Resurrection Stories: Becoming More Than You Were, Acts 7:55-60

by Connie Frierson

Our scripture today is about Stephen, the first martyr of the church. I have always had a bit of trouble warming up to this story. I mean Stephen seemed such a goody two shoes and preachy. Right before this little passage about the stoning, Stephen has preached 50 verses of a sermon. He is hauled before the Jewish authorities and accused of blasphemy both God and Moses. So he responds with a sermon that recounts God’s interaction from Abraham to Jacob to Moses to David to the Prophets. We don’t know anything bad about Stephen. He is almost too good to be true. So it is easy to turn Stephen into a cardboard saint, not so real as to touch us. But then I remembered one of the things we do know about Stephen. He was a waiter.
Who here as ever was a waiter or waitress? Who has ever said the words, “Hello, my name is Connie and I will be your server this evening”? Long before the term “wait staff” was in use I was just a plain waitress. It was my first paying job. I was 17. Stephen was a waiter too. The early church was growing by leaps and bounds and the believers were sharing their goods and food. But there were complaints that some of the widows weren’t receiving their share. So the disciples and the community called seven people to help serve. Stephen and six others were picked. Do you think this is significant enough to put that on a martyr’s resume? If you have been a waiter, do you put having been a waiter on your resume? I don’t. Waiting tables is humble work. Our society puts waitressing way down low on the important job list. It is not heroic or daring or brainy. It is just service. “What can I get for you today? You want fries with that? To go from waiter to martyred hero of God is quite a jump. It is an amazing reversal. The first shall be last and the last first. Or did the early church know how important service is. The disciples didn’t just tie an apron around Stephen. They laid hands on him and prayed. This is like a waiter ordination. “Here Stephen go touch people with God’s love while you wait tables.”
I will always remember my very first customer, of my very first night, of my very first job. A guy with a wiry build and dirty work clothes came in. He sat down at my counter. He ordered the special, a hot roast beef sandwich with mash potatoes and gravy. He ate his meal. He set out the exact change beside his plate, no tip. And then he put his head down on his plate and passed out. There he was with the mash potatoes on his eyebrows and gravy on his nose, dead drunk. Welcome to the service industry. I wonder did I do my best for this guy? I was probably chipper and oblivious. But here was a guy who needed care. But I didn’t know about being an ordained waitress. How different our lives would be if we didn’t just ordain ministers, elders and deacons, but we also ordained waitresses, accountants, teachers, firemen and electricians. How could we change the world if we thought of every aspect of our lives as ordained, sacred service to God?
I worked seven at night to seven in the morning at an all night diner. So I had the evening rush and the bar crowd after two o’clock. You learn a lot when you waitress the graveyard shift. Surprisingly, you learn a lot about death and resurrection. You learn a lot about the resurrection, when you have gone through the dark of the night, after the bar crowd rush is gone and the night is long and the diner is empty and stale and you are so tired. When the diner is empty in the dark of the night it seems sometimes as though the whole world is empty. Minutes drag. Feet ache. It is a lonely time. But when the dawn comes and the first of the early morning crowd comes in and the pancakes and coffee suddenly smell good and comforting again you feel you know a little bit about death and resurrection. They don’t call it the graveyard shift for nothing.
I wonder if this is what Stephen learned as he looked into the eyes of his accuser. When he had told the story of all of Hebrew history and God history to a crowd that couldn’t or wouldn’t hear, when their spiritual sense was stale, when their interest in God was dead, as hatred and violence darkened everything, did Stephen sense that death that comes before resurrection, the dark night that comes before the dawn.
