The Mayor of Cormorant Minnesota USA sadly died on Thursday 21st February 2019, just six months after retiring from office. Duke, the thirteen year old Pyrenean Mountain Dog had been the mayor of the village of Cormorant located about two hundred and sixteen miles north west of Minneapolis, with a population of around a thousand people. Duke was first elected in 2014 and he was reelected three more times before his retirement, he held court as an ambassador for the town at formal occasions, and would hang out at the local pub ensuring that law and order was maintained. You can read more about the life and work of Duke in his book “Meet the Mayor Duke” published in 2018. The BBC TV series QI has brought to us a whole range of fascinating revelations over the years, many of which have proved the claim of their final round “General ignorance” to be true, there is so much in the world that we believe, only to learn that it isn’t true, and so much more that way beyond belief. Did you know that it is illegal to chew gum in Singapore, or that Lulu the Kangaroo saved the life of her owner when he was involved in an accident on their farm in Australia in a true Skippy the kangaroo story. Were you aware that it takes about a week to make a single Jelly Bean, or that the CIA once considered using cats as spies? When faced with the question “which company buys the most explosives in the world, would it surprise you to discover that it is The Disney corporation? Or, faced with the question Which company manufactures the most tyres would you dream of answering The Lego Group?
I think that we live in such a mind boggling world today, I remember standing in our office in Leeds and watching the fax machine churn out the very first copy, page three of the Sun! sent by one of our colleagues in the Dudley depot in the West Midlands, unbelievable! So if we know all of this, why is it that we give the disciple Thomas such a hard time, for centuries the poor bloke has been labelled “Doubting Thomas” as though we think that simply because he was one of the twelve, he should have immediately believed that Jesus, who three days earlier came into a locked room and stood there chatting with his friends. With the best will in the world I can’t condemn him for doubting what they were saying, lets face it, the story is unbelievable and has been a stumbling block for many searcher for faith over the year. People love to gather at Christmas time and can relate to a nostalgic story of a poor young couple having to have their baby in a barn, but a dead man, being alive takes a bit of swallowing. Yes, I can happily forgive Thomas for doubting, I guess that in the same situation, I would have also doubted.
The bigger issue for me is that Thomas wasn’t in the room with the disciples when Jesus appeared to them. There is something that doesn’t make sense. The ten remaining disciples were locked away behind closed doors for fear of being attacked by the Jews after all that had just happened to Jesus. Why wasn’t Thomas with them, surely after all that had happened to Jesus, Thomas would be as fearful as the other disciples, yet he had gone out somewhere, gone out into the danger zone, why? We will never know, but his absence is the biggest issue for me, because while he was out, doing whatever he thought was more important, he missed this sighting of the risen Christ, and, more importantly in my opinion, he missed Christ breathing the Holy Spirit into the Disciples. Had Thomas been in room with the others he would have had no need to doubt, he would have known, because he would have been there.
Our response when times are difficult, is so often to separate ourselves out from the crowd, how often have you heard somebody enthusing over a situation or and experience and they have used the well worn phrase “you should have been there!” don’t condemn poor old Thomas for doubting, what he was being told was pretty unbelievable.