Sunday
April 23
Fear and doubt; Hope and faith.
By Marsh Chapel
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Good Morning! Christ is Risen! Alleluia!
It is an honor and a privilege to step into the pulpit at Marsh Chapel again this morning. My thanks to Dean Hill for his gracious offer to have me deliver the sermon today as well as to the rest of the staff and the congregation for their continued support of my ministry here at Marsh. It is Earth Day weekend, and as has become somewhat of a tradition here at Marsh, I am glad to have the opportunity to share the good news with you today.
Fear and doubt; hope and faith. We are just coming out of our Lenten journey of repentance and solemnity into the joyful celebration of Easter; life over death, the possible over the seemingly impossible. From darkness to light, the hopeless to the hopeful. For many, the day of Easter is over – it’s reserved for celebration one day out of the year. But for us, in the church, we continue to celebrate Eastertide for weeks afterward, 50 days in total, recalling Jesus’ resurrection and the joy and hope that it brings. But it is also a time when we can explore what our faith means – what our faith is grounded in and how we can come to claim our heritage within Christianity.
We’ve entered into the second week of our Easter journey this Sunday with the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples on the evening of what we’ve come to celebrate as Easter Sunday. We commonly refer to this passage as the story of “Doubting Thomas.” Thomas, who was not with the other disciples when Jesus appeared, insists that he must see and touch the wounds of Jesus in order to believe that Jesus is risen. He has earned the moniker of “doubting” over the course of Christian history because he does not rely on the other disciples’ testimony to the risen Christ. He insists on seeing and touching in order to believe.
I think Thomas, the twin, gets a bad rap from this story. Let’s go back and look at the text again. It’s not just Thomas that’s doubtful, or even better, without faith that Christ will do what he said he would. Mary Magdelene had already encountered Jesus at the tomb, after she and Simon Peter and the other disciples discovered that his body was missing. Jesus instructed her to go to the disciples to tell them that he was ascending to God, and she did so. “I have seen the Lord” she reported to them.
But what do the disciples do in response? Do they go to the tomb to see if Jesus will also appear to them there? Do they take Mary at her word? No. What do they do? They return to the house they have been staying at in Jerusalem and lock themselves inside. They are afraid – afraid that others will come after them because of their association with Jesus. Afraid that like Jesus, they too will suffer. It seems they have forgotten everything Jesus did and demonstrated in his time with them and instead are seeking self-preservation above all else. Where is their reliance on what Jesus instructed now?
And then the unexpected happens. Jesus appears to them. Somehow he enters into the locked house and shows himself to them, offering them peace and sending them forth with their assignment– to go out and forgive sins of others. As God sent Jesus to Earth, so Jesus sends the disciples out with the message of salvation. The disciples are overwhelmed with Jesus’ appearance and are eager to tell Thomas about their encounter.
So Thomas is not initially the only one in disbelief here or lacking in faith. The disciples too, are not convinced by others’ testimony of the resurrected Jesus. They have to see to believe. They have to be reminded of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Unlike the other disciples, however, Thomas asserts what will convince him that Jesus is risen. He wants to see and touch the wounds of Christ, to verify that it is him and strengthen his belief. He wants to understand what happened to Jesus – he does not fully grasp what the resurrection is about.
This story provides a practical form of guidance for the Church after its first generation. Without Thomas’ insistence on seeing the wounds of Jesus, Jesus would not have to explain that those who would never see the risen Christ are also blessed in their belief. The author of the fourth gospel knows that the words and actions of the disciples and of Jesus will have to be enough to sustain believers long after those who had first hand knowledge of Jesus, including us. Here we have Jesus saying it outright, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Thomas is an exemplar of what discipleship should look like, as depicted by the fourth gospel writer. Thomas demonstrates a questioning faith. A faith that looks critically at the situation and says, “This isn’t what I expected; I need more proof.” And he’s been unfairly cast in a negative light because of this questioning nature. But I want you to do some self-reflection in light of Thomas’ questions. Many of us, I think, have gone through or continue to go through periods of questioning faith. And that’s good. That’s healthy. Ours is a faith that still insists on critical thinking, not just rote memorization. It asks us to critically engage with the world around us and interact with others. It begs us to be active participants in our own faith. And Thomas, through his questioning comes to a theological statement that has not, to this point in the text been uttered by anyone else, “My Lord and My God.” Thomas not only recognizes that it is Jesus standing before him, but also sees Jesus’ divine nature – Jesus is God.