What we do know is that Stephen experienced the risen Christ. Stephen looked up and there the Glory of God was with Jesus standing on the right hand of God. There is something unique about Stephen’s vision. It is not quite right liturgically. Stephen sees Jesus as standing at the right hand of God. The Apostles Creed intones that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, almighty. The Apostles Creed is quoting Jesus statements from Luke 22. But Stephen sees Jesus standing. The scripture in Acts says it twice. Jesus is standing. Jesus is standing because sitting is just too passive. The living Christ would stand with Stephen. The living Christ would be Stephen’s courage for him. The living Christ would stand to welcome Stephen as he steps into eternity. The difference between the humble waiter and this extraordinary courage was Stephen’s vision of who was with him. Stephen was loved and supported and encouraged by the resurrected Lord who stands with him. And Jesus stands with and beside us.
We don’t know if this was Stephen’s first sermon but we know it was his last. And by our standards I would say Stephen was a failure as a preacher. He didn’t convince his audience. He didn’t win friends and influence people. My husband used to say that the first requirement of a good pilot is that you have an equal number of take off’s to landings. Any flight that has both a take off and a landing can’t be all bad. In the same way a preacher should stand up deliver the sermon and then return to her seat. This is a minimally successful sermon. It is also helpful if you entertain, enlighten, inspire and collect enough money to cover payroll, the mortgage and some mission giving. All our standards have to do with survival. By these standards Stephen failed. He didn’t make it back to the pew. He was dragged out and stoned.
Stephen wasn’t a successful preacher, but he was a wonderful follower of Christ. Perhaps, Stephen learned a counterintuitive lesson from ‘Our Lord’s Gospel of Holy Wait Staff.” For Stephen, there is a higher prerogative than survival. Stephen was trying to live a life that was shaped and formed by knowing a living God. So Stephen’s priority was love and integrity and a true witness. Stephen starts his sermon addressing his accusers as ‘Brothers and Fathers”. To address the accusers as family is a love language. Stephen loved with the agape kind of love Jesus described. Martin Luther King called this agape kind of love, disinterested love. He said, “Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. Therefore agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed to both.” So Stephen’s agape love poured out whether or not the audience smiled and nodded or scowled and threw stones. This kind of love is heard in Stephen’s last words when he says, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Stephen is following Christ right down to the last words of Christ. “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Stephen is held up as a model of courage and certainly he had that. But Stephen is more than courage; he experienced a transcendent life and death. Humans are capable of great courage in the face of death. I have read many accounts of soldiers acting with tremendous bravery. When interviewed later many say that in the midst of war they counted themselves already dead. So counting themselves as dead they could act often with risk and amazing bravery. But Stephen didn’t just count himself as already dead. He counted himself as already resurrected. The brave soldiers I read about acted out of fatalism and desperation. Stephen looked up and spoke out of trust and hope. As a witness to the resurrection Stephen could act not only with courage and passive resistance but also with forgiveness. This is transcendent living.
You know there is one other figure in this passage. Saul stands watching and approving the killing of Stephen. This was Saul before his transforming encounter with the risen Christ, Saul who was willing to defend his own system of beliefs with violence. When there are two such opposite figures it is helpful to ask in this story who are you? Are you the courageous visionary with eyes on Christ or the orthodox enforcer approving violence to defend your principals? Are you Stephen or Saul? The truth is that probably you don’t see yourself in either. We all are much too sensible to be caught up in such extremes. We steer clear of mobs and martyrs. But I wonder if Stephen and Saul would have said the same thing of themselves before these events. Each life has it’s moments of horror and decision, if not stoning by a mob, then the quiet struggle to maintain a marriage, or rebuild a life after job loss or illness, or the death of a loved one. There are lots of opportunities to live with the hope and courage of a resurrected people or the bitterness and anger of defending your own system.
You choose whom you will serve. Serve with the vision of Christ standing with you. Amen

