| Doubting Thomas: A Disciple We Can Believe In! - Part I |
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[This is the first sermon in a series of
three that begins with the honest doubts of Thomas, the Disciple.]
“Doubting Thomas: A Disciple We Can Believe In! – Part I"
John 20:19-29
Douglas S. Long
I debated celebrating
our anniversary today in worship… It was 9 years ago this weekend that we
worshipped for the first time in this venture now called Umstead Park UCC.
I wondered about
providing a photographic story of the past few years.
…and then I
started hearing a fairly consistent message, in various forms-
-“Ummm.. I’ll be
out of town Sunday…”
-“By the way, I’ll
be at the beach unless the weather’s bad!"
-“Hey, uh, I’ll
be in Chicago …”
-“You know, Wake
County Public Schools start their spring break this weekend…”
Today is the Sunday after Easter…
also known as "Low Sunday."
Seriously.
Last week, we had 40 more chairs
set up in this space than we presently do… and with a few exceptions scattered
here and there, they were all full.
A fellow was coming out of church one Easter Sunday, and
the preacher was standing at the door, as was his tradition, to shake hands with
every person that exited.
The preacher grabbed him by the hand and pulled him
aside and said to him, "You need to join the Army of the Lord!"
To which the fellow replied, "I'm already in the Army
of the Lord, Pastor."
The minister questioned, "How come I don't see you
except at Christmas and Easter?"
And with a totally straight face the ‘attendee’ whispered
back, "I'm in the Secret Service."
So it’s Low Sunday but, as that story so cleverly segues,
for some traditions this is increasingly known as “Holy Humor Sunday.” (I'm not joking!)
And some have tied the theme of jokes to the reality of “Low
Sunday” and use it as a gimmick to get people to come. (Can you believe that?!)
The thinking goes something like this….the Easter season is
a time to celebrate and laugh and be joyous so ministers encourage their
parishioners to bring their best jokes to tell on this Sunday, or they even hand
jokes out at the door as people come in and then call on them during the
sermon.
[Person One stands from the middle of the Congregation and
reads:]
-OK, who is the shortest person in
Bible?…
Bildad the Shuhite
[Person Two, from another section of the Congregation:]
-What
do you get when you cross the 1960s and the New Testament?
Peter, Paul and
Mary!
[Back to me]
Some ministers, it seems, will stoop to anything!
Low Sunday… Joke Sunday…
As Anthony reminded us in the forum that preceded our
worship (Kudos to Anthony, by the way, for the wonderful job he does in leading
our Adult Education efforts… You’ll see several offerings in the newsletter
you’ll receive later this week.)
But as Anthony reminded us in the forum, this Sunday is also
called “St. Thomas Sunday.”
The Gospel account refers to the story of “Doubting Thomas”
taking place on the eighth day after the Resurrection.
I love Thomas. Always have. Thomas, the Doubter.
A 4 year old boy spilled his cola on the rug and wanted
to clean up the mess himself. He was told that the mop was just outside the
back door. He ran to the door, then realized that it had become dark outside.
Suddenly scared, he told his mom what the problem was.
Assuring him, she told him that Jesus was everywhere, even in dark places, and
that Jesus would always protect him.
This put a smile on the 4-year-old’s face! He opened the door just enough to poke his
head outside and yelled, "Jesus, if you're out there, could you pass me
the mop?"
Jesus, it’s the second Sunday of Easter… Are you out there?
That’s what Thomas wanted to know, basically.
Is Jesus still here?
Thomas… There is so much I want to say… so many good threads
this leads to…
I was trying to cram it all in and then I said to myself,
“Who am I kidding? I’ve got all the time I want!”
That being said, you’ll be relieved that I’ve decided to
divide this message on Thomas, and Thomas related topics, into at least two
Sundays ….and there’s a good chance that some of it will spill over into a
third.
… Not that I really know that much about Thomas. Come to
think of it, there’s not much in the Gospels about him at all.
In fact, other than listing him as a disciple, you won’t
find a thing in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Unless I missed something in my search, there’s nothing much
on Thomas in the Synoptics. Just his name, Thomas, alongside other disciples…
…until you come to John…. John’s Gospel.
The writer of the Gospel of John seems to have a special relationship
to Thomas because there are multiple passages in John where Thomas is not only
mentioned, but has dialogue attributed to him.
For example:
When Jesus ventured near
…but despite this risk, when Jesus
states his intention to go, it is Thomas who says to the rest of the Disciples:
"Come
along. We might as well die with him." (John 11:16)
…and when Jesus tells the Disciples that ...”in my
Father’s mansion there are many rooms,” … that Jesus was on his way to get their room ready… and then Jesus says to
them…
“And you already know the road I'm taking."
Thomas responds
quite practically, "Master, we have no idea where you're going. How do you
expect us to know the road?" (John 14:5)
How, indeed?
Yes, I like Thomas… I feel a connection to him. I recognize my
own spirit in his questions, in his requests for clarification.
… which leads us to the most
famous interchange of all...the passage read earlier this morning… the one that
has forever labeled Thomas, the Doubter… “Doubting Thomas.”
Following the crucifixion, after
reports from Peter and Mary that Jesus had risen, Jesus appears, John’s Gospel
records, to all the disciples who had huddled, frightened, behind locked doors.
…but Thomas wasn’t present and when all the others told him of Jesus’ visit, he
scoffed.
“I’d have to see that for myself.”
Dare I say, in such a context,
that I adore Thomas?
You bet… I’m quite happy that in
that very first Easter event one of the disciples heard the story of the others
and said… “I don’t believe it.”
