We see God in and through each other

A few weeks ago my wife and I had the good fortune to celebrate Father’s Day with my son and his family.  The day was made more special because it coincided with 2 recent birthdays. It was a great day with lots of fun and laughs. Of course in time the youngsters, having spent the requisite amount of time with the adults, grew restless and were eager to pursue their own interests. I especially enjoyed listening to the various pleas and individualized approaches each of the children used in asking permission for this or that. I recognized many of these scenes from the past; they had been acted out when I was a parent and when I was a child myself.  

I believe that I became a better parent when I became a grandfather. As a grandparent I am more a spectator than an active participant and now have the luxury of being able to sit back and watch and listen to how these scenes all play out. Sure, I know some of the challenges my son and daughter-in-law face in rearing children are the same as the ones we and our parents faced, but the world and our culture are more complex today and the pressures on parents to manage these challenges are greater than the ones we faced. As a “spectator” I am in awe as to how our son and daughter-in-law work through the endless requests and issues that pop up on a daily, if not hourly basis, and I ask myself, “when did he learn to do all that; where did he pick up all the skills to handle this? I don’t think I would have done it as well.” I have learned so much about parenting in watching them and while it makes me feel good to think that there’s probably some imprinting going on, they are far ahead of where I was then.

Life, wrote Kierkegaard, can only be understood backwards.  But it must be lived forwards.  

Along those lines few years ago I saw an interview with actor Michael Douglas on a late night talk show. He spoke of his relationship with his father, Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas; I’ll paraphrase the story he told.

Dad called me the other night. He said, "Michael, I was watching myself in an old movie earlier tonight and I didn't remember making it."

"Well, Dad, you made over 70 movies and you are 94. Don't be so rough on yourself."

"No, Michael, you didn't let me finish. I realized halfway through that I was watching one of your movies."

Wouldn't it be wonderful if certain aspects of our lives and ways of relating to others were all but indistinguishable from Jesus? If they reminded others of Jesus, just a little bit? We seek, every day, in every place, to be emissaries of Jesus: representatives of Jesus who welcome others as if they were Jesus and who relate to others in the spirit of Jesus?

Our task (Matthew 10:40-42) is to consciously attend to the Christ in everyone. Christ in the stranger. Christ in the enemy. Christ in the friend. Christ in the spouse. Christ in our sibling. Christ in the politician who makes our blood boil. Christ in the one who believes differently than I do.

 

Our Beloved Community

Matthew's community was experiencing serious persecution. It would be decades before Christians were even called Christians and would be persecuted solely "for the name." Nevertheless, Matthew's followers were getting into trouble for the same reasons that Jesus and Paul did.

 

Sarah Dylan Breuer, an Episcopal priest from Cambridge MA, conducts a workshop called "Speaking the Truth in Love: Practical Skills for Reconcilers." She believes that there are essential skills that are foundational and vital to the process of reconciliation. Matthew’s (Matthew10: 24-39) Gospel selected for this Sunday calls to mind those skills.

The first skill requires that we keep an open mind, listen and be as fully “present” to the process of sincerely trying to understand one another. The second skill is to be in touch as much as possible with God's love. We want to really know and experience God’s extravagant and unconditional love.

When Jesus teaches that we "Call no one father on earth, for you have one father -- the one in heaven,” he is referring to the earthly paternal powers that we may allow to enslave and have dominion over us. Matthew’s community deferred to God’s infinite love and wisdom and not to the ruling powers of the time. They were taught and believed that God gave every human being the ability to make their own decisions. Each had gifts to offer the community and they didn't need to ask anyone's permission to do so. As such, they built pockets of communities within their overarching Christian community, based on Christ’s teaching, into a radical new order that looked more like chaos to many and therefore threatened to undermine the order of the Empire. 

And so their neighbors, their friends, and sometimes their own family turned them in, hauling them before governors as agitators to be flogged, or worse. We can only imagine that being betrayed by those so close to us would wound as deeply as any physical punishment. 

The one thing that Matthew wants his followers to remember isn't something they're supposed to say or some particularly compelling case that they should make to their accusers or the authorities. It, more than anything else, is that they need to embrace how very much God loves them. This is good advice for anyone living in Christ's reconciling ministry.  