Resurrection Stories: Overcoming Obstacles

John 21:15-19
May 15, 2011




When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”

I want you to imagine that you are founding an entrepreneurial venture, and that you are looking for an organizing president. What qualities do you look for? Do you look for experience? Do you look for evidence of commitment? Do you try to assess the person’s potential loyalty to you? Do you look for an understanding of your venture’s mission? Do you look for honesty? What are the key factors you look for?

If these are the factors we look for in a founding president, then there can be only one conclusion about Jesus’ efforts to hire a founding president of his entrepreneurial venture, the Christian Church: Jesus was a lousy entrepreneur.

I want you to think about who he chose as his organizing president. He chose Peter, and the fact is that this was a man who had no entrepreneurial experience. He had been a fisherman with little education or experience in organizing anything. He had a fairly shallow understanding of Jesus’ mission. Remember, he constantly misunderstood Jesus’ work. How often did Jesus have to say to him, “Get behind me Satan,” or correct Peter’s misperceptions, or point out Peter’s shortcomings? Peter also had a lack of commitment when times got tough, as well as a lack of loyalty. Think about how Peter reacted once Jesus was arrested. Three times people came up to him and said, “Hey, weren’t you one of the people following that guy Jesus?” And three times Peter said, “Naw, man, you got me confused with someone else. I didn’t know him.” Jesus sure knows how to pick ‘em.

Actually, Jesus did know how to pick them. Despite all the shortcomings of his founding president, Peter did a good enough job that the results speak for themselves. Look at their entrepreneurial venture today. It’s the most successful of all time. The church has grown by about 3,000,000,000% (if you take into consideration all present and past Christians in the world), it has lasted for 2000 years, it has cornered over 1/3rd of today’s world religion market, and it’s operations book, the Bible, has been the #1 selling book for 1500 years. That’s a pretty good entrepreneurial venture.

A lot of the success of the venture has to do with picking Peter as it’s founding president, and it shows the values Jesus looks for in us, as well as in Peter. For Jesus, it’s not about how perfect we are. It’s about how willing we are to change, grow, and to be unsinkable in the process. Our passage for this morning shows all this.

Jesus, who is appearing to them after his resurrection, has gathered the disciples by the lakeshore to teach them. He focuses in on Peter, asking him three times, “Do you love me?” Each time Peter gets more distressed at the question. “Why would Jesus keep asking him?” he thinks. “Doesn’t he know how much I love him?” What he doesn’t pick up is that Jesus asks the question for each time that Peter had previously denied him. Jesus is ramming home a point: “You, Peter, denied me three times when it mattered most, so I want to hear from you that you love me. I have something big for you, and I want to make sure that you are ready for it. I want to see if you’ve changed, if you’re ready for something very hard—a life lived in service to me.” In fact, at the end Jesus tells Peter that he is going to suffer for his service, saying that he will be led in shackles to where he doesn’t want to go. What Jesus says is true. Years later Peter was led in shackles to Rome, where he was crucified upside-down.

What this story tells us is that despite what we may think, God doesn’t look for us to be perfect. Instead, God looks for us to be like water. What does that mean? Think about how water responds to obstacles it hits as it comes down a mountain. It will either overcome the obstacle, find a way around it, or eventually erode it. Water can’t be stopped. God looks for us to be like water. It’s not a matter of where we come from. It’s a matter of how we face difficulties, struggles, and obstacles. Are we willing to always work to overcome them, with God’s help? Are we willing to get up when we are knocked down, look for hope when we are in despair, find God’s way when things look blocked? You see, with God, we aren’t defined by our flaws, failures, or sins, but by how we respond to them. Do we let them defeat us, or do we look to God to overcome them. Let me show you what I mean.

If you travel to the business district of New Orleans, you can find a statue of a woman named Margaret that was erected in 1888. It’s an odd statue, not like most statues you find in a city. Most statues in a city are of military, political, or financial men posed dramatically, showing their great deeds. This statue of Margaret is different. It has Margaret, an older, heavy-set woman in a crocheted sweater, hair in a bun, sitting on a chair with her arm around a small child standing next to her. The inscription on the base simply says, “Margaret.”

The statue is of Margaret Haughery, a woman who died in New Orleans in 1882. By the time she died, she had made a huge impact on the city. No one would have expected her to be remembered in marble when she was born in Ireland in 1814. At age six she migrated to America with her parents, settling in Maryland. Two years later, both parents died of influenza, leaving her an orphan. After a time in an orphanage, a Welsh couple adopted her. At age twenty-one she married and moved to New Orleans with her new husband. About a year or two later, both her husband and her infant child died of illness, leaving Margaret in poverty.

Eventually, she got a job washing and ironing clothes in a Catholic orphanage. It was there that she sensed her calling. One day she went to the head nun and committed her life to helping the orphanage financially. Saving as much as she could, she donated much of her salary back to the orphanage. With what she had saved she managed to purchase two cows and a small, wooden pushcart. She would rise very early in the morning and deliver milk to wealthy people and restaurants, often begging for leftover food so that she could give that to the orphans.

