Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed

Revelation 1:4-8
Acts of the Apostles 5:27-32
John 20:19-30


The Rev. Frank Moloney

April 15, 2007

In the liturgical tradition in which I grew up, and in which I ministered as a Jesuit priest, this Sunday after Easter is called “Low Sunday.” After the exultant ringing of the bells of Easter, the alleluias of the choral masterpieces, the enthusiastic proclamation that “this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” we are gathered again—smaller in numbers, lower in energy, missing from our gathering here the women who are at Kent Island, for their retreat, facing the quotidian reality of our week day lives, “measuring out our lives with coffee spoons.” A week after Easter—where are we now?

Let us attend to the Scriptural readings for this week “after.” All the readings are retrospective testimonies to the Resurrection—testimonies from a time when the initial enthusiasm has been tested by conflict, by disappointed expectations, by questioning, by doubt. The first reading, from the Book of Revelation looks both back--back from a period of several generations after the time of Jesus, and looks forward to the final triumph of God’s love affair with creation. But the author is also familiar with conflicts within the Christian communities, conflicts which threaten the very bonds of trust and love. Writing as an exile on the island of Patmos, the author begins by blessing us in the name of the God –the one who is, who was and who is to come. And in spite of the conflicts, in spite of the antagonism of imperial Rome, the author goes back to the core belief—grounding his hope in the one who has loved us, freed us, and made us into a kin-ship, Jesus the faithful witness, the first born of the dead. The Book of Revelation is a book of consolation, as well as a book of warning, to a generation of Christians who have deeply experienced the element of doubt within their

In our second reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we have the account of Peter’s proclamation of the resurrection when brought before the leaders of the synagogue. In these first chapters of the book of Acts, we can hear the echo of the earliest, primitive proclamation of the Christian faith—before the years of reflection and meditation. But the author even while incorporating this earliest tradition writes from a later perspective—reassuring his audience that the spread of belief from Jerusalem to the very center of the Empire was a triumph of grace. Luke knows how the Christian community gradually had separated from the synagogue, and here he presents Peter challenging the synagogue authorities. Peter’s fundamental proclamation throughout these first chapters in Acts is that the Jesus who had been hanged upon a tree has been exalted—that God has raised him, to be the Leader and Savior of his people, and that these are the beginnings of the final days. Peter presents himself along with the other apostles as witnesses to this—but he also points to the outpouring of the Spirit evident in this growing community, as a witness to the reality of the Resurrection. Luke is inviting his readers to consider that testimony, and that outpouring of the Spirit, as they question the foundations of their own belief.

Now to the concluding chapter of John’s Gospel—(there is another chapter that has been appended, and accepted by Christians as in continuity with the Gospel, but this chapter is the original climax and conclusion to this proclamation of the Good News). We begin with the evening of the day of Easter—and with a frightened group. Mary Magdalene’s has related her experience, her encounter—and Peter and John have seen the empty tomb, and in a way, believed—but such experience and such testimony had not transformed the disciples, not even Peter and John. The group is afraid, wondering if they will face the same hostility that has led to the crucifixion.

Can a faithful Christian have doubts? The evangelist we have just heard writes from probably fifty to sixty years after the time of Jesus. He writes differently than the three Synoptic authors. He meditates on the Christian tradition and experience, ponders just how to express who this Jesus was and is. In distinctive language and style, he expresses these reflections and meditations to a community that knows it is distant from the earliest Christian witnesses. Within the Christian communities, questions have already been formulated about Jesus—did he really die? Or was that death merely an appearance? So in John, we read that a soldier pierced the side of Jesus—the death was real, and not something that happened to a divinity merely cloaked in a discardable garment of human semblance. Was the Jesus whom the witnesses say was raised from the dead and appeared to them a real human being, or a ghost? Was the risen Lord the same person who had died? John’s Gospel responds to such concerns--to the disciples gathered that Easter night, he shows them his hands and his feet. Was Jesus a return to life, a mere resuscitation? Or was there a difference between restoration and resurrection? Lazarus had been “restored” to life—but Lazarus was not freed from death, nor brought into the glory of an unbreakable presence with God. Jesus Risen is different—in John he shares the glory of the presence of God. He is still Jesus, but there is an inexpressible difference that can only be hinted at. He is not bound by normal physical restraints. John writes of this Risen Lord from belief to believers—but to believers who have known doubts, who have voiced the questions, and have prayed for a deeper faith. John does not write to prove the resurrection—he writes to testify to the resurrection, and to express its meaning. Can followers of Jesus doubt? And still be believers?

Can we doubt? Can we acknowledge that we are torn between belief and hesitation? Over the last twenty years especially, I have talked with good friends, people we have known and loved who have moved from being explicit Christians to agnostics or expressly humanist in their beliefs. They continue to be socially committed, generous, justice hungering, caring persons. But Jesus as the Risen Lord? Maybe a powerful even empowering myth. Maybe the projection into story of a shared psychological, social need for the denial of death? Maybe a political metaphor, the hope of an oppressed and struggling sect from a specific Messianic tradition. Last month, we even heard on television or read about the supposed discovery of the burial caskets with the inscriptions of Joshua/Jesus and Miriam—and we know of the Gospel according to the DaVinci code. Do not doubts arise in our minds?

