Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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A visitor to a construction site came upon two bricklayers working side by side. He asked one, "What are you doing?" "I'm building a wall," the man replied. Then he asked the other, "What are you doing?" "Me?" said the man, "why, I'm building a great cathedral, a place where the beauty and glory of God will stream in through the stained-glass windows, and where future generations of faithful Christians will come and worship and find God." (Whereupon, as the story goes, the second man was immediately fired, because he was supposed to be building a gas station!)

Well, if you can forget the punch line, the first part of the story tells us about how different people attribute different meanings to things, how some come to believe and some not to believe. At least it opens the question, and it's a very difficult issue, indeed. Because, all day long, all around us, different people looking at the same evidence (the same realities -- in this case, some bricks and mortar) come to different conclusions about the meaning of it -- one builds a wall, another a cathedral. Some see God in a flower, others see only petals and stem. Same flower. Some ripen and gain faith with age, others deteriorate and loose faith. Same experience. With bad news, some take heart, others take gas. Some see victory in crucifixion, others see only tragedy. Same scene, same experience, nothing different about our eyesight or our perception -- the different is in what we come to believe about what we see and experience.

Thousands saw Jesus in his lifetime, looked right at him and saw him (those "multitudes" the gospels are always referring to) -- thousands saw him heal the sick, calm storms, still the raging sea. A great multitude heard him preach the Sermon on the Mount. Why, a big crowd watched as he raised Lazarus from the dead! The Bible says clearly that hundreds even saw him after he, himself, had been raised. Plenty of evidence. Plenty of witnesses. But, when all was said and done, only eleven believed -- eleven poor, uneducated men, and a handful of women, perhaps. What can we conclude from that? Only a tiny fraction of those who saw the evidence put it together right. Same evidence, wrong conclusion. Sometimes people say, "If only I could have lived back then, seen Jesus in the flesh, touched him, heard him preach and teach." Let's not kid ourselves. Had we been there, chances are we would not have believed. The odds are against us.

Poor Thomas. His place in history will always be "the doubter." That's really not fair, because the point of the story is not Thomas' doubt but about Jesus generous love, and (it's not fair) because none of the others believed until they saw, either! Peter and the other disciple didn't believe even when they went into the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene didn't believe the angels -- she had to see Jesus in the flesh, there in the garden, before she'd believe -- and then she though he was the gardener! The disciples, as John tells the story, apparently didn't believe Mary, when she ran back to them breathless that morning and said, "I have seen the Lord!" No, not until that night when Jesus comes to them in person, behind closed doors (the closed doors of their minds and souls), and shows them his wounds, and breathes the holy spirit upon them, not until then, until they can see him and touch him do they believe. And poor Thomas wasn't there. And he, when he returned, like all the others, said "seeing is believing." So he didn't find his faith until a night one week later, when he heard Jesus call his name, call him up out of the group, to to come forward and touch those awful wounds." "My Lord and my God!", he said. Then, and only then, does Thomas believe.

"Come feel with me his blood applied.

My Lord, my love, is crucified.

John's Gospel is the last of the four. All, or almost all, of those who had actually known Jesus are dead by the time John writes. Most, even, of those who knew those who knew Jesus are growing old, and some "have gone to sleep" -- as the early Christians liked to say. So the story of Thomas is especially important to John. How will we believe if we can't see? After Thomas touches him, Jesus says, "Have you believed because you have seen me? (O, yes. That's the way people are, isn't it. They only trust what they take in through their physical senses. What a bankrupt way to live! But, if that's what you need for faith, Thomas, I'll give it to you. Put your finger here, your hand here. I'd just like to say this 85) Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Or, if I may change it a little, blessed are those who have learned to believe in things they can't see. It was Jesus' message, of course, for future generations of believers. It is John, and Jesus, speaking directly to us. No Bible story is more relevant to the twentieth century than the story of Thomas.

Sometimes people who are struggling with their faith seem to say, "Make it so that I can't not believe." Tell me something, show me something, that will leave no room for doubt. But, don't you see, there's always room for doubt, just as there's always room for faith. It is a choice we have. And faith is a better, truer way. Information leads to knowledge, knowledge leads to wisdom, wisdom to faith -- in that order. Knowledge is more than information -- not merely the sum total of everything that has impinged upon our senses, sorted and categorized by the Pentium chips in our brains. Knowledge contains information (facts), but knowledge moves toward wisdom when the information is mixed with what we bring to it, our hopes and our sorrows, our needs and our fears. And (if we are faithful people) wisdom is then mixed with the power of God's Holy Spirit. And we have faith.

I've been especially enjoying my computer lately, because a while back I learned to pay bills with it. (Mary says I'm the only man in Montgomery County who runs to the mailbox hoping to find a bill to pay!) But, truly, I'm amazed at how it works, at the complexity of it all. My computer dials Sandy Spring Bank, and puts me right "into" my own checking account -- to do as I please! There are certain rules, of course, certain realities: my balance, for example, keeps me "real" most of the time. But think what it takes to make such a thing possible. There are millions of facts stored in my computer at home, and millions of facts in the bank's computer, I'm sure. These facts are organized and directed by internal programs and operating systems in both places. And somehow, almost magically from my point of view, when that telephone line to the bank opens up, what I have in my computer is combined with what the bank has, and I am suddenly empowered. I can do things. Move money. Move mountains. Perhaps faith is like that. In faith, perhaps, what I have in me is combined with what God has in him, and, in some miraculous and mysterious way, an enormous power is released. Faith that heals, faith that makes strong, faith that enables us to understand and to believe even what we haven't seen. Yet, I have to bring myself to my computer. It is that "myself" that God wants to reach. When we open up a line between us, he gives me great power.

I can go to church and learn "facts" about Jesus, or I can learn them in a book. But it's not the facts that save. It's faith. That's what Thomas learned. Jesus didn't refuse him, never shamed him, nor reprimanded him, for insisting that he see the facts first. Jesus, because he loved his own, gave his beloved disciple what he needed for faith. "That's o.k., Thomas. But it sure will be a fine a day when people learn to believe things unseen. For the unseen is where the power is, Thomas. We think we're being realists by insisting on seeing, and touching and hearing, but all the while the really real is beyond our senses.

We have to mix facts with faith. "Be not faithless, but believing," Jesus says to Thomas. As if it were up to him! As if he could choose to believe or not to believe. As if he were not a slave to all that facts (all the information) piled up in his head. As if he were not the victim of his genes, or his parents' wrong-headed ideas. As if he had free will. You can choose, Thomas. If you need some facts to help your faith, I'll let you touch me. But faith means mixing such facts with the power of God, and that is up to you. Choose. Choose to believe.

If someone were to say to me, "I saw your father last night, down at the donut shop," that would be an earthquake, for my father is long dead. I could conclude (as I probably would) that the person was mistaken, that the facts were somehow wrong, for I saw my father's body, and he was dead dead. Maybe it was just someone who looked like my father. Or I might, in faith, set out to find him, and make that search the overwhelming quest of my life. It would depend on the credibility of the witnesses.

How much truer with God. These early witnesses (Thomas, the other disciples, Mary Magdalene, John who wrote the Gospel) all say to us, "We saw Jesus." The fact before us is not the risen Christ -- he ascended into heaven long before our time, and we cannot touch him. The fact before us is the witness of these saints. Will we conclude that they were mistaken, that it was just someone who looked like Jesus, or will we mix facts (their testimony, and their deaths for what they said they saw) with faith, and seek him ourselves. John tells us that Jesus is available to us, through faith, even if not by sight and touch. And faith is a better way. We choose to believe. It's up to us.