Carmen Schrock-Hurst: Believing with the heart

March 30, 2008
Easter 2: John 20:19-31

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It is the week after Easter and most of the hard boiled eggs have been used up at our house. The candy is gone from the Easter baskets, except perhaps for the kind no one really liked anyway. The stores have quickly moved on to trying to find new reasons to sell us things, with Mother’s Day being the next occasion we need to prepare for by consuming. I noticed there are definitely less people here at church today than there were last week. Why is this? Why is this the Sunday that some in church circles have dubbed “low Sunday?” Are we suffering from post Easter let down? Is the Easter story past tense?

No. I am here today to say that the Easter story is NOT past tense. It is very much ongoing. But perhaps it is helpful to put away the eggs and the baskets and the candy so that we can hear more clearly what the story is all about.

Today’s passage from John actually takes place on that first Easter evening. The disciples are meeting in a room behind locked doors. Some think it might have been the same room where they met to share the last supper with Jesus. In any case, they are afraid, uncertain, hiding from the authorities who had just killed Jesus. They aren’t sure if maybe they might be the next ones to be arrested and crucified. And lo and behold, Jesus appears there right in front of them, And he greets them with the traditional Jewish greeting – Peace be with you. And he holds out his hands for them to see his wounds and he shows them his side. And John tells us they are filled with joy when they see their Lord.

Now Thomas, we find out later, wasn’t in the room at the time that Jesus came to visit. Some commentators say that this is an excellent illustration to show why you should never miss a Sunday at church because all the really good things happen the Sunday you are gone. Thomas missed one Sunday and look what happened! I don’t think that is really the point of the story.

But if you’ve grown up going to church you likely know that this story is often called the story of doubting Thomas. Doubting Thomas is what we’ve come to call the fellow who wasn’t there the first time Jesus appeared. But there are some things about that name that bother me.

First of all, Thomas doesn’t really ask for much more than what the other disciples received. We are told that the other disciples all got to see Jesus’ hands and side. They didn’t believe until they had seen. Thomas, who was gone at the time asks to see the same thing, but he also asks to touch Jesus’ wounds – why does that make Thomas the bad guy and the other disciples towering figures of doubt-free faith? If we are going to call Thomas doubting, maybe we’d better call the whole group of them doubting, because not very many of these fellows believed Mary when she came back from the tomb early Easter morning with the news that she had seen the risen Lord. I’d say we have here a whole group of doubting fearful uncertain quaking in their boots hodgepodge disciples.

But here is something that really intrigues me about this story:

When Jesus appears to his disciples, the way he chooses for them to know it is him, is by showing his wounds. Think about it – he has just conquered death. He could come with trumpets and angels, he could come with chariots and thunder, he could walk in on water or bring some other folks with him from the grave. But no –instead, he enters quietly, with a greeting “Peace be with you”, and he holds out his wounded hands and lets himself be recognized through those signs of pain and suffering. Somehow to me this brings a great deal of comfort on yet another Sunday when we come to worship aware that our world is besieged by violence and our personal lives are filled with brokenness. We can bring our cries of repentance and dismay, anguish and hopelessness to Jesus. And the God who is also deeply wounded by acts of hatred, and senseless war, and poverty, and hunger, indeed the God who is deeply wounded by our broken relationships holds out wounded hands, and meets us in the wounds. We know him in the wounds and in the healing of the wounds that is resurrection. What an upside down kingdom this is that Jesus invites us to join.

But back to doubting Thomas and his bad reputation. Let’s look at Jesus’ response to Thomas. I don’t see here that Jesus gives Thomas a scolding for lack of faith. I don’t see here that Jesus criticizes the whole group of disciples for hiding behind locked doors. Rather, after greeting Thomas, Jesus simply invites him to touch his wounds, he invites him to stop doubting and to believe.

We find here a Jesus of compassion and understanding. A patient Jesus who has made a special appearance for Thomas’ sake,

an invitational Jesus who calls Thomas not only to look at his wounds but to touch them. He is willing to give Thomas what Thomas asked for.

So if Thomas was not the only doubter among the early disciples, and indeed if doubting does not seem to be extensively criticized by Jesus here, why have churches historically been so afraid of those who dare to doubt? Perhaps because for some of us doubting leads to stubbornness and stagnant lifestyles. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Doubting can be a springboard to God, a jumping off point to deeper faith.

Marcus Borg, professor of religion and culture at Oregon State University and author of the book, Meeting Jesus Again as if for the First Time, says this: “Like many of us, as a child I had no problem with belief. But at the end of childhood there began a period lasting over twenty years, in which, like many, I struggled with doubt and disbelief. All through this period I continued to think that believing was what the Christian life was all about. Yet no matter how hard I tried I was unable to do that, and I wondered how others could. Now I no longer see the Christian life as being primarily about believing (p 17). He goes on to say, believe did not originally mean believing in a set of doctrines or teaching, in both Greek and Latin its root means, to give one’s heart to. The heart is the self at its deepest level. Believing therefore does not consist of giving ones mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level of one’s self. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one’s heart, one’s self at its deepest level, to the Jesus who is the risen Lord.” (p 137)

To truly believe is to believe with the heart. Thomas, in that moment when he saw Jesus’ wounds did more than simply see with his eyes, he did more than simply intellectually understand who it was in front of him. Thomas, as we would say, “got it.” He finally got what this was all about. Thomas saw with his heart that death had been swallowed up in victory and he believed, not in the apostles creed, he believed -- not in the Mennonite Confession of Faith. Thomas believed in the living breathing Jesus Christ, and Thomas gave his heart and soul to that Jesus. Thomas believed and his doubting gave way to the affirmation, “My Lord and My God” which some say is the climax of the whole gospel of John.

