Sermon delivered Sunday, April 16, 2017 (Easter Day) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA -- my last Sunday serving that congregation as long-term supply priest.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Our observance of Easter is the liturgical high point of the year, one of the most joyful moments in the life of the church. Christ is risen! Life has triumphed over death! On this day, churches all over the world, from small communities like ours to the biggest cathedrals, pull out all the stops to put on the biggest celebration of the year.
But the first Easter wasn’t so purely joyful. The day the women discovered the empty tomb and Jesus began appearing to his followers, there were many other emotions that were likely more prominent than joy for the disciples. The stories of the first resurrection appearances show the disciples grappling with grief and sorrow, bewilderment, disbelief, and fear.
The Gospel of Mark tells us that after the angels appeared to the women at the tomb telling them Jesus had been raised, they fled from the tomb and said nothing to anyone, because they were terrified (Mark 16:8). John’s Gospel tells us that while Mary Magdelene was out weeping at the tomb, the disciples were gathered together in the upper room with the doors locked, out of fear (John 20:19) – presumably fear that they too would meet a similar fate as Jesus at the hands of the authorities. When they received the news that Jesus was alive... well, it seemed to them “an idle tale,” as the Gospel of Luke puts it (Luke 24:11). Even though they had seen Jesus raise dead people to life before – the daughter of the leader of the synagogue in Galilee (Mark 5:35-43), a widow’s son in the town of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), and Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus (John 11:1-44), somehow the concept that Jesus could be alive after they’d seen him so brutally murdered was incomprehensible to them.
And perhaps rightfully so, because what happened to Jesus wasn’t exactly like what happened to the synagogue leader’s daughter, the widow’s son, or Lazarus. The disciples didn’t see the miracle in person, as they had with the people Jesus raised. The disciples only discovered it after the fact, after he was risen and began appearing to them. No one actually SAW him rise, and as our beloved forefather Thomas reminds us, it’s not just we modern scientific types who like to see things for ourselves in order to believe them.
Not only were there no witnesses to the actual event itself, but Jesus’s Resurrection had changed him in some pretty incredible ways. Although he still retained the scars and marks of his crucifixion, which the disciples were able to physically touch, and he ate and drank with them to prove that he was an actual physical being, not a ghost or some kind of apparition, he also wasn’t exactly the same as he had been before.
Presumably, the synagogue leader’s daughter, the widow’s son, and Lazarus all looked exactly the same before and after their resurrections, but when Jesus appears after his Resurrection, he’s not always immediately recognizable. The people who have spent many years traveling with him day after day don’t recognize him! Mary Magdelene mistakes him for the gardener. The disciples on the Road to Emmaus walk and talk with him along a long journey, not knowing who he is until he breaks bread with them when they arrive at home. And if that weren’t enough change, apparently he could also enter locked rooms without recourse to the doors, and appear and disappear at will.
Clearly, what happened to Jesus changed him in a way that the resurrection of Lazarus, the widow’s son, and the synagogue leader’s daughter did not change them. Their resurrections were a restoration of life and health to their physical bodies, but Jesus’s Resurrection was a complete transformation of the physical body. Presumably, all three of the people Jesus raised from the dead went on to die again at the end of their natural lives, but after his Resurrection, Jesus remained alive forever. His Resurrection wasn’t a simple resuscitation, bringing life back to his physical body. It was a complete transformation into a different plane of existence, one in which the physical body is still very real but the properties of this world no longer apply.
All of this was confusing and strange and mystifying to the disciples on that first Easter, as it still is to us if we take the time to really reflect on what we’re commemorating this day. When we say “Christ is risen,” when we talk about the power of life to overcome death, we’re talking about much more than the flowers blooming again after being dormant all winter, or the way in which new life can emerge from decaying matter in the natural world. Those transformations are certainly a kind of resurrection, bringing life from death, but at the end of the day, no matter how much we use that imagery at Easter, filling our churches with flowers, ultimately that image is a woefully inadequate metaphor for Christ’s Resurrection, and indeed all imagery or metaphors fall short to describe it. Because nothing that we can see or touch or feel with our senses could possibly come close to the complete radical transformation that was the Resurrection. That first Easter was like nothing humanity had ever known or experienced, before or since.
And as we all know, any time we experience significant change in our lives, it can be disruptive and unsettling. I’ve been reading a lot about transition lately, as I prepare to leave St. Cuthbert’s and begin my new ministry at the church of St. John the Baptist in Aptos, and all the psychologists will tell you that even good change, even positive change, even something that you’re happy about, causes stress. As human beings, for some reason, even though change is a regular part of our lives – we live in a world that is constantly changing, and we inhabit bodies that are constantly changing – most of us experience change as distressing in some way.
But no change you or I have experienced in our lives could possibly compare to the disruption the disciples were faced with on that first Easter. If we have mixed emotions when we move, or start a new job, or start a new relationship, or lose a loved one, imagine those experiences magnified about two hundredfold and maybe that would start to come close to something like what the disciples might have felt that first Easter morning.
Because unlike the resurrection of the synagogue leader’s daughter, the widow’s son and Lazarus, Jesus’s Resurrection wasn’t a restoration of the way things had been before. The families of the people Jesus raised were comforted that their loved one was healed and things could go back to how they’d always been before, but for the disciples, the fact that Jesus was now alive didn’t mean they would go back to wandering the countryside with him, and healing the sick and watching him teach. Instead, it meant that their entire lives were about to be changed, even more so than when they had left everything to follow him. They were about to embark on an entirely new journey, something that looked and felt totally different from what they had been doing before. And while some might have been excited and thrilled by that prospect, others were probably wary and skeptical, even scared. It was much more complex than the unadulterated joy we express on Easter morning in our liturgies. It was a direct experience of the power and presence of God that shook them to the core and completely rearranged their lives.
So while we rejoice in the Resurrection of Jesus, that central event of our faith that assures us of the promise of everlasting life, we also realize that that Resurrection also means that we are now tied to a life of transformation that leaves things unlike the way they were before. Through our baptism, we are joined to Christ; we become a part of his body. And as the Apostle Paul says, “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will surely be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5) – a resurrection that means not the restoration of breath to our physical bodies, not an assurance that we will live forever in this world, in these bodies, as we are now, but a promise of complete transformation into a different plane of existence, a plane where death can no longer touch us, a plane where we too will receive our resurrected bodies, which may be as different from our physical bodies as Jesus’s resurrected body was from his. We don’t know exactly what that day will be like, and until then, we can only imagine, basing our guesses on the glimpses of God’s transformational power that we occasionally receive in this life.
