John R. Claypool IV - "Taking Up For Thomas" (April 19, 1998)
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Lecturer | God above us, God before us, God within us, | 0:02 |
oh Father, Son and Holy Spirit | 0:05 | |
be also now between us, | 0:08 | |
a bridge across which your truth can move, | 0:10 | |
through Christ we pray. | 0:14 | |
Amen. | 0:15 | |
Most scholars agree | 0:22 | |
that the foremost affirmation of Christology | 0:23 | |
in all the New Testament | 0:26 | |
is found in our Gospel lesson of the morning. | 0:28 | |
It consists of five words; | 0:31 | |
my Lord and my God. | 0:34 | |
And interestingly enough, these words are not found | 0:37 | |
on the lips of John the beloved disciple, | 0:39 | |
they were not spoken by Simon Peter, the great fisherman, | 0:41 | |
but ironically they are on the lips of the one | 0:45 | |
who's name has become a household metaphor for doubt. | 0:48 | |
It was Thomas the disciple. | 0:51 | |
The one who was best known for his seeming unbelief | 0:54 | |
who is the one who articulates | 0:57 | |
this most foremost of Christological affirmations. | 1:00 | |
The question has to be asked, "How can this be?" | 1:04 | |
A person always associated with unbelief | 1:07 | |
giving voice to words of great certitude. | 1:10 | |
The only answer that I can give to that question | 1:14 | |
is that I believe of all the 12, | 1:16 | |
Thomas has been treated the most unfairly in history. | 1:18 | |
To use a modern phrase, he has been given a bum rap. | 1:22 | |
He has not been treated as he ought to have been treated | 1:26 | |
and, therefore, this morning in the few minutes | 1:29 | |
that are mine with you, | 1:31 | |
I would like to engage into something | 1:33 | |
that is by no means strange | 1:34 | |
to you in the academic community; | 1:37 | |
it's called Reconstructionism. | 1:39 | |
It is going back and revisiting the past | 1:41 | |
and understanding it from a different perception. | 1:44 | |
I would like to suggest, this morning, | 1:47 | |
that instead of being the symbol | 1:49 | |
of how one should not deal with truth | 1:50 | |
that the disciple Thomas | 1:53 | |
is a beautiful example for all of us | 1:55 | |
of how to relate to realities outside ourselves. | 1:58 | |
If you go back to what little we know | 2:02 | |
about the disciple Thomas, | 2:05 | |
it turns out that on the very day | 2:07 | |
that Jesus was raised by God from the dead, | 2:09 | |
the accounts we have says | 2:12 | |
that he appeared to three individuals or groups of persons. | 2:14 | |
According to John, | 2:18 | |
he appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden. | 2:19 | |
Later that afternoon he appeared to two disciples | 2:22 | |
on their way home to Emmaus. | 2:25 | |
And then that evening with a cluster of Jesus's followers | 2:27 | |
huddled together fearfully in that same upper room | 2:31 | |
where they'd had their last supper, | 2:34 | |
Jesus materialized in their very midst | 2:36 | |
and spoke to him the, them the incredible truth | 2:39 | |
that he was alive, | 2:43 | |
that God had raised him back from the dead. | 2:44 | |
For some reason, Thomas was not with that group | 2:48 | |
but you can imagine that they lost no time | 2:51 | |
in telling him of their incredible experience. | 2:53 | |
They told him that they had seen the one | 2:57 | |
who was crucified on Friday | 2:59 | |
now fully alive on Sunday. | 3:01 | |
And it was interesting that Thomas says, | 3:03 | |
"I hope to God that that is true. | 3:05 | |
"Nothing could be more wonderful. | 3:07 | |
"But listen, until I experience what you have experienced, | 3:10 | |
"until I see him with my eyes and can touch with my hands | 3:15 | |
"those hands through which the nails were driven, | 3:19 | |
"I cannot accept your conclusion. | 3:22 | |
"You are believing what you believe | 3:25 | |
"because you've had that experience. | 3:26 | |
"I have not had it and, therefore, | 3:29 | |
"I cannot join you in that conclusion." | 3:31 | |
I want to suggest that that is authentic truth loving. | 3:34 | |
