Untold things

My name is Thomas. You may have heard of me.- my Master saw to that in the way he treated me, but it wasn't always like that. In fact when it happened I couldn't have felt more anonymous. For 3 years I had been one of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth and had put aside all that was important to me to follow him and learn from him. Truly he was a special teacher. It wasn't just the words he spoke , his whole life was part of his message, and we were going places. You could see it in the way the people responded. They didn't get his deeper meanings which he went through with us afterwards, but they caught the inspiration and even proclaimed him as the incoming king, bringer of a new order.

But just when everything was fitting together, the pieces starting to make sense, then all of a sudden everything fell to pieces. It is an awful memory. Just running through the events in my mind brings it all back, makes me shiver. All the events leading to his death are etched in my mind as clearly as if they were a stone inscription. I could talk about them but its what followed that I want to think about - that's the time when I went from being a background observer to being the main character with all the exposure that goes with that. Everyone has heard it the way the others saw it. I want to tell it as it was in the glare of the spotlight.

When Jesus had died I was stunned. Though I stood a long way off, cowering in shame, I saw enough to know. It happened to him. He did die. It was the end. Darkness. Emptiness. I guessed where the others might go and went there myself. I wanted to ask 'Did it happen ? Did it really happen ?' I saw James and John and I only had to look at their faces to know what I already knew. It had happened.

We were in the shadows of the Mount of the Olives. We ended up in a quiet house, a safe place. Gradually we pieced together where the others were and talked about what had happened. It was tense. Everyone so tense and on the defensive. Each of us failures wanting to justify our failings, yet overshadowed by one thing - It had happened. He had died.

Peter and James got into an argument . I thought they were going to come to blows. All I wanted to do was to get out .Not just because of the tension, though that didn't help, but because I was crying out for space. My mind was completely overwhelmed with all that had happened. It felt like open boxes of spices on a trade ship had been tossed about by a storm and now I had to find somewhere calm where I could try to sift them all into their separate boxes again.

Where to go ? I knew at once. It had to be the Mount of Olives the place where Jesus had prayed , where he had been betrayed. It was safe now - no Judas waiting, the ringleader's been caught, only the small fry left now. And yes, I realised that they were right. not to worry about us. Yes, Jesus had taught us so much, but without him we were like a beached whale. I still went cautiously though, just in case. But I neednt have worried - there was no one there.

I found the place where we had prayed, or rather where he prayed and we slept. It was desolate, so desolate. I stood there in the shadows looking at the spot where he went to pray by himself just before the Romans seized him. I wanted to go and stand there myself and turn to heaven as he did and just ask one question - Why ? But I didn't feel worthy of putting my feet where his had been so I just stood there in the shadows, locked motionless, my thoughts frozen, paralysed by fear, caught in confusion, wondering what reality was. I had thought that he was Reality, but the radical new understanding he infused us with had been cut away, exposed as lies. And that hurt. I had examined things so carefully, determined to be sure that it all hung together, that no one could accuse me of being a hot head carried away by the emotional force of his personality. And now I was exposed.

I stayed there some time - hours. My thoughts made no progress, frozen in fragments of memory. Eventually the sky started to lighten and I turned to leave. I couldn't face light where he had been betrayed. And I couldn't face the others either. Instead I went elsewhere. Jesus may be dead but he had healed people and I went and sought shelter with one of them , a man who had been blind. He took me in, said little, but the compassion and sorrow in his eyes said everything. Here was none of the bickering I could imagine happening amongst the others. Here was acceptance, a safe place, understanding, or rather a shared incomprehension which because it was shared didn't need to be spoken. He made me a bed and I slept, slept through the hours of daylight, until it was dark enough again to face once more the darkness of my soul.

I nearly went back to the Mount of Olives, but something held me back. I knew I would return there, but I felt that first I must see the others. Maybe the compassion of a man who Jesus had healed could bring us some thin ray of comfort. I went to the room where I had left them, and they were still there/ But not bickering now. Or rather only bickering over who was going to tell me what had happened.

'Thomas !', 'Thomas !', 'He's alive !', 'we've seen Jesus !'. 'Where were you ?' etc. Imagine my shock. Just when, in the smallest of ways I felt that I might be coming to terms with what had happened everyone goes completely loopy. Gradually they calmed down and I got some sense out of them, or rather words that hung together, for it sounded like nonsense. Oh don't get me wrong, I wanted to believe what they said, that he was alive, and I could not believe there excitement, but, well, there's one simple 'but'. He died.

He died. He died . He died. It is a fact. We cannot get away from it. I stayed and listened, but in the end I couldn't bear it. I had to leave. I promised I would return, but I insisted on leaving. And so a pattern was established. I spent time with the disciples, but I could only bear so much of their smug outlandish confidence, and so I kept returning to the Mount of Olives, and sought compassion with the man who had been blind.

At first I didn't tell him what was going on, but then I did. I expected him to join me in ridiculing the crazy story they had told me, but instead he said with just ahint of a smile 'Maybe its so crazy its true'. Now I was the one getting frustrated and angry.

'Talk with me in a language I can understand' I wanted to shout at them. Instead I said I'd have to touch Jesus' wounds before I would believe. 'Thomas, stop creating obstacles, just believe' they cried. 'If he really is risen then he must be able to do this. Are you worried that you are wrong ?' I countered.

But it was not they who were wrong, it was I. After a week I went to the Mount of Olives as usual, and this time instead of leaving while it was dark I stayed until sunrise and as my shadowy waiting spot received the warm orange glow of the dawning day I prayed, 'If it is true, please show me'.

And then the next time I was with them it happened. He appeared. And he didn't just appear, he spoke to me. I didn't want to hear those words, my challenge returning to mock me, but he spoke it so gently. And I was so glad, so glad of that challenge I had laid because now I knew. I hadn't just seen, I had touched, he was real. And I knew as he spoke to me that he wasn't just some ghostly shell. He was vibrant and radiant, even more alive than before he died, somehow.

He pulled me into the centre and made me the centre. The others were so envious - they hadn't touched him like this. But I wasn't the centre really. He was. His hands, his side, his risen body. And I knew in the way that he treated me, Thomas, doubting Thomas, that he understood every tortuous corner that I had been through, that he accepted me as I was, and that he called me to follow him in ways beyond those I could imagine or those my imagination might limit me to.