Easter II B "A little doubt will do ya"

“If all the kids were jumping off a cliff would you join them?”  This was the response from my either of my parents whenever I wanted to do something all the other kids were doing, a cynical answer to be sure. They wanted to be sure we kids weren’t just following the crowd trying to keep up with the latest fad, a lesson I think I learned pretty well, since I don’t consider myself particularly a follower of fads.  In fact, at the University of Kentucky, one colleague thought he was being disparaging when he called me a contrarian.  I thought a minute about his comment, then decided I kind of liked not going along with the crowd.

I think the disciple Thomas the twin could perhaps be called a contrarian too. He didn’t go along with the other disciples, who were telling wild stories about their rabbi, who had been crucified in front of the entire town of Jerusalem.  He didn’t believe tales of a risen Christ, something nearly impossible to grasp.  He didn’t swallow any of it, hadn’t been there, and couldn’t be convinced without seeing it himself.  He wasn’t one to go along with the crowd, even if they were his close buddies with whom he had spent nearly three years’ traveling with, being close to this rabbi Jesus of Nazareth.

To top it off, this Jesus had been cruelly and shamefully executed on the orders of the Jewish chief priests, who were jealous of the great throng of followers Jesus had attracted, even as he talked against what hypocrites the temple authorities were.  Thomas, perhaps expecting a different rabbi, an altogether more positive outcome from this man whom some called the messiah, could not believe the claims of rising from the dead, without seeing for himself.  Thomas’s faith was one of hard facts, of sensate touching, seeing, hearing, for himself, just as he touched, saw and heard Jesus when he was alive.  Thomas’s personality does not allow for unsubstantiated belief.  Thomas doesn’t want a faith that he can’t support by truth, and to him, truth is bound up in experience.

Many of us have the same personalities that require experience. We don’t just follow the crowd, go for the latest fad, we want our life to be uniquely ours.  In fact, this individualism characterizes much of American life. While we follow the fads, we also want to do it our way, in our own time, by the rules we find most fair and equal. 

This individualism also spills over into our faith lives in America.  People pick and choose what they want to do with their spirituality nowadays.  They rarely pick a church because it is the denomination they grew up in, if they grew up in any faith tradition at all. They may find just as much to meet their needs outside of church or not in any faith walk at all, in a kind of proud claim to being “spiritual but not religious,” where they don’t ever enter a church building, except perhaps to attend a concert. They don’t read scripture, but may read self-help books claiming a kind of spirituality, and follow web sites of gurus giving spiritual platitudes.

The devolvement of our spiritual life into this amorphous walk sounds a lot like doubting Thomas.  Experience takes over from blind faith. We know from the letter to the Hebrews that ”faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We are far from this kind of faith, as was Thomas the twin.

Is this to be applauded or lamented?  Is blind faith without experience the best kind of faith?

I believe that each of us in our individual personality has needs for faith that meet our particular way of seeing the world. Some of us are skeptics like Thomas who believe only in those ideas that can be proved and experienced.  We would be the ones in the locked room with the disciples, afraid that we were about to be persecuted for being followers of a man who was executed as a political criminal.  Without our doubt, we could have no faith, could not enter into believing an incredulous thing.  Thomas had this personality, and so did the apostle Paul, who actively persecuted the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, until he too had a face to face encounter with the risen Christ.

Then there are those among us who can take our minds and souls beyond our senses, to places that might exist, to ideas that resonate with us on a level beyond the world at our fingertips. These people believe that Christ rose from the dead, even when they don’t have evidence. They believe because they seek God everywhere perhaps, or perhaps they need the reassurance of God’s presence in a rabbi who rose from the dead. They believe in the miracle because they also believe in God’s abiding love for humanity, and God’s promise to make all things new.

Then there are those of us who fall somewhere in between these two types, who may believe, without evidence, some days but not others, depending on our mood, our needs and wants, or what’s happening  in our life. 

One thing I know for sure, is that, whatever your basic way of dealing with the world, whether you are one to follow the crowd, or one to doubt everything you hear, or one who needs evidence, or one whose belief system encompasses many things you can’t touch or see with your senses—God can reach you. God can make all things new with you, meeting you wherever you are in your faith journey, using your own basic world view to find you. 

God doesn’t ask us to mold our way of thinking into one way to believe, only one path to faith.  Just like God found Thomas in his doubts, God finds each of us in our unique faith.  Trust God’s ways of meeting you on your path.

Easter Sunday 2012

Recently in the magazine Science, German scientists reported that a dog they worked with could understand the words for 200 objects.  This finding may not surprise dog owners—that our pets understand a lot of what we say to them.  Like children they pick the meaning of language without needing to learn grammar or spelling—they just watch and associate language with objects and acts.

One foreign language system takes advantage of this ability to pick up language by hearing it.  I am learning French as if I were a child, by listening to the sound of the words and repeating them again and again.  We all can pick up language like this, and especially pick out the names of people and things very quickly when they are associated together.

In our Easter gospel today, language makes it possible for Mary Magdalene to understand that it was not the gardener but the risen Jesus speaking to her.  She talks with him, but in her grief that the body of Jesus is no longer in the tomb, she mistakes who Jesus is. It isn’t until he speaks her name that she recognizes Jesus.