Those who love the truth more than anything else | 3:38 | |
know that it has to be, | 3:41 | |
conclusions have to be based on outside evidence. | 3:42 | |
Truth always comes through encounter. | 3:46 | |
It takes the shape of discovery. | 3:50 | |
It is always something outside of us | 3:52 | |
that moves in and we honestly accept it. | 3:55 | |
Paul Tillich used to say | 3:59 | |
that reality is what we come up against. | 4:00 | |
It's those things that we have to adjust to | 4:04 | |
because they will not adjust to us. | 4:06 | |
There is a stubborn otherness to truth | 4:08 | |
that must be accepted regardless of what you fear | 4:11 | |
or desire or might want to be the case. | 4:15 | |
And therefore, I would suggest | 4:18 | |
that when Thomas says "Until I have experienced | 4:19 | |
"for myself what you're talking about, | 4:22 | |
"I cannot join you on hearsay, | 4:25 | |
"I can't take second hand evidence. | 4:27 | |
"I too must experience what you have experienced | 4:30 | |
"to come to the same conclusion." | 4:33 | |
And I think that is authentic to any kind of truth loving. | 4:35 | |
Well eight days later, | 4:40 | |
the same group is gathered in the same upper room | 4:41 | |
and once again Jesus materializes, | 4:45 | |
only this time Thomas is there. | 4:47 | |
And on this occasion without any recrimination whatsoever, | 4:50 | |
Jesus offers him the same evidence | 4:54 | |
that he had given to the others. | 4:57 | |
He let him look at his body and say, "It is I, | 4:59 | |
"the one who was crucified on that dark Good Friday. | 5:02 | |
"I will let you look at my hands | 5:06 | |
"and see where they drove the nails. | 5:08 | |
"I'll let you put your fingers | 5:10 | |
"where the Roman put his spear into my side. | 5:12 | |
"I give you the evidence, Thomas, that you've asked for | 5:16 | |
"and I invite you to respond to it | 5:19 | |
"as an honest person should." | 5:22 | |
And it is at that juncture | 5:25 | |
that you have the greatest Christological affirmation | 5:27 | |
of the New Testament. | 5:30 | |
He falls to his knees in absolute astonishment | 5:31 | |
and says, "My Lord and my God". | 5:35 | |
Which, once again, I would suggest is the way | 5:38 | |
truth loving people respond. | 5:42 | |
They're willing to change their opinions | 5:44 | |
when new evidence is given. | 5:46 | |
People of conviction are willing to change their minds. | 5:49 | |
It is people of prejudice | 5:51 | |
that are stubborn and refuse to ever change. | 5:53 | |
I remember reading once when Mahatma Gandhi | 5:57 | |
was the Prime Minister of India, | 5:59 | |
a young associate came in to him one day and said, | 6:01 | |
"Sir, you have no integrity. | 6:03 | |
"Two weeks ago I heard you take one position | 6:06 | |
"and this morning you're taking a very different position. | 6:09 | |
"How do you account for that?" | 6:11 | |
And Gandhi said, "It is simple my child. | 6:13 | |
"I have learned something since two weeks ago." | 6:16 | |
In other words, new evidence leads to new conclusions. | 6:19 | |
A willingness to sit down before truth like a little child | 6:23 | |
is the very essence of intellectual y | 6:27 | |
and this is what we see Thomas doing here. | 6:29 | |
Before he had the experience, he could not accept it. | 6:32 | |
But once he had encountered truth for himself, | 6:37 | |
he was willing to embrace it with his whole being. | 6:40 | |
So I would suggest in this sense, he is a model | 6:44 | |
for how we need to deal with truth. | 6:47 | |
But it's the thing that comes right after | 6:50 | |
the theological affirmation | 6:53 | |
that I think has caused the great problem | 6:55 | |
and led Thomas to be so misunderstood in history | 6:57 | |
because as soon as he had said | 7:01 | |
what he did to the risen Christ, | 7:03 | |
Jesus says to him, "You have believed in me | 7:05 | |
"because you have seen me. | 7:08 | |
"Blessed are those who do not see me but will believe." | 7:11 | |
I think Jesus was moving ahead in time at this moment. | 7:17 | |
