“Coming to Faith”

4/15/07

Rev. Dr. Jon Smoot 

 

It may be a bit of a stretch for starting a sermon on faith, but I have to weave in a story from Kurt Vonnegut, one of my literary heroes, who died this past Wednesday. He was a POW in Dresden, Germany in February, 1945 when the Allied command turned the beautiful, artistic city into a charnel house with tens of thousands of incendiary bombs that incinerated more than 100,000 people. The city burned for a week. With the agony of Vietnam as the background, 25 years later Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five, his hard-hitting and heart-breaking account of that monstrous and senseless bombing of Dresden. In the book Vonnegut creates the character of Billy Pilgrim, who was, strangely, a POW in Germany during the bombing of Dresden. It is never clear in the book whether Billy is certifiably insane or searingly prophetic, or both. Vonnegut coined the ironic and iconic phrase “So it goes” as existential Prozac after describing some particularly outrageous absurdity or atrocity. One day, as the story goes, Billy Pilgrim, who is prone to being thrown about in past and future time sequences, is browsing in a bookstore reading sections of the newest book by his favorite author:

 

“The book was about a man who built a time machine so that he could go back and see Jesus. It worked…the time-traveler in the book went back to Bible times to find out one thing in particular; whether or not Jesus had really died on the cross or whether he had been taken down while still alive, whether he had really gone on living. The hero had a stethoscope along. The time-traveler was the first one up the ladder, dressed in clothes of the period, and he leaned close to Jesus so people couldn’t see him use a stethoscope, and he listened. There wasn’t a sound inside the emaciated chest cavity. The Son of God was dead as a doornail. So it goes…”   

 

Today’s text from John would seem to center on Thomas, or “Doubting Thomas” so goes the moniker, which is unfair, and completely beside the point that the gospel writer wishes to make. We may be tempted to think that the Evangelist is trying to shame us, along with Thomas; for believing only after applying the stethoscope to the once dead, now alive body of Jesus. Which, of course, we can’t. Which, of course, presents us with the dilemma of faith, now 2,000 years removed from the events. But the writer of this gospel is no stranger to elapsed time and collapsed faith: He is writing some 55 years after the crucifixion and resurrection. An adult generation has come and gone that were eyewitnesses. A 9 year-old who was present to see the shadow of the cross pass across her on the Via Dolorosa is now 64 years old - an absolute ancient in those days, and given to forgivable and wistful remembrances that may have nothing to do with the hard-bitten realities of life at the end of the 1^st century. In the midst of persecution from dominant religious authorities and the persecution of fading memories, the Evangelist tells us that faith in the Risen Jesus comes to us in startling and diverse ways.

 

Last week was Easter, and already the alleluias are fading as quickly as the lilies in the crunch of over-committed lives, troubled marriages, financial worries, and murder and mayhem in the so-called safe haven of the Green Zone in Baghdad. So it goes… Or not, the Evangelist would reply. His overall hunger in the book of John was for the formation of joyous faith despite fading memories, scared followers, ennui, or skepticism with the whole faith enterprise because of the lack of empirical data. He has skillfully recounted an entire panoply of reactions to the Risen Jesus, beginning with last week’s narratives and continuing into this week. The Evangelist knows that faith is formed in as many ways as are there are followers of the crucified and risen Jesus. There is no single path to faith – to suggest that would be disingenuous and discouraging, to say the least.

 

Last week, impetuous Peter and steady John, the “Beloved Disciple” run to the tomb, ignited with urgency by Mary Magdalene who has reported that the body of Jesus has been taken. Although John gets there first and needs time to recover his breath and his wits, Peter brushes him aside, clambers down into the tomb, sees everything, and sees nothing, and leaves. Faith is not yet formed. He goes home, to think about all of this. The beloved disciple enters, looks upon the same scene, and believes. He believes because, frankly, he already believes in the word and promise of Jesus, as John might say. Mary Magdalene, in the dark early morning mist, speaks to her Risen Lord, without recognizing him, until Jesus speaks her name, disclosing himself to her. In faithful and joyous recognition, she tries to hug him, but Jesus says, “Mary, I love you to death, but please don’t try to hold onto me as you have in the past – things are different, but better now.” These are last week’s faith reactions – and maybe some of ours as well.

