Dangerous, angry times

     Youngest and I went up to Old Sacramento on Saturday afternoon to have some mother-daughter time.  We went to the Crocker Art Museum and then walked down to the train museum and wharf to get some ice cream (because in my mind Old Sacramento means trains and ice cream).  As we walked into the ice cream store, we saw a sign in the middle of the entrance that read "Masks must be worn, as per state mandate.  Anyone failing to comply with this mandate will not be served."  We were wearing our masks, so not a big deal.  We walked up to the counter, ordered our ice cream and stepped aside for the next person to order.  Apparently the people who walked in behind us were not, however, wearing masks.  One of the workers (my guess is the manager) said to the woman behind me, "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but masks are required by state mandate within this facility.  Please put on a mask.  I believe I have one I can give you."  After a minute, though, he said, "Oh, I'm sorry.  It appears we have just run out.  If you do not have your own mask, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."  

    I don't know about you, but if I were asked to leave a facility, I would.  I would do it out of embarrassment if nothing else.  But also, I am lacking that sense of entitlement that some people apparently have.  This woman was one of those people.  "Well @#$% that!"  She said, "I'm not going anywhere!"

    She stepped up closer to the counter to order.  The worker said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but if you do not leave, I'm going to have to call the police."

    "You do that!" she said, and then proceeded to call him a list of nasty discriminatory slurs that I will not print here.  She then turned to two of the other workers insisting that they take her order.  The other workers both shook their heads and backed up, frankly looking a little scared.

    The first worker responded by saying that yep, the slur she had used absolutely applied to him, and that as a result he was better at certain graphicly described behaviors than she was.  He then repeated that if the woman did not leave, he was going to call the police.

    The woman responded by approaching the counter and knocking everything on it to the floor, spilling the tip jar, scattering coins, making a huge and violent ruckus.  The worker then bounded over the counter, the same counter that Youngest and I were standing in front of (which we both quickly stepped back from), to move towards her, threatening to kill her at the same time and saying, "Don't think for a second that I won't do it!"  She laughed and ran out.

    Whew.  Situation over.  But frankly, Youngest and I were so shaken by the incident that we did not have the ability to taste our ice creams at all.  

    While it is a challenge for me to NOT express some of my thoughts on all of this, today I am working hard to face that challenge because I don't see that as productive in this moment.  What I want to focus on instead is this: I think the divisions in our country and in our society, the divisions that I saw escalate in that store, reveal a much larger issue.  

    We have forgotten that we belong to one another.  We have forgotten that the person in front of you with whom you disagree is still your sister, is still your brother, is still your sibling.  We have forgotten that we are to be kind and loving to others, even when they disagree with us, even when we don't like what they believe or what they do, even when we are embarrassed or uneasy, or hurt.

    To put this a bit more forcefully: while it takes effort on our part to respond to anger with compassion, this is the job of being an adult.  Having no self-control or ability to respond to anger with a calm and listening presence can only increase the divisions and the struggles in our world.  To be kind, to be caring: these are not easy, but no one ever said that life would be easy.  Just as you can spread violence by reacting with more violence, you can spread kindness by reacting with a calm and caring presence.  YOU have the power to diffuse violent and scary situations with your very demeanor, with your caring, with listening deeply and responding with compassion.

    So once again we have a choice to make: do we add to the pain, anger, and panic of the world by responding in kind when others lose it?  Or can we be part of the solution and movement to make the world better by staying calm, by hearing one another, and by acting with love?  

    We won't always be able to do the right thing.  I know this.  As always, I'm preaching to myself here and I know that it is not easy to respond to nastiness, to hurtful comments or actions with kindness.  It takes practice.  But, for better or worse, we are getting a whole lot of practice of late!  So take it for the gift it is: to practice taking the high road in the face of anger.  People are stressed.  People are scared.  And ultimately, people are just people: flawed and trying to do the best they can in difficult circumstances.  Try to picture each person as your mother, or your sister, or your best friend: someone having a hard day.  You may disagree with them, but you can still love them.  

    If we can do anything to help the current situation in our culture, it's worth the effort.

