4-23-2006

4-23-2006

John 20:19-29

Sermon

Doubting and Believing

    But again, that's something we do.  Jesus did not label him, Jesus labeled the behavior.  What we really know about Thomas though is not any character trait except for courage, because some of the things he said are things only a very brave disciple would say.  All we know for certain about that night is that ten disciples were there; Judas being dead, the twelve disciples had diminished to eleven and ten of them were there, and Thomas was not.  That's all we know.  The others were present, Thomas was absent.  And that absence might be because Thomas was disappointed about the crucifixion and had despaired and left the disciples.  That's possible.  But it could also be that it was just his turn to buy the bread and milk, and he was out doing an errand.  We don't know that from the scripture.  We're not warranted then in thinking that Thomas was an heroic doubter or an unusual doubter, just that he was not present when Jesus came into the midst of the disciples on Easter night. 

    And that's how it happened, in their midst there he suddenly was.   The doors were locked, but there he was.  And he said to them Peace be with you; and showed them his wounded hands and feet.  And the disciples were overcome with joy when they recognized the Lord.  We don't know how long this process took; we don't know much about the dynamics of the process, but we know that these things happened in sequence.  Jesus was there, Jesus showed them the wounds, the disciples rejoiced.  The relationship was reestablished after Jesus had died.  Now they knew for sure that those messages they heard about the empty tomb were something good.   They didn't know that before this moment; but now, in this moment they saw the Lord and they realized he was alive. 

    And then, Jesus proceeds to start working with the ten disciples.   Again he gives them his peace and then he sends them; he says:  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.  This suggests to me that Jesus is giving the disciples a very high mission, a very important purpose in the kingdom of God. In God's own way of saving the world, he begins by sending his son, he begins by sending the Eternal Son.  So that Jesus comes into our world, he comes into our midst to bring his ministry of reconciliation to God.  And he accomplishes that ministry in his highest moment, in the crucifixion.  And that ministry is brought home with power in it's highest moment in his resurrection.  Jesus was sent by God to do these things, and so Jesus said: I send you.  They disciples are given a rare privilege, they are to carry forward what God had given Jesus to do in the world; now the disciples would do the very same thing. 

    And then Jesus breathes on them, and instructs them to receive the Holy Spirit.  And then he gives them a ministry of forgiveness; and a ministry of knowing the right ways in which sins are forgiven, which persons are ready to be forgiven of their sins.  Again a very heady responsibility, a very divine office, is being given to the disciples; and all because they were there that night.  Thomas comes in later; and the disciples immediately start telling him about all the things that have happened: We've seen the Lord!  But Thomas is not ready to accept any of it, because he wasn't there.  Thomas laid down a condition: Okay, I'll go along with you, I'll believe you, if I can see the mark of the nail, and I can put my finger in that mark so that I know it's not some sort of apparition, some trick somebody's playing on us.  And if I can put my hand in that wound in his side, then I will believe.  But unless I can see these things, unless I can place my hand here, place my finger there I will not believe.  

    So, that's where Thomas stands.  The ten disciples are commissioned and empowered and ready to do the work of God; Thomas is holding apart from that because he wasn't there on that night.  But then, a week later, Thomas is there; and again the doors are locked, and again Jesus stands in their midst, and again Jesus says: Peace be with you.  And then Jesus addresses himself directly to Thomas: Look at my hand, see the mark of the nail, place your finger in my side, stop doubting, and believe. Thomas said: My Lord and my God.

    The question this Bible passage doesn't actually answers is: Did Thomas feel the marks? Did Thomas actually place his finger in the hand and his hand in the side?   Or did he express his belief without doing those things?  We know that Jesus invited him to touch; we don't know whether Thomas did.  One of my preaching professors at seminary said: when you're preaching about a Biblical story, a narrative part of the Bible, you should always try to imagine how you would make this into a movie; what a movie director would do with this scene, how he would depict these events taking place.  And I thought about that question with relation to this issue of whether or not Thomas actually did feel the wounds of Jesus.  And I decided that a movie director would have him doing that; but probably Thomas would be doing that simultaneously with Jesus telling him to.  But that doesn't necessarily answer the question, because movie directors generally look for an action that can take place while a line is being spoken or while other things are transpiring because that makes the narrative telling the story more effective.  So the movie director "rule of thumb" doesn't give us a definite answer, but it can give us a picture, I think, of Thomas being overwhelmed by Jesus' presence and feeling the hand and the side and gazing upon him in disbelief. Performing this action while Jesus is telling him to believe.  So, by the movie director's "rule of thumb" Thomas did, maybe, feel the wounds; but we don't really know that. What we do know is that his belief was nearly instantaneous.   That was the very next thing that happened.  The way these lines are given in the story, it has to have been that Thomas was saying: my Lord and my God before the words that Jesus was speaking were barely complete.  Thomas was overwhelmed, was suddenly struck, by the presence of Jesus.  Thomas was ready to fall at his feet, particularly because this time Thomas was there.

    Thomas' condition: feeling the wounds; Thomas' insistence: I will not believe were at least somewhat overcome by the actual experience that the other ten disciples had had a week earlier, and now they were having it again and because Thomas was there with them when it was all happening, Thomas could almost say to them: Now, I see what you mean; now, along with you, I believe.  The special condition that Thomas made: I must feel the wounds, is not, I think, the most important part of Thomas' transformation, of Thomas being brought into the community of the resurrection.   The condition is not the most important part; it's his being there with the other disciples, his presence with them.  He was not necessarily "Doubting Thomas"; he is, very clearly "Thomas who doubted until he saw". 

