Sermon: 2nd Sunday of Easter
Monday, 17 April 2023 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjbanningAs preached at the weekend Eucharists at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Glassboro, NJ on the evening of Saturday, April 15 and the morning of Sunday, April 16. Long-time readers of this blog might recognize large portions of this sermon as being lifted from this unpreached sermon, written thirteen years ago. I thought about writing a completely new sermon, but I couldn't imagine saying anything else on this text without saying this first.
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
The second Sunday of Easter is my favorite Sunday in the entire liturgical year. Part of the reason is because the message it gives us is not simple to decipher or easy to hear; it challenges us, invites us to engage the story of St. Thomas just as Thomas engaged the physical body of the Risen Christ: fully, critically, and reverently.
Even before I was baptized a Christian–perhaps especially before I was baptized a Christian–the Gospel passage we heard today resonated with me as I put myself in the sandals of a skeptical St. Thomas. Even today, 16 years after my baptism, the challenges which it has given me in the past only serve to enrichen and deepen my response to it in the present.
These are the words of Jesus the Christ to the doubting St. Thomas: "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe."
In a world where ignorance and uncritical thinking are commonplace, where religious intolerance is rampant and fanaticism begets horrific violence, where people reject the scientific evidence on various subjects including the efficacy of vaccines or of masks, these are challenging words. It seems, after all, like the absolutely last thing this world needs is more uncritical belief without evidence.
But as I've reflected over this Gospel passage over the years, these are also words that have come to bring me much hope and joy. Imagine all the things Jesus could have said, but didn't. Jesus could have cursed St. Thomas, just as Jesus had cursed the fig tree which had not born fruit out of season. Words of reprimand, of condemnation, of anger or disappointment, could have followed. Jesus could have berated St. Thomas for his lack of belief.
But none of those things happened. Instead: "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe."
But the truest, deepest source of joy isn't just that we aren't, say, damned to eternal torment in hell forever for our doubts, for our unbelief. It's this: that when Thomas reached out for a deeper, relational connection with Christ, demanded to see and touch and feel Jesus, the Risen Christ appeared. We are not required to hold blind faith, to believe without seeing. When we need Jesus, when we ask for Jesus, Jesus shows up. Every time, without fail, just like Jesus did for St. Thomas.
Well, maybe not just like. If you expect Jesus to show up bodily in front of you, to give you a chance to put your fingers in Jesus' side, you're probably going to be disappointed--probably. I suppose I can't, and I won't, rule out the possibility completely--but if it happens to you, you're probably best off not telling me about it, because I probably won't believe you. If you're looking for some grand supernatural violation of the natural order of God's creation, you're going to be disappointed; at best, you'll get a violation of the established rules as we currently understand them. And if you expect "proof" for some set of propositional truths, to the exclusion of some other set of propositions, some final demonstration that you're right and everyone else is wrong, you're almost certainly going to be disappointed. Faith, at least as I've come to understand it, doesn't work like that.
"First of all," writes the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff in his book Liberation and Ecology, "comes the experience of mystery, the experience of God":
This may well be the purest description of my personal theology as has ever been written; I know that those words have been written on my heart ever since I first read them as a college student 19 years ago, in 2004. (If you've done the math, you know that was about 3 years before my baptism.) And I cannot think about the story of St. Thomas without thinking of the words of Boff I've just read.
Jesus' appearance to St. Thomas did not put an end to the possibly of doubt or disbelief. Imagine what we might wonder were we to find ourselves in Thomas' sandals. Is it really Jesus--and not, say, Jesus' identical twin? Or a clone? Could it be a trick with mirrors, or a delusion of the mind? Can we be sure that Jesus really died, and wasn't just resuscitated by some scientifically-explainable process (and never underestimate the ingenuity of scientists in constructing explanations, it's what they do)?
Jesus' appearance to St. Thomas did not make these questions impossible. Instead, it made them irrelevant. Because in that moment, the reality of Christ's presence transcended all necessity to explain how or whether or why.