A questioning faith, then, can lead to a deeper and richer faith. But what good is this faith if we fail to use it properly? Brian Stoffregen, a Lutheran pastor and purveyor of the online exegetical resource Crossmarks, in reflecting on Thomas’ faith states that “faith is not really about what we believe, but what difference it makes in our lives that we believe.”[1] Let me say that again “Faith is not really about what we believe, but what difference it makes in our lives that we believe.” What I take this to mean, as an ethicist (my theologian friends may argue a different perspective on this) is that if we do not live our lives in a way that reflects our beliefs, then we waver in our faith. If we are overcome with fear and doubt in the face of challenges, we also waver in our faith. If we assert doctrinal beliefs, but don’t follow them with action, we waver in our faith. If, however, like Thomas, we are able to learn from our fear and doubt, able to push through the questioning to something more, then our faith can deepen.
My academic interest is in ecological ethics. I study how faith can inform people’s understanding of the world around them and inspire them to lessen their impact on the world. I have to be honest with you, a lot of what I study is, well, for lack of a better word, depressing. I see all of the ways we continue to harm the earth in the name of economic profit and corporate greed, as well as, in some cases, sheer willful ignorance in the face of science that tells us how we are continuing to harm the planet. It has recently been particularly painful as the health of the environment continues to be less of a concern for those who are in charge of our nation’s priorities. For example, we cannot say that clean air and water are priorities and at the same time insist that regulations on coal mining are too stringent and allow for pollutants to be dumped into nearby streams. This is just one example of how our consumption and misplaced desires for economic gain have taken a toll on the environment. We allow corporations to do what they want because they have money. We continue to only measure success by economic gain rather than by sustainability.
In many cases, we do not immediately observe the impacts our lifestyles have on the world, and so therefore we don’t see anything wrong with the way we are acting. It is only we reach a critical point of pollution or impact on human health that we feel moved to do something. And in some cases, even that is not enough. Or, we have a sense of what the problems are but we are so overwhelmed by their size and complexity that we feel like we cannot do anything – that the solution is hopeless.
This is where we can learn from today’s gospel lesson. Fear and doubt exist in all of us, but we, with the help of God, have the ability to transition from that fear and doubt into hope and faith that is defined by the difference that our beliefs make in our lives. Hope is the biggest contribution that our faith in God can provide in turbulent times. This hope is not idealistic or naïve, but recognizes the realities of the situations at hand and encourages us to find opportunities for justice and reconciliation.
Since my introduction to his work in college, I have been enamored with the poetry and essays of Wendell Berry. Some of you may be familiar with his work. A farmer, writer, and environmental activist, Berry has written over 50 books describing the life and struggle of the small family farmer in the face of materialism, capitalism, and the ever growing idea that technology will save us all. Berry lives with his wife on a farm in Kentucky, getting his electricity from solar panels, but still using horse-pulled plows to till his soil.
Berry advocates for a life of patience and hope – living in tune with the world around us and letting it guide us into the best way possible to interact with it. Bill McKibben, the noted environmental activist and author, calls Berry “a prophet of responsibility.”[2] His writing speaks to so many because it comes from a place of authenticity and experience. While some of Berry’s work has become more radical as he has aged, it never falls into a trap of pessimistic fatalism in the face of global climate change, pollution, and every growing agribusiness that is creating so much harm to our planetary home. He still remains hopeful and confident in humanity’s ability to recognize the changes that must be made.
