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Some years ago I read a book by an English evangelical who said that whenever the church doors are open a Christian ought to be there, because you never knows what's going to happen when you're not. Thomas discovered the truth in this advice on the evening of the Day of Resurrection; he missed the meeting, and so he missed the risen Christ. But the next week Thomas was there, as we just heard. And this time he did see the risen Christ, and when he saw, he said, "My Lord and my God." And Jesus said to Thomas, "You have found faith because you have seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet find faith." How does one find faith? How does one come to the point of faith, to that point in one's spiritual life where, like Thomas, he is able to confess honestly that Jesus is Lord and God? Thomas arrived at that point when he saw the risen Christ with his own eyes and placed his hand in the wounds in Jesus' side, and Jesus said, "Blessed are you, Thomas. You believe because you have seen me." But what about the rest of us? What about all of us who have not seen the risen Christ with our own eyes and have not placed our hands in his side, and who cannot do so? How do we arrive at the conclusion that Jesus is Lord and God, and so, even though we have not seen him, are blessed? In a study of the disciple Thomas, John Claypool, a now-retired Episcopal priest who, in his earlier life, served Christ's Church as a Baptist pastor, tells the story of his own faith journey. He says that when he was a child he was a Christian, of course, because he was born in Tennessee. He was born in the Bible Belt of America to parents who were Christian. Almost everyone in Nashville was a Christian. It was something people there inherited, like pulling for the Volunteers. So Claypool, like most of us, grew up believing in God, and in Jesus as the Son of God, on the authority of his parents. His parents believed in God and Jesus, therefore John believed in God and Jesus. This worked for John for about the usual length of time, for about ten years. It worked until one Sunday afternoon, when John and a friend were playing in John's front yard, John's mother came out to tell him that it was time to get ready for church. And after John's mother went back in the house, his friend said, "Church? Do you believe in that stuff? My daddy's been all over the world, and my daddy says anyone who says there's a God is just a plain fool." And Claypool says that he was stunned. In all his ten years he had never met a real, live infidel before, and here was one right in his own front yard. And in his own ten-year-old defense all he could think to say in response was, "Well, my daddy says there's a God, and I think you're a plain fool." And with that bit of loving witness, Claypool confesses, he went in to change his clothes for church. Well, the experience opened up a period of doubt in Claypool's young life. He wanted to believe in God, but how do you know if your father is right and your friend's father is wrong? If it's just one person's word against another, even if one of them is your own father, how do you know? Especially when your friend's father has seen the world! And this question troubled Claypool for the next couple of years, until a second, equally powerful experience changed things for him once again. It happened when a young visiting evangelist came to preach at their Baptist church. And on Sunday morning, the evangelist told people to be sure to come back to church that night because he was going to address the matter of faith and doubt. Well, this got the twelve or thirteen-year-old Claypool's attention, because he was still wondering how he could be sure his father was right about God. And that night the evangelist confessed that he, too, had had periods of doubt in his life, but that the Bible changed things for him. And the evangelist got down on his knees beside the pulpit, and he opened the Bible on the floor and knelt before the Bible and said, "Holy Bible, I don't understand everything in you, but I choose to believe that what you have to say is the literal Word of God." And Claypool said that this was a life-changing experience for his adolescent mind and heart. "Of course!" he said. "Here's how one can know that my father is right about God and that my friend's father is wrong. It says so in the Bible!" That night opened up to Claypool an authority independent of his parents, an authority larger than they were. And it began, for Claypool, a long period of serious study of the Scriptures which has continued throughout the rest of his life. But in his senior year of high school he was to have still another experience which was to expose his faith to challenge and doubt yet again. During his senior year, he became good friends with Amhad, an exchange student from Iran who was studying at his school. And one night after supper with Amhad and Amhad's host family, John and Amhad went up to Amhad's room. And they began talking about this and that as good friends do. And Claypool says that in perfect innocence he asked his friend, "Amhad, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and your personal Savior?" And Amhad said, "No, why should I?" And Claypool said, "Because the Bible says so." And Claypool says that he was just about to whip out his pocket New Testament to lay John 3:16 on his friend when Amhad said, "I don't believe what the Bible says. Do you believe that Allah is God, and that Mohammed is his prophet?" And