Two Thomases

It is hardly original or ground-breaking to notice that Thomas didn’t touch the wounds of the risen Lord, or at least that we are not told that he did so.

 

It is frequently noted that John tell us Thomas says he will only believe if he is able to do so, that John tells us the risen Lord invites him to do so, but that John never tells us that Thomas actually does so.  Thomas encounters the risen Lord and says ‘My Lord and my God’ – that is it.

So I’ve been reminding myself, our Annual Parochial Church Meeting and others that any encounter with the risen Lord, any genuine encounter with God, is likely to result in a complete revision of what we previously judged, or simply assumed, are our criteria for faith.

Which may, of course, be one reason that intellectual arguments (between atheist and Christian, inter-faith and intra-faith) prove unproductive most of the time.  

And, while it is important to notice that, it may be more important to notice that the task of the church is to be places of effective encounter with God rather than instruments of persuasion.

I see that I haven’t quoted R S Thomas’ The Answer since 2009 (‘the one I value above almost all’) and 2011 (‘a poem I revisit more often than almost any other’) which says almost this with its

... the old questions lie
folded and in a place
by themselves, like the folded
graveclothes of love’s risen body.

The pictures are just one feature from my recent but only visit to Hull as this year's City of Culture.

A Bronte grave

We attended a wedding in Scarborough yesterday.  An older couple, both previously widowed, were married at St Mary’s, up by the Castle.  One of her children spoke at the reception afterwards about the way he knew the couple were serious when he saw them giggling together like teenagers.  He said he’d always imagined eventually ‘giving away’ his own teenage daughters and giving a speech at their weddings, but he’d never imagined he would do so for his mother.  All very special.

We are preparing to move to the parish where Patrick Bronte was once the incumbent, and where he is buried alongside his daughters Charlotte and Emily and most of their family.  It was, therefore, also a lovely coincidence to be able to visit the grave of Anne Bronte, the one sister not buried at St Michael’s, Haworth but instead buried at St Mary’, Scarborough.

Losing away

Cheltenham Town doesn't keep its pitch in very good condition (this mud bath is a goal mouth) but did play unexpectedly well on Bank Holiday Monday (so we saw them put two balls in this net before Grimsby Town finally but impressively got one in it in return).

Philippians 2.5-11

Much taken this Holy Week with the link which Paul places at the beginning of the (existing?) hymn ‘Christ Jesus was in the form of God’, the epistle for Palm Sunday, the canticle for Evensong in Passiontide.

The link with this hymn about the total self-emptying of God-in-Christ is ‘let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus’. 

So, if we are made in the image of God, then we are most so when not clinging onto anything, least of all status, power or prestige; all the self fulfilment aspirations, goals and norms promoted around us are fundamentally misconceived.

It turns out the aim is not to be filled or full at all, however much this pagan hope is integrated into my own instincts as well as anyone else's.

Paul is, of course, writing from prison and from within the possibility of condemnation to death.  This is what he talks about all the way through the first chapter of his letter to the Philippians leading up to this.  And he says it doesn’t matter, it is where we are meant to be.

It is from there (I’m equally taken with the ‘therefore’ in ‘therefore God has highly exalted him’) that we see that ‘crimson cresseted east’, a hint of which was even seen through our back window last week.

More than East Sheen

To London yesterday to see the next of the series of training Curates here being put into his or her first incumbency.  To take a coach to this one would have meant supporters not returning until 3.00 a.m., nevertheless half a dozen members of St Michael's made it to All Saints', East Sheen under their own steam to pray alongside Alex Barrow at his licensing and stay in different places locally overnight.

Among many significant things about the church (top), is being just seven miles east of Heathrow (second picture), and being the church in which Suzy Lamplugh was baptised and sung in the choir (the next picture, snatched as the clergy procession entered the church, is of a lovely resurrection window which is in her memory).

We went to the National Gallery this morning (the bottom picture is taken from our lunch table and gives both the banner promoting the exhibition we saw - the picture is of newly pregnant Mary being greeted by her cousin Elizabeth - and the new sculpture on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square) and were home in time to see Deborah's nephew play a significant part in his team winning the final of Only Connect to complete a memorable forty-eight hours.