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Do you remember the telecommunications advertising slogan, ‘The future’s bright, the future’s Orange’?  Sadly, Orange’s own future was not so bright, as it was eventually taken over by a bigger conglomerate and the slogan disappeared.  Then there was an American 1980s rock song,  ‘The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades’, recorded first by Timbuk 3 and then later by Status Quo. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and sing it.) This seemed a very positive song illustrating the confidence of a college student, getting good grades and optimistic about graduation and a good job. But then the writer later clarified things. Two verses he had written had been omitted from the recordings. They demonstrated an irony in the song. One of the verses omitted ran:

Well I’m well aware of the world out there,
getting blown all to bits, but what do I care?

The writer explained that the job the student was confident of getting was likely to be as a nuclear scientist, to facilitate nuclear war at the hands of Ronald Reagan and his contemporaries.

And we could go on in this pessimistic mode.  For example, How many political promises uttered with persuasive rhetorical verve come to sticky ends? – mentioning no topical political names, of course!

What we need is hope, hope to see us through. We really do. And for hope, we often need messengers of genuine hope.  One such was the man who wrote the first reading this afternoon, Isaiah. He has been forecasting a pretty miserable time for the Jews and their neighbours, and they are probably pretty downcast. But now, suddenly, he turns to hope:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with singing. 

And so on, through to:

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

I wondered why this reading had been provided for the eve of St Thomas’s Day. And I’ll come back to that in the meantime. But first, let’s recall what we know of Thomas.  Apart from being listed as one of the apostles in all four gospels, his only significant appearances are in St John’s Gospel.  Thomas comes across as a pragmatic, realistic sort of guy. (I’m sorry about the Sunday School-type picture, but it was the only one I could find which depicts Thomas and Jesus as real men together.) When Jesus announces he is going to see his recently deceased friend, Lazarus, Thomas says to the others, ‘Let’s also go, that we may die with him’ – presumably meaning ‘die with Jesus’.  He must have recognised a risk, perhaps of going into hostile territory, or encountering hostile Jewish leaders. Maybe there was a sardonic tone to his comment: ‘come on chaps, we may as well die with him!’

Thomas is often called ‘doubting Thomas’, which is a bit judgemental.  You may be familiar with the philosopher Descartes’s statement ‘I think, therefore I am’.  But Descartes also wrote ‘I doubt, therefore I am’. Doubting is a rational part of human existence. Thomas shares it; he is simply pragmatic and realistic. However . . . have you heard the fanciful story about someone asking Thomas, ‘Do you think people will ever appreciate you weren’t really a doubting Thomas?’  Thomas replies, ‘I doubt it’.

But Thomas’s pragmatic nature is most evident when Jesus has appeared to the disciples on Easter Day evening.  Thomas for some reason wasn’t there when this happened, and is sceptical. ‘Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’ he says.  And, in the story, when Jesus appears again, Thomas is challenged to do exactly what he has said.  He finds he doesn’t need to, and simply responds in awe, ‘My Lord and my God’.  But if some claim Thomas has been weak, well certainly now he is certainly strong.

And that, I think, is the reason for the hopeful Isaiah reading on the eve of St Thomas’s Day. Because part of what we heard is this:

Strengthen the weak hand, and make firm the feeble knees.  Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!’

And then there’s the second reading for the eve of St Thomas’s Day that we heard, from the Letter to the Hebrews. This includes this:

Do not . . . abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward.  For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. . . . . We are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.

And what of us?  When we were young, the future did look bright, and often was bright.  For some people, it remains bright: they succeed, make a good contribution to the world, and are happy.  And you may be one of them. But it’s not bright for all, even when they are young. Life can be tough from the word go, and I don’t need to spell it out. At the most extreme, our prisons are full of people for whom life has either never been bright, or has fallen apart and been anything but bright.  And you, wherever you are, online or here, could feel like that, at least sometimes.  Life can be a disappointment.

It’s too easy just to talk about the love of God, if it isn’t backed by human experience of love.  Many years ago, I was appointed as a housemaster and chaplain at a boys’ approved school in Birmingham.  The headmaster said to me: ‘Richard, your task is to work out how to tell the boys about a loving heavenly Father, when their only experience has been of an absent or abusive father, or words to that effect. I’m not sure to what extent I ever succeeded. But we did try in the school to provide some sort of consistency of care, even love. But the point is that religious sentiment has to be backed by human experience.  And that goes for all of us.

It goes for us in terms of our life experiences, and it also goes for us in the way we ourselves can model the love of God in the ways we deal with people.  That includes our nearest and dearest, of course, but also the people we have casual contact with in the shops, on the phone and in email and social media. And it includes the extent to which we are prepared to share our resources with the world’s most needy, and with people we shall never meet. 

Positivity is a great contribution.  And I’m glad the 1980s song writer left out the nuclear war verses, and retained a positive theme: ‘The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades’.  Because it is, in the love of God.   With the love of God that Jesus demonstrated and that Thomas came to understand, there is hope for us all.  Let it truly be so for us all.