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With much of the world, we remember with gratitude the person and example of Pope Francis. Such a human, humane, compassionate and humble pope the world may never have seen before.  Yet he was caught between conservatives and progressives, in terms of his approach to so many issues.  There’s a great story about how, early in his papacy, during a general audience at St Peter’s in Rome, he accepted a welcome drink from some visiting Argentinian compatriots in the crowd.  Afterwards, his security officials reprimanded him.  ‘It could have been poisoned’, they said. ‘Don’t worry’, replied Francis, ‘they were pilgrims, not cardinals’. This no doubt reflected the tensions he was already experiencing.

Last Sunday, on Easter Day, Canon Roly speculated about our contrasting categories of personality. I’d like to add another contrast, between those conservative by nature and those more progressive. Put another way, between those who are more accepting and those who are more questioning. I suspect that Pope Francis, given his orthodoxy of doctrine but his generous and open mind, may have been both: accepting and questioning.  And what about us: which is each of us? ‘Accepting or questioning about what?’, you might ask. Well, for today, accepting or questioning about Easter stories, about Jesus’s resurrection appearances.

After his terrible death, Jesus unexpectedly arrived through locked doors, greeted his close disciples and showed them his wounded hands and side. When Thomas heard this news, he was certainly questioning, if not sceptical. Then, a week later, Thomas was actually present when Jesus came again, just as before through locked doors, and challenged doubting Thomas actually to examine his hands and his side. Later still, again in St John’s Gospel, Jesus is reported as preparing breakfast on the beach for his fishermen disciples as they came ashore from a night’s fishing. And St Luke’s Gospel goes even further: Jesus appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem, asked for something to eat and actually ate broiled fish in front of them.

Over such stories, many today will share Thomas’s questioning. So, are you accepting or questioning?  There’s nothing wrong about questioning, being quizzical.  Remember, Thomas went on to declare to Jesus, ‘My Lord and my God’, did extensive missionary work, was martyred, and was made a saint! So there’s nothing wrong with honest questioning.

But what do we to make of these stories of Jesus appearing after his death?  Are they literally true? With the deepest things in life, there are different kinds of truth.  There is certainly literal, historical truth. But there is also metaphor or picture-language, and there are symbols, and they can express truth in a way that factual language can’t. Common in poetry, they also play their part in other kinds of narrative, including Bible narratives.  It’s also important to remember that the stories in the gospels didn’t drop from heaven as they are. The stories were passed down, orally and in a variety of documents, for at least a generation before the Gospels became as they are now. And there may have been some innocent enhancement along the way.  The resulting stories are often as much statements of faith as they are of history.  This doesn’t make them worthless – not at all – and in fact, the opposite.

There are some helpful clues about all of this in the Bible itself.

The first is in St Luke’s gospel story about Easter Day evening. Two disciples were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, when a stranger joined them on the road. The disciples told him about Jesus’s remarkable life, his cruel death and the report they’d heard of his tomb being found empty. The stranger then set all this for them in terms of expectations in the Hebrew scriptures. When they reached Emmaus, the disciples persuaded the stranger to stay with them. The three sat down for supper, and, over supper, the stranger took bread, blessed it and gave it to them, before vanishing. Then they realised it had been Jesus himself present with them all along. They said their hearts had been ‘burning’ as Jesus had interpreted the scriptures for them on the road.

This is a highly symbolic story. The events follow the pattern of the Christian Eucharist, which can include readings from the Hebrew scriptures as well as the Christian scriptures, then often a homily, and then bread being taken, blessed and shared – just as on the road and at Emmaus. Faith in the presence of Jesus at the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, in the early Christian church may well have contributed to the story. The important thing is the presence of Jesus in some form.

There’s another clue in St Paul’s first letter to the Christians in Corinth. He writes that, after his death, Jesus appeared to Peter, to James, to a large crowd of Christians, and then, last of all, he writes, to himself, Paul.  But there’s no record of Jesus actually appearing to Paul. However, Paul often mentioned in his letters a chronic affliction he suffered from, thought to be some kind of repeated seizures. One such attack may be what had happened to him in the famous incident on the road to Damascus.  Paul, you’ll remember, was on his way for more of his fanatical persecution of Christians. ‘Suddenly’ we read, ‘a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Why do you persecute me. I am Jesus whom you are persecuting”’.

There had probably been huge tension building up inside Paul. He was an avidly faithful Jew, a Pharisee, and was intent on killing off this new Christian threat to his religion. But he also knew about Jesus, he’d witnessed the faith of Christians, and he’d been present when Stephen made his brave statement of faith and was stoned to death with words of forgiveness on his lips. So, Paul’s dramatic conversion to Christianity during this seizure could certainly have involved resolution of mental tension. In his tormented mind, he heard Jesus speaking to him: ‘Why do you persecute me. I am Jesus whom you are persecuting’. And it’s probably this experience that Paul later described as Jesus appearing to him.

On that basis, in Paul’s understanding, an appearance would include a memorable psychological one, and perhaps a vision. Perhaps that, and the mini-Eucharist at Emmaus, may help our questioning personalities.

Jesus certainly had a profound effect on his early followers. So it’s not surprising that some of them had overwhelming experiences of Jesus present with them after his death. Recently bereaved spouses and other relatives sometimes have similar experiences of their loved ones.  So those early Christians may well have described their experiences in the form of concrete stories. The stories represent the conviction that Jesus was alive for the disciples, that the Cross was not the end, and that all that Jesus stood for could not die. They came to believe that Jesus was continually present, and would be for ever: not physically or visibly, but through the Holy Spirit.

Whether for accepting or questioning personality, the resurrection stories are powerful symbols for today. They are symbolic of Jesus’s continuing presence with us.  Presence in our home lives, symbolised by the gathering of the disciples behind locked doors; in our work lives, symbolised by the meal on the shore of Galilee; and in our church and community lives, symbolised by Emmaus.  And this conviction was undoubtedly prominent in Pope Francis’s mind, propelling him into his dedicated pastoral and caring ministry.

And we too, like Francis, are invited to be Jesus’s followers, as we go through our lives in his presence day by day. May it be so.