    That interaction that Youngest and I witnessed did not just upset the manager and the customer.  An ice cream store full of customers and employees were affected by what we experienced.  And while, fortunately, no one was hurt, things could have gotten worse, they could have escalated even more.  I am thankful that they didn't.  But also saddened that it happened at all.  It would have been so easy for either of the two main characters in this incident to take a different path.  The woman could have just left when asked to do so.  The manager could have stayed calm and just said, "I hear you are upset, but we are required to follow the law."  So much could have been done differently.  But it wasn't.  So I'm just taking the lesson for what it was: a chance to think through my own reaction for the next time someone acts out.  How will I respond?  How will you respond?  How will we make this world better together?  

God Above, Among and Beyond

Matthew 28:19-20

2 Corinthians 13:11-14

               There was a three generation household in which James, Sr., was living with his son, James, Jr. and young grandson, James III.  One day the phone rang and the caller asked to speak to Jim.  The response was, “Do you want Jim the father, Jim the son, or Jim the holy terror?”

               Today is Trinity Sunday.  It is a day when our service and our sermons are supposed to focus on the concept of the trinity.  Supposedly the trinity is one of the most important theological concepts for our faith, but it is also one that most people find challenging to understand.  So much of our faith we grasp and internalize because it meets with our experience of God.  So much of our faith is tied in with stories, both from the Bible and from our own lives, stories that say in ways that theological statements or ideas about our faith often cannot, what it is we believe, what it means to be children of God, who we are as a community of faith, and who we are as Christian believers.  But the trinity often seems to me to be an intellectual concept which is up there somewhere; high above our experience of God, outside the realm of stories, or even of intuition.  The trinity is proclaimed to be a great mystery of our faith.  But in the theological headiness of the concept it can lose what is most important about our faith, which is that the meaning of our faith comes when we experience it and live it out.  Discussion and debate, while interesting, ultimately do not make us the people of God, something that should claim every bit of our lives and everything that we do with those lives.

               As I have studied the trinity, hoping to find something that would make it a more accessible concept, I found myself more and more convinced of this division between those ideas that we intuitively understand and which help us to live our lives more fully as Children of God, and those ideas which belong in theological and biblical studies, but which do not seem to communicate the Good News to us, which do not help us as a people to truly give up all we have in pursuit of that one pearl of priceless value that is God in our lives.  Additionally, the first thing that every theological book, article and commentary I read had to say about the trinity was that this is not a concept found in the Bible.  The two passages that we read today are the sole basis for the theology of the trinity: two tiny verses that use a “trinitarian formula” but which don’t explain it as a trinity, never mention the idea of three persons in one God-head, never define those relationships between the “persons” of the trinity, or even define them as unique persons.  The idea of trinity, or three persons in one God-head first seemed to have arisen at the council of Nicea in 325 AD.  It simply did not exist before then.  And it is one of the great concepts that separates us from Jewish brothers and sisters who argue that they in fact REALLY have one God whereas Christians have a 3 God in one God-head thingy.  The first division or complete split in the Christian church was in fact a division over the nature of the trinity.  And the discussions, arguments, divisions over this concept which began at that time have never ceased.  Indeed, while most the books and commentaries I have read on the trinity were written by renowned Presbyterian theologians, no two of them agreed about the trinity meant or how it was to be understood.  For example, one commentary said that the trinity is like water in its three forms of ice, liquid and steam: all made of the same substance but in very different forms.  Another commentary completely disagreed with this declaring that this understanding of the trinity is a kind of modalism: that instead each person of the trinity is water in all of its forms.  According to this theologian, if we stick with the analogy of water, one person of the trinity is the plasma within our bodies, where as another is sea water: apparently both have just about the same make up chemically, but they simply exist in different places.  One theologian reported that the different persons of the trinity involve different jobs: there is the creator, the redeemer and the sustainer.  Another said that this was inaccurate because each person of the trinity was fully creator, redeemer and sustainer all by themselves.  One theologian said the mystery of the trinity was that there were three persons within the one God.  Another disagreed saying the mystery of the trinity is that there is one Godhead that encompasses three distinct persons.  Almost all of the theologians used scientific analogies are a way of describing their understanding the trinity.  The simplest example was that of the three forms of water I described earlier.  The most complex involved quarks, the smallest known particles of matter, and the interdependence of quarks who cannot exist, apparently, as single beings, but must exist in community with one another.  And again, it was interesting intellectual fodder for budding brain cells.  But when it came down to how this concept would help us to live our lives as Christians, how these ideas would bring us comfort when we are afflicted, or how these concepts would challenge us when we are falling short in our ability to forgive or to heal or to love God, self and each other, theologians had very little to say.  The books and discussions on the Trinity were strangely and starkly mute on what this had to do with our lives as people of faith.