In an interview with Bill Moyers a few years ago, Berry, in a rare television appearance, explained how he interweaves concepts of hope, grace, and faith into his writing while also, at the same time, describing aspects the world around him in a way that uplifts them as what he calls “precious things.”[3] Berry is a Christian, self identifying as “a person who takes the gospels very seriously.”[4] He admits that there are parts of the Bible that he understands, parts that shame him, and parts that baffle him. He does not claim to have it all figured out, but asserts that his belief “is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts” from God. What he means by this is that we must know the world, take care of the world, and love it – things that we have ultimately failed to do. Berry brings together the fear and angst of a planet in crisis with the sense of responsibility and hope that can be found by listening to reflecting with the Earth.
Listen now, to the words of Wendell Berry in his poem “The Peace of Wild Things,”[5] read by Marsh Associate, Kasey Shultz.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Berry provides for us a voice that is vulnerable to fear and doubt, but that is still able to convey hope and faith that is found in the world around us. He has a very real sense that God and God’s grace is communicated through nature. God’s grace is both seen and unseen in the natural world. Berry advocates that we can experience the divine through paying attention to and loving the earth, and in turn our connection with the earth can deepen our faith.
Hope, a legitimate, authentic hope, as Berry puts it, can be spurred by one good example. We only need a kernel of experience to be able to change ourselves, to make a difference in our lives, to see the world in a different way and to act in a way that will promote its sustainability. Nature, for so many, is a place where individuals feel a deeper connection with God, overcome with the complexity and beauty of the earth. When we separate ourselves from nature, both physically and mentally, failing to see the ways in which we are connected to it, we in turn can lose a sense of ourselves and our hopes for the future.
In John’s gospel, we are invited to understand that it is in the hearing of the Word – the truth of Jesus’ ministry and death and resurrection – that we are to come to our faith, and through that faith hope. The disciples and Thomas had not completely lost their faith, but they had doubt and waivered in their assurance of Jesus’ resurrection. We must remember that they are human beings, just like us. The example of Thomas’ questioning faith assures us that it is okay to doubt and have fear, so long as we engage that doubt and fear in a productively critical way. In doing so, we may come out with a deepened understanding of that which is holy. Yes, blessed are those who come to believe without seeing, but that does not mean that we should come to our faith without question. In fact, in questioning God or seeking answers from God, we admit faith that God at least exists and that our faith can be potentially deepened by the process of self-examination that such questioning requires. Once we have a sense of what our faith means to us, that faith must be translated into action. Let it work on us to create a change within us to do what is right in the world.
I leave us not with a statement as to what we should do in the face of fear and doubt, wherever that fear and doubt may spring from, but rather encourage us to question ways in which we can seek out hope and faith. Are we willing to name our fears and doubts and not just hide behind them, but actively seek ways of addressing them? Where can we find examples for an authentic hope? How do we observe God at work? Is it in ourselves? Is it in other people? In community, all of us together? Is it, like for Berry, in the natural world? What difference do our beliefs make in how we live our lives? Do we get involved when times are difficult? Do we march? Do we exercise our right to vote? Do we try to create change in our local community? Do we enact our faith as Christians when we see injustice in the world? Do we value the planetary systems around us and try to protect and preserve them, and in turn, protect and preserve our futures as human beings?
What difference do your beliefs make in how you live your life?
Amen.
-Jessica Ann Hittinger Chicka, University Chaplain for International Students
[1] Brian Stoffregen, “2nd Sunday of Easter – Years ABC,” Crossmarks Christian Resources Exegetical Notes on texts of the Revised Common Lectionary. Accessed 4.20.2017. http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/john20x19e2.htm
[2] Moyers & Company, “Wendell Berry on His Hopes for Humanity,” Filmed: October 4, 2013. Vimeo Video, duration: 39:39. Posted [November, 2013], Accessed 4.20.2017. http://billmoyers.com/segment/wendell-berry-on-his-hopes-for-humanity/
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
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