As her side business grew, she purchased more cows and hired people to deliver the milk. Out of her revenues she kept little for herself. She saved much of it, and gave much of the rest to the orphanage. As her business increased, she eventually sold it, and with the proceeds, both donated huge sums to the orphanage, helping them get completely out of debt. Then she bought a bakery. As the bakery business took off, she gave more money not only to the Catholic orphanage she had worked in years before, but also to Protestant and Jewish orphanages.

When she died in 1882, she left $30,000 to be shared with orphanages all over the city. By my best guess, that would be over $1 million in today’s dollars. All from a woman who could barely read or write, but who was willing to sacrifice herself for the benefit of others.

You’ve heard that God helps those who help themselves? That’s not quite true. What is true is that God helps those who look to God. Embedded in the Christian faith is a simple idea, which is that nothing can keep us down if we put our faith in God. It’s not about how good, or perfect, or strong we are. It’s about being like Peter. We might fail and falter, but if our faith is in God, we can overcome anything to do wonderful things.

Amen.

Resurrection Stories: Discovering Deeper Truths



Luke 24:13-35
May 8, 2011

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.


Those of you who have been in this church or around me for a while know that among my favorite authors is C. S. Lewis. And among Lewis’ books, one of my favorites is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. From the moment I read it as a 12 year-old, it spoke to me about things that I knew I would never completely understand. The whole Chronicles of Narnia series, which includes this book, does that. That first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, speaks to truths about Christ’s death and resurrection that is hard to grasp fully with our conscious minds.

I especially love one scene in the book that speaks of this deeper truth. The scene is central to the book. One of the four human siblings, Edmund, has betrayed his brother and sisters to the White Witch, who wants to kill all of them. There is a prophecy that when two human boys and two human girls appear in Narnia (a land of talking animals who have been under the witch’s power for 100 years), her reign will be over. Edmund betrays them, and the White Witch invokes a law of Narnia, which is that if one human betrays another to her, she has the right to sacrifice the betrayer.

Aslan, who is a great lion, and literally is Jesus in Narnia (he tells the children in another book that they know him by that name in their world), offers himself as a sacrifice. The White Witch knew that Aslan’s love would lead him to sacrifice himself, and she relishes it. She knows that with Aslan dead, she will be free to reign forever.

Appearing before the witch and her evil creatures, Aslan is led onto a primeval stone table, with ancient, long-forgotten writing on it. He is mocked as he is bound, shaved, and laughed at. Lying on this altar, Aslan looks out in grief and pain. Two of the children, Susan and Lucy, watch from their hiding place. After much abuse, Aslan is killed by the witch. All the evil creatures laugh and dance in joy over his broken body. Finally, they leave to attack the army of Narnians, led by Susan’s and Lucy’s brotehr, Peter.

Once the evil creatures have crawled and slithered away, Susan and Lucy come over to Aslan and sob over his lifeless body. They are crushed. All hope is gone. After a while, they walk away. Suddenly they hear a loud CRACK! They look over and Aslan’s body is gone. They wonder who has taken it. Then, from the side, they see a looming figure. It’s Aslan. And he’s alive. They can’t believe it. Aslan roars, and then comes down to them, and they all roll in the grass, playing and laughing.

As they settle down and catch their breaths, the children ask Aslan how he could be alive. He says to them that the White Witch knew the laws of Narnia, but not the deeper magic of his Father. If she had only been able to read the writing on the stone table, she would have known that when someone willingly sacrifices himself for another’s sin, then that sin is forgiven and life is restored. He says that there are deeper truths to the realm of Narnia than the White Witch can ever understand.

That scene speaks so much about what I would call “God-truths.” These are truths about God that go beyond our ability to understand. They aren’t just truths that take time to learn, but they are truths that we can’t understand no matter how hard we try to figure them out. We can only experience them. The truth is that there is so much about how God acts in life that we don’t understand, and because we don’t understand, we shut ourselves off to God. We are a people who think that for anything to be true, we have to be able to understand it cognitively. But so much of life, the universe, and God lay beyond our ability to comprehend. Our passage is a perfect example of this truth.