He was looking ahead to what would happen in a few weeks | 7:21 | |
when by the providence of God, | 7:24 | |
his physical resurrected body was going to be | 7:26 | |
ascended back unto heaven to the Father, | 7:29 | |
and he was going to reappear on Earth in a different form, | 7:33 | |
in the form of the Holy Spirit. | 7:37 | |
Which is to say Jesus was saying, | 7:40 | |
"You have come to your conclusion | 7:41 | |
"through your physical senses and that is exactly right. | 7:43 | |
"But the era that is about to be born | 7:47 | |
"is going to convince people of my reality | 7:50 | |
"in a different form. | 7:53 | |
"I'm going to come back as Spirit | 7:55 | |
"and not as physical body. | 7:58 | |
"And in the next era, the wonder of knowing the truth of me | 8:00 | |
"is going to come through the faculty of faith | 8:05 | |
"and not through the faculty of the physical senses." | 8:08 | |
If you'll stop and think about it, | 8:12 | |
reality exists in a variety of forms | 8:14 | |
and by the grace of God, | 8:17 | |
each of us have been given many ways | 8:19 | |
of perceiving that reality. | 8:21 | |
Reality is a many splendoured thing | 8:24 | |
and we humans are the most permeable of all the creatures. | 8:27 | |
Do you remember in the second grade | 8:32 | |
when your teacher used to talk to you | 8:33 | |
about the eye gate, the ear gate, the nose gate, | 8:35 | |
the mouth gate, the skin gate? | 8:38 | |
Those different windows that God has given us | 8:40 | |
through which outside reality makes its way into our hearts. | 8:44 | |
Well, this morning I want to suggest | 8:50 | |
that faith is a sixth sense. | 8:51 | |
Faith is more like intuition | 8:55 | |
than anything else I can imagine. | 8:57 | |
Faith is that way of our perceiving the sacred | 8:59 | |
and the holy dimension of reality, | 9:04 | |
just as our different physical senses | 9:06 | |
are our ways of perceiving the physical aspects | 9:09 | |
of the outside of ourselves. | 9:13 | |
For example, there is the dimension of color | 9:16 | |
and corresponding to that is the capacity of sight. | 9:19 | |
There is the dimension of sound | 9:22 | |
and corresponding to that is our capacity to hear. | 9:25 | |
The dimension of odor and our capacity to smell. | 9:28 | |
The dimension of taste and these little buds on our tongues. | 9:31 | |
The capacity to feel | 9:35 | |
and the largest of our perceptive organs | 9:36 | |
the skin that covers our body. | 9:39 | |
But I like to suggest this morning | 9:41 | |
that what the eye is to color, what the ear is to sound, | 9:43 | |
what the nose is to smell, | 9:48 | |
faith is to the divine dimension of reality. | 9:50 | |
Faith is not an alternative to knowledge; | 9:55 | |
faith is yet another avenue to knowledge. | 9:58 | |
It's another way of our experiencing realities | 10:02 | |
that are outside ourselves. | 10:05 | |
This is the way the most holy and the most spiritual | 10:07 | |
makes its contact with our personhood | 10:11 | |
and the way that scientific knowledge | 10:15 | |
and faith knowledge work is exactly the same process; | 10:17 | |
both are responses to realities outside ourselves. | 10:21 | |
The difference is in the structure of the evidence. | 10:26 | |
Our physical senses | 10:30 | |
respond to physical dimensions of reality. | 10:32 | |
Our faith capacity | 10:35 | |
responds to the spiritual, the holy and the sacred. | 10:37 | |
Therefore, what Jesus meant was, | 10:42 | |
"There's going to come a time | 10:44 | |
"when the way you will know my presence | 10:46 | |
"is not the way you're knowing it now Thomas, | 10:49 | |
"because it is rightly come to you | 10:52 | |
"through your physical senses. | 10:54 | |
"There will come a time | 10:56 | |
"that I will be present as Holy Spirit | 10:57 | |
"and then you will know..." | 11:00 | |
...through the capacity of faith. | 11:15 | |
I wish the church had learned | 11:19 | |
that lesson more carefully because truth be told, | 11:20 | |
across the centuries we have confused faith with fantasy. | 11:24 | |
