What's Your Nickname?

Do you have a nickname?  Or did you have one years ago at school?  In my class at school we had a few guys with nicknames - and despite it being a mixed-sex school it seemed always to be the gentlemen who had nicknames.  Admittedly most of them were unimaginative: Webbo, Banksy, Jonesy and Shakey were just variations on surnames (yes, I went to school with Shakespeare).  But there were slightly (only very slightly) more interesting ones.  We had a Hilly Helmet (on account of his haircut), a Nelly (which is a short step from Neil), a Mugsy (I don't know how he felt about that, it was a bit Bash Street), a Taff (he was Welsh and that was probably racist), a Mammal (best not to ask) and the resident straight-A student in the class was called Prof.

And that was me.  So I got off pretty well in those days.  I was fairly sure some people were spelling it with two Fs but what can you do?  It's basically good to be remembered and named for something positive. 

 Donny Osmond modelling the Hilly Helmet look.

So pity the poor disciple Thomas.  He has a few lines in the gospels but his rise to prominence is largely on account of one of his less brilliant days.  Thomas isn't there when Jesus appears to the ten disciples in lockdown.  Maybe he's gone out for essential shopping or his hour's worth of exercise, twice round the Temple and back?  More realistically, maybe he doesn't grieve well with others and is elsewhere, nursing a private grief.  Either way, missing meeting his faithful friends turns out not so well for him.

When Thomas hears them all say that the risen Jesus Christ has stood among them, Thomas takes an understandable and sceptical line, which paraphrases well as, "You wishful-thinking hallucinators!"  So unless he can see Jesus and tangibly prove that this crucified man is alive again, "No way Jose!"  I respect that.  And I respect that a week later when he actually does come sheepishly face to face with the good shepherd, he follows his own logic and declares, "My Lord and my God!" and he worships.  Good man.

The Bible doesn't record that Thomas did stick his fingers in the wounds, 

but it makes for good art.

My perennial complaint on Thomas's behalf is that all this logical behaviour serves only to earn him a nickname that has stuck: Doubting Thomas.  History has a bit of a downer on the guy, and it's not fair.

He sticks with Jesus for three years when other people abandon him on account of tricky teaching.  But do they call him True Thomas?  They do not.

He asks the big questions about heaven and earth (John 14: read it!) and other people are glad that he did because they pave the way for Jesus' best sayings.  But do they call him Honest Thomas?  They do not.

He travels (we think) to India to spread the gospel (and possibly China and Indonesia) and he ends up martyred.  But do they call him Brave Thomas?  Well, in India, yes they do, but the rest of us?  We do not.

Thomas gets stuck with an undeserved nickname and an undeserved reputation, all off the back of one (actually quite sensible, sane and reasonable) moment.  

Imagine if your reputation and nickname came from a moment you'd rather forget?  Some of us would have x-rated nicknames.  Imagine if everyone harked back to your silliest moment, rather than your greatest day?  We wouldn't leave our houses!  (Yeah, okay...)

But it's human nature to recall the mistakes, and it's insecure human nature to throw them back at people.  When I first led Book of Common Prayer Holy Communion - in one of those tiny books with busy print and everything squashed together in one paragraph, I managed to miss out a line.  Everything else went well, but I missed out one line.  Everyone at St Chad's Bagnall shook my hand warmly as if they knew how nerve-racking it was, but one gentleman in tweed approached me, said, "You missed a line," and turned on his heel and went.  Ooh, thanks.  (But I bet that will be the one slip that he wishes never to be remembered...)

St Chad's Bagnall: an excellent congregation

I feel for our organists and guitarists and flautists in the Team, because you can play 999 right notes, but if you play just one duff note, which is it that people remember?

People do have a habit of rubbing it in.  If Thomas was fussed, then 2000 years of being called Doubting Thomas might get him down.

But Jesus?  Jesus never rubs it in.  He gently invites Thomas to stop doubting and believe.  He knows Thomas inside out and he knows why he has a hard time believing, and he's not about to rub it in.  He simply offers a way into belief, and Thomas leaps at it.  Done and dusted, forgiven (if indeed anything needs forgiving: I suspect not) and forgotten.  And Jesus looks at Thomas and sees the next set of good works that he's prepared in advance for him to do: first in Jerusalem, later in India.  Rock!

This is important to hear because in a world where we beat ourselves upon for our mistakes and where other people are ever-ready to remind us of how stupid we can be (in my case that is very stupid indeed), we need to hear that we're forgiven.  The whole point of the cross is that Jesus rubs it out: every mistake, every sin, every spiteful response of the past.  Jesus never rubs them in; Jesus always rubs them out.

Mistakes: rubbed out by Jesus.  Thank God for that!

You may need to hear that twice as loud this Easter because many of us are stuck (blessedly or otherwise) with family, and there's no-one like family to either lift you up or bring you down.  No-one like family who know you so well and can needle you so badly and remember your misdeeds and throw them back at you when tempers fray.  

So it's a good job that we also live with Jesus Christ.  It's a good job he's on lockdown with us, because he rubs it out and points us to what we can be rather than what we once were.  He calls us friends rather than sinners and he lifts us up to what we can be rather than dragging us down to where we might have fallen before.  Jesus rubs it out.  He never rubs it in.

We need that.  We need that because families sometimes prefer to see us as we were rather than imagine us how we can be.  The best family in the world can become a sitcom at the drop of a hat, in which Captain Mainwaring will never be other than a pompous twit, in which Inbetweener Jay will never be other than a vulgar boaster, in which Basil Fawlty will never learn.  But with Jesus in lockdown with us, there is the chance to change, offered to us by someone who knows what we can be and doesn't need to knock us down or drag us down.

There's a bit of me that will always be Prof (with one F).  But don't bother calling me that because it's really the past, and what we all will be... well, it has not yet been made known.  Human eye has not seen and human ear has not heard what God has prepared for those who love him...

This'll be my Jesus.

Let Jesus rub all that rubbish out, and make space for the glorious future that you have with him.