Jesus meets two disciples, two men who had known Jesus intimately. They had been taught all of his teachings, but that’s not the same as them understanding his teachings. They knew all the right things, but they didn’t understand. They talk to Jesus as they walk, but they don’t recognize him. Jesus explains to them everything that had happened and, but because the resurrected Jesus makes no sense to them, they fail to recognize him. I’m sure Jesus was doing something to fog their abilities, but whatever he did was aided by the fact that they already have an understanding about how the world works, and the possibility of a resurrected Jesus made no sense. They had heard that some had seen him, but they were rational, logical men. For them, resurrection wasn’t possible.

It wasn’t until Jesus broke the bread and shared the wine at dinner that they recognized him, and recognized that they had just experienced a deeper truth. They still didn’t understand, but they had discovered Gods “deeper magic.”

For those of you who have been in this church for a long time, you know that I’m fascinated by stories, like this one, of God that reveal deeper truths. And I’m not just talking about deeper truths that we can figure out. I love stories that go beyond our cognitive understanding, that push the boundaries of what we can conceive of in our heads. I love stories about what God is doing in this world that push aside the known laws of this world.

I tell these kinds of stories in my sermons, I write about them in my books (and I’ve been criticized in book reviews for that fact), I talk about them in personal conversations, and I push books that share and teach these kinds of stories. The reason I’m so fascinated with these kinds of stories is that I truly believe that just as there is a deeper magic than the White Witch understood with Aslan, there are deeper truths about God than we understand, and that our doctrine and dogmas fail to capture. These are truths that we can’t necessarily explain. Instead, we experience them.

Let me close by sharing one of these kinds of stories. Over the past three months, our men’s group has been reading and discussing a fascinating book that you’ve heard me talk about in the past. The book is Father Arseny: Priest, Prisoner, and Spiritual Guide. It’s a book written by people who had come to know this amazing, Russian Orthodox priest during his lifetime. He lived during the Soviet period of Russia’s history, spending 27 years living in a Siberian gulag during Joseph Stalin’s savage reign. This was a time in which religion was forbidden, and people who practiced their faith could be imprisoned or killed. Father Arseny managed to live a life of deep faith during his brutal and torturous imprisonment, and he influenced thousands—both those in the camp with him, and those he met before and afterwards.

At the end of the book there is a story about one of his spiritual children, a woman he acted as spiritual guide to. Father Arseny had written a series of letters to many of the faithful he knew who were struggling under the oppressive, atheistic Communism of the Soviet Union. These were letters of spiritual encouragement, but they were dangerous. If found by the KGB, they would have implicated many as being Christians, and as worshiping together in secret.

A woman named Natasha took the letters from Father Arseny, and traveled to a town where she gave them to another woman named Alexandra. Knowing that Alexandra was frightened to take the letters and deliver them, she said to Alexandra the same words that Father Arseny had said to her: “God will protect you. He will be with you. Do not be afraid of anything. All will be well!”

As Alexandra set off to deliver the letters, she immediately felt as though someone was following her. She could hear footsteps about 50 to 70 yards behind her. Her heart raced. She didn’t know what to do. If she was caught,… well, she didn’t want to think of what might happen. Her pace quickened as she tried to elude her tail. She knew it was a KGB agent. She wondered if she should throw away the letters and run, but she knew that would make things worse. The KGB would get the letters, and all would be implicated, including Father Arseny.

So she slowed down and began to pray. She prayed to the virgin Mary, asking Mary to bring God’s protection (in the Orthodox tradition, many pray to Mary, or “Mother of God” as they call her). As she prayed, she soon noticed a second set of footsteps behind her. She didn’t feel fear at the sound of those footsteps. She felt oddly calm. Those footsteps came closer. As she turned a corner, a woman caught up with her. She was dressed exactly like her. She was the same age, had the same purse on her shoulder and kerchief on her head. She walked next to Alexandra, but said nothing. Her faced looked familiar, and had an amazing glow to it, but she really couldn’t make out the features.

Reaching a street corner, Alexandra’s companion turned to her and sternly said, “Stop here and stand. I will keep walking.” Standing completely still, the KGB agent—an angry-looking woman in her 30s—caught up to her, looked her up and down, and hurried on to catch the other woman. Alexandra was free! Within a few hours, Alexandra had delivered all the letters.