Sooner or later, if you're a part of that ministry, you'll find yourself making contact with very deep wounds, and wounded people. And all wounded creatures are liable to respond to any overture out of pain, confusion, and anger. A person who comes back at them with more of the same is only going to speed up the spiral of violence, with disastrous results. What we want to do in a situation like that is to be present and loving; that's the only way to disrupt that spiral of violence. That's very hard to do, though, when someone is right in front of you either threatening violence or saying something that would normally provoke a "fight or flight" response…something that's sure to happen eventually if you're trying to be an agent of healing.  

In a situation like that, we're understandably tempted to withdraw -- to "check out" mentally if not remove ourselves physically…or to strike back, or both. I think part of what makes those temptations particularly strong is that contact with another person's deep wounds often reminds us of our own wounds and vulnerabilities that we've tried to forget. That's why reconcilers must remind themselves moment to moment to stay grounded in God's love. If we remember how much and how unconditionally God loves and values us, we won't be thrown off-center by anyone's attempts to make us feel as worthless. Rely on the power of God's love to heal, and we won't have to flee from things that remind us of our own vulnerabilities and wounds. Recall what God's love looks like in the flesh…in the person of Jesus, and we will know how to respond. Be in touch with that love at the very core of our being, and we will be able to respond with authenticity and with love no matter what we face. 

Don't worry about what to say. There's a reason Martin Luther King called the result of nonviolent resistance "beloved community." It is the community of those who know, who proclaim, and who embody the Good News that love is the fundamental, powerful, and inevitable Word through which the universe was made and lives, and for which it is destined. We have seen the Word made flesh in Jesus, and we see it embodied in and among us. That can't be stopped by violence. Bringing violence to bear against God's love only creates more opportunities for God's love to disrupt the spiral of violence and build a beloved community.

Thanks be to God!

 

Adapted from SarahLaughed.net, by Sarah Dylan Breuer, an Episcopal priest who was elected to the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church by General Convention in 2009.

Church is a Verb

Let’s face it when many of us hear the "Great Commission" in (Matthew 28:16-20), we may not necessarily feel inspired or encouraged but instead just a little guilty. Why? Because day in and day out we somehow do not perceive ourselves as being called and sent to bear witness to our faith and, even more, do not feel equipped to do so. So when we hear Jesus' very clear instructions we are reminded of one more thing we should, but regularly do not, do – which as we know, is a sure recipe for guilt.

As adults, much of our identity is related to our areas of competence -- at work, at home, in volunteer activities or hobbies. When we find ourselves in situations where we do not feel competent, our anxiety shoots through the roof. (This, psychologists tell us, is why adults have a hard time learning a new language or musical instrument -- it's not that our brains are too old or hardwired to learn something new; it's that we don’t like feeling incompetent and so quit before making much progress.)

Now, think about how often we have been invited to make connections between our faith and our daily lives; to share that faith with others, or invite others to come to church. Perhaps it’s because we’ve rarely been asked, let alone shown how to do these kinds of things even in the relatively safe confines of church let alone in more threatening situations outside of church. It all means that we don't feel competent to fulfill anything remotely resembling Jesus' Commission.

These few short verses in today’s Gospel summarize our “Great Commission” and are such an important text in the context of Matthew's gospel that there is a danger that its use on Trinity Sunday will lead to too much focus on its links with the Trinity and dilute those pivotal themes around which are faith is centered: It clearly proclaims the supreme authority of Jesus, as being one with the Father and having no earthly equal; it reminds us that the purpose of the Church is to develop followers, baptize, teach, obey and remember that God through the life of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, is with us until the end of time.

Yet let's admit it, most of us feel a little guilty when we hear Jesus' instructions. More than that, most of us don't have the foggiest idea of what it would look like in everyday life to implement his instructions. So after acknowledging where we are, how can we go about gaining a sense of competence in these matters and thereby grow in our confidence to share our faith?

Perhaps it starts with moving to a more participatory style of Christian formation in which we reach out to one another, inviting our hearers to do more than just hear but to respond to the word proclaimed in our services and revealed in our daily lives. And maybe, over time we will be inspired to share these revelations and proclaim the Word with our own “gift of tongues,” and in and by our actions. How good are we at doing what we are told? How good are we at not allowing arrogance, negative patterns from the past, and doubts to hold us back from making disciples for Jesus Christ? We can't afford to wait until we are perfect and conditions are optimal to become and make disciples. Some people who call themselves Christians can't bring themselves to share their faith. They remain forever trapped on the mountain depicted in the scene from Matthew, mired in their doubts and excuses.

