Sermon Church of the Holy Communion

SUNDAY SERMON

April 27, 2003
Second Sunday of Easter
Year B

Last week I was walking in midtown when I spied an unusual car. It was a late model SUV with out-of-state plates. And it was covered with bumper stickers.

Now, I don't mean just the bumpers. And I don't mean just the rear end or the sides of the vehicle. I mean the whole bloomin' car: front to back, side to side, totally plastered with short, pithy messages in a multitude of shapes, sizes and colors.

Common sense and good taste keep me from describing a few of those bumper stickers right now. But there were others, popular ones I'd seen many times before. Ones like, "Got Jesus?" "Hate is not a family value." "Proud to be an American."

There were these: "Kill your television." "POW/MIAs: You are not forgotten." "Minds are like parachutes; they only function when open."

And, there were these, totally new to my experience as a semi-professional bumper sticker observer: "Normal people worry me." "Go ahead; act stupid." "God, protect me from your followers." My personal favorite: "Jesus shaves."

When I walked around that car, looking at all the stickers, writing many of those messages down, I thought, "Wow! They're something here to offend everyone." Then, I thought, "maybe this collection of stickers is a bit like the story of this driver's life."

As I reflected on this experience during the days that passed, I wondered: how is this SUV a symbol of some kind? How are all these messages, with their different perspectives, like my messages? How is this vehicle like my life?

We go through life, it seems to me, like a car that accumulates bumper stickers. At one moment we are "proud to be an American," in the next we may not be so proud. In one season of our lives, we're worried about all those people who seem so normal, when we may not even know what normal is any more. In another season, we can easily define what normal is at the drop of a hat, and we're annoyed with others who can't.

And, sometimes, we've "got Jesus" -- and, sometimes, we don't. That is to say, when it comes to matters of deep personal conviction, we're predictably unpredictable. We're human. We're just like those human disciples of Jesus, especially Thomas.

Thomas (another personal favorite) was not afraid to speak his mind and his heart. Problem is, his heart and his mind weren't consistent, either with each other or from time to time. There are three stories about Thomas in John's gospel account, three stories of Thomas in community with Jesus and his disciples. I think these three stories show how much his messages -- his bumper stickers, if you will - simply did not remain the same.

First, there's the time when Lazarus dies in John 11. Jesus arrives and says to his disciples, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe." Here's Thomas's response: "Let us…go, that we may die with him."

Die with whom? Die with Jesus? Maybe. Die with Lazarus? So that Thomas and his fellow disciples, like Lazarus, can be raised by Jesus? That's probably closer to his intent. But how would Thomas know about all this?

The one thing that IS clear in that first Thomas story is that he is confident in his faith. He doesn't know exactly what will happen if he goes with Jesus, but he is prepared to do what's necessary. At that moment, Thomas is even ready to die for his faith.

Then, there's that time, just before his betrayal and crucifixion, when Jesus is saying goodbye to his disciples in John 14. In his farewell discourse, Jesus tells his friends, "do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me." He goes on to say, "I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, you may be there also. And you know the way to the place where I am going."

What does Thomas say this time? "Lord, we do NOT know where you are going. How can we know the way?" This is not the confident Thomas of three chapters ago. For reasons we don't know, Thomas is no longer confident. He's thoroughly confused.

So far, Thomas has progressed on his faith journey from confidence to confusion. That sets the stage for the encounter he has with the risen Christ in today's account from John 20. It is one week after the evening of Easter, one week after Mary Magdalene and several other women have seen their risen Lord and told the men to wake up and go and see him. Everyone in his inner circle has seen Jesus - everyone, that is, except Thomas.

Thomas should have been able to believe. So should the others, all of them. But Jesus gave them all, women and men alike, a chance to gaze once more on his pierced side and wounded hands. Why, then, should it be any different with Thomas?

Maybe I'm saying this because he's my patron saint. But here's what I think. I think that, for two millennia, Thomas has gotten a bad rap. "Doubting Thomas" is not the only doubter. It's just that, like all of us, he needs a bit of encouraging from time to time.

Actually Thomas is someone who does have the courage to confess, consistently, both his belief and his doubt. From confidence to confusion. From "unless I see…I won't believe" to "My Lord and my God!" I would say that Thomas is, to use a phrase from my days in hospital chaplaincy training, fully in touch with the human condition.

I am struck this time around, in reading our gospel account for today, with the way in which the New Revised Standard Version translates that final sentence Jesus speaks. Most other translations have him say it something like this: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." Our translation makes this one, simple change: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet HAVE COME TO believe."