               Many years ago, I was sitting in on a 6^th grade Sunday school class in which the kids were all invited to make collages of their images of God.  As I watched the kids work, I noticed that each child had a very different collage in front of them.  David’s collage was made up of magazine pictures of angels: statues of angels, pictures of angels, in child and adult form, covered David’s picture.  Carlie sat next to David and her picture was made up entirely of nature scenes.  She had drawn rainbows and sunsets, beautiful flowers and strong animals like lions.  She had cut out a picture of the beach and had glued a feather onto the top of her collage.  George for his part had put pictures of people and names of people all over his collage.  Some of the pictures had no names, some of the names had no pictures, but his collage was people of all different kinds.  Megan for her part had the simplest collage.  Her picture was hard to figure out at first, but when I asked her she said that it was a voice; a voice inside, which she didn’t know how to draw except through wispy lines, like whispering.  My question to Megan, while simply inquiry began an argument among the children.  Carlie looked at Megan’s picture and frowned.  “You don’t really think God is a voice inside of you, do you?  God is much bigger than that!  God couldn’t fit inside of you!  Look at the wonderful things God has created!” And with that she showed Megan her own picture of the nature scenes of sunsets and beaches and great majestic beasts.  David jumped in at that point and said, “You haven’t created a picture of God, just a picture of what God made a long time ago.  If you want to see God now, you have to look at the angels.  The guardian angels all around us who look out for us and care for us.” To which George replied, “I don’t believe in angels.  I think God acts through people around us.  There aren’t really angels, you know.”  I was about to step in and encourage the kids to think about all of these images as important, when David said, very quietly, under his breath, “I have a guardian angel.”  The other kids all looked up from their work and David continued, “Not that I’ve seen him.  He always stays hidden, but I know he’s there.  Last week, for example, I was running home from school and was about to cross a street without looking when I heard someone call my name.  I stopped and turned around and just as I did, a car went careening into the intersection without stopping.  There was no-one behind me.  I know it was my guardian angel protecting me form that car.  Lots of stuff has happened like that.  I know I have a guardian angel and that is God in my life.”

               George jumped in, “A couple weeks ago my mom got fired from her job.  My dad’s been out of work for a while and has stayed home to take care of us.  So when my mom lost her job it was really scary.  But one of the women in church heard about it and she offered my mom a temporary job at her work; the job lasted just long enough for my mom to find a permanent position.  I know God was working through that lady in our church.”

               Megan added, “My little brother has some problems.  He’s kind of slow and a lot of the kids at school pick on him and give him a hard time.  One time a bunch of kids had surrounded him and were yelling names and closing in on him.  I thought they were going to beat him up and I was all ready to jump in there and defend him.  I’m sure we both would have ended up hurt if I had.  But just as I was about to jump in, I heard a voice inside of me say, “Why don’t you invite all the kids over to your house and they can see what Kevin can do at home and how important he is around the house.’ So I did. And they all came over and my mom ended up telling them a lot about Kevin’s situation.  Now they take care of Kevin and make sure other kids don’t pick on him.  I know I didn’t come up with that idea on my own.  God told me what to do.  And I did it.”

               Carlie had been quiet during all of this.  And there was a moment after the other kids finished that I wasn’t sure if she would speak up.  Carlie lived in a foster home.  She had been moved around a lot, and didn’t have a regular family taking care of her.  She never talked about this with the other kids, so I wasn’t sure she would say anything that day.  But she surprised me.  “I don’t have any parents,” she said, “but I do know God loves and cares for me.  Every time I see a sunset or get to go to the beach, I know that God made all of this and God made me and that everything is going to be okay.”