Peace and Forgiveness and The Holy Spirit

When Jesus appears to his apostles (John 20:13-23) he says "Peace be with you." With these words, I think we understand something deeper than calming their fears and anxieties. With Jesus' sudden appearance, there is apparently some further hesitation and fear that is somewhat calmed by Jesus showing them his wounds, his marks of identity as their Crucified Lord. At that point, they "rejoice," but then why does Jesus insist on saying again, "Peace be with you"? Isn't it because what they really need the most at that moment is forgiveness? Isn't the kind of peace they need the one set in motion by forgiveness?

The ensuing Pentecostal commissioning would seem to support this. As the Father has sent Jesus with the presence of forgiveness, so now Jesus sends them, with the power of the Holy Spirit: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

What is retaining sins about? Is this an ironic portion of the commissioning that Jesus throws in to make clear their mission is to not be as the unforgiving servant was in the parable of Matthew 18? How could they retain the sins of any after experiencing themselves this utterly gracious presence of Jesus among them as forgiveness? Had they done anything to deserve Jesus' forgiving presence with them at that moment? Had Jesus himself shown any hint of retaining their sin? If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?

I think we could agree that Jesus followers were, to use the vernacular, a “bad hire.” Jesus needed to call his disciples a second time. The first call didn't stick. They all abandoned him at his time of need. Why would he do that? Is this the case of a bad hire? Or is their failure, along with Jesus' forgiveness of it, precisely their main qualification for being hired as apostles?

Most of us would have fired them – “You good-for-nothing, fair-weather friends, you failed me! I never want to see you again! Now that I'm risen I'm going to get myself some new disciples, some real disciples, someone who will follow me through thick and thin.” That's what you and I would have said, right? But not Jesus! No, it's incredible! Not only does he not sack the sorry lot of them; not only does he not return for vengeance; not only does he come instead with peace; but he hires them to go out into the world extending the word of forgiveness to others!! And, some time later, when Jesus goes out to hire the person he wants to take this message of forgiveness to the ends of the earth, he hires Saul, one who is guilty of killing some of Jesus' first messengers. Is Jesus crazy?

No, of course not. He's the Son of God, and so he definitely does things differently from what we would do. To spread a message of forgiveness, he hires not those who appear blameless or somehow most worthy. He hires those who truly know that they themselves have been forgiven.

You and I are called as disciples of Jesus. Why? Because we are somehow better than others? No, the job description for being a disciple of Jesus begins with knowing how wrong you are [Alison's The Joy of Being Wrong], with knowing how much you are forgiven. It begins by recognizing our own guilt and then having the wonderful experience of being forgiven for it. Life can begin anew! There is a joy in being forgiven, and that joy is knowing the life-giving power of being forgiven. (Adapted from Gil Bailie, “The Gospel of John” Audio Tape Series #12)

 

Cling Very Close to Each Other...

John proclaims the Divine presence of God in Jesus in his very first Gospel with the words:  In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God… And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And now in (John17:1-14), as he announces the end of the physical presence of the incarnation of God in Jesus…he passes the baton to us:

All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me.

 Once again John relies on mystical words to speak to us in that place in which the personal images of reality and life itself reside in each of us. John invites us to close our eyes and picture what being in a relationship with God really means. Note, I use the word “picture,” not “understand,” in an effort to prompt our imagination and senses to feel the words as a palpable, sensory experience, and know what being in a relationship with God actually feels like, tastes like, and smells like. This is at the essence of our being and what we mean when we say “and the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God fully shared our humanity through Jesus as we through Jesus, fully share in God’s divinity. Anything less than that relationship with God would be reduced to mere acquaintance.

It is beautiful to hear Jesus pray for his apostles, not alone in a garden or in the desert but right in their midst. What a great model for prayer he provides us. In John there is no “teach us how to pray,” followed by the Lord’s Prayer, but rather it’s a prayer in which he asks the Father to bless us as we are called to follow him now, as we did while he was on earth, and invest our lives and love in one another as we glorify the Father.

It is, perhaps, the most relevant definition of what Pentecost means to us as his disciples. Jesus is no longer in the world. The incarnation is over. Jesus has been resurrected. He ascended to the Father. But we are still in the world and Jesus’ works are now in our hands. He is counting on us to be his presence to one another in his absence.

What if we imagined that the resurrection of Jesus was just the beginning and not the conclusion of the Gospel and that the promises of the resurrection are, in part, ours to fulfill? This prayer before parting is bitter sweet, after all Jesus is leaving his friends, but in many ways the sorrow of his leaving is replaced by the love he shares with us and we share with one another.