A year later Alexandra was arrested as a suspect. At the interrogation she was asked repeatedly what had happened to her companion on that day. Alexandra insisted that she had done nothing wrong. They eventually brought in her KGB tail, who said, “There I am walking, comrade Lieutenant, following her, she turns corners to lose me. But I follow her… When I came to the corner of Kazakov Street, somebody was standing, and another woman looking exactly like the first one walked away. They were identical, dressed the same way, same kerchiefs, same boots, same coat, same purse, same gait, same turn of the head. I followed them, but I couldn’t figure out which one I had been following from the beginning and which one appeared on that street corner. I followed the one who was walking away. I walked behind her for some ten minutes when she suddenly disappeared into thin air. I swear I am telling you the truth—she simply disappeared. Ask this woman, let her tell you what she did. It was just like a disappearing act in a circus.”

Alexandra told them that she didn’t know who the woman was, and in act of brazen spiritual boldness said, “I did not hide anywhere, I did not disappear. The Mother of God saved me. I had been walking and praying to her the whole time.” The interrogator laughed. They had to punish her some way, so Alexandra was sentenced to live in a small town outside of Moscow. For those times this was considered an extremely light punishment.

So, who was that with Alexandra? Mary? An angel? Who knows? What I do know is that to be a Christian means to be open to truths, and experiences based on those truths, that go beyond our understanding. It means being open to Alexandra’s experience. In fact, we Christians depend upon these experiences because we know that there is more to life than what we know, and what we think we know. We may not have the same kind of experience as Alexandra, but that doesn’t mean we can’t experience deeper truths.

We may advance in knowledge and sophistication in any age, but really understanding the truths of God isn’t about gaining new information. It’s about transformation. It’s about being open to truths that lay beyond laws, knowledge, and our convictions about how the world, universe, and God work. To become open to these kinds of experiential truths means to be open to God’s transforming and mysterious truths.

The question for you is simple: Are you open to this kind of mysterious transformation?

Amen.

Resurrection Stories: Overcoming Doubt




John 20:19-31
May 1, 2011

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.


I don’t know if you realize this, but there is a basic truth to growing as a Christian. It’s a paradoxical truth because it seems to stray from what many of us have learned growing up. The basic truth is this: if you don’t have doubts, and you don’t have questions, you don’t really have faith. Let me repeat what I just said: if you don’t have doubts, and you don’t have questions, you don’t really have faith.

I know,… I know,… we’ve all grown up learning that we have to have a blind faith. In fact, that idea of having a blind faith comes out of this passage, where Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” I don’t think Jesus is saying that being like Thomas and having doubts is wrong, while having a blind faith is right. Jesus has already blessed Thomas, and he’s saying that those who don’t have doubts also are blessed. He’s blessing everyone who has faith, no matter what course their faith has taken. Still, my experience tells me that the people who really develop the deepest faith do so after having overcome doubt and questioning.

I’ve learned how important doubting and questioning to growing faith both on a personal level and through my studies over the years. I’m a person who’s struggled with doubts and questions for much of my adolescent and adult life. You may or may not know this, but I never went to seminary to become a pastor. I went to get answers. The call to be a pastor came as a surprise to me, and only in my last year of seminary. My focus in going to seminary was to help my counseling career. I went to seminary to get answers to my spiritual and theological questions that would help me personally, and help me in my work with people struggling spiritually in their everyday lives. I had questions and doubts.

Even after I became a pastor, I still had questions about everything—about Jesus, God, the Christian life, and much more. I ended up working on my Ph.D., not because it would help my career, but because I wanted to dig deeper for answers. And all along the way I discovered that the more questions I got answered, the more new questions I had. Every answer opened up the door to new questions. Even today I outread most people I know because I have so many questions about what it means to be human, how the human brain works, how organizations work and why, what God is doing in the world, how to understand politics, how to understand history, and much more.