The kids continued to share and talk.  But it was no longer an argument over who God was or how God acted.  Instead, they were learning that people experienced God in different ways.  Perhaps more importantly, they were learning to be open themselves so that they might also experience God in different ways.

For myself, this is where the concept of the trinity finally meets experience.  I believe the theological concept of the trinity began as a way for people to try to explain a complex experience of God.  And that experience is that God is not just a distant creator, though God is creator and has done that.  God is not JUST present to us in the person of Jesus, though God was present to us in Christ and still comes and lives and walks among us.  God is not JUST present in the stillness of our solitude, in our prayers, in our community, in our reading of scriptures, though God is very active and present there as well.  God is all these things: God is above us, God walks among us, and God is within us.  The good news of the trinity is the good news that we celebrate every Sunday.  That God in all of God’s actions and forms, in all of God’s persons loves us beyond life itself and is present with us in that love to the end of the ages.

I also believe that part of the reason trinity continues to be so controversial is because it, too, is a human construct that cannot and does not completely capture God.  God goes beyond all of our human descriptions.  And our experience of God also goes beyond human explanation.  For me, trinity is a powerful way of describing the powerful, amazing, love-filled experience of God who made us, walks among us, and is within us; all at the same time, always caring for us, upholding us, and challenging us to be more loving.  Trinity does not need to stay a difficult theological concept.  It can become again what I believe it was meant to be; a way of understanding an experience that can’t be described adequately by words.  A metaphor for an experience of our God as real and tangible to us in many ways, in many forms, in many situations.

If we see the trinity as a metaphor for our experience of God, the image of trinity opens up to us many different layers and gives many more insights into God and our relationship to God as well.  The trinity becomes more complex than just the understanding of God above, among and within.  It also reflects other truths about God, one of which I find especially wondrous, but perhaps even harder to put into worlds.  What makes us persons is that we are relational.  If we were not in relationships to other people, we would not be persons, but simply beings acting out of animal instincts.  So, too, while God is one, God is also relational with God-self.  That relationship is what makes God persons, what makes God desire to be relational with us as well, and what allows God to be communion in being within God-self.  God, like us, is community which holds diversity within itself.  That, to me, is the greatest wonder and greatest mystery of the trinity.  Like the Bible which is one book and yet a book of distinct and different books which relate and inform one another, like a church which is one in its mission statement and yet holds within it a community of persons, God is community within God’s one-ness.  I think that this mystery too is one which must be understood and worked out through one’s own experience of God. 

Two people went up in a hot air balloon.  The balloon went way off course and the couple ended up totally lost, having no idea where they were until finally the balloon came down in the middle of an open field.  One of the people in the balloon called out to a man who was standing watching the balloon, “Say, can you tell us where we are?”

“Sure,” the man answered, “You are in a hot air balloon.”

The woman who had asked the question turned to her companion and said, “that man must be a preacher.  What he said is completely true and has absolutely no relevance to our situation.”

I hope that the concept of trinity does not stay for us an intellectual and irrelevant mystery that is above comprehension.  Rather, I hope for all of us today that the beauty of Trinity, of one God in community with God-self, will inspire you with its beauty to ponder ever more deeply, and to live ever more faithfully in the presence of our incredible loving God who is above, among and within.

Sermon - 5/15/16: Deepest Faith

Acts 2:1-21
1 Cor. 12:3b-13
John 14:8-17

Pentecost

Faith.
It gives us eyes to see.
It invites us to celebrate the gifts of the Spirit.
It invites us to consider more deeply what those gifts are really for.
It invites us to use them for God’s glory.

