"You Can't See If You're Not Here"
A response to the doubting Thomases and a popular book and film
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Text: John 20:19-29
A few weeks ago I was driving in Portsmouth, New Hampshire along Route One on the coast of New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts. I know that this is a day when many of our people are travelling; in fact, it's one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, so you might be in your car listening to this service right now. I went past a sign outside a church in a small village just south of Portsmouth and thought what a wonderful sign it was to put on a highway. It said: “If doubts are overtaking you, stop here for a faith lift.” I hope that today this sermon and this worship service will be for you a “faith lift,” and that you will find it to be a source of great strength in your spiritual journey.
I got the shock of my life last week. I was driving down a one-way street in my neighbourhood and, as you do on a one-way street, I perhaps wasn't paying the same amount of attention that I normally would if I was expecting oncoming traffic. So I was just sort of blindly going down the road when suddenly, to my absolute horror, I saw a car with its headlights on coming towards me. I realized that the driver clearly didn't realize this was a one-way street (although for a brief moment, you know, even if you've seen something a thousand times you have a moment of self-doubt, “Am I actually on the street that I think I'm on?”). I looked around in panic, because I realized that these two large objects were facing each and one of us was going to have to give way. I flashed my lights on and off furiously and honked my horn, and the other driver finally slowed down and pulled into a gap between parked cars, and we wound down our windows and had a conversation. I suggested to this young man in his souped-up hotrod that he should realize this is a one-way street. He looked perplexed and said, “I didn't see the sign.”
So I pointed to it, but I didn't want to be nasty. And then I said to him, as he continued his remonstrations that he was innocent, “Have you not realized that all the cars parked on this street on both sides of the road are facing the same direction?”
And he looked at me and said, “Oh, yeah.” He then put up his window and drove off.
I looked out my rear-view window, thinking he would stop and turn around and follow me in the proper direction, but, oh no, he just kept on going, until he met a garbage truck coming down the other way. I thought to myself, “I knew God would get him eventually, one way or the other.” And then, I continued on my way.
That incident made me think about how important signs are. You drive by them a thousand times and you never see them or take notice of them until something unusual happens. Signs are there to point the way and give direction. They are there to protect the innocent and they're also there to guide the miscreant. But the beautiful thing about signs is that if they are put up, at some point somebody has to see them.
Now, this morning in our text from the Gospel of John we have Jesus putting up a big sign that is consistent with the whole of the Gospel of John, which is sometimes referred to as a gospel of signs. There are many different signs of God's presence in Jesus' ministry in the Gospel of John. There are signs of Jesus fulfilling his role for eternity; there are signs that the Word had been made flesh, and there are signs that that flesh is now revealing God to all those who see him.
The first sign in John's gospel is the turning of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. But the one we have today is in a way the last sign - it is the sign of Christ's appearance. I want to look at this sign because it gives every single one of us a great sense of direction, and it really does speak to our world. But to do so, we need to look at this passage as sort of a play in two acts. To set the stage for the play we need to know a few things about how the sign came to be seen.
We are told in John's gospel that this sign takes place after the crucifixion of Jesus. Because Jesus is dead and buried this is now, probably, the third day after the death of Jesus, near the end of the day. According to the calendar that John follows, it would be the end of the Passover and the end of the first day of the week. So, we read that the disciples who had been left after the death of Jesus gathered in their usual place in a room. But more than that, we are told that they actually locked the door to the room. Why? Probably because they had seen their leader, with whom they had been associated, crucified, and they were worried that the very same fate would befall them, or if not the same fate exactly, then some form of imprisonment or incarceration, or at least ridicule, so they huddled, frightened in an upper room, and locked the door.
That is the setting: the disciples are frightened, it's the evening of the third day, Passover is over and now, in a sense, the play begins. In the first act, we see something miraculous: Jesus appears in that room with the disciples and speaks to them a word of comfort, a word that more than anything else in the whole world they needed to hear. He says to them, in classic Hebrew, “Shalom.” “Peace be with you.”
In other words he comes to put them at ease, to quiet their fears, to calm them down, to let them know that all is well. To use the phrase from one of this morning's hymns, to simply “be still.” Then he does something else: He shows them his body. He shows them where the nails had been driven through his hands on the cross, where his side had been pierced. In short, something was happening in that upper room - and I'll talk about that a little later on - that was absolutely and incredibly miraculous. The disciples who were living in fear and thought that Jesus was gone, and then he suddenly appears to them. He then goes even further. He not only says, “Peace to you,” he not only reveals himself, he also gives them a mandate and a mission. He says that it is now their job to go out into the world themselves and bear witness to what they have seen. Then, in one of the most dramatic moments in the whole of the New Testament, Jesus breathes on them, hearkening back to the classic imagery from the Old Testament of a wind, a breath, and bestows on them the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit, of course, would actually be fulfilled a few days later at Pentecost. Now, at this dramatic juncture, the disciples must have been absolutely stunned. It was unprecedented. What on earth was happening? But then John tells us something interesting: One of the disciples was missing; a man called Thomas, whose name in Hebrew was Didymus, which literally means “the twin,” wasn't there. He must have gone, as a soldier would describe it, AWOL. He must have been absent without leave and you can't blame him, really, can you?
