April 2009 Archives

Doubting is the moniker we give to Thomas, and I have to wonder if once again the Church is attempting to water down, sanitize and make clean something that underneath the surface could deeply transform us in some way we would have never expected.  In this day and age when doubt has become the new faith, is doubting an appropriate way to describe what Thomas was doing or feeling?  I say doubt is the new faith because it is, and as Episcopalians we probably relish in that idea.  Sit down with a bunch of people who call themselves Episcopalians and one will inevitably hear that the Church is good because it lets people ask questions, it allows people to have doubts.  We have believed all along, as Episcopalians that one has the right to ask questions, to doubt as Thomas doubted.  Thomas is kind of our unspoken patron Saint.  Thomas allows us to believe that we can live a life of faith steeped in the questions we have about God and God's activity in the world.

But I want to ask us to look a little closer at this text and wonder with me about the moniker Doubting.  Thomas himself does not say to the Disciples who tell him they have seen Jesus, "I doubt it."  He says specifically, "I do not believe you."  He has no qualms in telling them all that they are lying, all 10 of them, each and every one of them comes to him saying we have seen Jesus, not to mention the women.  In this day and age ten people corroborating the same story would put us in a place we call beyond a reasonable doubt.  Thomas is not a simple doubter who demands evidence, Thomas is a person who simply does not believe, he does not trust his own friends, he does not, to put it succinctly, love them enough to believe them.

This is a two edged sword I believe, on the one hand, it is pretty damning to have his sort of unbelief.  To flat out deny the truth in the face of people who were speaking to him about their experience and probably even looked transformed in some way as well, you don't see Jesus appear out of no where and remain the same.  We are talking about some serious heights and depths here in terms of Thomas' doubt.  It was clearly unbelief.  If someone had this kind of unbelief in our Church we might throw them out, or simply ignore them or somehow shun them from our midst.  It's true, someone with such a passionate disagreement when the entire community speaks the same truth is more than a simple prank or April Fools joke, this guy needs to go.

The other edge of the sword is that it is interesting that he did stand his ground so clearly and with such great passion.  There is something commendable in that.  His doubt, his unbelief was rooted in something that he believed strongly.  Clearly he had come to some sort of conclusion about what the future would hold for the new Christians and was holding fast to that idea or vision of the future.  He had made plans and was out acting upon them unlike his comrades who had remained locked in the upper room.  Maybe that is why he did not believe them; maybe that is why he denied so completely the individuals he had called dear friends.  He had made a vision and a goal out of the desperation and the fear that resulted in the death of their beloved Jesus.  He was acting on his own inspiration and his own call, a call he believed Jesus had given him.  What were these others doing?

I like this idea a lot; Thomas had the courage in the face of the people who had just killed Jesus to be out in the world doing something, creating something, carrying on Jesus' ministry.  Thomas, of all the disciples, was the one who had made plans and executed those plans to carry on the work of Jesus.  How else might you describe his outright hostility to the disciples in the upper room?  I think he probably felt the same way as Jesus did, aghast that these men, ignorant men, had shut themselves away from the world, a world that Jesus had clearly told them they needed to engage, love and transform.  The way the world will know we are Christians is by our love, not our invisibility.

Thomas' passionate unbelief is something that we might want to consider as we live out our lives of faith, and we may want to consider changing his moniker as well; Doubting Thomas does not truly grasp the passion, the zeal, the innovation that this man might have had at his core rather than mere doubt.  I think we should call him Thomas the Innovator, or Thomas the Creator, or Thomas the Doer, maybe even Thomas the unbeliever or Thomas the denier.  There are a couple of ways that we tend to see doubt in our culture today.  First as anathema, something we should never have or know if we call ourselves Christians.  This is not something many of us embrace.  Second, doubt is a dispassionate expression of our own disagreement, disconnected from the belief of Jesus and the resurrection, or at best, timidly supportive of an idea we have no intention of standing up for.  The ten disciples were this kind of doubters, even after the first appearance of Jesus they were still locked in the upper room, safe from the hostile world.  Their doubt was more a doubt that was rooted in fear and immobility; it was about indifference and apathy, which often tends to be how we doubt as members of mainline denominations.  Just let the majorities decide for me, I am fine with what every one else is doing.

