|
Doubts and Fears (The Gospel lesson for this sermon is found in the book of John, Chapter 20: 19-31.)
Pastor Stan Larson Central Presbyterian Church, Russellville, Arkansas March 30, 2008
|
|
How many of you like to have the group that you’re in, your family, or the church, to all agree? Isn’t it wonderful if everyone is in agreement, if everyone is on the same page? Fortunately, in the Presbyterian Church, fortunately from the witness of the Gospel, we don’t all of us have to agree all of the time. Now we know some churches where that’s kind of a standard where you all have to agree on some very basic things. We do agree on some basic things; but we don’t have to agree everything. We allow for there to be questions and doubts and fears and all kinds of things going on around us; not always making us comfortable, but always saying that there’s room for those things in our midst.
In the Gospel reading today, more often than not we would call this the story of doubting Thomas, and put a rather negative tone on “doubting Thomas.” But I want to raise up to you the fact that Thomas is really a model for all of us. Thomas in the Gospel of John takes on many of the characteristics that the other Gospels give to Peter. Thomas is the one in the Gospel of John that is always asking questions, seeming at times to put his foot in his mouth, which we always associate with Peter; but in this Gospel, it is Thomas. When Jesus says, “Well let’s go to Lazarus” (you know that he has died and it is not real safe to go), it is Thomas who comes up with the statement, “Well if we’re going to go, let’s all go with you so we can die together.”
And then in that famous passage that we read quite often at funerals, it is Thomas that after Jesus has said he is going to the Father and that you know the way, Thomas says, “Well Lord, we don’t know the way.” You know, he’s the straight man; so that Jesus can come out and say, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” And here, when Thomas is most needed (maybe he had relatives in town) Jesus appears to the disciples. They heard the women; they’re supposed to be all joyful and ready for Jesus to come, and what are they doing? They’re in the upper room with the door locked because they are afraid the Jews will come and arrest them. And Jesus comes and they still don’t really believe. You know, he has to show them and talk with them; and finally, then they rejoice. Then they got it. But Thomas wasn’t there. And they told Thomas; and Thomas, well Thomas could have been from Missouri. He says, “Show me—Show me; unless I see it, I will not believe.” Now none of us would speak those kind of words real quickly, because we had been left out would we? Thomas says that unless I can see Jesus and touch the nail holes in his hands and the spear mark in his side, and see him face to face, I will not believe.
Now the amazing thing is that a week later Thomas and the rest of the disciples are still together. Now you know this would seem to be a rather basic thing to agree upon; but they’re still there; it happens in the Church. There are times when we disagree over some things that are rather important; but we’re called by God to stay together, to continue talking, maybe to try to convince the other person, but not to say, “Well you’ll have to leave because you don’t agree with me on this one point”. Thomas is still there. Jesus comes again into their midst to convince Thomas.
Jesus is willing to come to any one of us to help us move from doubt and fear and questions, to faith. Now most of us are not going to go quite as far as Thomas. We think that that is just a really nice cute question when Thomas says, “My Lord, and my God!” But, what we have to realize is that Thomas is committing high treason. In the Roman Empire you only say that to one person, and that’s to the Caesar, to Caesar, the emperor; because you are saying that he is my Lord, my temporal ruler and my God, because the emperor was considered to be the representative of the God. Thomas is committing high treason by saying, “My allegiance is to Jesus, to God and not to Roman Empire.” Most often we don’t have to do that, but we know that in the early church a lot of them did. The simple word in Greek that means witness, just witnessing to one’s faith, has taken a different turn for us because it is martyr. So many of them were persecuted for just saying, “I believe in Jesus Christ”. And everybody else says that you can’t do that. If you do that, you’re going to die. So it is not surprising that at times we have doubts and fears and questions; and our scriptures say that’s okay. It’s coming through those questions, those doubts, that’s needed.
Jesus was one who asked questions of the crowds, who was willing to solicit questions from his disciples because if you don’t know what the problems are, the concerns, the questions, the fears, the doubts, you can’t answer them. Jesus kept saying what’s going on your lives? Tell me what is the most important thing; because so often in the scriptures, we hear the disciples, you know, if we ask a question, we’re gonna look foolish.
Now the people I know who really dislike asking questions and volunteering, are college students. When I was in college I had a wonderful Psychology 101 teacher; and he knew how to motivate college students. In his class he had a big jar of Hershey’s Kisses. Anybody who answered a question, asked a question or came up front to view a psychological experiment, re-enact it, he would give them Hershey’s kisses. He would toss it to the back of the room if you answered a question. Now college students respond to food. Is that a fair assessment? He knew his students. Jesus knew his disciples; Jesus knows us. He wants to draw out what it is that is keeping us from truly believing, truly committing ourselves and our lives to following Jesus.