But if we cannot expect the Risen Christ to show up bodily in our living rooms and instruct us to touch Christ's wounds, then how, then, can we experience Christ in the twenty-first century? How do we have the type of experience St. Thomas did? Where do we find this sacred mystery? Primarily, we can do this through the Sacraments, the outward and visible signs of inward, invisible grace--and most especially the Eucharist, the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood, where we receive Jesus Christself into us in order to strengthen and renew our identity as Christ's mystical Body. We encounter Christ communally and relationally, through our relationships with others, our work for justice and works of mercy: we see Jesus in the face of the stranger who is the least of our sisters or brothers or siblings. And also in solitude and contemplation, through prayer and sacramentals--but like with Thomas, our engagement with Christ must necessarily begin with our engagement with our community, in our challenging and being challenged by our sisters and brothers and siblings in Christ.
All of these things sustain us and make possible the type of holistic faithful response Boff talks about. They don't prove some truth claim and disprove some other; they don't have to, because what they're doing is far more important. That we know Christ is so much infinitely more important than that we know that Christ exists. That we know the Father is so much more important than that we know the Father exists. That we know the Spirit is so much more--well, I think you get the idea.
Thomas rejected holding a truth claim about Christ in favor of knowing the Christ, feeling and touching and seeing the Christ. And Jesus showed up. Jesus always shows up.
It must be acknowledged that even though Jesus always shows up, it doesn't always feel like Jesus has shown up. Sometimes, this is a consequence of us turning away from Christ, of pushing God away, but more often it is simply the natural symptom of exhaustion and despair.
At our lowest, it's easy to feel abandoned by God. This is so natural and human that even Jesus felt that way on the Cross. I believe with all my heart that even in those moments–especially in those moments–that God is present in our lives, but I have no fancy words of persuasion, no clever proof, to convince someone who doesn't experience Christ's Presence in their life that Jesus is indeed there.
I was a philosophy major; I’ve studied those sorts of supposed proofs. They had impressive names: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument. I have to say I found the content of the arguments themselves far less impressive, far less persuasive. I suppose I hold out hope that one day a version of one of these arguments might be put forth which accomplishes what I believe they have hitherto failed to do, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
And the interesting thing is that even if such a proof were to exist, how little it would in the end actually prove. It might get us to a First Cause, a Prime Mover, a Necessary Being. But probably not to the God of the Matriarchs and the Patriarchs, the God who delights in our joys and who shares in our suffering, the God whose great works have been attested to in the Holy Scriptures. In short, not to Jesus Christ. That requires relationship: asking Jesus to show up, and being receptive when–not if, but when–Jesus does show up.
Now, don't get me wrong, there's an important role for theology, in using the tools of Scripture, tradition, and natural reason to interrogate my experience of God and your experience of God in an attempt to arrive at objective truth. Such a process was used by the early Church to formulate the historic creeds which we affirm as basic Christian orthodoxy. But such an exercise must always begin with the presence, the experience of God, or else it ends up lacking reality. It becomes a mere logic puzzle, akin to figuring out how a fictitious farmer gets his fictitious cabbage and fictitious goat and fictitious wolf across a fictitious river using a fictitious boat.
So faced with a person who cannot detect the presence of Jesus in their life, I can only testify to the ways–the small, subtle yet meaningful ways–that God has been present in my life, and pray that Jesus will make Christself known to those persons in the fullness of time.
Jesus tells us that Thomas' type of faith isn't the only type of faith which is valid or acceptable to God: "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe." This is no doubt an important corrective to the temptation to judge the faith of others, to declare it too uncritical, too simple, too uninformed or unenlightened. I have known Episcopalians who needed that correction, and there have been times when I’ve needed that correction.
But I firmly believe--I cannot but believe--that those of us who are called to the faith of St. Thomas are blessed, too. How can we not be, when Jesus always shows up?
I love the second Sunday of Easter because it is this truth--that Jesus shows up, that Jesus always shows up--which fills me with joy like no other New Testament message can. The story of St. Thomas speaks to me so powerfully on a personal level, it is his story which fills me with hope like no other New Testament story can, because in Thomas I find a vision of a mature, questioning, critical faith which is not thwarted, but rather manages to find its fulfillment in Christ's Presence.
Jesus shows up. Jesus always shows up.
Alleluia!
