15 April 2012 at Saint Mark the Evangelist in Norman, OK
Acts 4: 32-35 + Psalm 118 + 1 John 5: 1-6 + John 20: 19-31
We live in a world of smoke and mirrors. Magicians have fascinated and drawn crowds forever. It’s always about tricking the eye. In today’s world, with all our technology and digital skills, we can never be sure of what we see. I was reminded of this Friday night when standing there with a couple after their wedding. I pulled this micorphone off my ear and thought I had flipped it out of sight. Actually it just came to rest on my shoulder and someone reached up to finish the job when the photograpaher said: “Never mind, I can photo shop it away.” And of course she could. She could also photo shop me away! In this day of artificial sweetners, phaux finishes, cloning, and reproductions of just about anything; seeing is not at all close to believing.
This wonderful passage from John which the church proclaims every year on the Second Sunday in Easter draws us deeper into the wonder of the Resurrection and proposes that we might question what we see, and perhaps consider what others see when they are here.
The approach that Thomas brought to the Resurrection was and remains thoroughly modern. He was practical, pragmatic, experiential, and rational. While these qualities are in themselves admirable, they are not dependable when it comes to leading us to truth and to faith. There is nothing rational about God, about God’s love, or about God’s way of expressing love. There is nothing practical about dying on a cross, spending three days in a tomb, and coming out alive. Thomas wanted scientific evidence. There was none, and until he got over it, he couldn’t believe. The evidence of the resurrection was not to be found by handling or probing the wounds of a body.
The evidence was there in that upper room, but obviously it was a bit unconvincing. There is a suggestion here that those who had seen the Lord were still afraid. The doors were locked. They were not yet Spirit-filled enough to get out of that room with any courage or vision of what the Resurrection meant to them. So perhaps the faith of Thomas depends upon the witness of others, and that witness was not there. They were timid and afraid.
Had he seen a group of people who had been transformed from powerless, fearful, hopeless, filled with shame and guilt into believers who were clear-sighted, courageous and hope-filled; people who were forgiven and empowered to extend that forgiveness others, there would have been nothing to doubt.
Wonder for a moment what someone finds when they walk into this church. I think there is a Thomas here every time we open the doors. What does that person find in this assmbly? We have to get a grip on this Gospel and let John speak to us again. This is not a story about Thomas or doubt. It is about a group of people to whom God has entrusted a message and a mission. How anyone will ever believe in it depends upon how we behave more than on what we say. Reducing Faith and Religion to a bunch or rules and obligations is not inviting or convincing. Using the rules and obligations to shape, form, discipline, and identify who we are is a different thing. We do not impose those on others, we invite them to find in the obligation to love and forgive the experience of resurrection. We invite them to find in fulfilling our obligations, an experience of joy and discovery that comes from unity, peace, and patient, tollerant acceptance.
There is one more thing about Thomas found in this story worth pondering. He was absent. He left the company of the apostles. He left the other struggling believers. He sought loneliness rather than togetherness. He went off on his own with his difficulties, whatever they were, and this moved him further from Christ. Thomas tried to become a Christian “Lone-Ranger” trying to live faith on his own. It did not lead him to the truth and to the risen Christ. I like to believe that the others went after him, supporting and encouraging, inviting, and maybe even pleading. They stayed with it and “I will not believe” went to “I will believe if….” and then “I will believe if….”became: “My Lord and My God.”
It is important that we stay with the weak in faith in order to help them stay connected. It is important that they stay connected with the family of faith, the community of believers, with the parish. The Lone-Ranger Christian is at risk in any generation and especially in our own as we move from centuries of faith to uncertain secularism. In the Epistle “Hebrews” (10:25) the writer says: “We should not stay away from our assembly as is the custom of some.” To do so weakens faith and continues to make our witness to the resurrection less than believable. As I have said again and again: If we truly believed and lived all that we say and do here, no one would doubt the resurrection; and we will have become credible undeniable witnesses to the resurrection by our own coming to life and resurrection from all the tombs in which we hide and lay buried like the dead.