“Christ is risen!” is a message not of restoration, but of revolution. It means incredible, mind-blowing change is not only possible but inevitable for those of us who have chosen to link our lives with his.
And if that thought brings you something other than pure joy, if you find yourself a bit wary of what that could mean for your life, remember that the disciples probably had mixed feelings about the Resurrection as well. The first thing Jesus said when he appeared to them after his Resurrection, as he stood before them, the embodiment of disruptive, unsettling change, was, “Peace be with you.” That was the first thing he said to them. “Peace be with you.” Peace to those who stood by him to the bitter end at the foot of the cross, and peace to those who deserted him and fled. “Peace be with you.”
Peace, and “remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). This new reality may turn your entire world upside down, it may transform you in ways that scare you, but do not be afraid. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” Jesus says to the disciples the night before his death (John 14:27). And as he sends them forth after his Resurrection to spread this world-changing news, he tells them, “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” “Peace be with you.”
Showing posts with label doubt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doubt. Show all posts
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Is faith a choice or a gift?
Sermon delivered Sunday, March 16, 2014 (Second Sunday in Lent, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Genesis 12:1-4; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17).
The season of Lent calls us to be intentional about our spiritual lives: to spend time in prayer, in reading the scriptures, and in self-examination and reflection. One could say that Lent calls us to deepen our faith.
Our readings for today convey the message that our faith is what makes us right with God. These passages represent one side of the classic debate between faith and works – is it our faith, our beliefs, that put us into right relationship with God, or is it our works, our actions, the things we do in this world? Our scriptures for today clearly come down on the “faith” side of the question.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul argues that Abraham was justified – made right with God – not by anything he did, but by having faith – by trusting God’s promise to him. In making this argument, Paul is commenting on a passage from Genesis, chapter 15, just a few chapters after our reading from the Hebrew Bible for today. Chapter 15 includes the famous scene where God shows Abraham a vision – that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky – and after that vision, the scripture tells us that “[Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Paul builds his argument for justification by faith on this line from Genesis. He points out that Abraham was considered “righteous” before God officially made the covenant with Abraham, so Abraham’s righteousness did not come through the law, which was given later, but through his simple trusting in the word he heard from God.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus encounters a prominent leader of Israel named Nicodemus. Nicodemus goes to visit Jesus by night – perhaps because he does not want to be seen associating with this “rabble rouser” in the light of day – but the fact that he goes to him at all shows that he is drawn to him in some way. He acknowledges that Jesus is “a teacher who has come from God,” showing that he does not entirely reject Jesus and his teachings. But Jesus doesn’t give Nicodemus any gold stars for acknowledging him as a teacher. Instead, he launches into a statement about the importance of being “born from above” in order to “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Jesus can tell that Nicodemus has not yet “gotten it,” so to speak. Perhaps his concern with observance of the law has gotten in the way of his understanding the deeper spiritual message; we don’t know. But Jesus is not impressed with Nicodemus’s tentative praise of him. The passage concludes with one of the most famous lines in Scripture – John 3:16 – “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Again, we are brought back to the importance of faith – everyone who believes in him will have eternal life, just as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
So, the call to us is to have faith, to believe. In Christian circles, this idea is often presented as much easier than “earning” our way into salvation by our works: “What great news – we are saved by faith alone! All we have to do is believe!” But as anyone who has ever struggled with serious doubts knows, it is often much easier to do “good works” than it is to believe in what are some pretty incredible statements that the church holds up as true. This is why plenty of people can go out and feed the hungry and advocate for justice but can’t bring themselves to say the Nicene Creed. It is often easier to do something than it is to believe something.
I’m very interested in why it is that certain people find it easy to believe, to have faith, while other people find themselves stuck, unable to move past their doubt and skepticism to surrender to the life of faith. What made Peter, Andrew, James, and John willing to drop everything and follow Jesus when he called their names, while Nicodemus was drawn to Jesus, but not willing to leave everything to follow him? Why are you all here week after week, active in the life of the church, while you may have friends or family members who were raised with the same exposure to the church and the Christian faith, who are not active in church, and perhaps even skeptical about religion in general? If faith is what makes us right with God, how do we get it? What makes it possible for us to have faith?
I used to believe that faith was entirely a choice: God has created us with free will, so we have the freedom to choose faith or to choose unbelief. From this perspective, the burden of action is entirely ours. God has already acted in history, through the resurrection of Jesus; now it is our choice whether we accept or reject that gift of life.
But as my faith developed, I began to question the notion that my faith was entirely my choice. Yes, I did choose to follow Jesus when I was a teenager and have continued to try to follow him, but why was I drawn to pursue a spiritual path at all? I no more chose my natural inclination toward thinking theologically than I chose my affinity for strawberries or for the color purple. Those things were planted in me from the beginning, it seems, part of my personality, something I did nothing to create.
So I began to think that perhaps the ability to have faith at all is a gift from God. One commentator on this passage from John points out that Jesus’s use of the birth metaphor points to the initiative in matters of faith coming from God rather than from us. Just as babies do not choose to be born, so we cannot choose to be “born again” [1] – such an experience is a gift from God that is bestowed on us. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Just as we cannot control the wind, we cannot control how God’s Spirit moves in our lives and in the lives of others.
Looking at it this way allows us to let go of feeling like the burden is all on us – to have faith and to lead others to have faith. A friend who was going through a difficult time once said to me that in her dark moments, she has to believe that God chooses her, rather than the other way around. “I CANNOT choose faith right now,” she said. “So I have to trust that God chooses me.” From that theological perspective, the burden of action is entirely God’s. If we have faith, it is only because God has created and planted that faith in us.
But that idea is not entirely satisfactory, either, for it runs the risk of falling into fatalism and making a mockery of human choice, making us into puppets stripped of any kind of real freedom.
And so, I’m coming to think that perhaps the truth is somewhere in between those two viewpoints. In true Episcopal fashion, I’m proposing a via media, a "middle way," which is that faith is neither entirely our choice nor entirely a gift from God, but some complicated combination of the two. The problem with the other two scenarios is that in both of them, there is only one active party in the equation: either faith is entirely up to us, or faith is entirely up to God. But faith in God is a relationship, and a relationship requires action by both parties. For a life of faith to flourish, both we and God need to act. The key is remembering that we control only our side of the relationship.