The other kind of doubt is a spectrum from belief to unbelief.  It is a spectrum that we all walk and often find ourselves journeying back and forth from unbelief to belief and back again.  Doubt is a journey, it is something we do, and not something that describes us.  I think most of us would claim this is where we land when thinking about doubt and what doubt is.  Indeed, I often say, doubt is not the opposite of faith, fear is the opposite of faith, and doubt is only the threshold to belief.  Without doubt, without questions, we cannot deepen and broaden and raise our faith.  Doubt, like the betrayal of Judas, is an integral part of who we are as Christians. 

But let's go back to doubting Thomas and look again at this idea of what it was that Thomas was doing outside of the upper room away from the disciples.  Could it have been that in the absence of Jesus Thomas was the only one with the courage to be in the world, continuing the work of Jesus?  Could it have been that Thomas was formulating a vision of mission and setting it into motion?  Maybe it was a vision he felt he had to do out of obligation, maybe his work in the world was empty, cold and not at all fruitful.  Maybe it was his plans, his vision and his mission that were bereft of belief.  Could it have been that the appearance of Jesus to Thomas was less about making Thomas into a believer and more about filling him more completely with a hope and passion and of course the Spirit for the work he was doing.  Was jesus really saying, do your work, carry out your vision continue my mission with passion, with zeal, with joy and with spirit, for that is the only way love will reign, even people as dense as these other ten disciples will see the Good News in your work if you only carry it out first in love, not out of obligation and dispassion. 

Jesus went to Thomas directly; Jesus sought Thomas out in the midst of all the disciples in that room.  Jesus wanted to affirm what Thomas was doing, while also chastising him for not loving his neighbor, loving his friends, loving his enemies.  Thomas' character, our character, Thomas' mission, our mission requires love and peace to be carried out, without either, our work is nothing but sowing the seeds of unbelief.  May we all have the misdirected passion of Thomas and be as open as Thomas was to receiving the Spirit and receiving new direction from Jesus as love guides us in the mission and work we do.

On the back of the Fantasy novel I am reading it says, "When hope dies, there's still survival."  This has caused me to think a lot about humanity, organizations, faith and religion.  When hope dies, there is still survival.  Our culture, the American narrative is littered with stories of survival, stories that say to us, even when you lose hope, if you just try hard enough, if you just survive, you will make it, whatever making it might mean.  It seems, as we live in this difficult economic culture with regular glimpses of a turn around, often followed by some new controversy or scandal, or economic blow, all we can do is simply survive, hope has been lost it seems, and we are lost as well.

This of course makes me think we have a pretty cheap idea of hope, a cheap idea of grace, a cheap idea even of the value of our own lives.  Have you seen that cartoon with the bird trying to swallow a frog but the frog has its hands tightly grasped around the bird's neck?  The caption of the cartoon which I have seen most, and I have seen many, says, "Never give up." One of these two parties is going to die.  Either the bird will succeed and swallow the frog, or the frog will succeed by strangling the bird and escape.  There is no room to imagine that the two would go out for martinis and dine instead on a nice fish or some other edible plant that they could both enjoy together.  When survival replaces hope, hope is indeed dead.

But maybe it is not that we have cheap ideas of hope, grace and our own lives, maybe it is more because we have isolated ourselves from one another in ways that prevent us from experiencing the glory that is God and the personal sacrament of presence that was so strongly present in the person of Jesus.  The extent of our communal experience often is simply our nuclear families, and today, even that experience is varied beyond recognition.  We are in a confusing transition period as we try to discern and understand how technological advances will change our lives, our future, our church and our religion.  Did you see that Trinity Wall Street twittered the passion this past week?  And how many of you on Facebook saw the Passion of Jesus according to Facebook this week as well?  Some will say we are becoming more disconnected, but I say we are becoming more fearful of claiming value for our future lives and the future of the life of the communities we belong to.