I’ve always been a person plagues with questions and doubts. Those doubts caused me to walk away from the church in my teens because I wasn’t sure the church could provide answers. I’m not alone in this. I’ve been surprised at how many other pastors walked away from the church as teens. I had lunch this past week with a Roman Catholic priest who told me that he had walked away from the church as a teen, and that he had been a drummer in a heavy-metal rock band before coming back to the church and going to seminary. Connie Frierson, who will be ordained as associate pastor in the next few months here at Calvin Church, has a similar history. She walked away from the church, and then ended up joining here and going to seminary, all to find answers to her doubts and questions.

All of us pastors who walked away from the church are in good company biblically because we are just like Thomas. I know that in the Presbyterian tradition we don’t have saints. Well, actually, we do. Everyone of faith is considered a saint. What we don’t have is set-aside or patron saints. If we did, though, Thomas could very well be the patron saint of the Presbyterian Church because we are a church that allows doubts and questions. We don’t demand blind faith. We invite a learned faith. We invite people to struggle with their questions. Why Thomas? Because he doubted, and it led him to the greatest commitment of any of the apostles.

You probably don’t know much about the fate of all the apostles (other than Peter and Paul) after Jesus ascended, but they have interesting histories. And Thomas’ history is as interesting as it gets. We don’t know how accurate this history is, since it was not written down till years after Thomas died, but here’s his story. Thomas was the most doubting, but he ended up being the most faithful. Christ called him to perhaps the most difficult ministry of any of the apostles.

After the Day of Pentecost, the apostles gathered together and cast lots to decide who would go where to spread the Gospel. Andrew was sent to the region that is now Armenia. Peter would stay in Jerusalem (and eventually move to Damascus and then Antioch). Later, Paul would go to what is now Turkey and Greece. Others were sent elsewhere. To Thomas fell the duty of spreading the Gospel in India, a place Thomas did not want to go to. Thomas complained: “I don’t want to go. I’m not healthy enough. I don’t speak the languages. It’s too dangerous. I’m the wrong person. I’m not going.” His refusal changed one day when he met Jesus in the marketplace. The tradition says that Jesus told him that he wanted him to go to India. Again, Thomas complained. So Jesus approached a traveling merchant in the marketplace named Abbanes and offered to sell Thomas to him as a slave. He told Abbanes that Thomas had carpentry skills, which he needed. The price was agreed upon, and Abbanes approached Thomas and said, “Is that your master over there?” pointing to Jesus. When Thomas said yes, Abbanes, said, “He has just sold you to me. You are now my servant.”

Thomas went with Abbanes first to what is modern-day Pakistan, settling in the Indus River valley. It was one of the great cradles of civilization, along with the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Yangtze. It was there that Thomas eventually was sold to and worked in the palace of the king, Gundaphorus. Thomas shared the Gospel with him, and after a number of years received his freedom and preached throughout India. It was a difficult mission because many parts of India were ungoverned and dangerous. Over the course of twenty years, Thomas faithfully traveled throughout India, spreading the Gospel. He eventually settled near Madras, where he was tortured with red-hot plates because of what he was preaching, and then was killed by being run through with a spear. The church started by Thomas, the Mar-Thoma Orthodox Church, which has about 2.5 million members world-wide, still exists in many parts of India.

Thomas, even though he doubted, balked, and complained, also served with tremendous courage in places that were more dangerous than any other in which the other apostles served. Thomas is my hero because he points the way to being an “authentic” Christian. He is the model for the struggling Christian who has doubts and questions, but never lets them get in the way of coming to God. In Thomas the questions led him to get closer to God, and to do more in service to God than ever anticipated.

I believe that one of the problems of our culture today is that our doubts are compounded with laziness. We have a lot of people who say that they yearn to find God in their lives, but then do nothing about it. For example, so many people in our culture today say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” That, to me, is a lazy person’s answer. When they say, “I get more out of going into the woods than in church,” or “I get more doing yoga than in being in church,” I hear people saying, “I’m too lazy to actually work on my spirituality. So I’m going to do what’s easy.” Like them, I love going out into the woods, and I do find God there. I also do yoga most mornings as part of my prayer ritual. I’m one of the few 52 year-old men who can actually place my palms on the floor while standing with straight legs. But if that’s the extent of your spirituality, it’s lazy. It’s doing nothing. It’s like saying that I’m a true athlete, but I find athletic success best by playing catch in my back yard. Or it’s like saying that I’m wonderful chef, and my best dish is boiling pasta. To be an athlete you have to work at your sport. To be a great chef you have to actually work at cooking. To be truly spiritual, you have to actually work on your spirituality, and without any kind of religious practice, how are you working on it?