Claypool said, "No, why should I?" And Amhad turned to his bookshelf and took out a book that was black and leather-bound and looked for all the world like the Bible, except that it had printed across the front, "The Koran." And Amhad held up the Koran and said, "Because this book says so." And Claypool says that once again he was absolutely stunned. He had never even heard of a book called The Koran. And this experience opened for him a long period of agnosticism, a long period of the study of all the world's great religions, a period of questioning and spiritual search during which, like the disciple Thomas, he wanted to believe in God but did not know how to believe, because all the authorities he had relied upon for so long -- his parents, the Bible, his parochial Tennessee culture -- seemed unable to withstand the assault of his ever-enlarging world of personal experience and reading and study and thought. Claypool says that that night, after his experience with his friend, he went out and looked up at the heavens, brilliant with stars, and said, "Mystery, Mystery, what is you name? Is it Yahweh? Is it Allah? If you will just show yourself to me and tell me who you are, I'll do my best to follow you." But the heavens, he said, spoke not a word in response. Or rather, they spoke only the silence of God. And Claypool must have felt, as many of us have felt, that it would be wonderful if only we could see for ourselves, as Thomas saw for himself. If only we could see the risen Lord in person and put our hands in the wounds in his side, if only we could see for ourselves, then we could believe and say with Thomas, "My Lord and my God!" Well, what about us? Jesus says that Thomas found faith because he had seen, but that those are blessed who have not seen and yet find faith. What is faith? Is believing, or faith, just so much wishful thinking, just a matter of accepting as true what one wishes to be true? Or is believing a matter of accepting the reality of God on the basis of some external authority? Is it a matter of saying, "Well, my daddy says...," or of saying, "Well, ...the Bible says...," or of saying..., "Well, the Church teaches"? Is faith a matter of accepting as truth, all the days of our lives, what our mothers and fathers or some other authority says is truth? Tradition has called Thomas the doubter. "Doubting Thomas" has become a household word, even among those who know nothing else about the Bible, even perhaps for some who aren't even aware that Thomas is found in a book called The Bible. But Thomas was not a doubter in the sense of a cynical skeptic. Thomas was one who, like all the disciples, wanted to believe. But he hadn't been with the others when the risen Christ appeared that first evening; he missed the meeting. And what Thomas did the following week was, really, simply to insist on the same kind of evidence that Jesus had given the others the week before. Peter and the others had also insisted on evidence. As you'll remember from last week, when Peter heard the report of the resurrection from the women, he didn't just say, "OK, I believe it because you say so." He doubted their report. He thought it was nonsense, Luke tells us. And Peter went to see for himself. And when he saw the empty tomb, we are told, he still wondered. Like all of us, he longed for some confirmation of the truth so that he could believe. Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Doubt is a stage to faith. Doubt is a way of seeking, a way of asking, a way of testing spirits to see what is reliable and what is not. Doubt is a way of asking how we can know if our parents are right, a way of asking how we can know if the Bible is right, a way of asking how we can know the Church is right, and in what ways they might be right. Tom Woodward, a friend of mine in Wisconsin and a former Episcopal Church chaplain at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, tells about an irate father who stormed into his office one day and said, "My son is losing his faith here! And I want it stopped." And Tom says that in that moment God gave him the grace to reply, "No, Mr. Thompson, your son is losing your faith here and finding his own." In Wonderland, as Alice or the Mad Hatter or someone said, faith is not a matter of believing six impossible things before breakfast each morning. Nor is faith repeating the certainties of our parents or our culture, or even the certainties of the Bible or the Church. Faith is a matter of trust appropriate to age. Faith is a matter of personal maturity, a matter of finding our own personal confidence as we live our way through the realities of the world which we cannot see with our eyes or hear with our ears. We cannot see all of reality. There are some realities -- realities just as real as the visible phenomena of the physical world -- which we cannot see with our eyes or hear with our ears or touch with our hands, realities which we can see only with our hearts or minds or spirit. Realities like love and hope and holiness and mystery and wonder. Faith is the evidence we need to live our way through these unseen spiritual realities of life, just as sight and hearing and touch are the evidence we need to live our way through the physical realities of life which we can see. H. G. Wells once said that there was a time, a time when he was young and fresh and open, when he would look up at the night sky, full of stars, "and my little soul shone at the magnificence of it, and at the wonder of it. But that has all disappeared now," he added. "Now