We can smile and act friendly toward someone, but that does not guarantee that that person will become our friend. We cannot control how the other person will respond to us. The same is true in our relationship with God. We can pray and come to Eucharist and say all the right words and do all the right things, but that does not guarantee that in our heart of hearts, we will truly believe and feel close to God. We still have to wait for God to show up, for God to act on God’s side of the relationship. Despite what our liturgies sometimes lead us to believe, we cannot make God show up by saying certain magic words or making certain gestures with our hands. God is not a robot or a vending machine. We cannot force God’s action in our lives, any more than we can force ourselves to have faith.
So perhaps what we are called to do during Lent is not to deepen our faith, but to deepen our spiritual practice. What we can control is our actions and choices on our side of the relationship. We can choose to show up wherever it is that we feel most likely to encounter God – in the church, out in nature, in the midst of our family and friends – and wait. This might mean we spend more time in silence, more time listening rather than speaking in our prayer life. But whatever the practices that work best for us, we can do them with a posture of openness – perhaps literally, praying with open hands, open palms, or metaphorically, opening our hearts – so that we become more receptive to God’s presence and action within and around us, so that we are primed and prepped to notice when God does choose to show up.
Jesus told Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). In our spiritual practice, we are building ourselves a wind turbine, so that when God’s Spirit does blow in our lives, we have the mechanism ready to capture its energy and allow it to fuel us.
This is what spiritual practice is all about – it is quite literally a practice to prepare ourselves to be ready for those moments when we receive a vision, or a strong inner sense of God’s call, or a deep abiding sense of God’s love and comfort – all of which are pure gifts of grace. We cannot make those experiences happen, but we can keep the lines of communication open. And that’s all we are asked to do on the spiritual path – to show up, to be open – and to leave the rest to God.
----
[1] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer (www.sermonwriter.com).
The season of Lent calls us to be intentional about our spiritual lives: to spend time in prayer, in reading the scriptures, and in self-examination and reflection. One could say that Lent calls us to deepen our faith.
Our readings for today convey the message that our faith is what makes us right with God. These passages represent one side of the classic debate between faith and works – is it our faith, our beliefs, that put us into right relationship with God, or is it our works, our actions, the things we do in this world? Our scriptures for today clearly come down on the “faith” side of the question.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul argues that Abraham was justified – made right with God – not by anything he did, but by having faith – by trusting God’s promise to him. In making this argument, Paul is commenting on a passage from Genesis, chapter 15, just a few chapters after our reading from the Hebrew Bible for today. Chapter 15 includes the famous scene where God shows Abraham a vision – that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky – and after that vision, the scripture tells us that “[Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Paul builds his argument for justification by faith on this line from Genesis. He points out that Abraham was considered “righteous” before God officially made the covenant with Abraham, so Abraham’s righteousness did not come through the law, which was given later, but through his simple trusting in the word he heard from God.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus encounters a prominent leader of Israel named Nicodemus. Nicodemus goes to visit Jesus by night – perhaps because he does not want to be seen associating with this “rabble rouser” in the light of day – but the fact that he goes to him at all shows that he is drawn to him in some way. He acknowledges that Jesus is “a teacher who has come from God,” showing that he does not entirely reject Jesus and his teachings. But Jesus doesn’t give Nicodemus any gold stars for acknowledging him as a teacher. Instead, he launches into a statement about the importance of being “born from above” in order to “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Jesus can tell that Nicodemus has not yet “gotten it,” so to speak. Perhaps his concern with observance of the law has gotten in the way of his understanding the deeper spiritual message; we don’t know. But Jesus is not impressed with Nicodemus’s tentative praise of him. The passage concludes with one of the most famous lines in Scripture – John 3:16 – “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Again, we are brought back to the importance of faith – everyone who believes in him will have eternal life, just as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.
So, the call to us is to have faith, to believe. In Christian circles, this idea is often presented as much easier than “earning” our way into salvation by our works: “What great news – we are saved by faith alone! All we have to do is believe!” But as anyone who has ever struggled with serious doubts knows, it is often much easier to do “good works” than it is to believe in what are some pretty incredible statements that the church holds up as true. This is why plenty of people can go out and feed the hungry and advocate for justice but can’t bring themselves to say the Nicene Creed. It is often easier to do something than it is to believe something.
I’m very interested in why it is that certain people find it easy to believe, to have faith, while other people find themselves stuck, unable to move past their doubt and skepticism to surrender to the life of faith. What made Peter, Andrew, James, and John willing to drop everything and follow Jesus when he called their names, while Nicodemus was drawn to Jesus, but not willing to leave everything to follow him? Why are you all here week after week, active in the life of the church, while you may have friends or family members who were raised with the same exposure to the church and the Christian faith, who are not active in church, and perhaps even skeptical about religion in general? If faith is what makes us right with God, how do we get it? What makes it possible for us to have faith?
I used to believe that faith was entirely a choice: God has created us with free will, so we have the freedom to choose faith or to choose unbelief. From this perspective, the burden of action is entirely ours. God has already acted in history, through the resurrection of Jesus; now it is our choice whether we accept or reject that gift of life.
But as my faith developed, I began to question the notion that my faith was entirely my choice. Yes, I did choose to follow Jesus when I was a teenager and have continued to try to follow him, but why was I drawn to pursue a spiritual path at all? I no more chose my natural inclination toward thinking theologically than I chose my affinity for strawberries or for the color purple. Those things were planted in me from the beginning, it seems, part of my personality, something I did nothing to create.
So I began to think that perhaps the ability to have faith at all is a gift from God. One commentator on this passage from John points out that Jesus’s use of the birth metaphor points to the initiative in matters of faith coming from God rather than from us. Just as babies do not choose to be born, so we cannot choose to be “born again” [1] – such an experience is a gift from God that is bestowed on us. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Just as we cannot control the wind, we cannot control how God’s Spirit moves in our lives and in the lives of others.
Looking at it this way allows us to let go of feeling like the burden is all on us – to have faith and to lead others to have faith. A friend who was going through a difficult time once said to me that in her dark moments, she has to believe that God chooses her, rather than the other way around. “I CANNOT choose faith right now,” she said. “So I have to trust that God chooses me.” From that theological perspective, the burden of action is entirely God’s. If we have faith, it is only because God has created and planted that faith in us.
But that idea is not entirely satisfactory, either, for it runs the risk of falling into fatalism and making a mockery of human choice, making us into puppets stripped of any kind of real freedom.
