Came to Believe

 

2 Easter         Church of the Redeemer             The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling

 

Came to believe

First I came

Then I came to

Then I came to believe

An Episcopal priest named Heidi Havercamp wrote, "Before I went to seminary I dated an atheist for a few months. He was a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Chicago, specializing in ethics. He did not believe in God and thought religion was a joke. But the man couldn’t stay away from church. In fact, I met him at an inquirer's class at our local Episcopal parish.”

            “He told me he was endlessly fascinated that people whom he deeply respected, who were clearly highly intelligent, believed in things he could not. He felt there was something good about church people - a goodness he felt drawn to. He said he had no capacity for faith or belief, but it haunted him all the same.” (Christian Century, April 2023, p27)

Resurrection faith is a hard nut to crack, especially on this low Sunday after the great feast of Easter, when the sugar high of chocolate has worn off. Easter brings joy but nothing like the twelve days of Christmas. Rather than talking about babies and Jesus’ birthday, we try to explain what happened to Jesus after he died or we avoid it altogether. Frederick Buechner claimed that we will “deflect, defuse, and dispose of resurrection explanations in as many ways as there are sermons preached on Easter Sunday.”

How so, you might ask? Well, we may talk about the Easter bunny rather than a real human being who lived and died as one of us. We may point to the lilies of the field and how daffodils are now pushing through the dirt, and so we remain stuck in an endless loop of springtime flowers. Or we talk about Jesus as one of those many people in our history, whom we loved and see no longer, but have no expectation of ever seeing them or Him again. Confusing resurrection with resuscitation and reincarnation, we deny the possibility that something far greater, more mysterious, and even downright miraculous may be a part of our future.

Jesus showed up in that locked room, not once but twice, and invited doubting Thomas, as he later came to be called, to look at his hands that were scarred. “Touch my side,” Jesus said, pointing to the place where He had been pierced. I like that Jesus showed up in that locked room. I like that Jesus had scars and was willing to reveal them. Rather than putting a crown on his head and sitting down on a throne next to his heavenly Father, in a place of supreme privilege, Jesus appeared before the disciples who had betrayed him, who had run away from him, and were now in hiding.The resurrected Jesus steps into our locked rooms and meets us where we are, more often than not at our lowest points.

Jesus’ faith seemed unwavering throughout his life; and yet, at the risk of being struck down in this pulpit today, I can’t always identify with his humanity. He wasn’t married. He had no children; and He had plenty of people attending to his needs. He was a man in a man’s world. And while I don’t want to minimize the painful realities of his crucifixion, he suffered for only three hours. He never faced the challenges of old age, dementia, or a life diminished by addictions, demons, chronic diseases, or a mental illness.

This Sunday after Easter is often called Low Sunday, a day when the fewest people show up in church; but low Sunday may also reflect the truth of our lives at any particular moment in time. Like gun violence erupting suddenly and unexpectedly. Or tornadoes leveling our towns with hardly a warning. Security breaches and artificial intelligence challenge our peace of mind. And today, social media and the news tells us about these low points with lightning speed and gruesome clarity.

Easter isn’t fun the way Christmas is. Who cares about our Easter hymnody and anthems, when we can have catchy Hallmark tunes not just for the twelve days of Christmas but for a season that often begins long before Thanksgiving? Who cares about a crucified 33 year old Jew when you can have a jolly old man who never dies? Or a newborn baby whose life is as fresh as the morning dew? Whose life has not yet been marred by sin.

Frederica Matthewes-Green had a Jewish friend named Mitch whose “encounters with suffering during medical training led him to doubt whether there even is a God. Yet one Christmas he wrote to her, saying ‘Looking at the Christmas thing as a Jewish man, the big celebration in Christianity should be Easter. No Easter, no Christianity.’”

Or as Frederica wrote, “Mitch has a point. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, who cares whether he was born in a manger, or in a 7-Eleven? If he didn’t rise from the dead, then Christmas is meaningless too.” At least, I would add, for people of our Christian faith. (Bread and Wine, pp 267-8)

And so, our Easter celebration demands adult conversations about death and life. Frederica wrote, “Easter tells us of something children cannot understand, because it addresses things they don’t yet have to know: the weariness of life, the pain, the profound loneliness and hovering fear of meaninglessness.Yet in the midst of this desolation we find Jesus, triumphant over death and still shockingly alive, present to us in ways we cannot understand, much less explain.”

Which is why, back in August, I was drawn to an article written by Debie Thomas, an Episcopal priest in California. Her title? “Resurrecting Heaven.” Her opening sentence was “I need heaven to be real. In many circles today, the belief in an afterlife, a literal resurrection, and a literal heaven has fallen out of favor.” And I would add, so too has church.

Like so many people today, she has watched her family members struggle with physical, financial, and mental illnesses to the point of questioning life itself. Throwing our hands up into the air in despair, we may come to believe that God is indifferent and therefore missing in action. Or maybe that God is even non-existent, and not worthy of our time.

Conversely, cynical and apathetic, we may sit on our hands and do nothing, placing all our spiritual cards in the hope of heaven. Unfortunately, Debie Thomas writes, "when we have an overemphasis on the hereafter, why bother with addressing any injustice that plagues humanity, if the earth is just a giant ‘waiting room’ for heaven?” (Christian Century, August 10, 2022)

She concludes that she “worries that if the church loses its belief in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, we will also lose both the ferocity of our hope, and the holy restlessness that leads us to action, the commitment to justice that fuels our prophetic lament, solidarity, resilience, and courage.”

It takes courage to unlock the doors of your minds and hearts and let Jesus come into your own locked rooms of anxiety, doubt, and fear. It takes courage to believe in the unbelievable. And yet, if we come to believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come, then Easter becomes a joyful celebration, not just on Easter Sunday, but on each and every Sunday.

In short, when we gather as a church, we are witnesses of our Christian hope in the Resurrection. “Although we have not seen him, we love him; and even though we do not see him now, we believe in him,” wrote St. Peter in the 1st century. And that living hope fuels our individual actions, and our prayers, however small they may feel. Yes, Resurrection faith is a hard nut to crack; and yet Resurrection faith is a gift more precious than gold, an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

Or as St. John wrote, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

I am a witness to that good news today. Because first I came, then I came to, and then I came to believe.

1 Peter 1:3-9        John 20:19-31