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
The second Sunday of Easter is my favorite Sunday in the entire liturgical year. Part of the reason is because the message it gives us is not simple to decipher or easy to hear; it challenges us, invites us to engage the story of St. Thomas just as Thomas engaged the physical body of the Risen Christ: fully, critically, and reverently.
Even before I was baptized a Christian–perhaps especially before I was baptized a Christian–the Gospel passage we heard today resonated with me as I put myself in the sandals of a skeptical St. Thomas. Even today, 16 years after my baptism, the challenges which it has given me in the past only serve to enrichen and deepen my response to it in the present.
These are the words of Jesus the Christ to the doubting St. Thomas: "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe."
In a world where ignorance and uncritical thinking are commonplace, where religious intolerance is rampant and fanaticism begets horrific violence, where people reject the scientific evidence on various subjects including the efficacy of vaccines or of masks, these are challenging words. It seems, after all, like the absolutely last thing this world needs is more uncritical belief without evidence.
But as I've reflected over this Gospel passage over the years, these are also words that have come to bring me much hope and joy. Imagine all the things Jesus could have said, but didn't. Jesus could have cursed St. Thomas, just as Jesus had cursed the fig tree which had not born fruit out of season. Words of reprimand, of condemnation, of anger or disappointment, could have followed. Jesus could have berated St. Thomas for his lack of belief.
But none of those things happened. Instead: "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe."
But the truest, deepest source of joy isn't just that we aren't, say, damned to eternal torment in hell forever for our doubts, for our unbelief. It's this: that when Thomas reached out for a deeper, relational connection with Christ, demanded to see and touch and feel Jesus, the Risen Christ appeared. We are not required to hold blind faith, to believe without seeing. When we need Jesus, when we ask for Jesus, Jesus shows up. Every time, without fail, just like Jesus did for St. Thomas.
Well, maybe not just like. If you expect Jesus to show up bodily in front of you, to give you a chance to put your fingers in Jesus' side, you're probably going to be disappointed--probably. I suppose I can't, and I won't, rule out the possibility completely--but if it happens to you, you're probably best off not telling me about it, because I probably won't believe you. If you're looking for some grand supernatural violation of the natural order of God's creation, you're going to be disappointed; at best, you'll get a violation of the established rules as we currently understand them. And if you expect "proof" for some set of propositional truths, to the exclusion of some other set of propositions, some final demonstration that you're right and everyone else is wrong, you're almost certainly going to be disappointed. Faith, at least as I've come to understand it, doesn't work like that.
"First of all," writes the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff in his book Liberation and Ecology, "comes the experience of mystery, the experience of God":
Only afterward does faith supervene. Faith is not primarily adhesion to a teaching that gives access to revelation and the supernatural. Then faith would be tantamount to ideology, in the sense of an idea or belief inculcated in someone from outside. This extrinsic character of so-called faith can give rise to various forms of fundamentalism and religious warfare. All groups tend to affirm their own truths to the exclusion of all others. Faith is meaningful and possesses truth only when it represents a response to an experience of God made personally and communally. Then faith is the expression of an encounter with God which embraces all existence and feeling--the heart, the intellect, and the will.
This may well be the purest description of my personal theology as has ever been written; I know that those words have been written on my heart ever since I first read them as a college student 19 years ago, in 2004. (If you've done the math, you know that was about 3 years before my baptism.) And I cannot think about the story of St. Thomas without thinking of the words of Boff I've just read.
Jesus' appearance to St. Thomas did not put an end to the possibly of doubt or disbelief. Imagine what we might wonder were we to find ourselves in Thomas' sandals. Is it really Jesus--and not, say, Jesus' identical twin? Or a clone? Could it be a trick with mirrors, or a delusion of the mind? Can we be sure that Jesus really died, and wasn't just resuscitated by some scientifically-explainable process (and never underestimate the ingenuity of scientists in constructing explanations, it's what they do)?
Jesus' appearance to St. Thomas did not make these questions impossible. Instead, it made them irrelevant. Because in that moment, the reality of Christ's presence transcended all necessity to explain how or whether or why.