How many of us would stay once we'd seen this leader, this commander, this person who was going to do all these great and glorious things, die? How many of us would want just to hang around with these fellows afterwards, after we had committed our lives to him and seen him crucified, dead and buried. It would be pointless, Thomas would have thought, to meet with these other disciples. It was over! It had been a great party for three years. They had travelled the hillsides, they'd seen miracles, but the promise of a resurrection and a coming back hadn't happened. So, Thomas was doing what any realist would do - he was staying away.
Well, you can imagine what the disciples said to him after all this had taken place. They went to him and said, “You missed it. He was here! Jesus was present!” They probably said to him in Aramaic, “You moron! You missed everything that we had waited for. You weren't here. If you'd been here you would have seen for yourself.” Then the skeptic, the cynic in Thomas kicks in and he said, “Unless I see for myself the nails in his hands and unless I put my hand through his side, then I simply will not believe.” Thomas was laying down his credentials as someone who wasn't yet convinced that this was a great thing.
Here is the irony of the whole story: He didn't see the things that he wanted to see because he wasn't there. If he had been there he would have seen, but because he had doubted, because he had become overcome with despair, because he no longer thought the fellowship was necessary, he was AWOL and therefore, the very proof that a man like Thomas wanted was not available.
Now, my friends, I think this is a profound message for today. I say so because I meet so many people genuinely seeking something spiritual in their lives, something miraculous, something powerful. They really are a little bit skeptical about the claims of religion, but they want something to affirm the supernatural, the extraordinary or the health-giving or the peace-giving or the powerful in their lives, but so often they miss that affirmation, because they are not where they should be.
I think that that is one of the great challenges that we have when we are talking about The Da Vinci Code book and movie. I have been inundated with people wanting to know what I think of the book. I mean, people don't want to know what I think about anything else, but they want to know what I think about The Da Vinci Code! People who never speak to me want to speak to me about this. It's amazing! In the lineup at the coffee shop two weeks ago a man realized I was a minister and he said, “So what do you think about that, Father? It must really peeve you!” And I just want my coffee, you know. I'd like to talk about the Edmonton Oilers, maybe, or the decline of the Leafs, or the economy, but oh no, The Da Vinci Code. So, I'm going to talk for a moment about The Da Vinci Code.
This is what I'm going to say about it, so everyone will know: First of all, I think that there is a massive over-reaction to this book and this movie. I think that trying to persuade people not to go and see it or not to read it only exacerbates all the fears, all the suspicions that people have of religion. I think it is blasphemous, personally, of course I do. There are things in this book about Jesus and his life that bear absolutely no resemblance to the Christian tradition whatsoever. And I suppose I could read this and get really upset and aggrieved about it, but I won't. It's fiction. And if you are going to get upset every time a piece of fiction or a movie comes along that depicts something that you don't like or believe, and you try to suppress it and push it down, then let me tell you, that only achieves the whole motive of doing this in the first place… to make money.
If you are going to pick on one of the world's great religions, you are going to get a reaction, and if you get a reaction, you are going to make sales. Let's be honest about it. Sure it's a good book and it reads well, particularly the first half - great pace, wonderful intrigue, great sense of dilemma. It's a thriller, sure it is. But I mean really, folks, wanting to ban something like this I think is an overreaction. I also have got to say that I think people are awfully gullible if they believe that this is historically accurate and has veracity and truth from an historical point of view. Just because Dan Brown says this is fact doesn't mean it is. I just can't believe the things that people tell me about him, about Mary Magdalene and everything. I say, “Please, folks, honestly, don't believe everything that you read.”
Don't do that, because you have a choice. If you are really going to be a seeker and if you are really interested in whether this is truth, you have to look at two things: You have to look at the book as written by a man called Dan Brown and, if you're going to be really scholarly or smart, really informed, you have to do what any good academic would do - go back and read the original documents. If you're really worried about this, if you are really concerned about it, I invite you to read the original document. It is amazing, is it not, that the original document will still be, by the end of 2006, a better seller than The Da Vinci Code. It also comes with a much nicer, softer, sometimes leather cover as well, but more than that, it has been read for more than 2,000 years and has changed people's lives. It has given people what Jesus said to the disciples in the upper room: “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives but as I give, I give unto you.”
