St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, April 15, 2007
From Wounds to Witness – Rev. David Mundy
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31
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Many of you who have children and some of you who don’t went to see the
film, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The
motion picture was based on a children’s book by the late British author, C.S.
Lewis.
Lewis wrote a series of these children’s fantasies and some of you have
read all of them with your kids. Lewis
wrote excellent science fiction novels as well, but he was better known as an
amateur theologian. While working at Oxford University as a don, he began
writing about Christianity, to which he was converted after being a staunch
atheist. There are a number of clever and even brilliant books on every aspect
of being Christian, including the difficult subject of suffering.
Then Lewis took a very intellectual and yet accessible approach to
Christian subjects on a BBC radio program which was hugely popular in Britain
during World War Two. Today it’s hard to imagine people huddling around the radio,
eager to hear about faith, but he used logic and clear speaking to address what
it means to be a follower of Christ.
Something happened in Lewis’ life which shook his logical faith to the
core. Well into mid-life, when he had assumed that he would be a bachelor
forever, he married and then fell in love with an American woman. I put it that
way because Lewis married Joy Gresham as a convenience, so she could stay in
Britain, but to the surprise of both of them they fell in love after the fact.
They enjoyed a brief but extremely happy marriage, until she developed
cancer and eventually died. Lewis was devastated by her death. They had prayed
constantly for the remission of her illness, and while it seemed for a time as
though a miracle had taken place, the cancer returned.
Lewis wrote another book, which was actually a collection of journal
entries, and it was an entirely different reflection called A Grief
Observed. He wrote with powerful honesty about his sense of loss and how it
affects his relationship with God.
Meanwhile, where is God? ...go to God when your
need is desperate, when all other help is vain, a door slammed in you face, and
a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that silence . . .
Why is God so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent
a help in time of trouble?
In the book Lewis concedes that he won’t give up believing in God, but
wonders if the real danger is what sort of God he will be able to believe in.
In the midst of doubt, his heart and mind search for answers.
This morning we move past the great celebration of Easter, which is all
about the certainty of our resurrection faith. On Easter morning we don’t allow
much room for the shadows of the grave, only the bright light surrounding the
Risen Christ. But once we get past that powerful moment we return to the
everyday realities of life. Every year we listen to the same story about Easter
evening when the followers of Jesus have bolted the doors in fear of
persecution, perhaps, but even against the notion that their master has died
and left them alone to fend in the world. What will be next?
The disciples are all there, except for Thomas, and Jesus seeks them out
and offers them peace. When they tell Thomas what has happened, he is understandably
skeptical and makes what we might consider a very modern demand of empirical
evidence “Unless I see the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will
not believe.”
According to John, Jesus comes back to the disciples a week later and
this time Thomas is present. He offers
Thomas the opportunity to do just what he has asked, to touch his wounds. As he does so Jesus says “Do not doubt but
believe.” We are not biblical and linguistic scholars here, but you might
be interested to know that when Jesus invites Thomas to believe it is not just
for that startling moment, but for a lifetime.
Thomas’ response is a breakthrough. He no longer needs to touch the
wounds and when he says “My Lord and my God” he is acknowledging the
divinity of Jesus in a way that no else has before.
How do we move from our wounds to becoming faithful and confident
witnesses to Christ in the world? We come to realize that what we call faith is
not simply a matter of what is in our heads, in the form of statements of belief.
It is also a matter of our hearts, and there are times when the combination of
intellect and emotion tells us that what is going on around us just doesn’t
seem consistent with what we want to believe about God.
We teach our children that God is loving and kind and cares for our
well-being. We teach them this because we want to trust it ourselves. When life
is unfair and even cruel we struggle with that image. It’s likely that we all
have our times when doubt causes us to hesitate in our conviction that God is
good and merciful. There are several different Greek words for doubt used in
the New Testament and one of them is distazo, which means to “hold
back” or hesitate. So doubt is not necessarily a denial of a relationship
with Christ but it can certainly keep us off balance.
We are inclined to doubt God when the people who claim they believe in a
loving and compassionate Creator and Redeemer say and do fanatical things
including murder in God’s name. The latest issue of Maclean’s magazine has the
cover story Is God Poison? which is about the increasing challenge to faith by atheism
or non-theism as it also called. Of course atheism is not the same as doubt,
but the article does look at the flood of books published recently in which the
authors point out that some of God’s followers do nasty things, therefore God
is toxic. While their arguments can be simplistic – Stalin and Mao Zedong and
Pol Pot were murderous atheists – we have probably all wondered how “holy”
people could be so unholy.
There all also times when circumstances seem so profoundly unfair that
we wonder if there can be a personal God. After the Asian Tsunami a couple of
years ago a number of people spoke to me and wanted to know why God would allow
this to happen.
The challenges to our faith are often much closer to home. In my
previous congregation a parishioner was a professor at Dalhousie University,
her specialty being the nature and management of pain. She is a lovely person,
warm and intelligent, and we had several stimulating conversations over coffee
on what pain is, and why it has to exist. This was not just an academic pursuit
because the man she married is dependent on a wheelchair and while he lives an
active life he lives in constant pain.
While she had a strong spiritual hunger, she also admitted her doubts
about the existence of a loving, personal God who would allow so much suffering
in the world.
It always seems to surprise people when they discover that I have doubts
the way they do, although when you stop to consider, I am constantly exposed to
situations where life seems cruel. This past week I suggested to our bible
study group that there are days when I eat doubt for breakfast and munch on it
as a bedtime snack!. Yet, even though there are
moments and extended periods of time when I have been disappointed and angry
with God, I consider the alternative and realize that I can’t live in a world
of unbelief. Christ has met me and continues to meet me on my journey.
Is there no room for doubt in our lives if we are “real” Christians?
There has to be, because it exists, and virtually every religion acknowledges
the reality of doubt. One of the great theologians of the 20th
century, Paul Tillich put it this way: “serious doubt is confirmation of
faith.” We doubt because we are trying to understand the way God works and
the way the world works. Doubt can allow us to move forward into faith.
This can happen
providing we don’t become stuck in our indecision and uncertainty
and personal pain. In the Middle Ages a philosopher
named John Buridan proposed a problem which became known as Buridan’s Ass. It’s
not what you might think! It’s about a
donkey who stands between two piles of food and cannot
decide which one to choose until it eventually dies of hunger. This can happen to us spiritually, where we
become so stuck “in between” that our doubt eventually starves us of
meaningful, joyful faith.
This first Sunday after our Easter worship we can affirm that the
celebration isn’t over and that we can live in the
light of Christ. We can support one another and be open about questions and
seek answers as well. Christ is able to pass through the locked doors of our
hearts and minds and meet us with honesty and hope.
My encouragement to you all is to work at your faith so that it is both
deep and strong. The world needs Easter people who are able to give witness to
the faith that is within them. Learn and grow and be prepared to let others
know what is important about your experience of Christ. And if you are not sure
whether you have experienced the risen Christ, be open
to the possibility and pray that it will happen today and in the days ahead.
In a poem called The Ancient Sage, Alfred Lord Tennyson says
For nothing proving can be proven.
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.
I like this. We constantly choose to move out of the shadows to the
sunnier side of doubt. C.S. Lewis eventually made his way back to faith,
despite his pain. The tradition of the church says that Thomas did recover from
his doubt about the resurrection of Jesus and went on to a missionary in Syria
first of all and then in India. He is the patron saint of the church in India.
Thomas was able to move from behind the locked doors and away from the wounds
of Christ to become a witness in the world.
With the grace of Christ we will be witnesses and declare “My Lord
and my God!”