A number of years ago I attended an Alpha course which was designed to introduce me to the Christian faith. Actually, when I went on the course I had decided that I already had a Christian faith but I was persuaded that I would see a different perspective on my faith if I went on this course and this would strengthen my faith. By the end of the course I think I had retained my faith despite having been on the course.
One of the things I remember from the course was being told that there are three hundred and thirty Old Testament prophecies that are fulfilled by the life and death of Jesus and some scientists from Cambridge University or maybe it was Oxford or Harvard have calculated that the chances of this happening are over a million to one. I may not have those numbers quite right.
I should maybe say that I don’t know for sure whether the course I went on was the official Alpha course. It may have been a local variation on it. But they called it the Alpha course.
I remember wondering how you can calculate the mathematical chances of an Old Testament prophecy being fulfilled. I remember thinking what a stupid thing to say this was. It seemed to me to be a very weak and very patronising attempt to somehow offer a scientific basis for faith – as if such a basis was possible or needed.
Today’s famous Gospel is about our faith that Jesus rose from the dead. It tells us how the risen Jesus came to the disciples and breathed the Holy Spirit into them. But Thomas wasn’t there. So he didn’t receive the Holy Spirit and didn’t believe it was true. So Jesus appeared to him also. Thomas saw with his own eyes and believed. And called Jesus something he hadn’t been called before. He called him God. And Jesus then mentions us. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’ That’s us, isn’t it?
It takes a lot of courage to be a human being. Sometimes we cope by believing that we are in control. But then things fall apart. The job goes wrong. The business fails. Somebody dies. We become ill. It turns out that we are not in control.
That is when we find out how blessed we are to have faith in a risen Lord. We can’t prove that Jesus rose from the dead. There is no mathematical formula that will demonstrate it. And yet the Holy Spirit is in us and we have a faith; a hunch; a belief that this good news is real.
We believe that Jesus is who he said he is. He died and then rose from the dead. A Christian writer I rather like said this, “Believing in him does not put us in charge. It does not give us what we want. It does not protect us from harm. But it can remove from us the fear we have of being alive. We can learn to live with the human condition, maybe even love it because we believe that he lives and he loves it too”. That is why we are blessed.