I wonder if hope has been replaced by survival, have we finally gotten to the point where it is not so much our hope for things unknown and unseen that drives us as it is a game of survival of the fittest?  Hope seems to be lost, or at the least, reduced to cliché slogans that we do not really believe but continue to say, for the sake of our children.  Vision has failed us, personally and corporately.  The light that has shone from the heart of the Glory of God, human beings fully alive, has been replaced by darkness, or at the very least, a dark cloud, a veil of mist impenetrable to our sight, feeling and touch.  Fear has gripped our world, fear has gripped our Church and it clings to us, desiring not our downfall, not our death, not our destruction, but rather our apathy, our indifference and our familiarity. 

Yes, I said that, death is not the ultimate goal of fear as we are pushed into survival mode, or into the darkness, survival is the ultimate goal of fear.  Our energy and attention focused entirely upon our survival is what fear seeks to accomplish, the disciples succumbed to it in their denials of Jesus, the crowd in the cries of "Crucify him" were coerced or moved towards survival by their own fear.  Anytime that which is familiar in a way that is warm and gentle and historical comes under some threatening experience, fear moves us to survival, fear seeks to squash hope and make it disappear.

Brian McLaren, a contemporary theologian and author was asked at a recent presentation he gave, "Is there any hope for mainline denominations?"  His response is one that is genuinely insightful.  He said that there is great hope, because while yes, it is difficult to turn the Titanic around, you have to ask yourself, what is harder, turning the Titanic around or turning 15,000 individual boats around.  Of course it is the Titanic that is much easier to turn than the 15,000 boats driven by individuals.  He was referencing our structures and our polity, mainline denominations having a structure that lends itself to having a few highly placed leaders able to make certain decisions to turn things around, where as his tradition, the Evangelical tradition, is one that is quite varied and resists the type of authority that is represented in most mainline denominations.

But he continued, lest you get comfortable in the false hope that you can turn the ship around think of this bridge in South America.  A beautiful bridge that was built to perfection, spanning a beautiful river that one year flooded, and the erosion from the flood redirected the river around the bridge, so that the bridge was no longer functioning and had no purpose.  Put in tension, those are two examples of our future that are poignant to consider.  Both require change, transformation, new thinking in how we live and move and have our being together.  But it is hard to change, isn't it, we often wish we could change, or simply choose not to change because we have no hope in the transformation that change would bring.

Tom Peters, in his book the "Pursuit of WOW!" asks, "How long does it take you to achieve change or spiritual transformation?  A nanosecond, but it takes a lifetime of passionate pursuit to maintain that transformation."  I like this, we can change in a blink of the eye, it is the lifetime pursuit of that change that is the difficult part, it is the challenges and obstacles that we and others put in our ways that keep us from accomplishing our Goals.

Look at Mary Magdalene in today's Gospel.  She changed in the blink of an eye; she changed at the simple saying of her name.  The Gardner who stood before her turned into Jesus like that (snap).  If we listen, I believe we will hear Jesus calling our names on a regular basis, every day Jesus calls to us, I am alive, Jesus says, I have been resurrected, death no longer holds sway, I am alive.  We hear it, we know it, but we too often leave it in the far reaches of our minds, never allowing that voice to filter into our very being, into our broken hearts that long for healing, human touch and relationship. 

In the naming of her name Mary is changed and transformed.  Just as today Emelia and D'Angelo will be transformed by the saying of their names.  You can feel it as we baptize these children, you can feel it when you read the Gospel, Mary's exclamation is full of joy, full of excitement, full of newness, full of possibility it is rich and wonderful and she has changed, but she falters immediately, because this man whom she loves, who she walked with is alive, and she desires nothing else but to hold him, to cling to him, to be with him, but what does Jesus say?  Seeing her need, seeing her desire, he says to her, do not cling to me.  Do not hold on to me, for I am going to a place that is more mysterious, more mystical and more dangerous than anything you have imagined.  Go Jesus says, do not hold on to me, but go and tell others about me.  And today we start with Emelia and with D'Angelo, tell them your story, share with them your relationship with God, don't hold on to a sentimental nice and comfortable Jesus, speak to the truth, the passion, the fire the excitement of the God we all love so that Emelia and D'Angelo will be able to grow in the fire that is the love of God. 

In the letting go we find not despair, but hope, in the letting go we find not death, but life, in the letting go we find not nothingness, but abundance greater than we have ever imagined.  When we give up our fight for survival we might just feel once again, in the very beat of our heart, the power of hope in our lives.