Here they
are again, "startled and terrified." They thought they were
seeing a ghost, but Jesus invites them to touch him and then to prove
the point he eats a piece of fish.
All of
the Resurrection stories are a combination of faith and doubt. This
morning's is no exception. The disciples are paradoxically both joyful
and disbelieving that their friend who had been so brutally crucified
on Friday should have been somehow, miraculously, raised from the dead
on Sunday. Last Sunday we remembered the story of doubting Thomas-Thomas,
who needed proof of this fantastic story the other disciples told him,
who threw down the gauntlet of challenge, "unless I see him with
my own eyes, unless I touch his wounds, I will not believe."
What
does it take 2,000 years later for Jesus' disciples to believe? My experience
has been that just like the disciples of Jesus in the days following
the Resurrection, you and I are a mixture of doubt and belief, more
so sometimes than others.
Thinking
back over my own life I well remember as a teenager how it is I began
to doubt the literal veracity of the Bible, particularly the anthropomorphic
picture of God that I had-at least in my head-of a sort of regal Father
Time, or perhaps heaven's version of Charlton Heston as Moses. I never
really doubted the resurrection of Jesus but I certainly questioned
why God let Jesus suffer so much. These were primarily an intellectual
disbelief that could legitimately include the bodily resurrection of
Jesus which the resurrection stories readily fuel with Christ walking
through locked doors while at the same time he can be touched. There
are respected biblical scholars today who doubt the bodily resurrection
of Jesus for a variety of reasons, and that along with the Virgin Birth
have had the Nicene Creed up for grabs. I am comforted by the faith
of other equally respected biblical scholars who do not doubt the bodily
resurrection of Jesus and the virgin birth, but I only use it as an
illustration to say that there is a legitimate place for inquiry, for
skepticism, for questioning, for research to find the truth.
I find,
however, that doubt which springs from the heart rather than from the
mind can be more personally devastating, the dind of doubt arising from
deep feelings of hurt or of anxiety particularly when in Rabbi Kushner's
words, "bad things happen to good people." Who wouldn't sympathize
with the anguish of a mother who says, "I cannot believe in a god
who would allow my child to die of a terrible, ravishing disease."
And who can blame so many Jews who became atheists because of the horror
of the Holocaust, because of the unimaginable evil of the murder of
12 million Jews and Russians and Poles and gypsies and homosexuals just
because they were Jews and Russians and Poles and gypsies and homosexuals?
However,
these are the same arenas in which faith can be observed and experienced
and shared. I well remember a beloved Old Testament professor in seminary
whose equally beloved wife had died. They had had no children and his
grief was devastating. Dr. Denton stayed away from the seminary chapel
for months and months. When he did return for daily services he finally
had occasion to preach, and he began by thanking the seminarians and
other professors for their recitation of the Creed all those months
he could not be in the chapel because as he explained to them, "I
could not say, 'I believe.'" He thanked them for their faith during
a dark period in his life, a faith that could carry him while he was
incapable of expressing it himself.
And when
we are confronted with those sorts of overwhelming pictures that we
have of evil and death represented by the Holocaust, there are stories
and experiences of grace that can bring us back to a gratitude for God's
goodness. I recently visited a parishioner in the hospital because he
had had heart surgery, which was a success. However, the day after his
surgery he recounted the story of his brother's and his hesitancy about
the surgery and about the doctor who was new to them who would perform
the surgery. But he said when the doctor learned that they had been
soldiers as part of the D-Day invasion of Europe, he said, "Let
me shake your hands. You saved my parents from the death camps."
Our parishioner said, "I was happy to put my faith in him because
I knew he was grateful to us."
Sometimes
faith and doubt are subject to what Christoph Blumhardt describes as
our satisfaction with a
…Christianity
that only makes us a little more decent. That's all that people want.
And yet if no one takes a look at it one must say, "This cannot
be all." Not just a sense of something new, but all things new,
in yourselves first and foremost. How long have we been sitting around
here; how long are we being preached to; how long have we let ourselves
be admonished again and again! And still there is no breakthrough
to something new. It could make one die of grief to see how little
has actually happened. So much that is new lies before us, and still
there are so few results; it is always at our doorstep, and still
it will not come in.
Recently,
however, I had the experience of meeting a couple for whom the Christian
life was absolutely, completely new. They were a couple who were members
of the host church I attended last Sunday for my seminary reunion, Trinity
Church in Baltimore. This couple had just been baptized the Sunday before-baptized
at the 11 o'clock Easter Sunday service. The rector who was our classmate
had suggested a few of us might want to meet with the couple after last
Sunday's service so that they could ask us "experienced" Christians-and
priests at that-what our prayer life as Christians was like. It soon
became apparent, however, at least to me, that these priests, including
two bishops, of 33 years were being enriched by this young couple so
recently incorporated into the life of the Church through their baptism.
What so astonished me was how new and how vital their faith was and
how vivid and visceral their experience of the living presence of Jesus
Christ. She said, "Everything looks new to me. When I look out
my window and see the trees and the flowers and the green grass I'm
almost blinded by the love of God who created that loveliness just for
me." It was as if she was with God at the beginning of Creation
and could feel nothing but joy and wonder.
Now I'm
under no illusion that with time that faith and that wonder will be
tested, that there will be temptations to doubt God's presence, that
life's cruelties will take its toll, but I also know that their sense
and experience of God's love that they had in their baptism will be
a well of water by which they'll be able to prime the pump of faith
again.
There
is a story in the Bible of a man whose son had suffered from what his
father believed was demonic possession all of his young life. The boy's
symptoms suggest epilepsy to the modern mind, but no matter because
his father had every reason to doubt the goodness of a god who would
allow such suffering. The man had already asked Jesus' disciples to
heal his son, but they were unable to do so. Finally he asked Jesus
for his help and cries out his prayer, "Lord, I believe. Help thou
my unbelief."
Isn't
that our prayer? How honest, but how trusting! Faith is a risk worth
taking, my friends, despite the distractions, the evidence to the contrary,
the cultural pressure to be cool, self-sufficient, capable; faith is
a risk worth taking, your willingness to believe despite your unbelief.
Amen.