So many people have questions and doubts, and it leads them to do little or nothing. Evangelical Churches really understand how spiritually lazy many people are, in a way that many of us in our Mainline churches don’t. They actually tailor their churches to people who are immature spiritually, either because they never grew up in church, or because they walked away after confirmation. So they do things to make religion easier. For example, in most of those large, evangelical churches, do you know what term they give their worship services? They don’t call them “contemporary.” They call them “seeker” services. They are trying to create services for people who are spiritually curious, but are afraid of deeper spiritual, theological answers. They create them for those who are just “seeking,” but haven’t gone very deep. They are targeting the most spiritually immature, which I believe is a good thing. We’re not set up for that, though. We’re set up not as a church for seekers, but as a church for “deepers”—for people who want to go deeper into Christian faith and spirituality.

If you read the writings of pastors and others out of the evangelical, mega-church movement, they are written for people with little spiritual or religious background. They tend to write to people at an 8th or 9th grade level. How do I know this? It all has to do with the SMOG test. I don’t mean an environmental air-pollution test. The SMOG (SMOG stands for “standard measure of gobbledygook) test is a reading test that Bruce Smith made me aware of. Back in 1968 an educational researcher named G Harry McLaughlin came up with a formula to determine what grade level a person was writing at. It was a helpful test in guiding writers to write at an age-appropriate level. The test is fairly simple. You take 30 lines of any book. You then count the number of words that have more than two syllables. You then take the square root of that number (or the square root of the squared number closest to that number) and add 3.

Most of what I write is written at a 12th-grade or college level, according to the SMOG test. When you read books coming out of the evangelical world, they tend to be written at about an 8th or 9th grade level with large print and lots of white space. My saying this is not my saying that their writings are bad or wrong. There are many good books that I have read that are written at this level. One reason that Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life was so popular is that it was written at an 8th grade level. If you want to see why I say that, apply the SMOG test to it. I think his book is a very good book, but it is written for people who are at an 8th or 9th grade religious level. It is written for people who either don’t have many questions, or who have been somewhat lazy spiritually and want simpler, easier answers. Warren’s book is good, but there are so many more that are truly exceptional, but reading them requires a willingness to use our questioning and doubts to dig deeper.

In the Presbyterian Church (USA) and at Calvin Presbyterian Church, we allow people to doubt and question, and we invite people to grow deeper. We are not a tradition or a church that expects blind faith. We expect a questioning faith. I really believe that one of the gifts of the Presbyerian tradition is that we both encourage and expect people to move beyond a 9th grade religious level. We encourage and expect people to have questions and doubts, and we try to create classes and groups that move people deeper.

You see this whole emphasis on questions, doubts, education, and growing emphasized throughout our church and the whole Presbyterian tradition. For instance, if you look at our robes, they’re different from the ones Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholic pastors and priests wear. Think about where else you’ve seen people in our culture with these kinds of robes. You see them in universities and colleges. Professors wear them at graduation. Our robes are academic robes, and it emphasizes that we pastors are primarily to be teachers. It’s also for this reason in the Presbyterian Church that so many of our pastors have doctorates. We get them because we not only believe that education is important, but because so many of us pastors have our doubts and questions, and we are always working to get answers, which of course leads us to new questions. We Presbyterian pastors are questioners leading others to both question and to find answers.

Too many Christians today come armed with strong opinions, but with little study. They have a little knowledge, and they use it to criticize and judge people, while they stay safely in their own little ignorant and arrogant bubbles. But we’re different. We’re a people called to recognize that there is so much that we don’t know, and that we need to humbly strive for greater learning. This is what Thomas has taught us. He’s taught us that our doubts and questions can lead to an even greater faith.

From Thomas we also get an important question that we need to answer if we’re going to grow in faith: how committed are we to really growing spiritually, to forging ahead for answers to questions, and to learning what God has to teach?

Amen.