For some reason this Gospel conjures up for me the beautiful words that Oscar Hammerstein penned for Anna in The King and I, as she wishes for new young lovers, the love she shared and continues to share:

When I think of you
I think about a night
When the earth smelled of summer
And the sky was streaked with white

And the soft mist of England
Was sleeping on a hill
I remember this
And I always will

There are new lovers now on the same silent hill
Looking on the same blue sea
And I know  you and I are a part of them all
And they're all a part of you and me

 

Come Holy Spirit & fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love

I vividly remember Dean Henry’s initial invitation to our “Wednesday Evening Bible Study,” originally entitled “The ‘Jesus Way’ Bible Study” in our weekly bulletin. I was intrigued by the last sentence in his posting: “No expertise in Bible Study is necessary, not even helpful. So, come and join us,” This last sentence spoke directly to me and gave me the courage to give it a try and see what it was all about. In retrospect, I can’t help but think that Dean, like John, was carefully selecting his words for the way in which they struck us or to use the current vernacular, resonated with us.

We have come to learn over the years that John’s Gospels defy literal translation and ask that we suspend our intellect and allow the words to become flesh in us and take them to our hearts so that we might intuitively feel their presence and know the Spirit. Padovano tells us that Jesus will never be found by those who reduce faith to words or doctrines or who limit religious behavior to moral exercises or spiritual behavior. Perhaps Dean had John in mind when he suggested that prior expertise or literal knowledge of the Bible may not be helpful. So, in our Gospel (John 14:15-21) Jesus says: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.”

Have we ever seen the Holy Spirit? This is not a trick question.  Let’s think for a moment. The best description we get in the Bible of the Holy Spirit are tongues of flame or a freely blowing breeze. However, in this week's reading we get two helpful hints that offer a pretty good picture of just what the Holy Spirit looks like.

The Holy Spirit looks like an Advocate --the one who stands up for you when you need it; the one who speaks on your behalf; the one who lends you a helping hand, takes your side, and won't leave you while you're down.

The Holy Spirit looks like Jesus. The Spirit is "another advocate" because Jesus is the first. The Spirit, Jesus goes on to say, will abide with us and is sent in Jesus' name to remind us of what he taught. In a very real way, the Spirit affirms Jesus presence in us and through us, and helps to keep his promise that he will not leave us orphaned. You know him, because he abides with you, and lives with us

An advocate is defined as one who upholds and defends a cause or person, and intercedes on the part of another. Yes, we've seen the Spirit many times in those who share the love of Christ, and stand up for one another. They are advocates.  And unfortunately, we have also seen the adversaries to the first Advocate, Jesus, in the Pharisees who as with the proverbial “brood of vipers,” were self-righteous in the preservation of their egoistic demands, quick to judge and condemn and eventually put an end to Jesus, while destroying and dividing his community in order to serve their own purpose, and not God’s.

John’s Gospel is as relevant today as it was when it was written two thousand years ago. There are advocates for the love of God in our midst…and there are adversaries.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.  

Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled

We are taught to read literature as though it is newspaper. Time is sequential and reality is flat. It’s one–dimensional, in which the words on the page are an assemblage of letters to communicate information in real time. What you see on the surface is what really is in black and white. This is not the case when we read the Gospel and especially John’s.

David Steindl-Rast writes: “to understand these (John’s) images in the way they were meant we must develop a sense for poetic language. These images speak to our intellect through our poetic sensibilities…Tuning in to this language means both taking them seriously and not taking them literally.” Marcus Borg goes on to say “it invites his hearers to see in a radically different new way. The appeal is to the imagination, to that place within us in which reside our images of reality and our images of life itself.”

So when John begins the first chapter of his Gospel with In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God (verse 1)…And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, he announces the incarnation of God in his fullest humanity as the Word became flesh in Jesus, and he also signifies that the Word becomes flesh in us. “The Word speaks to us in that place which reside our personal images of reality and our images of life itself.”

So back to John’s Gospel for today (John 14:1-14).  Jesus comforts his apostles and says: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me, says Jesus. Trust me. Trust God— you have seen God in me. I am enough. Trust that you will find me in the community as we come to see God in one another.

Andrew Prior writes: “I do not think we can overstate the love and the intimacy of the household of God and our place in it. What we can miss, however, is that it is not a geographical place at a certain time. It is a relationship in eternity into which we can enter; in which we can place our trust. We will not be left alone, or orphaned.”

