THE SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER 2007
The Revd Daniel Weir preached this sermon on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 15, 2007.
“Do not doubt but believe.” (John 20:27)
Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen has suggested three different ways to translate these words of Jesus to Thomas, ways that get at the shades of meaning of the Greek:
Do not become unbelieving, but believing.
Do not become unfaithful, but faithful.
Do not become uncertain, but certain.
Become believing; become faithful; become certain.
Our life in Christ is about who we are becoming and not about some static state of being. We are growing, changing all the time and what the story of Thomas suggests to me is that this growing and changing is not just some automatic process outside our control, but is something we also choose. In the Christian life, growth doesn’t just happen; it is chosen and it is nurtured.
Growth in faith is nurtured in community and the story of Thomas tells us something about the nature of communities that nurture faith. At the 2002 Trinity Institute in
The first false community is the kind in which everyone has to think alike, to adopt the party-line or they're out. We saw this in the
The second false community is the kind where you can believe anything you want because no one is really paying attention to you or taking you seriously. If you want to struggle with your doubts and fears, don't bother to do it in this kind of community, because no one really cares.
By contrast, the community of the disciples in the days after Easter was a real community, a community that did not require that Thomas accept Simon Peter’s or anyone else’s interpretation of what had happened on Good Friday and Easter. As the other disciples kept right on telling Thomas, “We have seen the Lord!” he refused to believe them, insisting, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
And Thomas did not find the other kind of false community that didn't care if he had doubts. He found instead a community of unconditional love that accepted him as he was - doubts and all - and provided him a place where he could struggle with those doubts and come to faith.
Jesus had formed a community of unconditional love around himself in the months before his death by reaching out to all sorts of folks, even those who were unacceptable in the eyes of the religious establishment. When he breathed on his disciples on Easter, inviting them to receive the Holy Spirit, he gave them the power to create the same kind of community of unconditional love. And that's what they did, and it was that community that Thomas found when he met with the disciples a week later.
And it was in that community that Thomas became believing, faithful and certain. His confession of faith, “My Lord and my God,” is one we don’t hear any of the other disciples making. It may be true that it was only in the struggle with his own uncertainties and in his stubborn refusal to accept the testimony of the other disciples that Thomas could come to such a profound confession of faith. Certainly the others would come in time to a similar deep faith, faith that would send them out as fearless preachers of the Good News and, for some, would lead them to a martyr’s death, but in that process of coming to deep faith, Thomas led the way.
We are called to be just such a community of unconditional love, to welcome all sorts of people with all of their doubts and uncertainties and to provide a space where together we can come to deeper faith. We are called, especially, to provide a safe place for the younger members of the community to struggle with their our doubts and uncertainties. In far too many places, in far too many religious institutions, the message, explicit or implicit, is “Don’t question our beliefs, our faith!”
In one of my earliest sermons here, I voiced my own doubts about how the Church understands the Virgin Birth. A few weeks later, Bishop Michael told me that another priest had gotten hold of a copy of the sermon and had written a letter of complaint to the Bishop. A short time after that, Glen Weeks, who was one of the more conservative members of the parish, gave me a copy of a letter that he had sent to Bishop Michael. In that letter, Glen stated very clearly that while he did not share any of my doubts about our understanding of the Virgin Birth, he affirmed my right, as an Anglican, to be honest about my uncertainties, even in a sermon.
What Glen affirmed as appropriate for me, I claim as appropriate for all of us, and especially for our younger parishioners. Questions are for asking and challenging even some of the most cherished beliefs of the community may be an absolutely essential part of the journey to deeper faith, to a faith of one’s own, and not simply the faith of the community. The Christian faith is not so fragile that it needs to be protected from challenging questions. And certainly I am not at all concerned about how well God can handle such questions.
The English biblical scholar J. B. Philips wrote a book with the title, Your God Is Too Small. If it is true that our understanding of God is too small, and I believe that it is, then the path to a deeper understanding of God, to deeper faith, will involve honest questioning. Such questioning may make us uncomfortable, in the same way that Peter and the rest may have been made uncomfortable by Thomas’s questioning. We may even experience such questioning as a shaking of the very foundations of our faith. But I am certain that if we welcome such questions as an essential part of our life together, all of us can come to deeper faith.
So the first question I would pose this morning is this: “Are we willing to welcome the Thomases among us and to be the kind of community of unconditional love that rejoices in the questions that can lead us to deeper faith?”
