THOMAS, YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN A BAD RAP
Sermon given by The Rev. Earl William Greene, Jr., based on
John 20:19-31
Some of you have seen this birthday card sent by a friend back in 1971. There have been a lot of cards through the years, but this one "takes the birthday cake" (so to speak). On the outside is a picture of a ship named "Lady Luck," and the words: "Someday your ship will come in." Opening the card the words say, "but with your luck you'll probably be at the airport!" Thomas' ship came in. Easter came and went and Thomas was somewhere else. We don't know where he was, but he wasn't around when Jesus made his appearance to the disciples that Easter night.
The next time he saw the disciples he heard the whole story. "Thomas, you should've been here! Jesus came right to this room. He's not dead at all, Thomas. We understand now what Jesus was trying to tell us all along. He did rise again! The resurrection came to us, Thomas."
"I don't believe you," said Thomas. "Oh, I miss Jesus just as much as the rest of you. I can't blame you for wanting to bring Jesus back again. Unless I see what you saw - I'll not be convinced."
It seems to me that the Church through the centuries may have given Thomas a "bad rap." I must have heard a dozen sermons "bash" Thomas for his doubts. (and it follows that such sermons also "bash" any of us who have our own doubts, scolding us for not having enough faith!)
We forget that none of the disciples believed that Jesus was alive either at first. The women that very Easter morning, came back from the empty tomb, saying "He's alive!"
Now, not only is the idea of resurrection from the dead a hard one to grasp, but we must remember that in that culture women didn't have much credibility to begin with. I can just see the disciples, looking around at each other with raised eye-brow when the women told them this one! The disciples may have said something like - "what a story! You can't trust emotional women to get anything straight!"
All of them had been "doubting Thomases." Despite the fact that Jesus told them everything that was going to happen - ahead of time - it wasn't until the spirit of the risen Jesus came to them personally that they could understand any of it!
Now, that shouldn't surprise any of us. We aren't apt to believe that God is still doing "resurrection things" until something very unexpected happens in our lives, something beyond anything we've ever known before, an amazing coincidence, an epiphany, an answer to prayer. Something strong enough has to get our attention, and out of that experience we discover the enormous truth for ourselves, that God's "life forces" not only happen in the Bible, but can happen in our lives as well. And because something "highly irregular" has come to us we find that we too are able to break out of our own cocoons, and spread our wings, and soar to even better life than we've known before.
Is this idea too far-fetched? - that new life can come to us, that we can have another chance, that God can touch our lives and set us in a whole new direction? For some, the whole idea of resurrection is indeed far-fetched. It's something that the "scientific method" can't explain by it's own method so it's unbelievable.
But there are lots of things - unexplained circumstances, "happenchances," epiphanies, strange coincidences which come to all of us, defying all logic. Some are explainable - sort-of, and - others, in defense of St. Thomas stretch our imagining so far that we require proof before we can believe. And what proof is there? Only that we know it happened. No one else needs to agree with us. But we know!
Resurrection isn't so very far away. We see it every spring when new life bursts forth in blossoms. We see it everywhere - in the universe - where not everything is as unchanging as we once thought it was. The laws of physics are continually challenged by new variations, by exceptions to the rule, and by evolution and change. Everything is changing! If we're alert to it we can see resurrection in the lives of people who, when pressed to the wall of life, against all logical odds somehow still find the courage to be resurrected in their actions and in their thinking. Miracles do happen in individual lives and in the life of the world.
But back to Thomas. Thomas, you've gotten a bad rap. The Church hasn't had much tolerance for questions, or for doubts through the years. We've tried to organize everyone's faith in God into creeds and dogmas, so we have the whole truth in our hands - where we can control it. And, wouldn't you know! God breaks through like a sudden wind and changes everything, breathing new life into a stuffy room with locked doors.
It's not disloyal to God or to the Church to say, "I've got questions! Just a week or so ago one of us who is going through a great loss said to me, "I just don't feel God near - in any of this." My response was, "I'm not at all surprised Faith does come and go, but I'm convinced that God will find you again. You're not lost, you've not been abandoned. Something will happen and you'll discover that God has been there for you all along. Don't be too hard on yourself about your faith right now. What you feel now is natural. Your book of faith is still being written."
As your pastor, I encourage you do to what Frank and I do all the time: raise the questions, challenge the suppositions, ask for more information, test the truth. But do it within the context of the covenant community here. Don't keep the doubts to yourself, for fear of offending someone. No one here is going to be shocked. Ask others to think about it with you. Listen to what others here have discovered. Don't go away , don't give up on the journey just because the questions and answers are hard ones. And don't assume that there's a "quick fix" somewhere else. Don't put yourself down because your questions seem disloyal. Trust that the spiritual journey you are on is a process of many epiphanies and resurrections, and that a pattern will emerge which speaks to your doubts and puts them in a broader perspective of your own spirituality. It is a growing thing. Growing things often emerge out of struggle and patience.
Having questions and doubts are no insult to God! Instead, questions and doubts constitute engagement in truth. And the truth will make us free: as our personal stories are shared here "in covenant community." We will find some of the answers, or we'll find a path, an approach, a way of thinking, and in that process we'll discover God in our lives for ourselves, and experience what "resurrection" and new life is all about.
It seems to me that that's exactly what our church's fourth core value means when we say, "we engage together in spiritual journeys, pilgrimages, and processes."
But too often churches are guilty of saying, "believe blindly," don't ask embarrassing questions, don't challenge authority, don't be a "doubting Thomas. Just have faith." That, to me sounds like a "put down."
Now, let's not miss a very important point. Thomas stayed "in covenant community" with his friends in the faith. He didn't "bail out." He listened. He asked hard questions. And eight days later he was there - "in covenant community," and Jesus was there saying, "Thomas, now let me give you the proof you need - see my hands, see my side!" And the "mystery of the resurrection" became a part of Thomas' own life experience.
Sometimes we are Thomas. Thomas, you are the one in this very church today who is searching, struggling to find God for the first time, or having lost God are trying to find God again for the umpteenth time. And the "see-saw" of it all is exhausting.
Thomas, you are the teenager who looks around at your parents and other adults in church, and see people who say they believe, yet don't practice what they say. And it makes you wonder!
Thomas, you're the one who looks for some evidence that people in the church are truly willing to make some significant sacrifice for their faith, yet when you look around you find barely a scratch on the palms of their hands, and you are skeptical.
Thomas, you're the one who can't make any sense out of why the innocent in life suffer, why there are children in the world who are hungry, why too many women are abused, why good people die in so-called "acts of God."
Sometimes, Thomas, the more orthodox followers of Jesus don't know what to do with you. Coax you? trick you into believing? shame you into faith? debate, argue, threaten you with hell?
No, that isn't the answer, for at times we all know that Thomas is our name, too. And the questions are hard ones, and hard answers come in God's time, not always in ours.
Thomas, do "stick around" "in covenant community," for like Thomas of olden
times, God will come and give you the proof that you need. You won't be scolded,
and you'll sure want to be here when it happens.