It’s just the way it is. Church isn’t a priority for most people in our world. It’s frustrating for sure, but what we in the wider church and certainly you here at St Peter’s have learned is that people not coming through these doors isn’t their problem…it is ours.
Author Greg Boyle relates this story: “I read an article in a magazine where an American Baptist Church official lamented that ‘secular culture will always be hostile to Christianity, therefore our future is bleak. ’”
OK…in my opinion, there’s lots of things wrong with that statement, but the thing that really fries me is the official’s assumption that there’s nothing we can do about secular culture’s view of Christianity. He doesn’t ask what I feel is the necessary follow up question: why? Why do those “outside the church” find us “inside” the church irrelevant, unnecessary, and of no account?”
Author Diane Roth, writing in the Christian Century magazine , says that she doesn’t think that secular culture views Christianity as a whole with hostility but rather views inauthentic expressions of Christianity, with hostility. Faithless expressions of Christianity, shallow expressions of Christianity, talking the talk of Christianity without walking the walk----that’s what she thinks is so offensive to those outside our doors.
And I agree.
I don’t think the world rejects the basic tenets of Christianity, to love everyone everywhere no exceptions, I think the world rejects us when we profess this faith but we don’t live it. When we love everyone, except them, everywhere, except those over there, always, except when it is too risky or too uncomfortable….
When they hear us talk about Jesus but they don’t see us living like Jesus.
That’s really at the crux of the Thomas story.
We hear this gospel every year on the Second Sunday of Easter. It’s one of only a handful of readings we hear every year, so it clearly has a message the church really wants us to hear.
While Doubting Thomas is very familiar story to most of us, how well do we really know it? How much time do we spend considering what it has to teach us, here and now?
Below the surface of “doubting Thomas” is a story of a man who was heartbroken, terrified and determined to experience the Risen Lord for himself. He just wouldn’t believe until he touched those wounds. He couldn’t believe until he experienced the Risen One.
Who can blame him?
Do you believe something lock and stock and barrel without experiencing it?
If someone says Just Pizza has the best pizza in western New York would you simply believe that report and proclaim, Just Pizza has the best pizza in WNY? Or would you actually try it for yourself, taste it for yourself, experience it for yourself?
Incredible things –be they miraculous and wonderful like resurrection or shocking and horrific like a sudden death---cannot be easily processed. We need to see it to believe it.
As many of you know, my wife Pete died 5 months ago. I wasn’t with her when she died and when I heard the news the only thing I could do was rush to get to her side, to see and to feel that she was really gone. Only then could I begin to grasp this new “reality.”
But, and this is where the story of Doubting Thomas gets a little complicated, Christianity demands more than just seeing and believing. Christianity demands that once we believe we don’t just sit back and relax comfortable with our own faith… we must act. We must do. We must talk and walk.
Thomas needed to see the risen Lord, to experience him. And so does the world just outside these doors.
People need to see Jesus through us and our actions. In everything we do, everywhere, always. We can’t wait for people to walk through these doors and be impressed by our piety, we need to meet folks out there and have them be moved by our faith.
This is the lesson Jesus is trying to teach Thomas in today’s Gospel. When Thomas sees Jesus and proclaims “My Lord and My God,” Jesus snaps at him a bit saying "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
Jesus is continuing to teach. He’s reminding his followers... those in the upper room then and to you and me here and now.....that the work he began is now their work, it is now our work. It’s up to us to show this broken world that we feel their wounds, that we share in their pain, that we won’t stop, we won’t rest, we won’t waver until the hurts are healed, the lonely are visited, the afflicted are comforted and the hated are loved.
Today’s Gospel teaches us that it is not enough to come to church and praise God’s name, it’s not enough to believe in Jesus, died buried and alive again. Today’s Gospel teaches us, it commands us that we walk the walk of Jesus, believing his message and living his message in all we do. Because when we do that, when we love others as we ourselves have been loved, when we enter into the wounded-ness of those around us, people will see us, they’ll experience us and then they will exclaim—"I have seen the Lord in your eyes, I have experienced the Lord in your deeds and I believe! Alleluia, Alleluia and Amen!
“Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship” Boyle, Gregory Simon and Schuster, 2017
Christian Century Magazine, “Living the Word,” March 7, 2018
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