We know that Jesus was killed for political reasons: he violated the “status quo” of the prevailing Jewish law that caused the Judeans, not all Jews, to want him removed. The Judeans were those who aligned themselves with Rome to maintain “control” of their “religion” and maintain their “status quo.” As such, their religious leaders collaborated with Imperial Rome to have Jesus “removed.”

Throughout his life, Jesus made it clear that he resisted the man-made rules of “organized religion” as it existed. I wonder what he would think about the religions of today.  How different are some of its members from the Pharisees who resisted change. History reminds us that Jesus was not the last to be persecuted for bucking the “status quo.” Leave things alone I’m comfortable with the way things are; hey, I read the scripture and preach the Gospel; isn’t that enough?  But where is the Love that Jesus was?

Wills tells us that “Jesus opposed any religion that is proud of its virtue, like the boastful Pharisee. Any that is self-righteous, quick to judge and condemn. Any that wallows in gossip that destroys and divides the community in order to serve its own purpose and not God’s.” And how do we relate to hear Jesus’s words in our Gospel: Do not let your hearts be troubled…I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.

I tell you, I am the gate

I grew up in New York City in the ‘50s. We lived in a two–family house in Brooklyn. I recall it as a carefree time of life. It was a time which while doors marked certain boundaries, we were not so afraid of others inappropriately crossing them. It was not always necessary to lock our doors. And when we finally did, my father kept a key in the milk box on the porch or left one with our upstairs neighbor. Our ability to come and go was safe. However, in later years when both my parents worked I, as the oldest of my siblings, was entrusted with that key. Later concerns for safety appeared to be heightened and more attention was paid to doors and security. I know I was older and more aware of the news of the day but times were changing.  We were a little less carefree and the world was not as safe as it was before.

While gates and doors provide protection and security, they are the means for going in and out of a home or place. They also serve as boundaries to permit entry and exit. In today’s Gospel (John10:1-10) Jesus, the Good Shepherd, describes himself as a “gate” and not a “gatekeeper.” Our frame of reference for a shepherd does not likely fit with the image of the shepherd in the time of Jesus.  Is there any more powerful artistic depiction of Jesus the Good Shepherd in our Christian heritage?  For me it is the famous painting of Jesus with the lamb draped over his shoulder that was hung on the wall in one of my grade school classrooms, and was one of the stained glass windows in the church.  Yet, when Jesus lived and John writes his Gospel, shepherds were among the most disreputable and mistrusted outcasts of society. We might consider replacing the image of the loving guardian strolling peacefully in the sunshine among his flock, with the marauding motorcycle gangs of our century or cowboy outlaws of the 19th century. They were drifters with no fixed address and because of their occupation, they were perpetually unclean and, by definition, in violation of Jewish law. These outcasts are the very people John’s gospel is talking about. 

Needless to say John shocks his audience by comparing Jesus to a shepherd and then later calling this very shepherd “good.”  He challenges his listeners to look past their assumptions of where God is located and who God belongs to and who can belong to God.  We and the people of John’s time are asked to see God in those who are outsiders, who exist on the fringe of the community, who are despised and even a little feared.  The readers of John’s story are told to look for God among the despised.

It is interesting today that Jesus, our Good Shepherd, does not describe himself as the gatekeeper, but rather as the gate. Jesus calls himself the gate, because that is the role the shepherd assumed. We are told that there was no actual gate in sheep-folds and that the shepherd would stand, sit or lie down in the opening which allowed entry and exit. In this way the shepherd could serve as protector of his sheep.  He knew his sheep and they knew him. John purposely contrasted Jesus, the Good Shepherd, with disreputable religious rulers of his time who exploited their congregations.

Jesus clearly defines his role when he says, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. I am the door.  I am the proper way, the right way, the only way into the sheep fold.”  He preached the power of love and denounced the love of power.

Can Religion Keep Us From Our Journey?