And so, I’m coming to think that perhaps the truth is somewhere in between those two viewpoints. In true Episcopal fashion, I’m proposing a via media, a "middle way," which is that faith is neither entirely our choice nor entirely a gift from God, but some complicated combination of the two. The problem with the other two scenarios is that in both of them, there is only one active party in the equation: either faith is entirely up to us, or faith is entirely up to God. But faith in God is a relationship, and a relationship requires action by both parties. For a life of faith to flourish, both we and God need to act. The key is remembering that we control only our side of the relationship.
We can smile and act friendly toward someone, but that does not guarantee that that person will become our friend. We cannot control how the other person will respond to us. The same is true in our relationship with God. We can pray and come to Eucharist and say all the right words and do all the right things, but that does not guarantee that in our heart of hearts, we will truly believe and feel close to God. We still have to wait for God to show up, for God to act on God’s side of the relationship. Despite what our liturgies sometimes lead us to believe, we cannot make God show up by saying certain magic words or making certain gestures with our hands. God is not a robot or a vending machine. We cannot force God’s action in our lives, any more than we can force ourselves to have faith.
So perhaps what we are called to do during Lent is not to deepen our faith, but to deepen our spiritual practice. What we can control is our actions and choices on our side of the relationship. We can choose to show up wherever it is that we feel most likely to encounter God – in the church, out in nature, in the midst of our family and friends – and wait. This might mean we spend more time in silence, more time listening rather than speaking in our prayer life. But whatever the practices that work best for us, we can do them with a posture of openness – perhaps literally, praying with open hands, open palms, or metaphorically, opening our hearts – so that we become more receptive to God’s presence and action within and around us, so that we are primed and prepped to notice when God does choose to show up.
This is what spiritual practice is all about – it is quite literally a practice to prepare ourselves to be ready for those moments when we receive a vision, or a strong inner sense of God’s call, or a deep abiding sense of God’s love and comfort – all of which are pure gifts of grace. We cannot make those experiences happen, but we can keep the lines of communication open. And that’s all we are asked to do on the spiritual path – to show up, to be open – and to leave the rest to God.
----
[1] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer (www.sermonwriter.com).
Sunday, December 29, 2013
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Sermon delivered Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013 (1 Christmas, Year A (John 1:1-18)), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
On this First Sunday After Christmas, we hear a very different version of the Christmas story than the one we heard on Christmas Eve. Rather than shepherds and angels and a family sent to the stable because there was no room for them at the inn, we hear John’s version of “the beginning” of Jesus’s story, a beginning that began not in Bethlehem, but at the beginning of time, before the creation of the world. John’s account is a cosmic creation story, a magnificent theological poem about the very essence of the Divine breaking into the depths of our world: “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
And in this artistic proclamation of the origins of the Christ, the author of John’s Gospel gives us what I believe to be one of the most powerful summaries of the Christian message in all of Scripture:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
In that one sentence lies the heart of the Gospel: the power of light over darkness, of love over hate, of life over death. Jesus’s Resurrection is the ultimate expression of this truth. Death itself could not extinguish the light that came into the world with the birth of Christ, and it continues to shine through all the ages, despite countless attempts and threats to extinguish it.
This is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News that we proclaim as Christians: that nothing will be able to extinguish the light of God that shines in all creation. The Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). This is the message we are called as Christians to proclaim to a broken and hurting world: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And we are called to proclaim this message precisely during those times when we cannot see the light, when all seems to be darkness, when the world around us tells us there is no joy, no hope, and no love.
Many of us know that Christmastime can bring with it both great joy and great sadness. There’s something about this time of year that has a way of bringing up old memories, of reminding us of Christmases past that were happier or more joyful than this year, of making us acutely aware of the absence of those departed family members whose presence was so much a part of what Christmas meant to us in the past. This is why we gathered the week before Christmas for our first “Blue Christmas” service here at St. Paul’s, to acknowledge and sit with those less-than-merry feelings as Christmas grew nearer.
But now Christmas is here, and sometimes the “blue” feelings show up even more poignantly after the pomp and circumstance of Christmas Eve is over, after all the presents are opened, the family from out of town has left, and all the merriment is over. Although Christmas lasts for 12 days, our culture is done with it the day after December 25th. The trees and lights start to come down on December 26th, and the working world immediately goes back to “business as usual.” This sudden removal of all festivity can sometimes feel like a bit of a “let down” after the “high” of Christmas Day. The Sunday after Christmas and the Sunday after Easter are known amongst church leadership as “low” Sundays, and although we’re usually talking about attendance numbers, we could also as easily be talking about spirits. There is a natural human tendency to feel a bit low after a great high. But the celebration of the church goes on, even when it doesn’t match up with the culture around us. It is still Christmas, and we continue to celebrate the birth of Christ.
It is particularly appropriate during this post-Christmas Day “low” that we hear and affirm that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Because this reminds us of something that is absolutely essential to the Christian life – that we continue to proclaim the truth of the Gospel not only when we feel happy and joyful and confident in the ability of light to overcome darkness, but even during the times when we most doubt it, when we are consumed by fear, sadness, and despair.
The only time we let the light go out in our churches is on Good Friday – in a symbolic recreation of the darkness of the crucifixion, when the disciples thought the light really had gone out, when that light of the world that John’s Gospel speaks of was, for a time, absent. But the light did come back – it burst forth from the tomb in the body of the Resurrected Christ and set ablaze the light that the church has carried ever since, through times of deepest darkness. In the Church, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Except for the one liturgical exception of Good Friday, no matter what else is going on in the world around us, we come to church to see the light. Our calling as Christians is to carry that light even when the darkness creeps in around us and we are certain it will extinguish the light.
This is a difficult task, to be sure, and I dare say it would be impossible for any one person to do. But the good news is that none of us is called to carry the light of Christ alone. We are part of a community of faith, the Church, which is the very Body of Christ, which will go on proclaiming the good news of the Gospel even when we as individuals are not able to proclaim it ourselves. When we fall into despair and find ourselves quite literally unable to say the words of faith, when we have no will power to pray, and when we can affirm nothing but the existence of the darkness around us, the corporate prayer of the Church goes on in endless praise of the One who is the Light even in the midst of the darkness.
When we cannot see the light ourselves, we come to church to allow others to hold it up for us. When we cannot find the words to pray, we allow the community to pray for us until we are able to join in again. We are able to carry the light of Christ through the darkness only to the degree that we are willing to carry one another through the difficult times.