Mary was not expecting Jesus, her emotions are focused on the loss of Jesus’s body.  She needs to be brought out of her grief by being called by name. We are often flattered when we are called by name by a famous person who we don’t expect to know our name. Mary is a close friend of Jesus, however, but still didn’t recognize who he was.

What was it, that by calling her name, she suddenly recognized him?  Mary was one of the close sheep, a disciple, a follower of Jesus.  All throughout the gospel of John we hear the theme that Jesus is the good shepherd. The good shepherd  calls his sheep by name, and when the sheep hear their names, they follow him.

Mary here shows how her following Jesus had made her understand when her master the Good Shepherd called.  She understood then that the person who knew her through and through was standing there, risen.

When the risen Christ calls us by name, we know we are known, through and through, and loved, not just loved for the good we do, but loved for all ourselves, even the pieces we would rather not own up to.  The Good Shepherd, the Risen Christ, shows us that God redeems even death, even the deadly parts of ourselves and gives us new life.

Mary Magdalene was not perfect, but she was a perfect follower of the Son of God.  We do not have to be perfect to follow the Son of God, just willing to answer when we hear our name lovingly called.  For the Good Shepherd, who is the Risen Christ, the son of God, died and overcame death to show us that life and light come from our own darkness.

Christ, the risen Son of God, calls to you today to follow.  Will you rejoice by following when he calls your name?

Easter Vigil 2012

We have just ended the 40 days of contemplation of the acts of God, and now tonight we recapitulate those acts again in our readings. The acts of God start with creation, in a world that began in such perfection but devolved into human being humans, but wanting to be God themselves.  God’s acts then turn to redeeming what humans have made dark, giving us the very Light of the World, his son our savior Jesus the Christ.

Again and again, God has given people of faith a second and third and fourth chance, not to be perfect, because that is never possible. What God wants from us is not perfection, not doing everything right, but doing everything with God, not our self, in mind.

Imagine living your life as if God counted highest, steered all our attention to the love and grace in our life? What would the world look like?

The women at the tomb were frightened, and I believe they were frightened not by seeing a young strange man at the tomb of Jesus. I believe they were frightened because they grasped that all that Jesus has been telling them about being the son of God suddenly was shockingly true.  Jesus focused on the divine healing and love, he pointed to it in all his acts with us, brought us an example of what focusing on the divine would look like.

If Jesus, the carpenter’s son, who has been drawing the criticism of the temple authorities, angering the scribes and chief priests, and making them so jealous they had him put to death, if he were really God’s son, what does this say about who God is?  God had redeemed all that happened to Jesus, all the scorn and contempt of the leaders, but all the healing and loving acts were suddenly not just some nice guy who can heal people, but God acting in the lives of people to redeem whatever had gone astray. God had gone looking for the outcasts, the unlovable among the lowliest of people and had raised them up in love. He had sent his son to undergo all we undergo as human beings, even a shameful death on the cross, to show us that God is not only with us, but right in front of our faces in places and people where we don’t expect to encounter the divine presence.

If God can be on the cross and make something new of it, redeem it with life, God can redeem the dead and dying pieces of each of us. God has declared victory over death brought the light of his love to us all.  Alleluia Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen Indeed.

Good Friday 2012

We have it wrong, the placement of Good Friday—this time of the darkness of God and of our faith—this time of death and destruction, of the end of Jesus and his descent into darkness—this commemoration of his crucifixion should be happening as the buds appear, and the sun comes to us for a longer time each day, the day of commemorating the death of Jesus of Nazareth should occur at the winter solstice, the day when we have the least sun, the most darkness.

But it does not, because we know something about how the story ends. We know that new life cannot happen with some death.  We know it in our personal lives, when we repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf. We know it in our corporate life—that some things must die so that other things can live.  We know it all around us—in the buds coming back to life because last year’s fruit lived and died.

So Good Friday happens as the spring sun greets us, and the buds bloom and new life starts all around us.  We acknowledge the death around us even as we look for signs of new life. We say no to the things that bring darkness so that we can say yes to the Light of Christ on Easter.

So today, enter into this darkness, acknowledge the dark spots all around and in you. Stay with them today.  Keep still in the dark of death, even as you know in  your soul that the light is around the corner.

Maundy Thursday 2012

On this Holy Thursday, we recall two commands Jesus gave us. One was to remember him in the bread and wine of the Passover feast. The other was to love others by serving them, not as master but as slave, symbolized in the washing of feet.  The church chose the Eucharist as the central act of our liturgy, which we bless, break, and share each week.  The church in her wisdom knew we must focus ourselves in order to understand what is most important to our life in faith.
But a professor in seminary one day asked his students, “What if the washing of feet had become the central act of liturgical Christianity instead of the Eucharist?”  What would that shift in focus mean? What if, in our focusing, we said no to the Eucharistic act altogether? What would we look like?
Some say that the Eucharist, with its dining room elegance of beautiful vessels and linens makes us one kind of people. But if washing feet was the liturgy every week, how would we be a different people?  Would we be more or less committed to the inclusion of all at the basin of the Lord? Would we be more vulnerable with one another?
On this night we will have both liturgies, both acts of being fed and of serving.  Where does Jesus resonate the strongest with you in these acts tonight?