Pentecost is the birthday of the church, a day for celebrating that God called us into being, brought the Spirit down upon those who were open to seeing and hearing, and united all by reversing the tower of Babel – instead of people no longer understanding each other, all could and did understand. It is an amazing incredible day to remember the power of the Spirit and the gifts that the Spirit gives to our community.
The story of Pentecost also shows us that those who were not open to hearing and seeing God coming, those who could not see with eyes of faith continued to fail to receive what people of faith do receive.  People who either cannot or will not open their eyes in wonder to see God miss out.         They missed the party, they missed the celebration!  God included everyone in this event.  Even those who would not see were included in the party and invited to experience the amazing gifts of the Spirit on that day.  But those who could not see with faith could not accept into themselves the party gifts of the Spirit.  They missed what God was doing so vividly right in front of their eyes.  They explained the Holy Spirit’s coming in terms of people being drunk.  The fact that those in the room could understand each other across language differences and barriers, that their experience was described as tongues of fire descending on each person, that the room was filled with a sound like rushing wind – that someone could try to explain this as people simply being drunk shows how far some would go to deny an experience of God’s presence with them.  But I find myself again being moved with pity for them.  They missed out.  They truly missed out on the amazing blessings and experience and gifts that the Spirit was giving them on that day.  And I feel simply sad about that loss for them.
Faith gives us a different perspective.  Faith allows us to frame the events in our lives in very different ways.  Are the difficulties that come our way problems for us to whine about, or are they blessings, opportunities to grow and learn and deepen in our faith?  Is the weather that we experience just the interesting ebb and flow of the seasons?  Or is it God’s reminder to us that what we experience today will be different tomorrow, that there is hope, there is movement and all of it is glorious?  Everything is seen and experienced differently when we do it with eyes of faith, eyes that seek out God.
In the series, Joan of Arcadia, God talks face to face with a teenage girl. God appears in the different people that surround Joan and at first Joan is really unsure why this is happening to her.  She asks God, “why are you appearing to me?” To which the God figure responds: “Correction: I am not appearing to you.  You are perceiving me.”  I think there is great wisdom in that.  God is all around us.  But our sacred moments, our moments when we are touched by the Divine happen when we have the vision to perceive God.  Again, we see the miracles, we hear God’s voice, we see God’s presence, we receive the Spirit, only when we are open to perceiving it.
             There used to be a restaurant called the Bella Italia Inn, which had no inn attached to it at all.  It was an Italian restaurant, though the owner/cook was Indian.  This was the first thing you would notice when you walked into the restaurant - the Indian cook behind the counter in the kitchen cooking the food.   In case you missed this, you would be reminded of it by the choice of music - Indian music playing over the speakers.  The waitress who worked there was from Central America, and spoke very little, if any, English, only Spanish.  The decor in the restaurant was an odd mix of quality and...lack of quality - the wood work in the restaurant was high quality, truly lovely stuff.  But the tables would rock back and forth on their uneven legs.  The rugs were beautiful, but filthy both with current grime and with deeply set stains.   Drinks that you would order would be brought to you in glasses that didn’t match.  The last time I went, my friend was given a beautiful large crystal wine glass out of which to drink her coke, and I was given a beautiful, small and differently designed plastic wine glass out of which to drink mine. There were beautiful glass oil and vinegar holders on each table right next to the cheap plastic salt and pepper shakers.  If you were able to order your food (if you were able to communicate with the Spanish speaking waitress) she would bring you hot food on cold plates, and cold food on hot plates.  If you asked to split your dessert, they would “split” your two layer piece of chocolate cake by cutting off the top layer, so that one of you gets all the frosting and the other all the filling.  The waitress wouldn’t bring you a spoon with your spaghetti nor a pen with the credit card slip if you pay by credit card.  If you ordered mineral water, they brought something that wasn’t carbonated.  One time when I went, I had to wait for an hour to be served, though it was obvious that there was only one other couple in the entire restaurant - “we’re understaffed tonight,” we were told.  But in the midst of this very chaotic and strange place, the food is fantastic.  The seasonings exquisite, everything cooked to perfection.   Truly wonderful Italian food cooked by this Indian man in these strange circumstances.  If you were put off by the circumstances, the décor, the incongruity of the place, you would miss out on one of the best Italian meals in the Bay Area.  We could have seen the problems, but instead, we experienced the gifts.