And, thanks be to God, the truth of the Gospel does not depend on our emotional state of being. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” whether or not we believe that is true, whether or not our hearts are in it when we say that statement. Trusting in the truth of the Gospel, a truth that comes from outside ourselves, we can continue to say it, even when the world around us screams that the light has gone out. We light the Advent candles of hope, peace, joy, and love even when the world says there is no hope, peace, joy, and love. We sing songs of praise even in the midst of great loss. We do so because we are an Easter people. We do so because at the center of our faith lies the proclamation of a Truth that is greater than the truth of this world: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
On this First Sunday After Christmas, we hear a very different version of the Christmas story than the one we heard on Christmas Eve. Rather than shepherds and angels and a family sent to the stable because there was no room for them at the inn, we hear John’s version of “the beginning” of Jesus’s story, a beginning that began not in Bethlehem, but at the beginning of time, before the creation of the world. John’s account is a cosmic creation story, a magnificent theological poem about the very essence of the Divine breaking into the depths of our world: “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
And in this artistic proclamation of the origins of the Christ, the author of John’s Gospel gives us what I believe to be one of the most powerful summaries of the Christian message in all of Scripture:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
In that one sentence lies the heart of the Gospel: the power of light over darkness, of love over hate, of life over death. Jesus’s Resurrection is the ultimate expression of this truth. Death itself could not extinguish the light that came into the world with the birth of Christ, and it continues to shine through all the ages, despite countless attempts and threats to extinguish it.
This is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News that we proclaim as Christians: that nothing will be able to extinguish the light of God that shines in all creation. The Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). This is the message we are called as Christians to proclaim to a broken and hurting world: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And we are called to proclaim this message precisely during those times when we cannot see the light, when all seems to be darkness, when the world around us tells us there is no joy, no hope, and no love.
Many of us know that Christmastime can bring with it both great joy and great sadness. There’s something about this time of year that has a way of bringing up old memories, of reminding us of Christmases past that were happier or more joyful than this year, of making us acutely aware of the absence of those departed family members whose presence was so much a part of what Christmas meant to us in the past. This is why we gathered the week before Christmas for our first “Blue Christmas” service here at St. Paul’s, to acknowledge and sit with those less-than-merry feelings as Christmas grew nearer.
But now Christmas is here, and sometimes the “blue” feelings show up even more poignantly after the pomp and circumstance of Christmas Eve is over, after all the presents are opened, the family from out of town has left, and all the merriment is over. Although Christmas lasts for 12 days, our culture is done with it the day after December 25th. The trees and lights start to come down on December 26th, and the working world immediately goes back to “business as usual.” This sudden removal of all festivity can sometimes feel like a bit of a “let down” after the “high” of Christmas Day. The Sunday after Christmas and the Sunday after Easter are known amongst church leadership as “low” Sundays, and although we’re usually talking about attendance numbers, we could also as easily be talking about spirits. There is a natural human tendency to feel a bit low after a great high. But the celebration of the church goes on, even when it doesn’t match up with the culture around us. It is still Christmas, and we continue to celebrate the birth of Christ.
It is particularly appropriate during this post-Christmas Day “low” that we hear and affirm that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Because this reminds us of something that is absolutely essential to the Christian life – that we continue to proclaim the truth of the Gospel not only when we feel happy and joyful and confident in the ability of light to overcome darkness, but even during the times when we most doubt it, when we are consumed by fear, sadness, and despair.
The only time we let the light go out in our churches is on Good Friday – in a symbolic recreation of the darkness of the crucifixion, when the disciples thought the light really had gone out, when that light of the world that John’s Gospel speaks of was, for a time, absent. But the light did come back – it burst forth from the tomb in the body of the Resurrected Christ and set ablaze the light that the church has carried ever since, through times of deepest darkness. In the Church, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Except for the one liturgical exception of Good Friday, no matter what else is going on in the world around us, we come to church to see the light. Our calling as Christians is to carry that light even when the darkness creeps in around us and we are certain it will extinguish the light.
This is a difficult task, to be sure, and I dare say it would be impossible for any one person to do. But the good news is that none of us is called to carry the light of Christ alone. We are part of a community of faith, the Church, which is the very Body of Christ, which will go on proclaiming the good news of the Gospel even when we as individuals are not able to proclaim it ourselves. When we fall into despair and find ourselves quite literally unable to say the words of faith, when we have no will power to pray, and when we can affirm nothing but the existence of the darkness around us, the corporate prayer of the Church goes on in endless praise of the One who is the Light even in the midst of the darkness.
When we cannot see the light ourselves, we come to church to allow others to hold it up for us. When we cannot find the words to pray, we allow the community to pray for us until we are able to join in again. We are able to carry the light of Christ through the darkness only to the degree that we are willing to carry one another through the difficult times.
And, thanks be to God, the truth of the Gospel does not depend on our emotional state of being. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” whether or not we believe that is true, whether or not our hearts are in it when we say that statement. Trusting in the truth of the Gospel, a truth that comes from outside ourselves, we can continue to say it, even when the world around us screams that the light has gone out. We light the Advent candles of hope, peace, joy, and love even when the world says there is no hope, peace, joy, and love. We sing songs of praise even in the midst of great loss. We do so because we are an Easter people. We do so because at the center of our faith lies the proclamation of a Truth that is greater than the truth of this world: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Anyway
Sermon preached at the Thursday evening community Eucharist at the School of Theology at Sewanee. Text: Jeremiah 7:23-28
"So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." (Jeremiah 7:27)
Does this sound like a job you'd be willing to sign up for? God tells Jeremiah to proclaim his words to the people of Israel, but tells him ahead of time that the people aren't going to listen to him. Apparently God didn't get the memo about effective ways to motivate your employees. Imagine what a business meeting would be like if the president of a company took this approach: "Well, we've done the research, and all indicators say that the market is going to reject our product," she'd say to her employees. "We basically have a zero chance of making a profit. Now, your job is to devote your life to producing this product."
People aren't usually too willing to go along with a plan they know is going to fail. We might try something that seems unlikely to succeed simply because we never know what the results will be; since we're not omniscient, there is always a chance the statistics and projections are wrong. But coming from God, there is no uncertainty in the claim: "I'm telling you up front, Jeremiah -- these people aren't going to listen to you." Gee thanks, God. I bet Jeremiah could have done without some of that omniscience there.
So what's the point? Why does God call Jeremiah to speak words of warning to the people and call them to repentance if he knows they're not going to listen anyway? Or, to make it a bit more personal, why are we called to proclaim the Gospel when we know many will reject it?
I think the simple answer is, we do it because it's who we are. We do it because we can't not do it. We do it because God calls us to do it.