We have turned it into something | 11:29 | |
that is so different from our ordinary ways of knowing. | 11:30 | |
We have corrupted this capacity | 11:34 | |
to know that outside ourselves | 11:37 | |
and somehow made it to look like | 11:39 | |
that faith is an alternative to knowledge. | 11:42 | |
You go into the scientific lab and you are limited to | 11:44 | |
what the evidence leads you to conclude. | 11:47 | |
But according to this corruption | 11:51 | |
you go into a faith experience | 11:52 | |
and you're free simply to believe | 11:54 | |
anything that you want to believe. | 11:56 | |
And when that is your sense of faith, | 11:59 | |
it leads to a terrible, terrible perversion of our faith. | 12:01 | |
I remember years ago during a Christmas holiday, | 12:06 | |
a young woman back from college | 12:09 | |
made an appointment to see me. | 12:11 | |
Her parents and grandparents had grown up in this parish | 12:13 | |
that I had served, | 12:16 | |
(garbled) through our youth group; | 12:17 | |
a wonderful young woman. | 12:19 | |
She'd been accepted in a prestigious Ivy League school. | 12:21 | |
She'd gone away to study. | 12:23 | |
And she came back for Christmas, made an appointment | 12:25 | |
and as soon as she walked into my office, | 12:29 | |
I sensed that she was | 12:31 | |
profoundly uncomfortable about something. | 12:32 | |
She got right to the point. | 12:35 | |
She said, "I've come to you today to formally ask | 12:37 | |
"that my name be taken off the rolls of this church." | 12:39 | |
She said, "I can no longer in good conscience | 12:43 | |
"consider myself a Christian." | 12:46 | |
When I asked her why she was taking that radical step | 12:48 | |
she said, "I'll be very honest with you." | 12:51 | |
She said, "I grew up believing what my parents taught me | 12:53 | |
"and that was that God had created human beings. | 12:57 | |
"But now that I've been exposed to a | 13:01 | |
"wider span of knowledge, | 13:03 | |
"I've concluded it's the other way around. | 13:04 | |
"It is human beings who have created God." | 13:07 | |
She said, "I think people believe | 13:11 | |
"what they want to believe. | 13:12 | |
"There is nothing objectively real | 13:14 | |
"on the other side of this verb to believe." | 13:16 | |
She said, "People dig down in their hearts, | 13:20 | |
"their fears, their hopes and they concoct what they want | 13:22 | |
"and they project that on the screen of reality. | 13:25 | |
"And I can no more, in good conscience, | 13:29 | |
"be a part of such a process. | 13:30 | |
"Religion, I've concluded, | 13:32 | |
"is just spoofing on a grand scale." | 13:34 | |
I don't know how she expected me to respond to those words. | 13:38 | |
I don't know whether she thought I would fall in a faint | 13:42 | |
at the sound of such heresy. | 13:43 | |
Or maybe go ballistic and actually attack her | 13:46 | |
for taking a position that was so different than mine. | 13:48 | |
What I did do was to respond to her | 13:52 | |
as honestly as I knew how | 13:54 | |
and said, "What you have just said is not new to me. | 13:56 | |
"It's one of the oldest charges | 14:00 | |
"that is ever been leveled against religious experience | 14:01 | |
"and I myself know exactly what you're talking about | 14:04 | |
"because I can remember | 14:08 | |
"when I encountered the same possibilities. | 14:09 | |
"I remember in college reading | 14:12 | |
"that Sigmund Freud's classic volume on religion | 14:14 | |
"is entitled The Future of an Illusion. | 14:18 | |
"I recall hearing that Karl Marx said, | 14:20 | |
"Religion is simply the opiate of the people. | 14:23 | |
"Something made up to keep the under classes down." | 14:25 | |
I said, "I remember going to a play once by Eugene O'Neill, | 14:29 | |
"and in one of the gripping moments | 14:33 | |
"a character says with great feeling, | 14:35 | |
"Religion is the chloroform mask | 14:37 | |
"into which the weak and the fearful stick their faces. | 14:40 | |
"It is a way of running from reality, | 14:43 | |
