. Some have claimed that when Jesus said he was thirsty, this was a pre-arranged signal for someone to administer a drug, passed to him in the sour wine, that would knock him out so the guards would think he was dead and take him down from the Cross, thus setting the scene for his apparent resurrection on the third day.
What we’re doing here, of course, is entering into conspiracy theory land. Just think about it. It’s believed that the Romans did offer drugged wine to those being crucified. But there were three men being crucified that day and Jesus died much more quickly than the others. So for the wine Jesus took to contain a more potent drug than did the wine that was offered to the other two does suggest a conspiracy, and one that the Romans themselves were probably involved in. That claim has been made and some have even gone so far as to suggest that the plan was inadvertently wrecked by the soldier who stabbed Jesus with a spear, which he did because he wasn’t in on the plot. Given that there would have only been five soldiers in the crucifixion guard, it seems very unlikely that, having gone to the trouble of planning all this, the plotters would have been so careless as to let someone wreck their plans by simply walking up and killing Jesus by stabbing him with a spear doesn’t it?
However it happened, Jesus was dead, and St Thomas wouldn’t believe that he’d risen. So perhaps he thought the women had gone to the wrong tomb, as people today still suggest. They must have been distraught on the Friday as Jesus was taken away for burial, so they could have been confused about the precise location of the tomb, though that doesn’t seem likely. We get upset at the funerals of our loved ones don’t we? But we don’t forget where they’re buried do we? In any case, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus would have known where the tomb was so the disciples could have checked with them whether the women had gone to the right place or not. And so did the authorities because they put a guard on the tomb. And they didn’t claim that the women had gone to the wrong tomb, in fact quite the opposite. They claimed that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body which in itself is a tacit admission that, on that Sunday morning, Jesus’ tomb was empty.
The accusation that the disciples stole Jesus’ body in order to claim that he’d risen from the dead is, of course, the original and still most popular conspiracy theory surrounding Jesus’ Resurrection. But again, there are all sorts of problems with this theory. First of all, who was involved in the conspiracy? Not St Thomas, judging by his comments to the other Apostles, if there was a conspiracy, he appears to have known nothing about it. And unless they were involved in some double bluff, not St Peter nor St John either because they ran to the tomb and were just as puzzled by what they found as the women had been. And they were two of Jesus’ inner circle, so if there was a conspiracy of any kind, we would expect them to have been in on it. Also, the tomb was guarded so how did the disciples manage to pull it off? How did they get past the guard, remove the stone from the entrance to the tomb, and take Jesus’ body away without being seen? Even if the guards had fallen asleep, is it likely the conspirators could have done all that without waking them up? The conspirators would have had to move very quickly as well as quietly to carry out their plans, so why did they bother taking the gave clothes from Jesus, folding them up and placing them back, neatly? Wouldn’t they have been far more likely to have simply picked up Jesus’ body, still wrapped in the gave clothes and making their escape as quickly as possible? In any case, if the authorities thought Jesus’ body had been stolen, why didn’t they find the disciples, or Joseph and Nicodemus, and beat a confession out of them, as they’d tried to do with Jesus? Beat them into revealing the truth about what they’d done and showing them where Jesus’ body now was? This theory that the disciples stole Jesus’ body in order to fake his resurrection is the most common theory amongst those who want to deny Jesus’ Resurrection, but it really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
There’s no suggestion in St Thomas words that he was involved in or even suspected any kind of conspiracy, but perhaps he thought that the other disciples were just so distraught by what had happened, that they wanted so much for Jesus to be alive, they were simply seeing and believing what they wanted to see and believe. But in that case we have the problem of multiple attestation. When a haunting or possession is reported, and a priest is asked to visit a house to investigate, one of the things that’s always asked is whether the disturbances or appearances have been witnessed by more than one person. If they have, the likelihood is that there is a genuine problem of some kind. It doesn’t mean it’s supernatural in origin, but if more than one person has witnessed a disturbance, something is going on, it’s less likely to be imaginary or the cause of individual mental health issues, or substance abuse. Many people saw Jesus, alive and well, after his death so it’s very unlikely to have been a case of grief giving rise to hallucinations or wishful thinking.
When we examine all the conspiracy theories and alternative histories that have been proposed to deny and explain away Jesus’ Resurrection, we soon find that they really don’t hold water. In any case, one of the very best arguments in support of the truth of Jesus’ Resurrection is that his disciples made that claim at all. Why would they? What, on earth, did they have to gain? They’d just seen their leader put to death, saying that he’d risen from the dead was only, ever going to land them in trouble with the authorities. And they had nothing to gain in earthly terms: they weren’t a large group with any hopes of achieving power or wealth by saying that Jesus had risen from the dead, still less by pointing the finger of blame at the authorities, as Acts of the Apostles tells us they did. So why did they do it, unless they believed from the bottom of their hearts that it was true? Why were they prepared to die for that belief, which many of them did, unless they believed that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that they had seen him, and spoken with him after his Resurrection?
In his novel, The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle has his great detective, Sherlock Holmes say,
“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
We have to say that the alternative and conspiracy theories surrounding Jesus’ Resurrection are, strictly speaking, not impossible, but they’re not very likely either so we’re left with what remains, that Jesus died, was buried and on the third day rose again from the dead. That is a statement of faith and for many people today, as for St Thomas all those years ago, believing in such an improbable thing is difficult. Unlike St Thomas, people today can’t come to faith by seeing with their own eyes and touching with their own hands, so we have to rely on faith. Faith is not the same as knowing, it’s not the same as concrete certainty but that doesn’t mean faith is or has to be unreasonable. And when we look at the events of the first Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Day, and what happened in the wake of those things, the best explanation and the best response is to simply say, Alleluia, Christ is risen!
Amen.
Propers for the 2nd Sunday of Easter, 16th April 2023
Entrance Antiphon
Like new born children you should thirst for milk, on which your spirit can grow to strength, alleluia!
The Collect
Almighty Father,
you have given your only Son to die for our sins,
and to rise again for our justification:
grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness,
that we may always serve you
in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Acts 2:14, 22-32
Psalm 16:1-3, 10-17
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 