Doubts surely have been my close companions. I have always loved the response in Mark when Jesus asks the father of an epileptic child if he believes. “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” Does my faith in Resurrection leave me with doubts about what happens when we die? Surely, I want to hear as I am dying—“Jesus, remember me, when you come into your Kingdom.” But I question, wonder, just what is beyond that chasm. Does God hear our prayers? Does God directly act in our world? How do I reconcile the deaths of children with a loving God? Within my faith is the ambivalence, the hesitation, the question, even the anger. But I remain also convinced that the God of creation, and of new life is also the God who has gifted us with inquiring minds, questioning intelligence, and questing hearts. Such gifts are also to be respected and honored. We are challenged to love God “with all our hearts, and with all our souls and with all our strength, and with all our minds, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.” A great philosopher theologian, Bernard Lonergan, once described God as “the object of the unrestricted desire to know.” Doubts, as the questions that arise from questioning intelligence, are also honored and respected, even in the Resurrection narratives.

Throughout John’s Gospel, persons who respond generously and authentically to Jesus still have questions, still have doubts. Their questions reflect important issues for John to address, and for his audience to consider. Nicodemus, an honest seeker, comes to Jesus by night and questions Jesus: how can someone be born again? The question is respected. The Samaritan woman at the well asks, after giving Jesus water contrary to the religious and ethnic restrictions, where should one worship? Here in Samaria as our tradition has it, or in Jerusalem? Her question is respected, and leads to an expansive, perspective-shattering response: “God is spirit and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.” There is no special, required sacred space: and so John gives through Jesus a response to those in John’s community who have doubted, wondered about the privileged role of Jerusalem. In the Resurrection narrative in John, Mary Magdalene questions. She has seen the stone rolled away. She doesn’t understand. She doubts even when she encounters the risen Christ—thinking him to be a gardener. And in our reading today—Thomas doubts. But Thomas is not outside of faith in his doubt. Thomas has been a spontaneous, transparent, enthusiastic, even semi-courageous disciple. Recall earlier in John’s Gospel when Jesus turns his face to Jerusalem and moves towards confronting the surging antagonism against him. This same Thomas challenges his fellow disciples: “Let us go also, that we may die with him.” Thomas also at the last evening with Jesus asks directly “Where are you going? We do not know the way.” Thomas’ questioning, his doubting leads to the answer: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” So when Thomas is portrayed as doubting, as requiring more than the testimony of the others, as requiring the direct experience of the wounds had he stepped outside the community of belief?

Thomas is unbelieving, yet believing. His anguish, his honest questioning is honored. He had not been there with the others to see and hear the Risen Lord that first night—he had also not been there when that Risen Lord had bestowed the gift of the Spirit, the sign of the coming of the kingdom. He did not hear nor experience Jesus’ words: receive the Holy Spirit. He had not had his heart warmed and his imagination quickened. He had not been commissioned to carry on the very ministry of Jesus. His question, his requirements were authentic and respected. His doubt was answered.

In every Resurrection encounter, Jesus’ appearance is always relational—Jesus does not appear to Pilate or Herod or Annas or Caiphas, but to Mary Magdalene, to the apostles, to Thomas, to Paul, those who will be his witnesses, who will carry his word forward. There is always something related beyond the vision or sighting of the Risen Lord: there is an outpouring of the Spirit—an enlarging of the heart, a quickening of the soul, a gift of peace, an experience symbolized in tongues of fire and wind, in disciples speaking across the boundaries of languages and nations. There is also a commissioning. He sends his disciples as we hear today: “As the Father has sent me, I also send you.” We have come to differentiate and distinguish Resurrection and Ascension and Pentecost—but aren’t these different aspects of the same central surprise—that God has raised Jesus who has proclaimed the Kin-ship of God and has glorified him. The final days have begun, as demonstrated through the outpouring of the gifts of the Spirit.

The Resurrection accounts have been written as the Latin phrase has it, in fide, ad fidem. They have been written “in faith”—by believers, for believers, “ad fidem” to foster faith, deepen faith. The Resurrection accounts are all testimonies, testimonies of a believing community, testimonies that invite a response. In John, we are included in the conclusion of his gospel. “”Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” The testimonies’ greatest invitation to believe is the spirited experience of the Christian community. Does that Christian community demonstrate a greater sense of the presence of God? Does that community continue to express with energy the freedom, the confidence of those who know the loving embrace of God? Does that Christian community continue to live liberated from the fear of death? Does that Christian community share good news, a story, which reveals a God of Covenant, a God that has not and will not let us go? Does that Christian community, as the early community did, embrace and welcome strangers? Share resources? Show solidarity with the poor, the widowed, the orphaned? Are we today the inviting witnesses to the reality of the Resurrection?

The greatest invitation to believe the earliest Christian proclamation was the spirited testimony of the Christian community. In contrast, is not today the greatest challenge to belief the life-denying, non-loving, fearful, security-worshipping character all too visible in people who are also named Christians—people including us?

John ends his gospel with a summary reflection: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”
As we heard earlier in this service, “I believe this is Jesus, come and see, come and see.”

Lord we believe, help our unbelief.