doubt

We All Need Doubt: Sermon Preached on 12th April 2026 (Second Sunday of Easter)

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Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

1 Peter 1. 3-9; John 20. 19-31

“Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.’”

A dimly lit scene showing four men in close proximity, their faces and hands dramatically illuminated against a dark background. One man, bare-chested with his robe pulled aside to reveal a wound in his right side, guides the hand of a second man whose index finger is extended and appears to be probing the wound. The second man leans forward intently, his face close to the wound, brow furrowed in concentration. Two further men press in from behind, peering over the shoulders of the first two, their expressions conveying intense curiosity. The lighting falls sharply from the upper left, casting deep shadows and emphasising the physical, tactile nature of the moment. The figures fill the picture space almost entirely, with very little background visible.
Caravaggio, The Incredulity of St Thomas (1602). Hangs in the Sanssouci Picture Gallery, Potsdam.

Do you blame Thomas for doubting that his friends had really seen Jesus risen from the dead? I don’t know about you, but if any of my friends want me to believe something that seems pretty far-fetched, I expect them to have some actual evidence for me, ideally hard physical evidence. If they can’t supply that, I’d expect there to be some evidence that whatever far-fetched thing they wanted me to believe had had some impact on them.

Now, the idea of one of your mates not only rising from the dead, but walking through walls and appearing in a locked room, is about as far-fetched as it gets. So the fact that the apostles were still hiding in the upper room, full of fear, would have left me pretty unconvinced too. He gets dismissed as “Doubting Thomas” when he is only engaging in the sort of healthy scepticism we should all practice at times.

And, actually, when we think about it, is it always a bad thing to be a doubter? All groups of people need different temperaments and personalities. An organisation or institution without doubters is going to see all sorts of poor practices, dishonesty and abuse going on, unchallenged and perpetuated. The term for a church without doubters is a cult. I wouldn’t be without the doubters in the various churches I’ve worked and worshipped in over the years. Of course, an organisation with too many doubters is also an unhealthy place, and is probably in the process of losing faith in itself – indeed, something very much like that happened to the Church in the latter part of the 20th Century. There is, I think, a natural ecology to these things.

What Thomas wanted was some hard physical evidence that Jesus had risen from the dead – and he got it. Christianity is a very physical faith. We’ll see that in a few minutes’ time, when we baptise little Ivan: the water is essential for baptism. There is no valid baptism without it. We couldn’t baptise for periods during the worst of Covid because we weren’t allowed to be physically present together. It wouldn’t have been valid to pretend to baptise someone down a Zoom link. For the same reason, we also couldn’t carry out ordinations during Covid – the bishop actually needs to lay hands on the person they are ordaining, in a link of physical touch that goes all the way back to Thomas and the other apostles. As a result of that, my ordination as a deacon was delayed by three months, which seemed like a big deal at the time.

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The Worth of Doubters: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 24th April 2022 (Second Sunday of Easter)

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Readings – Acts 5: 27–32; John 20: 19–31

“Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

I wonder when you last heard a friend or an acquaintance described as “a bit of a Doubting Thomas?” Perhaps you have even been described as a “Doubting Thomas” yourself. It isn’t usually intended as a positive assessment. A Doubting Thomas, including the original in today’s Gospel reading can often be presented as a cynic who is committed to nothing.

‘Still Doubting’, by John Glanville Gregory, after Caravaggio.

Yet ‘uncommitted’ isn’t the picture of Thomas we get from other passages in John’s Gospel. To shed light on this and some other things in this morning’s Gospel reading, we need to jump back to the 11th chapter of John. As I don’t expect you to remember what happens in every bit of the Bible by chapter number, let me reassure you that this is a passage of scripture familiar to most of you: it’s the story of the raising of Lazarus. One significant thing about it is that it’s the last miracle and indeed last major “action scene” in John’s Gospel before Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem.

Back then, when Jesus’ life was under threat by stone-throwing mobs, Thomas was the one who responded to His suggestion of a trip into deeply hostile Judaea by telling his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Here we see not an uncommitted backslider but a deeply loyal follower of Christ; perhaps even a fanatic.

Despite his deep commitment, can we blame Thomas for being sceptical, faced with tales from his friends that Jesus had returned from the dead, walking through walls to appear in the middle of locked rooms? We have all experienced people reacting to shocking news, especially to the death of a loved one, with denial. Indeed, I have found myself engaging in denial at times, and I suspect most of you have done so too. It’s a natural human tendency; so personally I have more than a little fellow-feeling with Thomas in this passage when he is wary of his companions engaging in denial.

The Church needs its Thomases, because it needs Christians of all sorts of temperaments and outlooks. It needs its sceptics as well as its enthusiasts, its pragmatists as well as its romantics. And that means that the Church needs all of you, just as you are, otherwise God would not have called you to be here this morning.

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