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate that “spiritual development” has less and less to do with religion. And while the Church, the Bible and the liturgy are important to our development, spiritual formation is more about learning to discern the call of God “outside,” in our everyday lives. Spiritual Formation is an ongoing dynamic process in which we develop the “tools” to be able to see and align ourselves with people, places and things in which God is at work. I know this might sound like heresy but in some ways religion can become a static process that lulls us to sleep in its repetitive sameness. As such, it can become an “obstacle” to our call to “bear witness” to God’s Word to those outside the upper room. In a real sense we are preaching to the choir! We in the comfort and security of our Church community, are like the apostles in the upper room after the Crucifixion. When Jesus appeared to the apostles and Thomas he said “... As the Father has sent me, so I send you," he beckons us as he did his disciples to leave the upper room and live our lives outside the walls of our Church as we engage in Christian practices that are fundamental to human needs, and may have nothing to do with religion but everything to do with faith. As such, we join with one another, and with Jesus, and with the communion of saints across time and space in a way of life that proclaims Christ’s victory over death and our eternal life. (Luke 24:13-35)

Now in “bearing witness” to the Word, I'm not talking about "life-style evangelism." That term for many of us, may evoke discomfort and have a strange connotation. We bear witness to the great movies or television programs we've seen and want others to enjoy. We bear witness to the accomplishments (or failures) of our sports teams. We bear witness to the important events in our family or work lives. We bear witness -- that is, tell someone about -- the things that matter to us all the time. We bear witness to feelings of joy, sadness and despair. We share life, our lives, with each other. No, I mean we bear witness to the presence of God, the Love, in all things in the here and now all the time.

Witnessing is not really all that different when it comes to faith. It does not mean shoving our beliefs down someone's throat or threatening them with eternal hellfire if they don't believe as we do. The ego tries to convince, while love shares.  To witness is simply communicating with others where we sense God’s presence -- at home or work, at church or school, or in a stranger or a friend, a doctor or teacher or neighbor, or even in a tragedy. Bearing witness is nothing more than proclaiming God’s presence in our life and  in our behavior as the Word becomes flesh in us and those we encounter as we live his Word…  by Him and with Him and in Him in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

 

 

Our Great Confession: My Lord and My God

While we might not say this out loud, most of us often regard Bible stories as we would history. Of course in some ways they are but they are so much more; yet, it’s not always easy to see them as connecting to our real lives in a tangible way. Let’s face it, the stories are just odd enough, just unusual enough, and just foreign enough to our day-to-day experience that we don’t pretend to understand them let alone feel confident at connecting them to our daily lives. Moreover, because we have read these familiar accounts year in and year out, we tend to see them in the same way. It’s not that we’re unwilling to take a fresh look but our preconceived impressions, influenced by so many who have interpreted their meanings for us, direct us to view them through a familiar prism.

OK, so once again it’s time to read the story of “Doubting Thomas” (John 20:19-31). I suppose it might be helpful to keep in mind that the Gospel writers themselves did not think that they were telling stories about events that happened in the past. Rather, they were reporting to new audiences what they believed were current revolutionary events and claims that they knew would shape the immediate present and future of everyone who read or heard them. So while John could have shared many other stories about Jesus to make his point, he chose this particular story because he hoped that everyone who heard it would know that Jesus is the messiah, the savior of the world.

John, as he did then, is inviting us into the scene involving Jesus’ encounter with Thomas at this very moment, here, now and today…to make this our story. So, as you re-read the all-to-familiar Gospel, I invite you to walk away from it and let it marinate. If you choose to come back, where do you see yourself in the scene? Near the end of this story, immediately after Jesus has shown his wounds to Thomas, and Thomas, in turn, professes the great confession of John’s Gospel, My Lord and My God, Jesus says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

I admit; I saw myself as Thomas. And sadly, for most of my life I had assumed that Jesus was rebuking Thomas, which frankly always struck me as a little harsh, since Thomas only asked for what everyone else had seen and received. (I can still hear my father saying, don’t ask why, just do it.) However, a few short years ago, in preparing for Bible Study, it occurred to me that this might be another one of those lessons that invite us to realize that we are already standing smack dab in the middle of the encounter. I mean, think about it: who are those who have believed without seeing Jesus? Well, likely some were the members of John’s community for whom he wrote. But guess what – we’re included in that group, too. We, also, have believed and struggle to continue believing without ever seeing with our eyes, or touching with our hands. And so now I think it’s not so much that Jesus is rebuking Thomas as he is blessing us. What a relief it was to realize that Jesus was not only cutting me some slack for being a “doubter” too, but was assuring me that this never-ending encounter with him continues every day of our lives and, will until the end of time. We are all characters in John 20:19-31, and are invited to learn from the faith and fear, courage and mistakes of those mere mortals who have come before. But now we are the ones who are invited to share Thomas’ confession as part of God’s plan as we proclaim My Lord and My God.