"not a way of embracing reality." | 14:46 | |
So I said, "I am no stranger whatsoever | 14:49 | |
"to what you're saying | 14:52 | |
"because I have faced those same things myself." | 14:53 | |
I said to her, "I wish I could say to you quite openly | 14:57 | |
"that what you're charging simply has no basis in fact, | 15:00 | |
"that nobody in history has ever in the name of faith | 15:04 | |
"made up something out of their own needfulness." | 15:07 | |
But I said, "I cannot do that." | 15:11 | |
I said, "what you are saying today, again and again, | 15:14 | |
"has been the tragic, tragic perversion of faith." | 15:18 | |
Then I told her a chilling story that I had read one time | 15:22 | |
that illustrates this very point. | 15:25 | |
It took place in the middle of the 19th century. | 15:27 | |
The great potato famine | 15:31 | |
had caused great dislocation in Ireland | 15:32 | |
and an enterprising business man in Dublin | 15:35 | |
sees the opportunity, bought an ocean liner | 15:37 | |
and began a very profitable business | 15:41 | |
of transporting folk from the old world to the new. | 15:43 | |
For 10 years he took countless number | 15:47 | |
of his fellow countrymen into a new life here in America. | 15:49 | |
And after 10 years the ship came back to Ireland | 15:54 | |
and the sea captain | 15:57 | |
made an appointment with the owner of the ship | 15:58 | |
and said to him quite honestly, | 16:01 | |
"In my opinion, our ship is no longer seaworthy. | 16:03 | |
"It was old when you bought it. | 16:06 | |
"You've not done anything to it for a decade." | 16:08 | |
He said, "Much of the rigging is inoperative, | 16:11 | |
"the hull is making creaking, ominous sounds." | 16:13 | |
He said, "It needs to be put in dry dock | 16:16 | |
"and completely overhauled. | 16:18 | |
"I don't believe it's safe for the mission | 16:20 | |
"that we're undertaking." | 16:22 | |
And when the captain had left, | 16:24 | |
the owner began to compute what the implications would be | 16:26 | |
at what the captain had said. | 16:29 | |
He'd have to put forth | 16:31 | |
considerable capital investment to repair the ship. | 16:32 | |
He would also miss all kinds of revenue | 16:35 | |
from round trips that he could not take. | 16:38 | |
It would have made a tremendous dent in the bottom line | 16:41 | |
and that disturbed him greatly. | 16:44 | |
And so he began to think to himself, "How do I know | 16:46 | |
"that this captain is right? | 16:48 | |
"Maybe he's just a nervous nelly who is just reacting, | 16:50 | |
over reacting to something. | 16:53 | |
"After all, that ship has made many, many voyages | 16:55 | |
"across the Atlantic without incident." | 16:58 | |
And then he grew religious. | 17:00 | |
He said, "I'm engaged in a beneficent enterprise. | 17:02 | |
"Surely a gracious providence would not let anything happen | 17:05 | |
"to eager souls who are trying to better their lot." | 17:09 | |
So on the basis on that kind of thinking, | 17:12 | |
he got up from the desk | 17:15 | |
and he said, "I chose to believe | 17:17 | |
"that the captain is mistaken and the ship is seaworthy." | 17:19 | |
And with that he set another sailing date, | 17:23 | |
sold a whole round of tickets, | 17:25 | |
even went down himself early one morning | 17:28 | |
and waved goodbye to all those eager souls | 17:31 | |
who were setting out on their greatest, greatest adventure. | 17:34 | |
But three days later a severe thunderstorm broke out | 17:38 | |
over the north Atlantic. | 17:42 | |
The ship was, in fact, structurally weakened. | 17:44 | |
The stress of the storm was so great | 17:47 | |
that the hull literally broke in two. | 17:49 | |
They sent out SOS messages | 17:52 | |
but no other vessels were close enough to help | 17:54 | |
and all 800 souls went down to their watery grave. | 17:57 | |
But when the word got back to Dublin about what had happened | 18:01 | |
the ship owner went down and collected his insurance | 18:05 | |
and said nothing to anybody. | 18:09 | |
Now what was the problem here? | 18:11 | |
