Reveal your source: Why Doubting Thomas was right
This is a transcript of a sermon delivered by The Rev'd George Pitcher on Sunday 30th March 2008, the occasion of Arthur Lister's baptism
When I was learning my journalism in the early 80s, the importance of the Second Source was regularly drummed into we young and ambitious reporters. If we heard a piece of information or gossip that would make a good story, we were told that we had to find another, unrelated and independent source to corroborate the story, or "stand it up". Only then could our story run.
The second source gained almost mystical status - a figure so revered that, when we found him or her, we'd almost drop to our knees in gratitude and adoration. Well, I exaggerate - but we would at least buy first-rate wine for them, on our expense accounts.
When I crossed the Rubicon into PR, I became a source of information and sometimes a second source. I have to say that the simple pleasure that one could give by confirming a journalist's scoop was one of the great joys - perhaps the great joy - of the job. So much so that I was sorely tempted sometimes to confirm stories that I knew nothing about, just to hear the pleasure at the other end of the phone. But I'm pretty sure I never did. Because that's the thing about stories - they only really work when they're true (but that's another story).
I'm happy to say that, some years ago, I acted as a source for some stories for David, Arthur's dad, who we baptised today. I don't remember any of the stories. I do remember the wine.
But - as I'm sure David will agree - there are some stories that are so big that independent corroboration isn't enough to stand them up. Even from an impeccable source like me. The journalist needs to see the evidence. If there's an official document, for instance, that reveals that (say) the credit crunch is about to claim a major bank or that the Government expects that to happen, then it's not good enough for a source to confirm that they know that to be the case - the journalist would have to see the document. The stakes are otherwise simply too high.
Which brings me, of course, to today's story of Thomas the Apostle. Forever known as Doubting Thomas. I think he gets a poor press. I think it's perfectly respectable - certainly journalistically respectable (and there is an apocryphal gospel of Thomas, so he has journalistic credentials) - for Thomas to say that he's not going to accept the risen Christ until he's seen him. It could hardly be a bigger story, after all - what news editor wouldn't say, when told that the disciples of Jesus were claiming that he'd risen from the dead, "we'll need a photo".
The story of Doubting Thomas is usually said to illustrate how those of us who cannot see the Christ are richly blessed that we nevertheless have faith in that eternal existence, that living truth. More interesting than that, I think, is that the story shows that, as the Jesuit Frederick Coplestone said, the opposite of faith isn't doubt - it's certainty. Doubt is an integral partner of faith. Doubt nourishes faith.
But I want to make another suggestion for the interpretation of the Thomas story this morning. Blest, we are told, are those who believe the story without evidence. Who buy the story for itself. It seems to me that we might be being asked to re-tell the story in ways that reveal its essential truth, without the benefit of being witnesses to the historical events ourselves.
Again, any journo worth their expenses will tell you that no story can have legs forever. It needs to be moved on. Given a fresh angle. Or it dies. Blessed are those indeed who continue to have faith in our Christian story, who continue to see in it a living truth, when it is too often told in a way as if it's been frozen in time 2,000 years ago. Or stuck in the feudal language of the 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury Anselm - all Lord and King and Rulers and Kingdoms.
Anselm was entitled to use the language and metaphors that his 11th century listeners would have understood, just as Jesus of Nazareth used language and metaphors that his people could associate with - vineyards and shepherds and fishing. But they were already struggling to give the story legs some 30 years after Jesus's death, as Peter's epistle this morning shows (though almost certainly not written by Peter - and that's not the last time a by-line has been stolen).
So how do we make the story live in the context of the world that we know today? How will we ask Arthur and his generation to understand the story - by telling it in the dusty and distant language of worlds gone by, or in the context of the world in which he and his friends and family, his big brother Freddie, will grow up in?
Jesus was a revolutionary, who turned the world upside down and changed the course of our history forever, with resources that were extraordinary for their simplicity - simple stories and simple people; fishermen and tax-collectors, widows and prostitutes. In Hebrew culture, the "poor" - not just economically poor, but unclean, outsiders. He spoke truth to power (as good a definition as you're going to get of good journalism, incidentally). A world changed by telling us to love our neighbours as ourselves.
It's difficult to make that story boring. But somehow we often manage to do so. Blessed indeed are those who have faith in the risen Christ when they have not seen him. Not just because they can't see. But they're never shown him.
There must be a job for journalistic talents here. How does the story run today? Where is the Christ? Where is the Truth? Who are the poor who are always with us? Who the neighbours to love as ourselves? Do they live next door, or in China and Iran and Pakistan and Darfur? Where is the Christ, if not standing with the reviled tax-collectors, the unclean hoodie and the prostitutes of Ipswich and elsewhere who appear briefly for censure in our newspapers? Who speaks truth to power today?
Not a Lord or a King or a stained glass icon - but we must find a living Word, a Christ for the powers and principalities of this world, this today. One that lives for us as lived for the first apostles, real in our world as in theirs. A story we can stand up. For in doing so, we can conjure a living and actual Christ for Arthur's generation, one before whom they can stand unafraid and, like Thomas, put their fingers in the holes in his palms and their hands in the wounds of the world.