Second Sunday of Easter – 19th April 2009

Keeping the Faith

Today's lessons: click to read

Briton is a nation ‘living in fear’ was a front page news headline on Tuesday of last week. The accompanying report went on to say that record numbers are suffering from anxiety, and many believed that the world had become a more frightening place over the past ten years!

And it is said that some seven million persons now suffer from anxiety disorders. That must certainly have been the experience of the disciples on that first Easter Day. ‘But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them – ‘I don’t believe it!’ >

Andrew Walker in his book -‘Journey into Joy – Stations of the Resurrection’ – says this -

‘Doubt perhaps has played its part in our faith, and at times may well continue to do so. We can share Thomas’ need for certainty and desire for assurance, but it will at times make us miss the point or lead us to settling for something less than might have been.’

On Good Friday three years ago Pope Benedict said –
‘A Christianity which has grown weary of ‘faith’ has abandoned the Lord.’

As seems to be the case, at this time of the year when Christians are celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead – doubts as to the authenticity of the Christian Gospel and attacks on it, surface with new publications and articles being given prominence. Even the writers of sit-coms add their two penny-worth – with ‘Ken Barlow’ in Coronation Street reportedly accusing the Christian’s of making a target of ‘vulnerable people’. Perhaps some parts of the Christian church do take advantage of the vulnerable in our society today.

The Archbishop of Canterbury in one of his past Easter Day sermons spoke of a tendency to treat biblical texts –
‘as if they were unconvincing press releases from some official source, whose intention is to conceal the real story.’
And he also said –

‘We have become so suspicious of the power of words.….. the first assumption we make is that we’re faced with spin of some kind, with an agenda being forced on us. So that the modern response to the proclamation ‘Christ is risen!’ is likely to be, ‘Ah, but you would say that, wouldn’t you?

Now what’s the real agenda?’
However, a text out of context can be and is used as a pretext by some.

But perhaps it is because the amount of ‘spin’ being used by politicians, which makes our nation suspicious of any pronouncement by those, in authority including the Christian Church.

And perhaps Dan Brown’s novel – ‘The Da Vinci Code’ did encouraged the 40 million or so readers of it, to believe that the Christian faith is also, like the spin doctors of today, and in Jesus day also following his death, a series of ‘conspiracies and cover-ups’. For all those who hold these views, we need to proclaim to the world, as we heard earlier in the Epistle of John that -

‘This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness,’

For with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, we now have the ‘Easter hope’ as the church of Jesus Christ, if not the certainty, as individuals, of an eternal life as promised by Jesus.

There will of course always be those who will seek to disprove the truths of the Gospel or seek to cast doubts about the authenticity of the scriptures.

Some, with the experience of years of study and research and with good foundation, will perhaps question today’s interpretations of the scriptures, and I believe that it does no harm to do so.

For faith as we are reminded in the New Testament is a gift of God, and through it, as Paul says in writing to the Church in Ephesus, ‘we will be saved’. (Eph 2.8) For as Christians, we are all called to a life of obedience to the Gospels, if we would follow Jesus Christ, and in doing so, honour God our Heavenly Father. We must beware though of seeing the resurrection as giving a ‘happy ever after’ ending to the life of Jesus, for the story has yet to be completed – and we the ‘Easter people’, are called to be part of that story and process.

Certainly from that first Easter Day with the first disciples of our Lord, down to the present disciples of Jesus in our own time, there are many Christians who have become martyrs of the church by not being prepared to compromise the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their own lives or its message, and who have witnessed to their faith even unto death.

For
‘A faith that sets bounds in itself, that will believe so much and no more, that will trust thus far and no further is no faith’
- has written a modern writer.

But we also all need to be reassured that the –

‘God, in whom we have put our faith, works within the constraints of humanity. Sometimes the miraculous occurs, but generally God works within our own limitations of faith’

(After eating the apricots – page 131)

On an order of service for a funeral there was a quotation from Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy. –

‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept my faith.’
Words taken from the authorised version of the bible, only that the word ‘my’ to preface the word ‘faith’ had been used instead of ‘the’ faith. For some people, there is a danger that ‘the faith’ is taken not on God’s terms, but on ‘their or my’ terms. I do not doubt the faith of Thomas – for he was the sort of person who was prepared to ask the questions that no one else had the courage to do so.

It was Thomas whom we read of in John’s Gospel who responded to Jesus’ words – ‘and you know the way to the place where I am going’ with the comment – ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’

But it was also the same Thomas – the Twin, who encouraged the other disciples to go with Jesus, following the news of Lazarus illness, by saying – ‘Let us also go, that we might die with him.’

There can be no doubt about the faith of Thomas or his commitment to Jesus, but he was someone it seems who needed that extra reassurance.

Honest doubt, with a desire for answers and a, willingness to struggle or challenge, can still lead to a growth and transformation of our faith.

A further quote from Andrew Walkers ‘Journey into Joy’ says –
‘Doubt in this Gospel story leads to a different sort of encounter with Jesus, and so faith and doubt in their different ways, can both lead to God.’

Each one of us is called, not to be conformed to the world, or to seek to conform, the Christian faith to our own lifestyle, but rather to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, in order that we might discern the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect to him.

For as St. Paul says in his letter to the Church in Corinth, ‘we are all being transformed from one degree of glory to another’. (2 Cor. 3.18)

And it will be in that ‘transformation’ that we like the Apostles, following their empowering with God’s Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and with ‘great power’ as we heard in our first reading today, will be enabled to give our testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Anxiety and fear are part of all our lives – as it was for the disciples and followers of Jesus following his death.

If we confess our sins, our second reading from St. John assures us that ‘he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness’.

While others may have ‘honest’ doubts concerning the Christian faith, with some even wanting to have their infant baptism records removed from church files, and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers recently proposing that compulsory Christian worship in schools is an ‘antiquated’ idea, the Christian church today needs a collective ‘Pentecostal’ experience, so that when we proclaim that ‘Christ is Risen – He is risen indeed’ the only ‘fear’ that people should be experiencing in their lives is ‘Holy fear’ which will bring with it, healing and new life for all.

AMEN