I wondered if following the blue dot on Google maps could help me trace the route that the Apostle Thomas took to India. After an interesting side trip into Nestorian Christianity, and questions about the exact nature of Jesus as both divine and human, I decided to return to the original focus of my exploration.
Continuing my madcap trip around the Indian traffic circle, I wound up in Chennai where completed an informal pilgrimage to the three basilicas dedicated to one of the Apostles of Jesus. I visited the Basilica of Apostle Thomas, and felt that it pointed to something larger than just maintaining the prevailing view of what Christianity.
I’m going to try to construct a meditation about Thomas. Let me try to rip away some of the garbage I think surrounds Thomas, and point to why I think we might pay attention to him as we meander through India, or the world.
I will posit that we don’t know much about Thomas is because he was not a church guy. I think he actually might have been the smart ass geeky kid, maybe even an obnoxious asshole. I found this brief article about the “Gospel of Thomas” by Elaine Pagels and a talk she delivered at Stanford 17 years ago, My friend Bonnie Johnson would have loved Pagels’ work, and you might appreciate how Thomas sides with the slaves who are unwillingly forced to disrupt things trying to get a high caste lady’s sedan chair to the front of the crowd.
After Jesus was crucified, the Apostle James and a few others stayed in Jerusalem, preached about the risen Jesus and kept kosher. Paul went off trying to translate his take on radical conversion into Greek, adopting the first non-Jewish cultural idiom. Peter traveled to Rome where he, according to legend, set the course for the Teaching of Jesus to dominate the western world.
But Thomas apparently went in the exact opposite direction; he struck out for India, alone or with maybe a few followers. The churches, the communities he established were not as cohesive as the ones established in the Greek and Roman worlds. Maybe my speculation that the Indians were just just not going to submit to conforming beliefs way back then, like right now, is basically correct, and any communities he established disappeared or were absorbed by local cults. India in the first years of the common era was religiously similar to what I experience today, mystics and wandering sadhus.
The most famous story about Thomas, and he is only mentioned a few times in the official record, is that he did not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead because he hadn’t seen him, that he would not believe until he actually placed his hands into the wounds of the torture that had killed Jesus. So Jesus appeared and held out his hands with the wounds still open. Thomas says, My Lord and my God, I believe. Then Jesus says: "Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.” Pagles says that this is the formal, or dominant church getting a recalcitrant believer to cast aside his or her doubts and enter into the fold. But something else might have been going on.
What if our Thomas was really just a stubborn guy who not only demanded a different kind of evidence when it came to belief, but insisted on an interpretation of the message of Jesus that included everyone, not just the proper ladies but also her slaves, the outcasts, even the homeless? And since the older Apostles who were in charge couldn't forbid him coming to the Lord’s table, they just sent him to India, and told stories about him, barring him from the proper European landholdings.
You don’t have to join me in India to upset the picnic table. That is not a rhetorical question.
The ride around India (or anywhere) is much better with a companion; I remember Ashish Gupta driving for the first time in India, in Goa where the traffic rules are slightly more recognizable for the likes of us. It is the main headquarters of the Jesuits in India and has been since about 1543 plus or minus so there is a bit more ingrained European sense of order in some things. But Ash still almost got us killed. My last longish trip here was twice to Amritsar where I got my Covid Vaccination. 12 hours round trip to a private hospital that would give foreigners a jab. It really did save my life, and I was scared to death on the highway across Punjab where drivers think nothing of driving against traffic on a two lane divided highway if it gets them closer to home.
So I don't have any real question. It is more of a floating inquiry--how we open to the Spirit for more than just pinpointing a destination. My observation is that it's almost as if to thwart our good intentions, sometimes the movement of the Spirit is like barreling up the freeway in the wrong direction, or maybe to be accurate, facing that guy who needs to get back to his cows who's barreling towards us, and we know we really shouldn't trust his driving.
And if you can't join me in India, (not a declaration or assessment but a kind of wild daydream--you, me and Rinku driving across the high Himalayan plains in Kashmir!), we still travel as spiritual companions and check out Saint Thomas. What a blessing.
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| Of course after all that travel--a post card! |