A man had believed something he had no right to believe | 18:14 | |
on the basis of the evidence. | 18:19 | |
In the name of faith, he had contacted something | 18:21 | |
out of his own selfishness that suited his desire. | 18:24 | |
It was not a truth out there that he encountered; | 18:28 | |
it was a selfish fantasy within that he had projected. | 18:32 | |
And so I said to the young woman, "Tragically, tragically | 18:37 | |
"this has happened again and again and again. | 18:40 | |
"But I would suggest to you that this is not faith | 18:44 | |
"in its most authentic form; | 18:47 | |
"this is a perversion of faith." | 18:49 | |
So I said to her, "Because you strike me as somebody | 18:52 | |
"utterly honest, wanting above all to know the truth, | 18:55 | |
"before you come to a final conclussion, | 18:59 | |
"I wish you would do three things for me | 19:02 | |
"and then come back and let's talk." | 19:04 | |
I said, "I wish you would take about an hour a Sunday | 19:07 | |
"and sit down with the gospel of Mark | 19:10 | |
"and read it through at one sitting | 19:13 | |
"the way you'd read a profile in the New Yorker. | 19:15 | |
"And I want you to focus as you read on | 19:18 | |
"that shortest of all stories | 19:20 | |
"about the central figure, Jesus of Nazareth. | 19:22 | |
And I want to ask yourself honestly, "Is this somebody | 19:26 | |
"who was making up a concept of God | 19:30 | |
"to get himself out of trouble? | 19:33 | |
"Is this an example of wish fulfillment? | 19:35 | |
"Or was Jesus in touch with a reality beyond himself | 19:39 | |
"that often times cut against his self interest? | 19:43 | |
"Did trouble cause Jesus to create God | 19:47 | |
"or did the God he perceive by faith | 19:50 | |
"often time lead him into his troubles? | 19:53 | |
I said, "I want you to focus | 19:57 | |
"particularly on the last night of his life | 19:59 | |
"when he goes the Garden of Gethsemane | 20:01 | |
"and there in utter honest he says, | 20:04 | |
"If it be possible, let this cup of rejection pass from me. | 20:07 | |
"Please, please deliver me from this fate, | 20:12 | |
"nevertheless, not as I will | 20:14 | |
but as you will." | 20:19 | |
I said, "Whatever else you say about that moment, | 20:20 | |
"that was not religion as wish fulfillment. | 20:23 | |
"That was not somebody making up what they wanted to believe | 20:26 | |
"out of their own selfishness. | 20:30 | |
"That was an encounter with something beyond himself | 20:32 | |
"that he sensed to be greater | 20:36 | |
"and before which he bowed | 20:38 | |
"in a wonderful kind of loyalty." | 20:40 | |
Secondly I said, "I wish you would take the next book | 20:44 | |
"after the gospels, Acts of the Apostles, | 20:46 | |
"and read the accounts of a man named Saul of Tarsus; | 20:49 | |
"a vigorous Hebrew | 20:53 | |
"who found it offensive to suggest | 20:54 | |
"that a crucified carpenter | 20:57 | |
"could possibly have been the Messiah, | 20:58 | |
"and who set out to rid the Earth of | 21:00 | |
"that heresy as quickly as he could. | 21:02 | |
"And as Saul was making his way to Damascus | 21:05 | |
"on that mission of annihilation, | 21:08 | |
"he has this blinding encounter with something not himself." | 21:10 | |
And I said, "Ask the question, | 21:16 | |
"was what he hoped to discover | 21:17 | |
"as he made his way to Damascus | 21:20 | |
"that Jesus of Nazareth really was the Messiah | 21:23 | |
"and his followers were, therefore, | 21:26 | |
"the true believers in reality? | 21:30 | |
"Or did what he discover there | 21:33 | |
"be the last thing in the world | 21:35 | |
"that Saul would have wanted to discover?" | 21:37 | |
Whatever you can say about Damascus road, | 21:40 | |
this was not wish fulfillment. | 21:42 | |
It was not taking the easy way out. | 21:45 | |
This was having to reorder life according to realities | 21:47 | |
that were utterly beyond him | 21:52 | |
and yet that's exactly what he did. | 21:54 | |
And I said, "Thirdly, I want you to do something | 21:57 | |
