A reflection for Easter 2

I’ll call her Kerry. Kerry lived a while back and in a parish many kilometres from here. Kerry had terminal cancer and she was a terrifyingly close in age to me. Kerry didn’t come to church much, but she was always receptive to a visit. The hospitality was generous and the conversation was gregarious.

There was a lot to like about her.

What was most admirable was her struggle with faith. She wanted to believe and she wanted to believe very much; particularly as things got grimmer and the cancer progressed.

She spoke frankly about this struggle with her faith and her mortality. Mixed in with the darkness of her doubts there was a deluge of questions and hope. There was a genuine and difficult struggle with the concept of a loving God as her body disappointed her more and more and more.

I was honoured to speak at her funeral and I think I said something like this.

There are many today who would say why would you have a priest and a Church funeral, for someone who seldom went to church. Well for one thing the Church will always honour anyone with the rite of Christian burial. The door is continuously open in these circumstances.

But more than that, Kerry was a person whose struggle with faith and her God was authentic. It was real, it was out there, it was a passionate wrestle with the hard questions. She wasn’t shy about asking the toughies.

And that is what made her special. She is one of the few that expressed outwardly what we all tussle with inwardly. There are many times when I have come into Church to say evening prayer and quietly closed the door behind me. Then I lock it. I calmly sit down and shake my fist at him and ask the same questions that Kerry asked. Most of them beginning with “Why?”

And if we are honest, somewhere deep in ourselves we have often asked these same questions and perhaps we are even asking them today.

Faith and doubt are the two sides of the one coin. If there was no doubt, then you would not require faith. You’d have the game all sown up and it would all be ticketyboo and tidy. None of us have arrived at that point yet, but we hope to one day.

To have a faith, no matter how feeble and to have doubts that are monsters, is part of the normal humdrum way of walking close to a pierced and risen saviour. The Risen Master appears frustratingly briefly, never when we want, in ways that we’re not expecting, or hoping for.

Thomas in today's gospel is very much like my friend Kerry. He articulates clearly, honestly and audibly what we all have wanted to say but because of social niceties and misplaced politeness, have never had the courage to speak out loud.

Thomas really wants to believe, needs to believe, would love to believe what his mates have told him  “but unless I can put my finger into his pierced hand. Haven’t we all wanted to say that. To do that.

Faith and doubt go together. You cannot have one without the other. Just as love and pain go together. You know that you are really in love when you hurt for, or pain over someone else. If it didn’t hurt, if there was no pain, or cost, it wouldn’t be love.

Which is why John in this mornings gospel so beautifully captures in this one incident with Thomas, both doubt and faith, love and pain. It is the pierced hand and side that Jesus offers to Thomas out of love. The prints and proof of what he did for Thomas, for you and I and for all those who walk closely and struggle and wrestle and question and bargain and shake our fist at Him. He in turn offers a pierced hand. He says to us “Put your hand here”.

In the end Kerry died a swift death. I count myself deeply privileged because she allowed me to walk a little way with her. The treasures she offered were not glib, pious, swift off the tongue platitudes. What she offered was an integrity and authenticity with her God. I am quite sure that her questions and her grappling continued onto the other side of the grave. Some of the answers would have been revealed when she got to the other side. A bit like asking what is England really like? Well you have to go and live there in order to get the real answer. But what I reckon will calm the the bubbling troubling ferment in her soul, is that moment when The master looks into her eyes and she will know that He is the answer. He is the home and the peace that lasts forever and ever Amen.