It was during the eulogy at my Uncle Guy’s funeral in the late 1980’s that I first heard ‘landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915’. My mind jerked out of reverie – What? Could that be true? Uncle Guy on Gallipoli – admittedly Uncle Guy was a bit alternative - he lived in isolated bushland at Belmont with his family, and had been a lighthouse keeper for all of my youth.
I decided it couldn’t be true, because the speaker also said my grandfather had also been with him that 25 of April. My Grandfather, the somewhat staid, boring, banker
At my G’father’s funeral about 10 years later I heard the story again.
If it was true, why hadn’t I known that when they were alive?
These days it’s easy to hop on line and fact check – blow me down they had both served at Gallipoli and then on the western front.
Like Thomas I wasn’t believing what others told me, I needed personal verification.
And today’s Gospel shows us that that’s fine by Jesus. He validates Thomas’ need for physical presence, to reconnect before he could process the reality of resurrection.
After all resurrection is an absurd idea - that the vine could find and reconnect to a fallen branch!
Mind you, Thomas was no more doubting than the other disciples.
After all, they (in Evangelist John’s Gospel) have already heard the testimony of Mary Magdalene who found the tomb to be empty,
Peter and John who rushed to do their own fact checking of the empty tomb,
and the majority of the disciples who’d gathered together in a locked room on the evening of what we now recognise as the day of new creation - the 8th day.
Jesus entered into the midst of their fear filled huddle and stood among them – peace be with you, he said, – and they recognised him and rejoiced – and then he breathed on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, commissioning them, sending them out with a ministry of forgiveness.
So why, a week later were they still huddled in the locked room?
Their eyes and ears may well have ‘seen the Lord’ but their hearts and souls were not fully engaged. They hadn’t begun their mission.
They still feared.
Seems coming to faith and belief is not a linear process – more one of backtracks and detours, fits and starts. And into this confusion comes Jesus, haunting the places of death, like a shepherd seeking the lost, bringing peace and abiding presence.
I hear the words from a millennium later when Dame Julian wrote but all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.
The UK journalist Lamorna Ash says that all any of us want to hear. Despite the resurrection, deep down we know that all won’t be well, it just won’t be. Not one of us will make it through, even Lazarus goes on to die – but the resurrection stories we’ll be hearing over this Easter season all tell us that it’s OK – death has been defeated, the goodness of life is definitely affirmed and there’s a promise that we, all of us, are made for a future, for eternity.
Christ is God’s justice.
Archbishop Jeremy’s moving tribute marking the death of Pope Francis this week, quoting the Pope’s own words, speaks in a similar vein telling us that the future has a name, and that name is hope.
Not a hope based on naïve optimism that ignores the tragedy of evil, but the virtue of a hope based in hearts that don’t close themselves down in the darkness of fear, don’t get stuck in some past longing of imagined glory or that just scrapes dismally along in the present, but hearts that clearly see and move towards a tomorrow where there is restlessness and joyousness.
That is a restlessness for a world that better reflects the realm of God and a joyousness that comes through encounters with people everywhere – the sick and suffering, the marginalised, those in prison, refugees, the homeless, the lost, the lonely, hearts that care for creation and welcomes interreligious dialogue.
I read restlessness as actively participating in God’s dream that we live as Jesus did, loving and caring for others and joyousness as we see God’s love setting people free to live lives of wholeness
It brings me back to the commission Jesus gives to the disciples in their locked room. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. Do you hear echoes of Jesus at the Last Supper – I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:34-35
After all if we have received the love which restores meaning in our lives, how can we fail to share that love with other?
The question we all must ponder is does my life bear witness to my faith? I don’t think any of us want our family and friends to wait till they hear our eulogies for them to know the truth of our deep and abiding faith.
There’s a blessing in the prayer book (p. 69) typically used at the end of services of confirmation. Its preamble, I think, speaks to us today:
Go forth into the world in peace,
be of good courage.
Hold fast that which is good,
Render to no one evil for evil,
strengthen the faint hearted,
support the week;
help the afflicted, give honour to all;
love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit
The Lord be with you.
The. Venerable Valerie Hoare.