April 12, 2015
John
20.19-31
+ I’m going to test you this morning. This is going
to be a hard test. I’m going to see if anyone here actually read my book of
short stories, The Downstairs Tenant. I
wrote a story in it called, “I Could’ve Gone on Forever.” In that story, I
talked about an astronaut and an actual famous event about astronaut in the
1960s. So, who was the astronaut I wrote
about? Or—and I’m going to make this easy for you who didn’t read it—who was
the cosmonaut? It’s all right if you didn’t read the book or the story.
It was about Yuri Gagarin. And today, April 12,
is the 54th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s trip to space, making him
the first human being in space. In 1961,
this was a HUGE event.
Supposedly, the first words attributed to
humankind in space came from him and they were not words of awe, or praise. The
first words from humans in space were:
“I see no God up
here!”
Actually those words
are probably apocryphal.
But, let’s face it—he
didn’t see God up there. He didn’t see God there or anywhere. You’ve heard me
say it again and again.
I have deep and profound
respect for atheism. I truly believe that atheism is fairly simple and straightforward.
But belief—belief is hard. And none of
us can believe without a certain level of doubt. Doubt is healthy. It’s an
important part of true faith. In fact, it’s one of the
healthiest things we can do as believers.
In this morning’s
Gospel, we encounter doubt of course in the person of the apostle Thomas. Doubting Thomas, as we’ve come to know him,
doubted that Jesus was resurrected until he had put his very fingers into the
wounds of Jesus. It wasn’t enough that
Jesus actually appeared to him in the flesh. Obviously, Jesus wasn’t a ghost or
something after all. He stood there in
the flesh—wounds and all. Only when he
had placed his finger in the wounds, would he believe.
It’s a strange and wonderful story. I always liked this story and what it stands
for. I think it’s always interesting to hear this story of Doubting Thomas. Thomas, I think, is so much like us in many
ways. We sometimes do need little bits
of proof to make our faith meaningful. We
sometimes need to touch the wounds of our own faith to actually believe. We sometimes need to proof just to get us
through the difficult phases of our belief.
But, the fact is, we are
not St. Thomas. For the rest of us, we
don’t get it so easy. Our doubts are not
as easily done away with. Jesus is probably not going to appear before us—in
the flesh. And we are not going to have
the opportunity to touch the wounds of Jesus.
Let’s face it, to believe without seeing, is not
easy. It takes work and discipline. A strong relationship with God takes
work—just as any other relationship in our life takes work. It takes discipline. It takes concentrated effort. There will be good days and bad days in our
relationship with God.
And with that, we cannot get around the fact
there will be times of doubt. We will
question. We will, however briefly,
question God’s actions, God’s love for us. Or even that God exists at all. We might even question the actual existence of
God at times. It’s important to question. Questioning means we’re not robots. And
doubting is not a bad thing in and of itself. Without some doubt, we would, again, be
nothing more than unthinking and unquestioning robots. And that is not faith.
Faith is being able to
weigh both the certainties and uncertainties and still make that step forward
into the unknown and hope and believe that we will be sustained. Doing so is not the easiest road to take. It takes constant work to make that step into
the unknown. Belief doesn’t—and
shouldn’t—come easy. It takes constant
discipline to believe in something we can’t see or touch. It takes constant discipline to believe that
there is something out there that we cannot see or feel that will sustain us
when we take that step forward.
In a sense, we are
sometimes like blind people groping in the dark, trying to understand who and
what God is in our lives. We make our
guesses. We see God as we want to see
God. We often form God into our image when
we can’t do anything else. And when we do that, it’s easy to say that God of
our own perceptions doesn’t exists because…that God doesn’t exist.
There’s a great quote I once heard:
“The same God many atheists don’t believe is the
same God I don’t believe in either.”
That god is often a god of our own
perceptions,a god created in our image.
And I do not believe in that god. If that were THE god, then I too would be an
atheist.
But it isn’t that easy, sadly. Now, for Thomas,
he saw. He touched. It was all made
clear to him. We however don’t get that
chance. We are often just groping about
in the void, trying to make some sense of who this God is that we follow and
love and worship.
“Blessed are those who
believe but don’t see,” Jesus says this morning in our Gospel reading.
We are those blessed
ones. We are the ones Jesus is speaking
of in this morning’s Gospel. Blessed are
we. We believe, but don’t see. Yet.
We are the ones who are able to look into the
void, into the very depths, and, unable to see God with our eyes, we somehow
still have faith. Seen or unseen, we
know God is there. And our faith is not
based on seeing God here. Because we
have faith that one day, yes, we will see God. We have this faith because the one
we the follow—Jesus—showed us the way forward. He stepped out into that void and was held up
by God. He still motions to us to come
forward, to step into what we think is a void. Because Jesus did what he did, we know we too
will be held up by God. And because he
died and was resurrected, even though we might doubt it at times, even though
it doesn’t make sense to our rational minds, we know—deeply—that this is what
awaits us as well. And, on that glorious
day, we will run to God and see God face to face. And in that moment, our faith will be
fulfilled.
Blessed are you who
believe but don’t see now. The Kingdom
of Heaven is truly yours.
No comments:
Post a Comment