Rev. Rick Haverly
April 23, 2006
You Don’t Need the Brick
Poor Thomas has this reading come up every year on the first Sunday after Easter and he is called doubting Thomas so much that you might think “doubting” was his first name. But the doubts of Thomas are not unique. The women and men who first see the empty tomb had doubts and confusion about what happened. In the Emmaus story found in Luke 24:11 the two followers of Jesus say: “Some women have said that Jesus is alive but these words seemed like an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” In Luke 24:36-43, Jesus appears to the disciples. He questions and challenges their doubt. He shows them his wounds and then asks for some food and eats it to prove he is real. The alternative endings in Mark’s gospel combine many of these stories and the doubt that each group experienced.
The Thomas story is really the culmination of all the doubt regarding the resurrection rather that something unique to Thomas. Rather than casting a shadow on Thomas, I think it really points out the continuing revelation of God in Jesus. Each group that doubts has an encounter with Jesus which serves to settle those doubts. Jesus is not just resurrected and off to sit at God’s right hand. Jesus continues to be present to his followers in the resurrection appearances and continues to build up or restore their faith. I think the continued revelation of Jesus is hopeful for us because it speaks of God’s intention that Jesus can continue to be present to us, the present doubters, in a way that can build up our faith.
Now Thomas is also instructional to us because the story indicates that Thomas has believed where he has seen but those who come after him will believe not having seen. So this encounter indicates that our experience will be different. We may regret that. We wish that we would see Jesus more concretely like the photographer for the National Enquirer a couple of years ago who got a picture of a gigantic Jesus standing over Washington, DC. But we don’t have to have an experience that hits us like a brick. Our experience of Jesus tends to be much more subtle.
As it was described in Chris Rice’s song, our experience of the risen Christ does not usually come through our ordinary senses. I think he takes the reality of the conclusion of the Thomas story and shows how faith is still created and built even without the tangible experiences.
I believe the greatest witness to faith and the resurrected Jesus is the demonstration of lives transformed by living the faith. So the presence of Jesus is not seen as a body but by the effect it has had on his followers in the centuries following his death including the present one.
Now this kind of proof is not unique to Christianity. Scientists are now talking about dark matter out in space. Now no one has ever seen it and they don’t even know what it really is but they say it exists because of the gravitational aberrations it causes on other planets and things in space. So they know it exists by its effect even though we can’t see it. On a totally different scale we are also discovering subatomic particles like quarks and neutrinos. Again these are objects that have never been seen but their existence explains what happens when particles collide in particle accelerator super colliders. So we spend billions of dollars showing these things that we can’t see actually exist because of their effects on other objects in these experiments.
That is the same proof we have for the presence and existence of the risen Christ. It is demonstrated not by seeing Jesus, but by seeing the effect Jesus has on other people. That is why Mother Teresa was such a phenomenal and intriguing character to so many people. Her life was transformed and used in such a way that pointed to the reality of faith and the power of Christ. Each of us should have those transformed lives as witnesses for our lives. My grandparents; Bob Dorn, a Sunday school teacher; Rev. Sahn Hyun Hahn; individuals in each of the churches I have served. I hope you have people in your life who have served that way.
Now some will say that actually the presence of religion in history has only been a destructive thing, that all sorts of killing has gone on in the name of religion. But I would say that has happened only in the misuse of religion, where it has been used for somebody else’s purpose instead of lives being transformed by it. But the same could be said of science and technology. Most killing uses some tool or technology whether it is knives, guns, cars, bombs, radiation, chemical weapons, or biological weapons. It doesn’t mean that science and technology are bad, only that they can be misused as well as religion.
So rather than dismissing religion as evil, I think we need to live lives that experimentally prove the presence of the risen Jesus. That is why I think short term missions and retreats are effective because they give us time to leave our everyday concerns behind and live the experiment in a temporary time frame. The question continues to be can we incorporate the results and experience into our everyday lives when we return? We have the promise of the scripture that Jesus continues to be revealed to his followers even in the midst of their doubts. So we should look with our vision of faith to experience Christ now. We should be trying to smell the color 9.
We have benefited from those who have lived lives of faith before us. They have demonstrated the reality of the risen Christ. Many today question the church as an institution. But they are hungering to see lives lived authentically in faith. If we aren’t just a people who believe the right things, but become people transformed by the teaching and presence of Christ we can lead others to their own experience. While Thomas and others first doubted, they continued to hang around with those who were convinced until they came to the knowledge for themselves.
Hopefully, we will continue to be surrounded by the community of faith that points us to the truth until we can experience it and be transformed by it.