 

On to today and today’s text – as if the Evangelist knows that the spectrum of faith is not yet complete, which it isn’t. Today, we read that on that same evening of his resurrection, the entire band of would-be followers of Jesus are gathered in the upper room where they shared that last supper with him. They are dazed and confused, doubting and hopeful, huddled together in a common fear of reprisal from the religious authorities who smell a rat because the body of Jesus is clearly not in the tomb – that body, whether stolen or resurrected, whatever happened, they’re not about to bet their pension on it.

 

In our text, suddenly, Jesus walks in on them, though the oaken door was bolted from intrusion. The first thing he says is, “Peace be with you” – not, “Why the heck is the door dead-bolted – It never was before?” Or, “Shame on you for hiding like you have something to hide.” He says, “Shalom.” Then what happens? Our text says that he showed them his hands and side. There they are, huddled in fear and confusion, but isolated, alone with their wounds of betrayal, cowardice, and fear of the future. He shows them his scarred hands and his side, his authenticating marks. Our text says: “Then the followers rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” Jesus gives them what they need for faith, even before they ask – which God will do for anyone who wants to come to faith. To underscore this point, the Evangelist tells one more story.

 

Thomas just took a week later to get to faith, because he, like us, was not present when the scarred, but risen Jesus first showed-up. But he does get there – which is the gospel writer’s driving passion. And then Jesus, looking over Thomas’ shoulder, at you and me this morning says, “How about you?” What do you need to believe?” Will you stretch out your heart and hands for I will always be there, but you have to want it…”

 

One more story – for there was someone else not there. This story from Reynolds Price of Duke University, tells us about Judas…

 

“Where someone had told him Jesus was born, there’d been a dead tree – a bare, black snag above the cave. Judas had gripped it even then, and chinned himself once; it was still firmly anchored. So, just as the sun broke free of the hills and swept the fringes of Bethlehem, Judas Iscariot reached the tree again. He’d found a stout piece of rope along the way, and he set straight to work. Throwing the rope up and over the strong limb, he started trying to recall the right knot – he mustn’t fail at this, too. But with all his years of studying scripture, he’d lost the knotting skills of his childhood on his father’s scratch farm. Maybe five minutes passed – he was sweating now – when a man’s voice spoke from close behind him. ‘Need any help?’

Judas lurched around, thinking the voice was too familiar.

But the face was indescribably changed: This man looked not remotely childish but still utterly new, just born at sunrise, this April Sunday. So Judas said, ‘All the help I need – thanks anyhow – would be for you to leave.’ The man almost seemed to leave for a moment; his image faded on Judas’ eye. Then he was back and stronger still. His face had the calm that Judas had spent a whole lifetime hunting. The man nudged Judas lightly aside, then reached up and tied the appropriate knot. Judas somehow watched the man’s broad hands and still didn’t notice. But when the man was finished, he raised both hands toward Judas and said, ‘Jude, go to your father now; he’ll need you for the planting. The others won’t harm you; I’ll warn them off.’ The man’s upright hands were pierced with deep wounds, just below the palms. Judas’ mind clenched down to the size of a pebble in his skull. But still he studied the new face for any further sign that this was Jesus, keeping his promise. The strange head began to nod, signing Yes, and slowly a kind of mist around the eyes began clearing. Finally the voice said, ‘I’ve come to you first.’

 

Judas never thought of fleeing. The one choice left apparently was to beg his teacher’s pardon and then use the rope. So he asked the final question of all: ‘You’re Jesus, aren’t you?’ The head nodded Yes, though the eyes and mouth were entirely calm. Judas said, ‘if you pardon me, help me leave then.’ He reached up and seized the rope in both hands. He’d need to climb the tree to make it work. The man said, ‘I’ll lift you.’ He did that with no strain at all, and he stood in reach of Judas’ arms till the last breath failed, but Judas never once reached toward him.”

 

There is nowhere that God will not go to meet anyone with the gift of faith – for it is a gift, but it is our continuing choice to receive, or not. How about you?