We don’t have the same advantage that the early disciples, of those who were in the upper room because we can’t physically see Jesus. So Jesus, at the end of his time, says, “Blessed are those who believe, but have not yet seen”. We have to believe in the word of others; we have to believe in the word of the disciples. We have to believe in the witness of those who have gone before us in the Church; and help them to bring out of us our doubts and our fears, to say, that’s okay, that’s expected. And even it you don’t totally agree with me, we can still talk as we work together and come to the place where we can say together, “Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ. Yes, I want to be a disciple. And I want to follow; but I don’t have it all perfect yet. I don’t have all my questions answered, I don’t have—I can’t maybe ace that final exam that’s coming up. You know in Christianity 101 or Presbyterian 101, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Jesus wants to know what’s really going on, what’s really concerning us. Then, Jesus can provide the answer, calm our fears and bring peace, bring the Holy Spirit into our lives so that we can become the people that Jesus knows we can be, the people we were created to be. Not sitting huddled up in that upper room, not just sitting huddled in the sanctuary on Sunday morning, saying, “I don’t know what I’m going to do when I go out the door. I don’t know how to tell people about Jesus Christ, about my faith, or what it means to be Presbyterian, and have people ask me about that wonderful thing, predestination”.
We get afraid and we have doubts because well, I don’t know if I’m the best witness. And God says, “I want all of you to be witnesses. I don’t necessarily want all of you to be martyrs; but I want all of you to go out, and by your lives, by your actions, by your words, show the world that yes indeed you do believe in and follow Jesus Christ. That while you have not seen, you have come to believe; and that God has calmed some of your fears, addressed some of your doubts, answered some of your questions. Maybe not all of them, but we still have to work by faith and go to places we are not always sure about, but always trusting that God has given us what we need. Gods Peace, Gods Spirit, so that when we come to those situations, when we come to those challenges, we know that God has provided what we need to be true disciples.
And in the meantime, stay together, talk together, even if we don’t always agree on everything. Even when sometimes it’s one of those essential tenets of the Presbyterian Church that we’re saying, “What are they?” But when we talk about it, we talk about our faith in Jesus Christ and we talk together over a meal, during worship; and we honestly come together, not to knock someone over the head and say, “You’ve got to believe” but to say, “This is what I’ve come to believe. This is what I see. This is what I have experienced in my life in coming to know and experience Jesus Christ. The disciples didn’t gang up on Thomas; well they probably did a little bit; but they didn’t say, “You have to believe or we’re going to kick you out.” They said, “We have seen Jesus and we know he is risen, and we want that experience for you, but we don’t know how to do that”. But Jesus came again, to Thomas, as Jesus, in many ways comes to us, to our families, to our friends, to our church, through all kinds of experiences to bring us from doubt and fears to faith, bringing God’s Peace, bringing God’s Spirit so that we can go out into the world, go out of that locked room. And sometimes that lock is on our hearts and our lives, and not on the rooms, physically. But so that we can move out, knowing that God goes with us that we can then go out as disciples and witnesses to Jesus Christ. Yes with a little bit of our fear still, with some of our doubts done away with and not all of our questions answered, but know that God has called us to do that--to move out so that others may come to believe, so that they may hear of all the wondrous things that Jesus has done in scriptures and for us, and thereby come to believe even though they have not seen. They come to see Jesus alive in us, in our lives and in the life of our church. That is how we address our own doubts and fears and the doubts and fears of others.
As Jesus came and was gracious to his disciples we are called to be gracious with one another and to help one another through our doubts and fears where we witness to what we believe about our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. It’s nice though to be in that locked room, to know that everything is safe and secure and that no one is going to harm us, no one is going to ask us that question that we are dreading so much. But God says we have to go out; we have to go out, but as we are gathered together, we need to gain strength from each other; we need to feel God’s presence in our midst. And so God invites us to worship together; God invites us to welcome others into our midst saying it’s okay if you come with doubts and questions and fears, if you’re not sure we’re here for you. The Presbyterian Church doesn’t do altar calls, but we do invite people to discipleship, invite people to membership, we invite people to come and talk together with us, and come to know and love our Savior Jesus Christ. We are able to do that because we have a faith that grounds us.
I invite you to affirm our faith together using the Apostle’s Creed.
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into Hell. The third day He rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God, the Father Almighty from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, And the life everlasting. Amen |