I have grown up, and I go out and look at the stars the same way we look at wallpaper." We can look at the stars the way we look at wallpaper. We can ask only for evidence of distances and of the composition and density of matter. But we can also look at the stars and at the rest of the wonderful world and ask for evidence of the spirit, for evidence of the nature and speed of light, for evidence of what or who lies behind it all, and where it all might lead us. We can ask if someone lies behind it all and if it all leads. And at some point -- at some time of God's choosing, not our own -- God happens to those who honestly and earnestly search for evidence of the Spirit. For the honest search is part of the faith. Faith, to be sure, is a conclusion we arrive at. But it is not only so. Faith is also the process. The search, the process of truth itself, is part of the faith and part of the truth, for the search itself is evidence of one's trust that God will provide what is needed for the realities of life we cannot see. It is like the experience of Archimedes, the scientist of ancient Greece. When Archimedes sat in his bathtub one day, he said, "Eureka! I have found it!" (Actually, it is said that "Eureka!" is what he shouted while running naked from the bathtub to the house to tell everyone about it!) What he had found was the relationship between the density of an object and the amount of water the object displaces. But Archimedes' discovery wasn't like finding a dollar bill on the sidewalk, something he just happened to stumble over. What he found was the answer to a question he had been asking for years, and it was all those years of searching and questioning that gave greater insight to his sitting in his bathtub that day. The problem Archimedes had been puzzling over was that the king wanted to know how he could tell if his new crown was 100% gold, or whether someone had mixed in some cheaper metals and just made it all look like pure gold. The king had offered a prize to anyone who could figure out how to know the truth about his new crown. And in God's own good time the truth happened to Archimedes; the relationship between the density of an object and the amount of water it displaces happened to Archimedes under circumstances he was able to understand. And it happened because all the questions Archimedes had been asking helped him to see its happening. Similarly, Claypool tells about the long years of his agnosticism, about the long years of his searching, about the years of his study of philosophy, because philosophy seemed to be asking the big questions. He tells about all the kind help provided by patient teachers and friends, who shared their faith with him but did not try to cram their faith down his throat. And he tells how, patiently and lovingly, they continued to feed him what he was able to eat so that he might find his own faith. And one day a teacher gave him a book that was new at the time, J. B. Phillips' Your God is Too Small. Claypool says that he didn't read the book right away, but put it aside. And then, months later, he happened to see it on his shelf, and he picked it up and began to read it. In his book Phillips continually refers to the Gospel of John, so Claypool pulled the Bible, a book he had read many times, off his shelf once again. And, for the umpteenth time, he read these familiar words: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." And Claypool had a bathtub experience. God happened to him. It became clear to him, he says, in a way that had never happened to him before, that these words conveyed truth to him. God gave him the spiritual evidence he needed to say, personally, "Yes, this is what I believe." Claypool is clear to say that he did not find God. He says that God happened to him at the time of God's choosing. Somewhere along the way of Claypool's long and honest and serious search for truth, God happened to John Claypool when Claypool read something he had read a gazillion times before. And reading it this time, Claypool said to himself, "To the mystery of Godness, Jesus gives a face." Which is the very same thing Thomas had said when he said, "My Lord and my God," though the evidence for Thomas was evidence of the eyes and the hands and the evidence for Claypool was evidence of the Spirit. Friends, do not fear the questions your children or young people ask. Fear, instead, if they do not ask them. Don't fear if they ask you to give them evidence of your own faith. Be concerned, instead, if they fail to ask. Do not fear if you find yourselves asking the same kinds of questions. Maybe your children are God's way of helping you ask them. It is a natural part of the process of truth. And if searching -- honest, vigorous searching for truth -- is part of your life and part of what you are sharing with your children, then truth will at some point, in God's good time, happen to them. And to you. At some point -- at a time of God's own choosing, not ours -- faith happens to those who are open to the realities of the Spirit. At some point -- to those who are open to him and who honestly and earnestly search -- God happens. And when God happens, he gives one the kind of certainty, among the realities we cannot see, on which you can bet your life, if we are open and honest and willing, as Thomas was. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet find faith, for they will be able to look at the stars and the heavens and the world around us as more than wallpaper. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. |