Questioning Thomas: Easter 2

 Easter 2 2026

There’s a great little feature in the Guardian each week called the Kids’ Quiz. It’s not a quiz for children, it’s a quiz by children. They set the quesitons – and very good questions they are too. 

Recently, Esther aged, 6, asked “how many lions are there in the world?”  Around 28000 is the answer, about a tenth of the number there were a century ago. Or Aariya, aged 7, asked why our little finger is sometimes called our pinkie finger. It turns out to be from an Old Dutch word, pink, which meant small. There is a complicated link between that and the colour pink – but you’ll have to ask me about that afterwards. 

I particularly loved a question from Rocco, aged 10, though. Why does water make clothes look darker, despite the fact that water has no colour? Good question, Rocco. The explanation, I learned from the quiz answers, is that the thin layer of water on top of wet clothes traps some of the light that would otherwise have bounced back to our eyes – it bounces around inside the layer of water instead. So, less light is reflected back to us which makes the clothes seem darker…

Children are great questioners. Of course they are, because the main job of a child is to learn and grow, and we can’t do that unless we are curious and prepared to ask questions. Perhaps I could have worked out why wet clothes are darker than dry ones, or googled it, or asked my husband – there’s no point in being married to a retired physics teacher if you don’t tap him for this sort of knowledge – but the truth is that I had never thought to wonder, never thought to ask the question. 

Every year, on this Sunday after Easter, we hear the story of Thomas. He’s often called Doubting Thomas, but really it would be far more accurate, and far fairer, to call him Questioning Thomas. A man who isn’t content simply to go along with the crowd but needs to know things for himself, to ask his own questions, and make his own decisions.

We only meet him a few times in the Gospels, but when we do, this is the thing that stands out about him. For example, at the Last Supper, Jesus speaks of his death and says he is going away “to prepare a place for you”, he tells the disciples that “you know the way to the place where I am going”. The rest of the disciples do that thing that we all do when we haven’t got a clue what someone is talking about but don’t want to look stupid. They nod politely, look blank, and keep quiet.

But not Thomas. He says, “Lord we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” It’s a perfectly sensible response. Your satnav won’t give you directions to Maidstone if you don’t tell it that Maidstone is where you want to go.  

And Jesus’ honours Thomas’ question – the only person who is honest enough to say “I don’t know!” . “I am the way, the truth and the life”, he says. That might not seem to make things much clearer, but it tells Thomas, and us, that it is Jesus himself who is the map. Following his way of life, a way of sacrificial, generous love, will take us where we need to go. 

And now, in today’s Gospel reading, here is Jesus honouring Thomas’ questioning nature again. Has Jesus really risen from the dead, Thomas wants to know? He isn’t simply going to believe it because the other disciples say so. That’s just groupthink.  He needs to know for himself. And Jesus honours that. He turns up for him, just for him. Thomas matters that much. His questions matter that much. 

Of course, as Jesus says, there will be others – including those for whom John is writing his Gospel, including us – who won’t get to see the risen Christ in the way that Thomas does, but this story tells us that it’s ok to question, in fact it’s vital to question. Otherwise our faith isn’t our faith, it’s just something we are borrowing from others, going along with because they do, or because it’s how we were brought up. 

I grew up going to church with my family, but my own Christian faith really came alive for the first time when a teacher at my school started a Christian club. I was about 10 or 11. One day the teacher read a passage from Isaiah – “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near”. And it hit me between the eyes – I was being called out on a great big God hunt – not in the sense that God was hiding, but in the sense that I was being called to discover him day by day, to open my eyes to his presence, to see him for myself.  Fifty-five years or so later, I’m still doing that, expecting God to surprise me. Where might I find God today, who might I see him in, what might I discover, how might I learn to love more and better? 

We thought about good questions earlier – why do wet clothes look darker than dry ones? – but I wonder what our questions about faith might be? They might be deeply personal, or they might be ones that we can share. They might be questions that can be answered in a sermon, or with a conversation with someone – I know all the clergy and lay ministry team here in our benefice would be happy to listen. Or they might be ones that lead us towards baptism, or confirmation, or some form of training or further study, or to join a home group where we can discuss faith with others. There are a number around the benefice, and more can be arranged!

Thomas’ story invites us to be aware of and honour our own questions, just as God honours them, to ask those questions – of ourselves, of others, of God - because each of us is called out on our own journey. And who knows where that journey might lead us? 

Thomas, according to legend, ended up travelling east with the Gospels, and is acclaimed by the people of South India as the one who brought the Good News to them.

We may not be called to make such a dramatic journey, but our journeys of faith are just as important, to us, to others, and to God, and they start with that gift of holy curiosity which Questioning Thomas shows us. 

Amen