But if we cannot expect the Risen Christ to show up bodily in our living rooms and instruct us to touch Christ's wounds, then how, then, can we experience Christ in the twenty-first century? How do we have the type of experience St. Thomas did? Where do we find this sacred mystery? Primarily, we can do this through the Sacraments, the outward and visible signs of inward, invisible grace--and most especially the Eucharist, the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood, where we receive Jesus Christself into us in order to strengthen and renew our identity as Christ's mystical Body. We encounter Christ communally and relationally, through our relationships with others, our work for justice and works of mercy: we see Jesus in the face of the stranger who is the least of our sisters or brothers or siblings. And also in solitude and contemplation, through prayer and sacramentals--but like with Thomas, our engagement with Christ must necessarily begin with our engagement with our community, in our challenging and being challenged by our sisters and brothers and siblings in Christ.
All of these things sustain us and make possible the type of holistic faithful response Boff talks about. They don't prove some truth claim and disprove some other; they don't have to, because what they're doing is far more important. That we know Christ is so much infinitely more important than that we know that Christ exists. That we know the Father is so much more important than that we know the Father exists. That we know the Spirit is so much more--well, I think you get the idea.
Thomas rejected holding a truth claim about Christ in favor of knowing the Christ, feeling and touching and seeing the Christ. And Jesus showed up. Jesus always shows up.
It must be acknowledged that even though Jesus always shows up, it doesn't always feel like Jesus has shown up. Sometimes, this is a consequence of us turning away from Christ, of pushing God away, but more often it is simply the natural symptom of exhaustion and despair.
At our lowest, it's easy to feel abandoned by God. This is so natural and human that even Jesus felt that way on the Cross. I believe with all my heart that even in those moments–especially in those moments–that God is present in our lives, but I have no fancy words of persuasion, no clever proof, to convince someone who doesn't experience Christ's Presence in their life that Jesus is indeed there.
I was a philosophy major; I’ve studied those sorts of supposed proofs. They had impressive names: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument. I have to say I found the content of the arguments themselves far less impressive, far less persuasive. I suppose I hold out hope that one day a version of one of these arguments might be put forth which accomplishes what I believe they have hitherto failed to do, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
And the interesting thing is that even if such a proof were to exist, how little it would in the end actually prove. It might get us to a First Cause, a Prime Mover, a Necessary Being. But probably not to the God of the Matriarchs and the Patriarchs, the God who delights in our joys and who shares in our suffering, the God whose great works have been attested to in the Holy Scriptures. In short, not to Jesus Christ. That requires relationship: asking Jesus to show up, and being receptive when–not if, but when–Jesus does show up.
Now, don't get me wrong, there's an important role for theology, in using the tools of Scripture, tradition, and natural reason to interrogate my experience of God and your experience of God in an attempt to arrive at objective truth. Such a process was used by the early Church to formulate the historic creeds which we affirm as basic Christian orthodoxy. But such an exercise must always begin with the presence, the experience of God, or else it ends up lacking reality. It becomes a mere logic puzzle, akin to figuring out how a fictitious farmer gets his fictitious cabbage and fictitious goat and fictitious wolf across a fictitious river using a fictitious boat.
So faced with a person who cannot detect the presence of Jesus in their life, I can only testify to the ways–the small, subtle yet meaningful ways–that God has been present in my life, and pray that Jesus will make Christself known to those persons in the fullness of time.
Jesus tells us that Thomas' type of faith isn't the only type of faith which is valid or acceptable to God: "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe." This is no doubt an important corrective to the temptation to judge the faith of others, to declare it too uncritical, too simple, too uninformed or unenlightened. I have known Episcopalians who needed that correction, and there have been times when I’ve needed that correction.
But I firmly believe--I cannot but believe--that those of us who are called to the faith of St. Thomas are blessed, too. How can we not be, when Jesus always shows up?
I love the second Sunday of Easter because it is this truth--that Jesus shows up, that Jesus always shows up--which fills me with joy like no other New Testament message can. The story of St. Thomas speaks to me so powerfully on a personal level, it is his story which fills me with hope like no other New Testament story can, because in Thomas I find a vision of a mature, questioning, critical faith which is not thwarted, but rather manages to find its fulfillment in Christ's Presence.
Jesus shows up. Jesus always shows up.
Alleluia!