             I had the privilege while studying in college of volunteering with an amazingly loving, intuitive, giving Chaplain to the Homeless in Berkeley.  One time when we were together, a schizophrenic homeless woman approached Pastor Alexia.  Jane came over, looked Pastor Alexia right in the face and blurted out, “I am God.”  I was a young college student at the time and her statement simply made me uncomfortable.  But Pastor Alexia looked at Jane very seriously for a moment and then said, “Tell me.  I’ve always wanted to know...what exactly does it feel like to be God.”  Jane sighed and said with relief in her face, but also with an urgency to speak, to tell, “I care and love and care and love but no one pays attention to me.”  Alexia gave me a very poignant stare as we both nodded our heads in understanding.  This woman I probably would have dismissed had deep needs, but also had gifts for us: gifts of insight, gifts of wisdom.  This woman felt ignored.  I am sure she was also accurate that God must feel ignored at times.  I heard God’s voice in this woman, though it was unexpected.
Several years ago, I was helping out in Youngest’s classroom.  I was walking with the children to their computer lab when we passed the school janitor.  Youngest’s teacher said hi to the man and he responded, “Just Keep believing”!  But as he said it, he turned to me and locked eyes with me for just a moment.  And I had that feeling, that feeling of being hit by lightning, that feeling of having heard a message just for me, that feeling of having met an angel, a messenger from God who had something that I needed to hear in that moment.  If this stranger had actually spoken these words to me directly, I doubt that I would have taken them in the same way.  I would have heard them as trite, or would have felt “preached at”.  He was the janitor, someone some people might dismiss.  But through his voice in that moment and at that time, I saw God.  I heard God.
           Albert Einstein said, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”  That is faith.  That is what faith does for our perspective and our experience of the world.  That is what happened for some on Pentecost.  They experienced the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, the miracle of God’s presence with them because through their faith they had eyes to see.
Which isn’t to say that the people of faith who were there got it right.  The disciples were still, even now, even after Jesus’ return and even after this amazing event, they were still getting it wrong.  What did Peter say about this?  He assumed that the world was ending!  He assumed that this gift signaled Jesus’ return and the beginning of the end days.  As he said, “this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:  ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.   Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.  And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.  The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.”  Well, that’s not what was happening.  The sun was not turned dark on that day of Pentecost, the moon was not turned to blood.  And Jesus did not return in a few days’ time to usher in the end of the world.  But their experiences were so deep and profound that Peter could not simply be in them, could not simply accept the gift of the Spirit’s coming, but had to try to interpret it, make sense of it.  It would have been better if he had just experienced the gifts but perhaps even then his faith was still growing, developing and he wasn’t yet in that place where he could just be with the Spirit.  
Poem:
The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang.
But, the man did not hear.
So the man yelled, "God, speak to me" and the thunder rolled across the sky.
But, the man did not listen.
The man looked around and said, "God let me see you." And a star shined brightly.
But the man did not see.
And, the man shouted, "God show me a miracle." And, a life was born.
But, the man did not notice.
So, the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me know you are here."
Whereupon, God reached down and touched the man. But, the man brushed the butterfly away,
and walked on."
Even when we have faith sometimes we still miss God.
 