Working for the kingdom of God is not always a results-oriented kind of endeavor, as much as we would like for it to be. We speak of "sowing seeds" that we may never see sprout as a metaphor that helps us make our peace with the fact that we may not see any visible results or effects of our ministry in the world around us. We "keep on keepin' on," because we believe in faith that those seeds will someday sprout, even if it's not for many, many years… maybe not even until Jesus comes back.
But sometimes, we can feel a little like Jeremiah must have felt when given the instructions he was given in today's reading: like we've been given an impossible task that we know is going to fail, that no matter what we say and how much we say it, the people will just not hear.
Some of us may have felt that way when the Sewanee Chautauquans blog surfaced last spring, with all of its anti-black and anti-gay rhetoric. People who work with those living in poverty and homelessness may feel that way when the same people never quite seem to be able to get their lives together, or when people with whom they've developed long-term relationships betray them. My friends in the interfaith movement and I felt that way when we saw the video released last month of a protest outside a Muslim charity fundraiser event in California, where violently angry women and men shouted insults at the Muslim men, women, and children who arrived for the fundraising dinner.
In situations like these, we may find ourselves asking, "What's the point?" Why am I giving my life to anti-racism training when there continue to be hate crime shootings every year in my neighborhood? Why am I feeding these people when they're only taking advantage of the system? Why have I spent the past ten years in interfaith education and advocacy only to watch a crowd of people waving American flags yelling, "Go home! We don't want you here, you terrorists!" to Muslim children under the age of of ten, whose only existence in this world has been in the context of post-9/11 fear of Muslims?
Perhaps at times like these we can remember the prophet Jeremiah. "So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." And yet, you are still to speak -- to speak the words of faith and love. You are still to call -- to call the people to repentance and reconciliation with their neighbor -- even when you know they will not listen. You do this for the same reason that a mother would throw herself in front of a train to try to protect her child, even if she knew that that action would kill them both. You do it because it's who you are. You do it because you can't not do it. You do it because God calls you to do it, regardless of the results.
There's a famous set of "paradoxical commandments," often attributed to Mother Teresa, but actually written by Kent Keith, a speaker and advocate of servant leadership, that I think say it best. Keith wrote them while a sophomore in college, and they advocate a stubborn faithfulness to love against all odds that I, for one, think is what the church should be all about. Here are a few of them:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
I return to these "paradoxical commandments" whenever I feel discouraged about the seeming impossibility of the tasks to which God calls me. Yes, people may continue to be hurtful and angry and bitter and use one another and kill one another -- and they may do those things in the name of God. But we are to continue to preach peace and to speak truth to power and to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God -- anyway.
After all, God loved us "anyway" -- despite our shortcomings, despite our sinfulness, despite our rebellion against the love of God. Contemporary Christian artist Nichole Nordeman captures this in her song, aptly titled "Anyway," in which she compares the Christian life to the process of restoring an old painting:
A gallery of paintings new and paintings old
I guess it's no surprise that I'm no Michaelangelo...
But you called me beautiful
When you saw my shame
And you placed me on the wall
Anyway
"So you shall speak the words of God to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." Speak anyway.
"So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." (Jeremiah 7:27)
Does this sound like a job you'd be willing to sign up for? God tells Jeremiah to proclaim his words to the people of Israel, but tells him ahead of time that the people aren't going to listen to him. Apparently God didn't get the memo about effective ways to motivate your employees. Imagine what a business meeting would be like if the president of a company took this approach: "Well, we've done the research, and all indicators say that the market is going to reject our product," she'd say to her employees. "We basically have a zero chance of making a profit. Now, your job is to devote your life to producing this product."
People aren't usually too willing to go along with a plan they know is going to fail. We might try something that seems unlikely to succeed simply because we never know what the results will be; since we're not omniscient, there is always a chance the statistics and projections are wrong. But coming from God, there is no uncertainty in the claim: "I'm telling you up front, Jeremiah -- these people aren't going to listen to you." Gee thanks, God. I bet Jeremiah could have done without some of that omniscience there.
So what's the point? Why does God call Jeremiah to speak words of warning to the people and call them to repentance if he knows they're not going to listen anyway? Or, to make it a bit more personal, why are we called to proclaim the Gospel when we know many will reject it?
I think the simple answer is, we do it because it's who we are. We do it because we can't not do it. We do it because God calls us to do it.
Working for the kingdom of God is not always a results-oriented kind of endeavor, as much as we would like for it to be. We speak of "sowing seeds" that we may never see sprout as a metaphor that helps us make our peace with the fact that we may not see any visible results or effects of our ministry in the world around us. We "keep on keepin' on," because we believe in faith that those seeds will someday sprout, even if it's not for many, many years… maybe not even until Jesus comes back.
But sometimes, we can feel a little like Jeremiah must have felt when given the instructions he was given in today's reading: like we've been given an impossible task that we know is going to fail, that no matter what we say and how much we say it, the people will just not hear.
Some of us may have felt that way when the Sewanee Chautauquans blog surfaced last spring, with all of its anti-black and anti-gay rhetoric. People who work with those living in poverty and homelessness may feel that way when the same people never quite seem to be able to get their lives together, or when people with whom they've developed long-term relationships betray them. My friends in the interfaith movement and I felt that way when we saw the video released last month of a protest outside a Muslim charity fundraiser event in California, where violently angry women and men shouted insults at the Muslim men, women, and children who arrived for the fundraising dinner.
In situations like these, we may find ourselves asking, "What's the point?" Why am I giving my life to anti-racism training when there continue to be hate crime shootings every year in my neighborhood? Why am I feeding these people when they're only taking advantage of the system? Why have I spent the past ten years in interfaith education and advocacy only to watch a crowd of people waving American flags yelling, "Go home! We don't want you here, you terrorists!" to Muslim children under the age of of ten, whose only existence in this world has been in the context of post-9/11 fear of Muslims?
Perhaps at times like these we can remember the prophet Jeremiah. "So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." And yet, you are still to speak -- to speak the words of faith and love. You are still to call -- to call the people to repentance and reconciliation with their neighbor -- even when you know they will not listen. You do this for the same reason that a mother would throw herself in front of a train to try to protect her child, even if she knew that that action would kill them both. You do it because it's who you are. You do it because you can't not do it. You do it because God calls you to do it, regardless of the results.
