A Reassurance of Life

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

            The story of Thomas is a wonderful story about God’s coming to be in relationship with us where we are.  I have preached before on what an amazing gift it is that when Thomas doubts, Jesus does not leave him or abandon him there, but goes to him, brings to Thomas his very self for Thomas to touch, reconnect with and believe in.  But today I want to focus on the other disciples, on what they were doing, what their lives were like following this revelation of Jesus’ resurrection. 

Today’s story from John immediately follows the announcement from Mary to the disciples that Jesus is alive, that she has seen him, that Jesus has sent her to them.  And yet, despite this announcement, where are the disciples?  They are hiding, we are told, from the Jewish authorities.  They are behind locked or closed doors (the Greek word is actually “closed” but I think many of the translators use the word “locked” to indicate that it was a way of shutting others out) out of fear.  Jesus has arisen, which tells us that there is nothing more to fear – everything can be overcome, even death itself.  And yet, even though the disciples have heard this news, they remain terrified to the point of hiding.  It isn’t just Thomas who is doubting because he hasn’t seen.  As a matter of fact, Thomas is an interesting contrast to these other disciples who are hiding.  Because Thomas, we are told, was not hiding with the other disciples.  He was out and about, not in the locked room!  He is the one who has reentered the world, continued living, refused to be trapped behind in fear, while the others, though they have all heard the news, remain in hiding.

            So, Jesus comes and shows himself to the hiding disciples, those who cannot yet believe, those who have heard the good news but remain afraid.  He shows himself and they believe….maybe.  Except that then we are told that eight days later they are still, or maybe again, in the same house, again with the doors closed or locked.  In other words, now after having seen Jesus, they are still hiding!!  And this time Thomas is with them.  Jesus comes again.  And this time when Jesus comes to them, he says something very interesting.  He says, “Do you believe because you see me?”  I think most of us have always heard this phrase to mean – “oh, so now you, Thomas, believe in the resurrection because you see me?”  But I heard this differently this week.  This time, I heard the phrase this way, “Do you actually believe? - because you have seen me.”  And I don’t think it was just aimed at Thomas.  The disciples are not behaving as people who believe.  They are not LIVING into the good news!  They are not so excited about the Good News that Jesus is alive that they are out preaching the word and sharing it!  They are not living as a people filled with joy and released from fear.  So he is asking them, “now that you have seen, NOW do you believe?”  He has come to see them a second time, and yet, they still have not understood the message.  And then he continues, speaking, again, to ALL of the disciples – “Happy are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”

            As we know, and as we see through all of this, belief is not as simple, even, as seeing.  Even seeing does not guarantee belief, not real belief, in the meaning behind what is being seen.  Many believe who have not seen, and many see who do not believe.  No, it is not seeing that causes belief.  So, what does create belief in us?

I’ve shared with you before what Frederick Buechner has to say about faith.

“…Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession.  It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all.  Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway.  A journey without maps.”

            He goes on to say that we can’t test what we believe, like, for example, we can’t test the friendships of our friends, without damaging those very relationships.  But we trust our friendships because we are engaged in them.        

And what this says to me is, again, that faith does not come about through seeing.  Faith, real faith, comes about through our relationships.  We believe in our friends when they ACT like friends.  And we believe in God when we experience a relationship with God. 

            We are called to live in the faith of the Good news.  The Good News, Jesus’ resurrection, tells us that even death will be overcome, that the last enemy has been defeated, and that because of that, we have nothing to fear, and can really live and can be free to work for life for all people, too, without fear of the consequences.  But, I repeat what I said, many who have seen do not yet believe, whereas many who have not seen, do believe and live out their faith.