"when you're your own self. | 21:59 | |
"I want you to sit down sometime and concoct a religion | 22:02 | |
"that would suit yourself. | 22:05 | |
"Draw up your vision of reality | 22:07 | |
"according to the wishes of your own heart. | 22:10 | |
"And then after you've done that, ask yourself | 22:13 | |
"Is the kind of religion that I would like to have | 22:17 | |
"the same thing I encounter | 22:20 | |
"in the documents of the New Testament?" | 22:23 | |
I said, "I've done this with myself | 22:26 | |
"and I'll be honest with you, | 22:27 | |
"if I were drawing up my own religious credo, | 22:29 | |
"I would have nothing in it about loving my enemies, | 22:32 | |
"I'd have nothing in it about forgiving 70 times seven, | 22:36 | |
"I'd have nothing in it about returning good for evil, | 22:40 | |
"or turning the other cheek, or taking up a cross, | 22:43 | |
"or the awesome possibility of judgment." | 22:46 | |
I said, "If I was making up a religion | 22:50 | |
"to reflect my inward desires, | 22:52 | |
"it would not be coterminous with what I find | 22:54 | |
"in the pages of holy scripture." | 22:57 | |
I said, "There is something other than our wishes at work. | 23:00 | |
"It is an incredible thing called Christianity. | 23:05 | |
"And I invite you to consider | 23:08 | |
"that though there has been wish fulfillment | 23:10 | |
"in the name of religion, | 23:13 | |
"that is not the whole truth." | 23:15 | |
I'm happy to tell you that just like Thomas, | 23:17 | |
she was profound enough in her love of truth | 23:20 | |
that she did the things that I had asked. | 23:23 | |
And it didn't come quickly | 23:26 | |
and it was the result | 23:28 | |
of much asking and seeking in knowledge | 23:29 | |
but she came to a sense of the truth of Christianity | 23:32 | |
out of a stubborn, stubborn commitment | 23:36 | |
to let the truth determine her conclusions. | 23:40 | |
And to this day she is an intelligent | 23:43 | |
and a wonderfully functioning Christian human being. | 23:46 | |
I think Thomas is our leader | 23:50 | |
when it comes to learning how to deal with truth. | 23:53 | |
I think history has given him a bum rap. | 23:56 | |
I think we have misunderstood what Jesus said, | 23:59 | |
"Blessed are those who do not see but believe." | 24:03 | |
He is not suggesting here | 24:07 | |
that faith is an alternative to knowledge; | 24:09 | |
a place where you can just simply make up | 24:12 | |
out of your own desires whatever you wish. | 24:14 | |
He is suggesting that to that deepest dimension of reality, | 24:18 | |
to the sacred, to the holy and to the divine, | 24:22 | |
you and I have been given a sixth sense. | 24:26 | |
Faith is an avenue to knowledge | 24:29 | |
just as surely as the eye, | 24:33 | |
the ear, the nose, the mouth and the skin. | 24:35 | |
It is our way of getting in touch | 24:40 | |
with that which is outside ourselves | 24:44 | |
and apart from ourselves | 24:46 | |
but is spiritual by nature. | 24:48 | |
And, therefore, I invite you this morning | 24:51 | |
to revise your views of Thomas. | 24:53 | |
Let him be the kind of truth lover | 24:56 | |
that inspires you to ask and to seek and to knock. | 24:59 | |
Faith is not believing the unbelievable. | 25:03 | |
It is not taking a leap into the dark. | 25:06 | |
Faith is responding with that special capacity that we have, | 25:09 | |
responding to the in thrust of the divine, | 25:15 | |
it is taking hold of the hand | 25:19 | |
that graciously has come to take hold of us, | 25:22 | |
it is sitting down | 25:26 | |
before fact, spiritual fact, | 25:29 | |
like a little child. | 25:33 | |
May that kind of honesty | 25:35 | |
lead us to the place | 25:38 | |
that we too can say from the depths of not being | 25:40 | |
to the mystery of godness, | 25:45 | |
the man Jesus does give a face. | 25:48 | |
And on that face, ahhhh, | 25:52 | |
there is a smile. | 25:56 | |
My Lord | 25:58 | |
and my God. | 26:00 | |
Amen? | 26:04 | |
Congregation | Amen. | 26:05 |
Item Info
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