Faith.
It gives us eyes to see.
It invites us to celebrate the gifts of the Spirit.
It invites us to consider more deeply what those gifts are really for.
It invites us to use them for God’s glory.
Can you see?  Can you experience God?  That is the gift that our faith invites us into.  Come to the party!  Celebrate what God has done!

Sunday's Sermon - the Cost of Doubt

The Cost of Doubt

1 John 1

John 20: 19-31

8/23/15

Today we hear the very familiar story of doubting Thomas. He has heard the news that Jesus appeared among the disciples and yet he does not believe it - or rather he is unsure, for as he describes it, he is not against believing, he just wants proof. And after Jesus gives him that proof Jesus says to Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

This reminds me of the story of a little boy, the son of a pastor whose parent told him to go wash his hands after playing in the dirt because of all the germs.  The child refused saying “Germs and Jesus!  Germs and Jesus!  That’s all I ever hear around this house and I’ve never seen either one!”

At least most of us here have probably never seen the risen Christ and so we are part of that group of Christians who, by our very presence in this room, are proclaiming that we believe in some way in a resurrected Christ. Whether you believe that to be literal or a story does not matter.  Your presence here declares that the story has meaning for you, that resurrection and the new life that it proclaims are realities for you. We are, therefore, part of that group of blessed people who have believed in some way without seeing. But we live in a time when Christianity has been around for awhile. I think back to the time of Jesus and find myself wondering how easy it would have been to believe around the time of Jesus’ death?  If we were living at that time, I think it might have been much harder for us to accept that a person we had actually seen and heard about, maybe even someone who grew up in our home town, maybe someone we went to school with, had arisen in any way from the dead. The farther back in time an event occurred, I think the easier it probably is to believe in it: the more distance we have from knowing the person personally, the less their story has to compete with an image of who we thought they were. I imagine that knowing Jesus and seeing him as a person might have made it very difficult for some, like Thomas, to believe without some kind of proof.

The gospel writer John is very clear about his reason for writing his gospel stories.  He says, “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” Many scholars believe that the gospel of John was written around 125 AD, so few, if any, of the people who met Jesus were still alive. Still, it was a time close enough to Jesus’ life that it was still probably difficult for many to believe a resurrection story about someone they may have connections with, either through friends or relatives. “Aaron’s cousin, Jesus, was said to have risen from the dead. What do you think of that?” It is in this context - of not knowing Jesus, but probably knowing people who did know or were somehow related to Jesus, that John is writing his gospel. And he is encouraging them to believe without sight, saying this is a blessed thing; to believe even when their senses have not been given the same proof the disciples were given. Hard for many people today. No doubt even harder for the people of Jesus’ time. 

But whatever you believe the resurrection to mean or be about, my question for you today is what does this story tell us about doubt, about our own doubts, about our times of faith struggle, and about where God is in those times and experiences?

With Eldest’s permission, I want to share with you some of the faith story of my eldest daughter. Eldest is now 15, but, perhaps especially when she was little, she had a very special relationship with God.  She talked to God starting at a very young age, and she would often tell us about things that God had said to her. I believe in those conversations. I think children are in a unique place, before the cynicism of age has crept in, before the “realism” of life raises doubts in them, to really hear God’s voice in ways that most adults can no longer do. Someday I will share with you some of the things Eldest has shared with me about her conversations about God.  But today I want to share something different. When Eldest was about 7 years old at dinner one night (where all my deep theological conversations with my daughter seem to take place), Eldest popped up with “Mama, I’ve been thinking and I’ve been realizing that believing in something doesn’t make it real. I mean, we can believe things that aren’t real, that aren’t true.”

“Yes, that’s true!” I agreed, thinking of the many times Eldest had said things to me such as, “I know you don’t think fairies are real, but they are.  I know you don’t think Pegasus’ are real, but they are.”

But Eldest continued, “So it is possible that we believe in God, but God might not be real. Our believing in God could just be a belief that doesn’t make God real.”

So I answered, “Yes, you are right. Believing does not make something real.  That is why our belief is called ‘faith’. It isn’t something you can prove or disprove. It is something you believe without that.”

This answer made Eldest very uncomfortable. She thought about it and began to cry, “Well, then how do we know God is real?”

“Well the simple answer is that we don’t know if by knowing you mean having hard, scientific evidence. We believe it. We trust it. But many people, at least, would say that we don’t know in the sense of having irrefutable proof.” After a pause I added, “You yourself have told me on many occasions that God has spoken to you. You have told me of things that God has said to you. So you have heard God. Don’t those conversations act as a proof for you that God is real?” 

“Well, it’s occurred to me that those things I thought God told me just might be my own voice inside my head.” She was clearly very distressed by this. And I found myself both a little sad and a little proud. The sad part was that she had finally grown beyond the innocent blind acceptance of her faith. That magical childhood time of unwavering and unquestioning faith she had begun to leave behind. When Jesus said, “you must come to me as a little child”, I believe he meant we must come knowing that there is more to learn, that God is not done with us, that we don’t have all the answers. I believe Jesus meant we must come searching for answers and wanting to know more. I don’t think he meant we need to come without questions or doubts.  But still, as with any parent, there are some moments of grief as our children leave aspects of their childhood behind. I had enjoyed hearing about Eldest’s conversations with God and it occurred to me that they were now changing, or her absolute faith in them was now changing.   

