I had no idea how a record actually worked and imagined that the only
way the music could be captured was if it was embedded, somehow, in
the black.
I still have no idea how a record actually works,
or a CD for that matter or even telephone or gravity.
How does a seed know to become an eggplant,
how does a cell divide to become a nose.
I have no idea.

But this doesn't stop these things from being real.
I believe in them although I do not understand the
how or the what or the why.
The disciple Thomas, of whom we read about today,
doubts the resurrection of Christ.
Fair enough.
Thomas says: Until I see the marks of the nails and touch the wounds I
will not believe.
Theologian Fredrick Buechner when reflecting on Thomas writes:
Imagination was not Thomas strong suit. He called a spade a spade.
He didn't believe in fairytales and he could be pretty direct with his
language.

There are a few people in this congregation who I imagine would
describe themselves as being just such a person.
Thomas wasn't around when the other disciples first met Jesus in the
upper room. There they all were crowded together, doors locked and
shades drawn, they were scared sick that they would be the next ones
to be arrested,
to be condemned.
when suddenly Jesus came in.
Nobody says where Thomas was at the time.
As Buechner writes: Maybe he'd gone out for a cup of coffee or just to
sit in the park for a while and watch the pigeons.
We don't know.
What we do know is that 8 days later when Jesus came back
Thomas was there and he got his wish.
His wish to see the wounds, to touch the dark.
Thomas's desire is a natural one
in the same way that many who lose the one they love
have a natural desire to see the body of the departed,
a natural desire to caress the hand or adjust the collar of the well
chosen suit,
or to smooth back the stray hairs on the brow,
to even kiss the cold.
When someone who was living is now
not
the shock can be so great,
the gap so gaping that the only way to make it real can be to touch,
touch, touch the cold.

So we can understand when Thomas, for just the same reasons
wants to touch the warmth, to touch the flesh with rich blood beating,
to see for himself that his friend is real.
Thomas is often dismissed with the word doubting and yet not many of us,
I imagine, would have felt very differently from he.
What the other disciples were claiming was fantastic and surreal and
completely out of the realms
of what appeared to be the possible.
So Thomas doubted.
He was and is not alone.
The resurrection is, as St Paul would say, the great stumbling block
of Christianity. But it is also its great beginning,
for without it
do we really imagine that this raggle taggle group of grieving men and
women would have been able to go out from their locked up rooms and
change the world?
Lets just go back for a moment,
back to what it must have been like for those early disciples as they
gathered together in that airless room.
The women are wailing, the community is grief stricken.
It is awful. It is despair. It is sickness and rising panic. It is devastation.
What are they saying?
Of course we hid away and of course we decided to flee, flee to Galilee.
We are fishermen and peasants; we are prostitutes and women who
scavenge for food thrown to dogs. We betrayed him, we fell asleep, we
ran away,
we denied him.
Three times.
And who cares anyway because he's dead now
and nothing is as he said it would be.
We are orphaned. We are alone.
And then.
Then what.

Well either Christ was raised or we suffered mass hallucination
or maybe we all came up with a story
and then laid our lives on the line to defend it?
Why would we bother?

why would we not simply return to the work that we did
the mending of the nets, the keeping of the sheep, the sweeping in the doorway?
How do you think we were changed, overnight, into a vibrant community
that did not, would not, could not
keep quiet about the love of god
the god whom we knew in Christ
despite the threat of death which shouted all around us?
We were not transformed by some intellectual notion.
We were not transformed by tricks.
We were transformed by something that was utterly tangible, utterly
real and complete mystery.
All at the same time.
Alleluia, Alleluia
So what about you.
Why are you here?
Are you here because Jesus was a nice man who told good stories and
who sadly died?

Or because somewhere, sometime, in the quiet upper room of your heart
Jesus came to you and said: I am the resurrection and the life,
Said: feed my sheep,
Said: do you love me
Said: I have come back to you.
Said what?
Lets listen together to the music.
Lets be, in our minds eye in that upper room, let's be Thomas
with our common sense and our endless doubts
and lets wait for Jesu to come.