Now you may not think this is a significant difference. Or you may be concerned that this is one more way in which people try to change Holy Scripture. I am reminded of what the renowned Rabbi Lawrence Kushner said recently. In talking about the Jewish tradition of midrash, of interpreting the scriptures, he told his audience that "scripture is SO sacred, it couldn't possibly mean one thing. It must mean an infinity of things."

So here's what that turn of phrase means for me. In my experience as person and pastor, the phrase "HAVE COME TO believe" resonates far more deeply and authentically with me than simply "to believe." Perhaps that's because it represents the way I have come to know the human condition.

Three reasons for this. The first has to do with my overall experience of being human. Over time, I have come to see, in my own life and the lives of those whom I am privileged to pastor, that the authentic life of belief contains unbelief. In other words, I have come to understand just how much we do not understand. My own prayer is that I continue to come to an adult belief and not just blindly believe what I was told as a child.

The second reason has to do with a contemporary movement that some have called the most helpful new roadmap for the spiritual life in a century. I'm talking about the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Over time, I have come to see a profound, spiritual impact on the lives of those who are members of the fellowship of AA and all those fellowships like Alanon and Gamblers Anonymous that are patterned after it.

Presbyterian minister and writer Frederick Buechner talks about his experience of these anonymous fellowships in his book "Telling Secrets." After the suicide of his father and the discovery that his daughter was anorexic, Buechner came to believe that "the church has an enormous amount to learn from (these groups)" (p. 93).

"They are apt," he says, "to begin their meetings with a prayer written by my old seminary professor Reinhold Niebuhr: 'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference….' Through prayer and meditation, through seeking help from each other…they try to draw near any way they can to God or to whatever they call what they have instead of God" (p. 91).

Now I suspect you have heard the first of the 12 steps: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol (or drugs or money or whatever) - that our lives had become unmanageable." What Buechner is referring to is step number two: "(We) came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Slowly, painfully, struggling over and over again, people come to believe in some kind of Higher Power.

Like St. Thomas, people who seek recovery from their addictions do not have it all together spiritually. Like Thomas, they speak to their Lord, not only in solitude, but also in community. And in that community may be the only place they can find God.

Buechner says, "the one thing they have in common can be easily stated. It is just that they…cannot live fully human lives without each other and without what they call their Higher Power. They avoid using the word God because some of them do not believe on God. What they all do believe in, or are searching for, is a power higher than their own which will make them well. Some of them would simply say that it is the power of the group itself."

The third reason for my "coming to believe" is purely scriptural. As a prodigal son who, after an entire adult lifetime, recently came home to my family and friends here in Memphis, I identify with that younger brother. Even though I am the oldest child, I often feel far more like the prodigal son who has returned.

My favorite part of that story is that phrase that describes what the prodigal son did when he realized he had wasted his life and was ready to live like a slave, just so he could eat pig food on his own father's plantation. While there are, as you might guess, different translations, the one I like is this: "he came to himself" (Luke 15:17, NRSV). He came to, he came to his senses, he came to himself, he came to believe once more in love and forgiveness. And he came to believe in a Power that could restore him to sanity.

My prayer for you and for me is that we embrace the bumper-stickered gift of doubt. I pray that, together, in community, we continue to seek a Higher Power. Some of us would call that Power the God of our own understanding.

And, in my prayer, I, Thomas, although often confused, am equally confident. I trust in the love and forgiveness that God promises all those with the gift of doubt. May we all dare to step out in doubt, within the church and without it, and discover that we, too, can come to believe.

Looking back
With the eyes of faith
At the death and dying all around me
And within me
A simmering faith
Seasoned heavily with doubt
Seeing new life
In its very midst
And being grateful
For eleven years of sobriety
For twenty years of contemplation
For a new spiritual home
For a new stability and security
For a new beloved partner
All rising
In the midst of the cross
In the midst of a culture
That wants to decorate the cross
Rather than to embrace it
And so I remain
A grateful recovering addict
And the marks of the nails
In the risen Lord of life
And in my own life of dying and rising
Are still there

Bumper stickers seen on an Olds Bravado (SUV) from Pennsylvania, 4/25/03:

Got Jesus?
Hate is not a family value.
Proud to be an American.
Kill your television.
POW/MIAs: You are not forgotten.
Minds are like parachutes; they only function when open.

Normal people worry me.
Jesus shaves.
God, protect me from your followers.
Life sucks (well, ok, just yours).
Go ahead; act stupid.

So many cats, so few recipes.
Save a cow; eat a vegetarian.

Join the army; travel to exotic distant lands;
Meet exciting, unusual people; and kill them.
You can have my gun
When you pry it from my
Mentally-disturbed, physically-abusive,
Cold, dead hand.
Arm the homeless.

Religion is what keeps the poor
From murdering the rich.
God is too big to fit
Inside one religion.

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