The pride part for me held a recognition that she was also beginning to engage her faith with her mind, something God also calls us to do. Yes, those who can believe without proof may be, as Jesus said, “happy.” I mean face it, it is easier to have all the answers. It is easier to have an unwavering faith. It is easier, and I would say happier even, to believe 100 % without doubts or reservations in a God who is with us, who loves us, who has been resurrected and calls us into new life with God. 

But God calls us to love God with our whole heart, soul, strength, and Jesus added MIND to the list - and that mind engagement is going to cause moments of doubt, moments of crisis, moments of questioning and exploration. As we’ve discussed before, it is, according to the spiritual development experts, those very periods of crisis, including periods of doubt, that cause our faith to grow, to develop, to become deeper and more real. Real faith is a living, breathing thing. It must be allowed to be explored and searched. If we keep it boxed into a rigid tight doctrine, it is not real, it cannot spread roots, it cannot grow up to the heavens, it cannot be firmly rooted in the creation God has made.

In other words, doubt is a gift. Frederick Buechner describes doubt this way. “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

None the less doubt is uncomfortable. It isn’t comfortable to be unsure, to be in crisis, to be in a time of spiritual turmoil. This is not comfortable at all. And it has the possibility of leading into cynicism which is unhealthy and causes unhappiness. But for those willing to truly engage it, look at it, explore it, doubt is a gift. For it calls us to take our faith seriously, to explore with God what it means to be a person of faith, to continue to grow in our relationship to God and in our understanding. 

It does even more than that. In today’s scripture when Thomas doubted, how did Jesus respond? Did he say “well, forget you, Thomas. You needed proof, so I no longer accept you as one of my own!” Did he say, “Happy are those who believe without proof and cursed are those who need it?” No. Instead, what did he do? He came to Thomas. He came to Thomas and invited Thomas into a much closer relationship with him: he invited Thomas to touch him, to experience him with his eyes, his ears and even his sense of touch. Jesus was their teacher, the “Rabbi” as they described him, and for him to allow himself to be touched would have been breaking, once again, some of the most important Jewish rules of the time: to be touched in this way at this time would have made Jesus “unclean” by the laws of the day. But Jesus crossed this line: he chose intimacy with Thomas, he chose relationship. Helping Thomas believe was much more important than anything else and Jesus was willing to do whatever was needed to meet Thomas and offer this gift of faith to him.  For Thomas, his doubt brought him this deep gift. Doubt brought his faith to a deeper and more intimate level.

For those of you who are curious, my answer to Eldest, as it would be to any of you in the middle of a faith crisis was simply this, “I believe in those conversations (or experiences) you had with God. The God I know and love does say or communicate the things you have told me about; things like ‘This is my world’ and ‘I am always with you.’ But if my belief in your conversations with God, if my belief in God is not enough for you right now, that is okay too.  Because my God is okay with your doubt as well as your faith. My God loves all of who you are, with your struggles, with your questions, with your confusion, with your doubts. And God’s love for you and God’s faith in you, even if you do not have faith in God, is enough to save the whole world.”

But the story didn’t end there. Just like Thomas, Eldest was not content to just stay in the doubt. For months after her first expression of this doubt she continued to do what felt like “badgering” to me. Every day or so she would pop up with things like “Well, except we don’t really know if God is real or not,” and she sounded defiant or angry every time she said it, like she was testing me, I thought. But finally, I heard it a little differently and I said to her, “It sounds like your doubt is really upsetting you.” She acknowledged that it was. So I said to her, “As I’ve told you before, God can handle your doubt. So take it to God. Ask God what to do with or about it. Ask God how you can feel sure that God is real.”

A few days later as we were driving home from school, Eldest said to me, “You know, God loves this earth and really wants us to take care of it.”  

Her tone was so different from the last few months’ conversations about God that I had to ask, “You really sound sure about that.  Did you talk to God like I suggested before?”

“Yes,” she told me, and she continued, “I talked to God about whether or not God was real and God said to me, ‘I am more real than any of you. I’m more real than your friends, I’m more real than your mama, I’m more real than your sister and brother, and I’m even more real than you.’ So I don’t doubt anymore. God is more real than any of us.”  Out of the mouths of babes.

Amen.