    Seeing - that's a word we use; it's actually an image because sometimes we say "I see" when we're not looking at anything at all but we're understanding with our mind some abstract concept or something that we're picturing in our memories or our imaginations.  So the word see covers a lot more territory than just the sense of sight.  But Jesus said: You believe in me because you have seen.  And seeing seems to have been the best way of describing what Thomas experienced.  Not feeling, not touching, but seeing - this fundamental thing that Thomas did.  But it's the kind of seeing that again, isn't just a visual thing; it's the kind of seeing that means comprehending, knowing, realizing, making it become a part of your inner being; that kind of seeing is what Thomas did on that day.   Because he was there.

    Sometimes people say that they have trouble believing in the affirmations of Christianity.  And sometimes people get into a pattern of believing that they settle rather comfortably into; with a lifelong outlook on life; and they think it is their doubtfulness, because they settle into it as a pattern, they somehow believe and say: my doubt is my form of belief.  My doubting is my way of being faithful.   And there might be something valid in the spiritual experience of being doubtful and yet hanging in there with the church, hanging in there with the Christian faith even though you have doubts.  But I think anybody who has ever doubted but wanted to believe knows the difference; knows that those two things are different, they are not very much alike.  "My doubting is my faith" is not a meaningful statement to somebody who truly wants to have the kind of faith that is like eating and drinking, and breathing in and breathing out, the kind of faith that permeates your being, the kind of faith that gives you a sense of certainty, a sense of "sure-footedness" if you will, for life.  A sense that you are ready to go out and die for what is right, what is true. 

    People who yearn for that kind of faith, if they're having struggle and doubt, know that they are not in faith, and they'd like to be there.  I think people know there's a difference.  However, I will say that in this regard, doubting and believing are very close together, and that is they can happen in very rapid succession.   You can believe only moments after you have been mired in the most discouraging doubt imaginable.  All can be done away with by a snap of the fingers, in the twinkling of an eye; doubt can be dispelled in a moment when you suddenly see, and the light breaks through, and suddenly it all comes together, makes sense, you understand and you realize the doubt has fled away rapidly, instantly, it's gone.  In that sense, you can be doubting one moment, and then a person of deep and certain faith just a moment later.  In that sense the two things can be very close together.  So it was with the doubt of Thomas.  Thomas doubted, a moment later, he believed.  And again, I think, because he was there when Jesus appeared.

    One of the most difficult things about our life in Syracuse, the first year that we lived there, was not having a church that we had to belong to.  When we moved to Syracuse, Lois had the job at S.U. and I figured that I would look for something that I could do that would be consistent with my experience and training as a minister.   And I would try to get some teaching jobs, if I could; and I would also keep in touch with the United Methodist Church and maybe an appointment would become open for me.   But in my first meeting with the District Superintendent, he did not do anything to encourage me that that would happen soon.  And so basically at that point, I gave up and we thought that we were never going to have another church where I was the pastor again. 

    And it threw us.  It didn't exactly make us miserable, because we were thinking: Well, we could visit around and see what other churches are like.   We could even try out the Episcopalians or the Presbyterians and see what their service is like.  We could do all those things that you never could do, because when you're the pastor you never get to visit other churches on Sunday morning.  So that was the kind of thing that was going on in our minds, but we discovered it wasn't much fun.  We didn't have a place.  There was not a group to which we belonged.   There was nobody who would notice, until we finally started to go regularly to one church, there was nobody who would notice if we weren't there.  It didn't matter to anybody else, except in some sort of vague sense, it didn't matter to anybody in a concrete way when we weren't present. 

    And so the gift of this appointment for me, this situation for our whole family, has been a gift of being re-placed in the kingdom of God.  That is put into a place that we could belong to in the kingdom of God.  When you're just kind of drifting as individual Christians, looking for a way to fulfill your spirituality in some sort of chosen abode, when you're still in the process of choosing, you aren't settled.   You aren't in a family or in a community, whatever image you want to use to describe a church congregation's life, you're not in a place where the Christians you are journeying with are flesh and blood people that you can actually be with in a tangible way.  And we were thrown by that.  And we had really, really missed what we have found since last summer in you.  It's made a big difference to us to be here.   It's helped my faith to strengthen and begin to grow again.  It's dispelled, over time, that sort of disconcerting feeling that we had. 

    And now that I've gotten past the moments when I was anxious about whether or not I'm saying or doing the right thing because I hadn't gotten to know you yet and you hadn't gotten to know me yet.  Now that we've crossed the big symbolic hurdles of Christmas and Easter.  Now that all of that is basically comfortable; I still have things to learn.  But now that we're there, I can reflect on how much it means to me to be with other disciples so that when Jesus appears in our midst; we all, together, can receive the sending that he wants to give to us, can receive the Holy Spirit that he breathes into us, can receive the awesome responsibility of ministry in the name of Jesus - helping people with their sins, helping people with their lives - together.   It means so much to us.  I daresay it means so much to you.  Amen

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Borodino United Methodist Church
1820 Rt. 174
Skaneateles, NY 13152
Pastor Peter Agnew

E-mail: BorodinoChurch@aol.com