Easter 2 – Cirencester Parish Church

My previous parish was right next door to Gatwick Airport. Every couple of weeks or so I used to visit the Immigration Removal Centre. It became a valuable part of my life, and was twofold. I was able to help minister in some small way to those who were being deported from the UK back to their countries of origin where in most cases hardship, danger and personal harm would follow. It meant a great deal to them to know that churches outside the Immigration system cared and prayed for them.

Secondly it enabled me to support the ministry of the chaplains, whose task was a difficult, demanding, and emotionally draining one. The chaplains were in fact Pentecostal ministers, though that made no difference to us. They were employed by the private company that the Immigration Service ‘outsourced’ the work to. Any breach of company policy had serious consequences for the chaplains, so compassion was often a difficult emotional response from them.

In the chapel in that centre there was a poster on the wall. It was one of those posters that takes a well known phrase and turns it round for effect – a device that often makes one sit up and think again. The poster read, ‘Unless I believe, I will not see.’

We are in that lovely season of Easter, lasting now for a good six or seven weeks. During this time the Old Testament reading is replaced by a reading from the Acts of the Apostles – that second volume written by the author of Luke’s gospel that tells of the early life and work of the church of Jesus Christ on account of the impact Pentecost had on the believers. It records remarkable events, and it registers a Mediterranean world where conversion to the new faith was frequent, and mission was vibrant. I advise that each of us sits down soon at home and reads the Acts of the Apostles all in one sitting. It will energize your enthusiasm for the faith, and remind us that the Holy Spirit at work with those early Christians is the same Holy Spirit today, alive in you and me, and in our church. There is not a Holy Spirit of the early church, and a Holy Spirit of the church in the 21st century. There is only one and the same Spirit.

Our gospel reading today, from John, proclaims the presence of the Spirit in the life of the resurrection church. Different to the elasticated version as told by Luke, John connects the gifting of the Holy Spirit with the mystery of the resurrection. No fifty days later, John’s Holy Spirit experience happens ‘when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week’.

The risen Christ is among his disciples, and he greets them with ‘shalom’, ‘Peace be with you.’ Here is a stark contrast to the grief and despair of the last three days when Jesus had hung on a cross. ‘Shalom’.
Christ is not dead, he has been raised, Alleluia! And Shalom. Greek has ‘irene’. Peace be with you.

In the context of this shalom the risen Jesus breathes on his disciples and delivers the gift of God’s Holy Spirit. He breathes on them. No flames or rushing mighty wind – they simply inhale his life-giving breath, and HE inspires them. Thiers is now the presence of the risen Christ in the world. He breaks his breathe on them, and they breath as Christ breathes – ‘Breathe on me breath of God, fill me with life anew’ as the hymns so beautifully expresses it.

But one of the original gang is missing - Thomas, Didymus, ‘the twin’. Perhaps not surprisingly he takes the view that the others have no problem in expressing joy in the risen Lord, because they had seen him. Thomas hadn’t so there was no requirement for him to believe. Oh isn’t that familiar. I haven’t seen so I don’t, can’t, won’t, believe. What a strange world it would be if something only existed because I had seen it – you had seen it. Jesus comes among them again, with ‘irene’, ‘shalom’.
The wounded and risen Christ allows Thomas his opportunity to believe. ‘My Lord and my God’. However, Jesus goes on to say that those who have believed without seeing are more blessed. Is this you and me. We are more blessed because we have not seen, yet believe.

I am back in that chapel at Gatwick among the immigrants with the poster that reads, ‘unless I believe, I will not see’. I understand it now, having heard this story from John’s gospel about Doubting Thomas. Scepticism, the need for proof, the desire for evidence, can so easily work against the blessings of faith in that which we have not seen. William Temple, a master of the ‘bon mot’ said, ‘the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty’. If we only believe in things we have seen, we will not have much belief. If we look only for certainties, so much that makes up the human spirit will be diminished within us, and we will be less of a human being than God intends for us each to become.

As we approach the General Election we need to keep this dimension in our lives – faith matters – not what can be seen, not crucifixes round our necks, not privileges of establishment, not gaining exemptions to human rights commitments – but faith. Our call or vocation in life – the highest vocation of all, is to be able to say ‘my Lord and my God’ without having seen. If we can do that we will enter the real world, the true world, that God has created for us, and we will be real people, people who know the joy of ‘shalom’. Peace be with you. Alleluia!