What can we learn from this doubting Thomas who goes on to become a missionary to India, and a martyr for his faith? We learn that it is okay to ask questions. Children, youth, young adults, older adults – Park View needs to be a place where it is okay to ask hard questions. We are not afraid of questions. We are not afraid of doubt.

Indeed doubting and questioning can strengthen faith especially if done in community. Frederick Buechner once said, “doubts are the ants in the pants of faith, they keep it awake and moving.”

J. Harold McKeithen, a Presbyterian minister from Newport News reminds us that “Columbus doubted the world was flat and so he set sail. Beethoven doubted that the keyboard instruments of his day had reached their maximum development, so he wrote piano music that could only be properly played on instruments not yet in existence.” Thomas dared to doubt and his willingness to express his doubts led to an encounter with Christ that changed his life and no doubt strengthened the faith of those around him as well.

McKeithen uses the example of electricity to help us think about faith and doubt in a new way. He points out that we can not see electricity. Even if we stand at its source at a huge electric power plant we can never see the electricity itself. But, we can see and hear lots of the results of the electricity if we go into people’s homes – the lights of the rooms that go on and off, the purr of washing machines, the roar of motors. The electricity becomes real to us as we see the action that it produces. How similar then must faith be? We can not see the power of the cross, the power of the resurrection with our own eyes per se. But the resurrection becomes real to us as we see the action that it produces.

We see faith in action when the Amish choose to forgive the shooter who kills five beautiful innocent daughters at Nickel Mines school. We see faith in action when Quaker Tom Fox gives up his life as a Christian peacemaker in Iraq because he believes in a better way to fight terrorism than with bombs. We see faith in action when missionary Gracia Burnham is kidnapped, drug around the jungles of the Philippines for over a year, loses her husband Martin in the final gun battle that is meant to free them, and yet forgives her captors, hangs their photos on her refrigerator in Kansas and prays for them daily.

Here in our own congregation we see faith in action when we share our offerings to help put a roof on a church in Trinidad, and when the teachers among us go the extra mile with students even though they are bone weary. We see faith in action when our family member says, “I’m sorry, I was wrong, please forgive me.” Indeed the resurrection story becomes real to us every day when we see Christians living out their faith, however imperfectly it may be done this side of heaven.

And yet, we also doubt. Some may say that doubt is the opposite of faith. I don’t think so. I think apathy is the opposite of faith. Apathy, to not care about God, is to be stuck, To dare to question and wrestle with God is to dare to open oneself to change, to open oneself to new discoveries, to deepening your relationship with Jesus. It is to cry with Thomas, “My Lord and My God, I see now with my whole heart.” It is to say, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

I want to close this morning with a story of faith. And children, if you haven’t been listening thus far, you might want to listen now.

In the 1930’s there was a civil war in Spain. A young Midwestern Church of the Brethren farm boy, by the name of Dan West, went to Spain to help with relief efforts. One day as he was dipping milk into cups for very hungry children the thought came to him that if he could get some of these families their own cows they wouldn’t need the milk that he was handing out. So he returned to the US with a dream, that he explained to his home church. After hearing the dream Virgil Mock, one of the church leaders said to Dan, “have faith Dan West,” to which Dan West replied, “I have faith, what I need is a cow.” Then Virgil explained that Faith was the name of the cow he was giving to Dan, the first of three cows named Faith, Hope and Charity, and thus Heifer Project International was born. To date Heifer Project has empowered over 9.2 million households with animals such as cows, goats, chickens, sheep, rabbits, etc. And if you are familiar with Heifer Project you know that when a family receives a female animal it is with the commitment to pass on to another family the first offspring that is born. Thus it is a gift with a long term multiplying effect.

Dan West had a dream, and probably some doubts too. But he dared to act with a little faith, Faith the cow and faith that God wanted him to make a difference in the world. God did the multiplying.

This story has stuck with me this week, perhaps because we too frequently misuse the phrase, “have faith.” “Don’t be a doubting Thomas” we say, “have faith”. But the lesson of Dan West is that is wasn’t enough just to believe, he also needed the cow.

Perhaps we all carry within us a mixture of doubt and faith, questions and clarity, pessimism and promise. And Jesus walks through the locked doors of our hearts saying, “Peace Be With You”. Jesus gently meets us wherever we are, and holds out his wounded hands for us to see, and he says, “see – believe.” He invites us to see, not just with our eyes, but with our hearts. He invites us to believe, not just in doctrine, but in him as a living breathing Lord. And when we, like Thomas, believe in our hearts, when we like Thomas cry out, “My Lord and My God”, our lives will be changed. We will be changed in a way that we make a difference in the world, one step at a time, one church at a time, one community at a time, one cow at a time.

Jesus said to Thomas, “you believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those in Park View Mennonite Church who haven’t seen me, and yet have believed.”



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