(Now, as an aside, if you were
listening to the Resurrection story as recorded in Mark’s Gospel that we read last
week, you heard that the women came back to tell the disciples that they found
the tomb empty and NONE of them believed it.
Remember, Clarence Jordan
translated the disciples response to the women as “women’s chatter”?
Despite this, history hasn’t pegged
the whole bunch as the Doubting Disciples, though.
But Thomas… Doubting Thomas, he
is.)
Why, then, do I like Thomas?
…because his response is
completely legitimate.
In fact, we, we here, are almost all
doubters by nature.
It may not be how we'd want to primarily identify ourselves…
but really, we are skeptics, too.
We’d probably be in other places of worship, were we not.
Our stories, for the most part go something like this… The
majority of us grew up learning the parables and sayings of Jesus… we were
taught to accept “church” as a place of truth… and we loved the Church as we
were taught… but then somewhere along the way… we had doubts, most of us.
Emotionally, if not physically, we left.
..Still, eventually we were drawn back to be here, to the
Church, to the community of faith.
I thought about this as I re-read a book by Elaine Pagels in
which she tells a part of her story. "Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of
Thomas." Pagels is a professor of religion at Princeton University… some
of you heard her lecture recently in Chapel Hill. …and Pagels uniquely brings
these themes together for us… faith, and doubt, and Thomas…. which I promise to get to …but hang
on.
Pagels, like some of us, has been
hanging around the Church, sometimes in, sometimes out, for several decades.
She grew up in a church, in her words, where she was one of “the
true flock that alone belonged to God.” (p.
50) That’s what her fundamental upbringing explained. She was one of God’s
chosen. She was a part of the family of God.
… but [a] turning point for her came, Pagels explains, when she
was 16 years old and a close friend was killed in an automobile accident. The
leaders of her church sympathized with her grief, but also explained that since
her friend had been Jewish, and therefore not ‘born again,’ the real tragedy
was that he was eternally damned. The inclusion she has been a part of had high
costs. The leaders of the church she attended directed their congregation "not
to associate with outsiders, except to convert them." (p.51) Finding no
room for discussion, Pagels left that church… for a time, she left the Church.
She studied religion. She studied it academically. …and she
was good at this… seeing the institution from a distance. Still, something
moved deep within her.. restless and wanting.
And as a religious academic, her return to the church
occurred years later… when she sought grounding in the midst of her 18 month
old son’s terminal illness.
Having rejected the church of her youth for its rigid
exclusion, she now found herself within a congregation that expressed itself
differently… “a community that had
gathered to sing, to celebrate, to acknowledge common needs, and to deal with
what we cannot control or imagine.” (p. 4) And in the process of that
experience, she began to look at the faith, and the statements of faith anew.
“I am a historian of the religion,” she explained, “and so, as I visited that
church, I wondered when and how being a Christian became virtually synonymous
with accepting a certain set of beliefs?” (p. 5)
You see, Pagels knew from her academic study much concerning
the earliest church. She knew the account of Tertullian, for example… “a
Christian spokesman of the second century, [who] writes that, unlike members of
other clubs and societies that collected dues and fees to pay for feasts,
members of the Christian ‘family’ contributed money voluntarily to a common
fund to support orphans abandoned in the streets and garbage dumps. Christian
groups brought food, medicines, and companionship to prisoners forced to work
in mines, banished to prison islands, or held in jail. Some Christians even
bought coffins and dug graves to bury the poor and criminals, whose corpse
otherwise would lie unburied beyond the city walls…" (p. 7, 8)
In the face of plagues, when others ran from the sick, the
Christian community sought them out, and cared for them. Death was not to be
feared and so they risked their own lives to care for others.
This caught the attention of many. Something was different
about such self-giving.
“They would say that their strength,’ Pagels claims, “came
from their encounter with divine power- but it was a power wholly unlike that
of the gods whose temples crowded the city streets, and whose images adorned
the theatre and public baths. Jupiter and Diana, Isis and Mithras, required
their worshipers to offer devotion, pouring out wine, making sacrifices, and
contributing money to the priests at their temples. Such gods were understood
to act, like human beings, out of self-interest. But Jews and Christians
believed that their God, who created humankind, actually loved the human race,
and evoked love in return… “ and what God requires is that human beings love
one another and offer help- even, or especially, to the neediest. (p. 9)
…and so, returning to the church in the midst of her son’s
illness, and finding a place of acceptance and warmth, Pagels question is an
intriguing one indeed.
“…when and how [did] being a Christian became virtually
synonymous with accepting a certain set of beliefs?”
Is Christianity, at its core, about belief (a right set of
beliefs), or about practice (how we live)?
Is it about doctrine, or love?
“…when and how” Pagels wondered, “[did] being a Christian
became virtually synonymous with accepting a certain set of beliefs?”
Now I said that Pagels was uniquely qualified to bring
together for us the themes of faith, and doubt, and Thomas and she is…because eventually she
attended Harvard Graduate School for early Christian Studies, and there
discovered the cache of texts unearthed in 1945 known as the Nag Hammadi
documents. (We, as a Christian community, are still reaping the treasures of
that find as they are sifted, sorted, studied and the results trickle down to
us.) In these documents, Pagels and fellow students discovered a wealth of
diversity in early Christian thought… a diversity so effectively squelched by
the Church through the centuries that she had never heard of it before.
It was the minority report.
Among the treasures of Nag Hammadi was another Gospel, an
account of Jesus’ sayings that did not make it’s way into the Bible passed down
to us through the ages.
The Gospel According to Thomas.
…and we will turn our attention there next Sunday.
For now… Amen.
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