            I think about the story in Mitch Albom’s book Have a Little Faith, in which we learn that the Rabbi lost his young daughter to illness.  When he returned to the pulpit he shared with the congregation that he’d yelled at God, screamed for an answer.  There was nothing in being a Rabbi that had kept him from the tears and misery of never connecting with his young daughter again.  But he also said that his faith was the only thing that soothed him.  It was a reminder that we are all part of something bigger.  And he believed that he would see her again.  But I also believe from what I read that it was the relationship he had with God that got him through the crisis.  It was a relationship that was strong enough that it allowed him to express his anger at God, and held him in the belief that God’s love was big enough to be able to handle that anger.

The thing is, belief, faith, is an act of will, and not a feeling.  And as much as we would want it to, seeing does not guarantee that belief.  I think about the movie, The Polar Express.  One of my favorite scenes in that movie is when the main character, a young boy who is struggling with faith in Santa Claus, is walking across the top of the moving Polar Express Train, looking for a friend of his whom he believes had also walked across the top of the train.  He finds on the top of the train a man who appears to be a Hobo, playing music next to a fire while he heats coffee and dries his socks over the fire.  And he has an interaction with the man where the man says, “You want to believe but you don’t want to be hoodwinked, bamboozled, scammed!”  We, the viewers of the movie, know that the man, the hobo is a spirit, or a ghost. But what is most interesting to me is that he says to the boy, “you want to believe, but seeing is believing, right?  So just one more question…do you believe in ghosts?”  The kid shakes his head “no” to which the ghost responds, “interesting,” and we are left, again, to ponder the reality that seeing is not always believing.  Even in the Polar Express we experience that the child’s faith (in Santa Clause in this case) comes about through his relationships and his experiences, and not through his seeing.  And we understand that child’s faith, we come to understand his faith change when his relationships with others change. 

            There is another part of Mitch Album’s book Have a Little Faith (p.47) that I want to share with you:

Mitch asks his Rabbi, “How do you not get cynical?” And from the book:

            “There is no room for cynicism in this line of work.”

            But people are so flawed.  They ignore ritual, they ignore faith – they even ignore you.  Don’t you get tired of trying?

            … “let me answer with a story,” he said.  “There’s this salesman, see?  And he knocks on a door. The man who answers says, ‘I don’t need anything today.’

            “The next day the salesman returns.

            “ ‘Stay away,’ he is told.

            “The next day, the salesman is back.

            “The man yells, ‘you again!  I warned you!’ He gets so angry, he spits in the salesman’s face.

            “The salesman smiles, wipes the spit with a handkerchief, then looks to the sky and says, ‘Must be raining.’

            “Mitch, that’s what faith is.  If they spit in your face, you say it must be raining.  But you still come back tomorrow.”

            To me, this story is talking more about what really makes faith happen: and that is, again, relationships.  You stay engaged, just as God will stay engaged with you every single time.  You also step out of your fear and choose to be in the world, no matter what the world is handing back to you.  That is faith.  Choosing to act “as if” even when we can’t feel it.  Faith is a choice.  It is a decision.  It is a way to be in the world that says, “I will not act on my fear.  But I will act on my faith, even when I don’t feel it.  I will choose to believe into seeing even when I cannot believe because of what I see.”

It is easy to be like the disciples, like Albom in his tendency towards cynicism, - seeing and still not believing.  The good news for us is that Jesus keeps coming, again and again, until we really do believe.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t times for all of us of struggle with faith, of doubt about who God is, that the love is really there, that it is enough.  I think about the book Life of Pi.  One of my favorite quotes: “Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love.  Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up….Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out.  It was a hell beyond expression.  I thank God it always passed…The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart.  I would go on loving.” (p209) 

Jesus didn’t leave the disciples alone.  He didn’t leave Thomas alone.  He showed up again and again and by doing so he rebuilt his relationship with them until their faith was strong enough that he could leave and trust them to live in the Good News.  God does the same for us.  God will show up again and again for us as well, until we, too, finally find that, because of our relationship with God, not because of what we have heard, and not even because of what we have seen, but because of our relationship with God, we, too can have the faith that moves into true belief and therefore into action. Thanks be to God.  Amen.