There's a famous set of "paradoxical commandments," often attributed to Mother Teresa, but actually written by Kent Keith, a speaker and advocate of servant leadership, that I think say it best. Keith wrote them while a sophomore in college, and they advocate a stubborn faithfulness to love against all odds that I, for one, think is what the church should be all about. Here are a few of them:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
I return to these "paradoxical commandments" whenever I feel discouraged about the seeming impossibility of the tasks to which God calls me. Yes, people may continue to be hurtful and angry and bitter and use one another and kill one another -- and they may do those things in the name of God. But we are to continue to preach peace and to speak truth to power and to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God -- anyway.
After all, God loved us "anyway" -- despite our shortcomings, despite our sinfulness, despite our rebellion against the love of God. Contemporary Christian artist Nichole Nordeman captures this in her song, aptly titled "Anyway," in which she compares the Christian life to the process of restoring an old painting:
A gallery of paintings new and paintings old
I guess it's no surprise that I'm no Michaelangelo...
But you called me beautiful
When you saw my shame
And you placed me on the wall
Anyway
"So you shall speak the words of God to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." Speak anyway.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Sermon - Second Sunday of Easter, Year A
Sermon delivered at Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, Ga., where I serve as communications coordinator.
Just a week ago, this place was filled with shouts of "alleluia," with ringing bells, and even a cymbal crash or two, proclaiming joyfully and confidently the Resurrection of Jesus. I enjoyed attending the Easter Vigil with you all on Saturday night, where we celebrated the new life of baptism. And on Sunday morning, Fr. Deneke invited you all to reflect on the ways in which, like Mary Magdelene on Easter morning, "we have seen the Lord" in this place.
But this week, the glow is off the Easter lilies.
This week, we meet Thomas. Thomas, who says not "I have seen the Lord," but "yeah, riiiiiiight."
It is significant that the "Doubting Thomas" passage always falls on the Second Sunday of Easter, no matter which of the three lectionary years we are in. The week after Easter, we are always confronted with doubt.
Doubt can be a touchy subject among people of faith. Somewhere along the line, we have been told that doubt is the opposite of faith, and so we get a little nervous, even threatened, when it rears its stubborn head. It seems to beg a response; we think we must say something about it, do something about it, explain it in some way. We see this impulse in the usual responses to the story of Thomas.
In general, it seems people want to read the story of Thomas as a commentary on the inherent value of doubt. Thomas is either vilified for having doubts or praised for being a "thinking Christian." Those who see Thomas's doubts as an indication of his weak faith point to Jesus's words to Thomas - "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." - while those who see Thomas's doubts in a positive light wax philosophic about how the fact that one of the disciples – a disciple who church tradition holds goes on to spread Christianity as far as India, by the way - the fact that even THIS disciple doubts the Resurrection surely means that we, with our sometimes shaky and doubtful faith, can accomplish such great things ourselves. If I had to choose, I tend to fall in the latter category, but really, I think both of these attempts to evaluate the worth of doubt really miss the point.
The fact of the matter is, doubt is neither an indication of a weak faith nor an indication of a strong faith; doubt simply IS. Doubt is a fundamental part of the human experience. The question is not whether we SHOULD have doubts - it is inevitable that we will - but in how we should respond. And in this sense the Thomas story can prove useful, for it provides a model for how to live with doubt in a community of faith.
Let's look again, closely, at the actions of this "Doubting Thomas." The other disciples tell him that Jesus has been raised from the dead, which strikes him as preposterous. "Yeah, right," he says. "Unless I see it for myself, I will not believe it." And here is the first lesson that Thomas has for us: Thomas is HONEST. He is up-front and open about his doubts. He does not go along with the crowd, does not say what he or others feel he SHOULD say. He is HONEST about where he is -- in a place of extreme skepticism about this whole Resurrection story.
The second thing Thomas does is choose to return to the community of the faithful, even with his doubts. He shows up. Somehow in all my readings of this story, I have always missed the fact that Jesus's appearance to Thomas actually comes a week after the disciples first tell Thomas of their encounters with the risen Lord. Thomas had a week's time to chew on this crazy news, to decide whether he was going to return to the next gathering of the disciples or jump ship from this bunch of loonies he had somehow gotten tangled up with. And he chooses to return. And because he chooses to return, because he chooses to show up, he is present the next time Jesus appears to the disciples -- he doesn't miss it this time.
We are not so far from Thomas, you and I. At least I know I'm not. Thomas's story, his rational skepticism and stubborn-headedness, are all too familiar to me. How many times have we echoed the words of Thomas in our own lives: "Unless I see it for myself, I will not believe"? A new acquaintance must prove their trustworthiness before we will open up to them. We must scrutinize a politician's voting patterns before we decide whether or not we will support her. We are sure that a family member who has fallen back on his word numerous times will continue to do so. In all these things, we say, "Unless I see it for myself, I will not believe it." Mere words, without an experience to back them up, ring hollow for most people. We demand to confirm with our own senses what others tell us to be true.
And herein lies the difficulty for those of us who struggle to be people of faith: We cannot FORCE the experience. We cannot MAKE ourselves believe any more than we can MAKE another person trust or love us. We cannot, out of sheer willpower, conjure up a vision of the risen Lord will dispel all doubts we might have about the veracity of the Christian story. Faith is not an intellectual proposition, a matter of agreement or disagreement over which we make the ultimate decision, but a relationship with that very living Force of Life that we call God. We are not the only ones in the equation when we talk about faith – faith is a two-way relationship that relies on the active participation of both parties. We have control over our actions, but we are at the mercy of God to grant us moments of insight, to grant us experiences of faith that reveal God's presence to us over time.
So what CAN we do, on our end of the relationship? Perhaps we can take a lesson from Thomas: to be honest about where we are, and to show up. To show up, even when we're not so sure about this whole faith thing. To show up, even when things don't seem to make sense. To show up, and in doing so, to open ourselves to the possibility of encounter with God.
In his skepticism, Thomas declares that if he can touch the body of Jesus, if he can touch his hands and his side, then he will believe - and when Jesus appears to him, he offers him the opportunity to do just that: "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." The blessing and grace of the Christian life is that Jesus extends that very same invitation to each one of us each time we gather together as the Christian community.
Every week that we enter this place, we have two very real and tangible ways available to us that we can touch the body of Christ.
The first is up front and center, at the climax of our liturgy: the celebration of the Eucharist. When you come forward to the altar, the ministers place into your hands "the body of Christ, the bread of heaven." If we are to take seriously our Eucharistic theology, we must affirm that Christ is really present to us in the breaking of the bread, that in touching the elements of communion, we are touching the body of Christ.