At the same time, I have also come to realize throughout this whole Da Vinci debacle that we've got a lot of Thomases in the church. They are not just in the street, not just part of the vox populi. There are people who don't show up and don't know. Because they are not here, they can't see. This is a great challenge, my friends. If you are going to take Christian discipleship seriously, you have to know the original documents. More and more, I believe that today it is absolutely essential and critical that Christians know their faith like they've never known it before. Not only because it is being challenged, or questioned, or because there is this plethora of information on the Web or in the media or in the movies about it, but also because we are living shoulder to shoulder with other men and women who are reading those things. If you can't give some kind of explanation of your own faith, then I think there is something missing in the quality of your discipleship.
This is a call for the church to take discipleship seriously. And if we want to look at the story of The Da Vinci Code and tear it apart argument by argument, that's fine, but that is not really what counts in the end. What counts is a faith that is informed. I think that all of this is good and I think it is a call for us to take up the spiritual challenge and to use that sign: “If doubt overtakes you, come to the church and get a faith lift.” That's what's needed and I'm excited about that, so bring it on! So long as you're going down the street in the right way, that's all I ask.
Act two, eight days later: Jesus appears again in the room and he does so in a powerful way. This time Thomas is there and Thomas is stunned. Again Thomas says, “Unless I put my fingers in the holes in your hands, unless I put my hand in your side, I still will not believe.” So, even when he was there, Thomas still questioned. So Jesus gives him this invitation. He says, “Put your fingers here, reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Now, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a phenomenal thing. It is the basis and the foundation of the Christian church and, as we shall see in a moment, it led to one of the ultimate declarations in the whole of Scripture. But we must realize that there was no historical cause for the resurrection of Jesus. It was an act of God and therefore there is no analogy that we can use, there is no precedent to which we can refer, there is nothing that we can point to before it to compare it to. And so, the disciples, though they believed in their hearts in the resurrection, had no point of reference to it until they actually saw Jesus. But the resurrection is not as some people have suggested, just a disturbance of the natural order. It is something, and I want to stress this, that is entirely unique. It was new; it had never happened before. And it was the Son of God and the Son of God alone who would be raised. Therefore, because it was something new it had to be the very power of eternity breaking into the mortality of the world as we know it. Even an historic debate about the resurrection still leaves one thing necessary to understand it, and that is faith, that is belief, and that is exactly what Jesus is saying to Thomas. You need to believe. There's a point at which all the proof in the world doesn't compare to belief.
My friends, Thomas was introduced in the second act because he represents all of us. All of us are Thomases. We do not have the opportunity to put our hands in the hands of Jesus and feel the nail holes, we cannot put our hands in his side; he has not appeared to us. But we believe. We believe. That belief is so powerful that it caused Thomas to say, “My Lord and my God.” That confession of Thomas' was the confession of the early church. They had no need to try and cover it up, they had no need to suppress it, they were actually willing to die for it, because they believed it to be true. Such was the power of the faith that says, “My Lord and my God.”
In 1887 a very famous preacher called Henry Drummond preached a sermon in Northfield, Massachusetts titled, “Dealing with Doubt.” He made this fascinating observation:
Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can't believe; unbelief is won't believe. Doubt is honesty; unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light; unbelief is content with darkness. Loving darkness rather than light—that is what Christ attacked, and attacked unsparingly. But for the intellectual questioning of Thomas, and Philip, and Nicodemus, and the many others who came to Him to have their great problems solved, He was respectful and generous and tolerant. And how did He meet their doubts? The Church, as I have said, says, " Brand him!" Christ said, " Teach him." He destroyed by fulfilling. When Thomas came to Him and denied His very resurrection, and stood before Him waiting for the scathing words and lashing for his unbelief, they never came. They never came. Christ gave him facts.
Christ gave him love. My friends, doubt is one thing, unbelief is another. Having doubts is to be like Thomas, but if we are like Thomas than Jesus comes and in the most gracious and the most gentle and the most loving way says, “I want you to believe. I want you to believe.” That's why I think in a world that has doubts, that is honestly questioning, that is genuinely seeking, that rather than branding people, or silencing people, we should love them and engage them and present them with Christ again. For that, I am sure, would be the response of the risen Jesus to everything that is going on at the moment.
After all, he has nothing to fear. He can't lose. He's alive and he is our Lord and he is our God. Let's share him and let's say to people, “If you're not here, if you're not worshipping, if you're not on your knees, you cannot see.” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.