The second way we can touch the body of Christ is right next to you – and all around you – and within you. The apostle Paul writes beautifully in many of his letters about the Christian community as the living body of Christ, with the different people compared to different parts of the body, each having different skills and uses, but all coming together to form the whole. WE are the body of Christ! YOU are the body of Christ. Your neighbors in the pews are the body of Christ. In a few minutes, when we share the peace with one another, remember that for each person you reach out and touch, you are touching the very body of Christ.
And when you come forward for Communion each week, remember Jesus's words to Thomas, those words that he still speaks to you and to me: Reach out your hands and touch my body. Do not doubt but believe.
Amen.
Just a week ago, this place was filled with shouts of "alleluia," with ringing bells, and even a cymbal crash or two, proclaiming joyfully and confidently the Resurrection of Jesus. I enjoyed attending the Easter Vigil with you all on Saturday night, where we celebrated the new life of baptism. And on Sunday morning, Fr. Deneke invited you all to reflect on the ways in which, like Mary Magdelene on Easter morning, "we have seen the Lord" in this place.
But this week, the glow is off the Easter lilies.
This week, we meet Thomas. Thomas, who says not "I have seen the Lord," but "yeah, riiiiiiight."
It is significant that the "Doubting Thomas" passage always falls on the Second Sunday of Easter, no matter which of the three lectionary years we are in. The week after Easter, we are always confronted with doubt.
Doubt can be a touchy subject among people of faith. Somewhere along the line, we have been told that doubt is the opposite of faith, and so we get a little nervous, even threatened, when it rears its stubborn head. It seems to beg a response; we think we must say something about it, do something about it, explain it in some way. We see this impulse in the usual responses to the story of Thomas.
In general, it seems people want to read the story of Thomas as a commentary on the inherent value of doubt. Thomas is either vilified for having doubts or praised for being a "thinking Christian." Those who see Thomas's doubts as an indication of his weak faith point to Jesus's words to Thomas - "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." - while those who see Thomas's doubts in a positive light wax philosophic about how the fact that one of the disciples – a disciple who church tradition holds goes on to spread Christianity as far as India, by the way - the fact that even THIS disciple doubts the Resurrection surely means that we, with our sometimes shaky and doubtful faith, can accomplish such great things ourselves. If I had to choose, I tend to fall in the latter category, but really, I think both of these attempts to evaluate the worth of doubt really miss the point.
The fact of the matter is, doubt is neither an indication of a weak faith nor an indication of a strong faith; doubt simply IS. Doubt is a fundamental part of the human experience. The question is not whether we SHOULD have doubts - it is inevitable that we will - but in how we should respond. And in this sense the Thomas story can prove useful, for it provides a model for how to live with doubt in a community of faith.
Let's look again, closely, at the actions of this "Doubting Thomas." The other disciples tell him that Jesus has been raised from the dead, which strikes him as preposterous. "Yeah, right," he says. "Unless I see it for myself, I will not believe it." And here is the first lesson that Thomas has for us: Thomas is HONEST. He is up-front and open about his doubts. He does not go along with the crowd, does not say what he or others feel he SHOULD say. He is HONEST about where he is -- in a place of extreme skepticism about this whole Resurrection story.
The second thing Thomas does is choose to return to the community of the faithful, even with his doubts. He shows up. Somehow in all my readings of this story, I have always missed the fact that Jesus's appearance to Thomas actually comes a week after the disciples first tell Thomas of their encounters with the risen Lord. Thomas had a week's time to chew on this crazy news, to decide whether he was going to return to the next gathering of the disciples or jump ship from this bunch of loonies he had somehow gotten tangled up with. And he chooses to return. And because he chooses to return, because he chooses to show up, he is present the next time Jesus appears to the disciples -- he doesn't miss it this time.
We are not so far from Thomas, you and I. At least I know I'm not. Thomas's story, his rational skepticism and stubborn-headedness, are all too familiar to me. How many times have we echoed the words of Thomas in our own lives: "Unless I see it for myself, I will not believe"? A new acquaintance must prove their trustworthiness before we will open up to them. We must scrutinize a politician's voting patterns before we decide whether or not we will support her. We are sure that a family member who has fallen back on his word numerous times will continue to do so. In all these things, we say, "Unless I see it for myself, I will not believe it." Mere words, without an experience to back them up, ring hollow for most people. We demand to confirm with our own senses what others tell us to be true.
And herein lies the difficulty for those of us who struggle to be people of faith: We cannot FORCE the experience. We cannot MAKE ourselves believe any more than we can MAKE another person trust or love us. We cannot, out of sheer willpower, conjure up a vision of the risen Lord will dispel all doubts we might have about the veracity of the Christian story. Faith is not an intellectual proposition, a matter of agreement or disagreement over which we make the ultimate decision, but a relationship with that very living Force of Life that we call God. We are not the only ones in the equation when we talk about faith – faith is a two-way relationship that relies on the active participation of both parties. We have control over our actions, but we are at the mercy of God to grant us moments of insight, to grant us experiences of faith that reveal God's presence to us over time.
So what CAN we do, on our end of the relationship? Perhaps we can take a lesson from Thomas: to be honest about where we are, and to show up. To show up, even when we're not so sure about this whole faith thing. To show up, even when things don't seem to make sense. To show up, and in doing so, to open ourselves to the possibility of encounter with God.
In his skepticism, Thomas declares that if he can touch the body of Jesus, if he can touch his hands and his side, then he will believe - and when Jesus appears to him, he offers him the opportunity to do just that: "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." The blessing and grace of the Christian life is that Jesus extends that very same invitation to each one of us each time we gather together as the Christian community.
Every week that we enter this place, we have two very real and tangible ways available to us that we can touch the body of Christ.
The first is up front and center, at the climax of our liturgy: the celebration of the Eucharist. When you come forward to the altar, the ministers place into your hands "the body of Christ, the bread of heaven." If we are to take seriously our Eucharistic theology, we must affirm that Christ is really present to us in the breaking of the bread, that in touching the elements of communion, we are touching the body of Christ.
The second way we can touch the body of Christ is right next to you – and all around you – and within you. The apostle Paul writes beautifully in many of his letters about the Christian community as the living body of Christ, with the different people compared to different parts of the body, each having different skills and uses, but all coming together to form the whole. WE are the body of Christ! YOU are the body of Christ. Your neighbors in the pews are the body of Christ. In a few minutes, when we share the peace with one another, remember that for each person you reach out and touch, you are touching the very body of Christ.
And when you come forward for Communion each week, remember Jesus's words to Thomas, those words that he still speaks to you and to me: Reach out your hands and touch my body. Do not doubt but believe.
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)