Holy Doubt

Holy Doubt

Allow me to introduce you to The Rt. Rev. Alexander Stewart, Bishop of Western Massachusetts from 1970-1984. He was always in a hurry, like I imagine the Apostle Paul might have been. There wasn’t a moment to loose. There are churches to visit, clergy and laity to train, conflicts to be resolved, and sermons to be preached. He always brought something for his listeners to read; homework, if you will. I first met him at a meeting of the Clerical Club of Boston. I was still “wet behind the ears” just breaking into my life as a parish priest. But I was impressed with our guest from the “other diocese” in the Commonwealth. He rose up to speak to us. He began with conviction and confidence.

His question; “What is the holiest moment of the Eucharist?

There were various answers.

Most of us ventured; “The moment at the altar rail when we receive the sacrament” That seemed reasonable, but Alex gave us a curt and corrective reply; “No!”

Someone else said; “Perhaps when we sing; Holy, Holy, Holy?” “No!”

Another proposed; “When we read the Gospel of Jesus?” NO!”

“When we offer the gifts of God for the people of God at the Altar of God?” “Absolutely not!!!”

Others ventured reasonable answers, but because he said “No” to all of them, we were reduced to guesswork.

We were puzzled and perplexed, at least I was.

Alex paused, and when he was sure he had our full attention he said; “The holiest moment of the Eucharist is the moment you leave the church. That’s when we find out what difference it makes for us to have been in touch with the Holy. For it is in the lives we live when we leave the church that the Gospel really comes to light!” 

Of course, you want to walk as a child of the light. And so do I. That’s what brings us together week by week. Like campers by a campfire, we sing our songs, we tell our stories, we bask in the warmth and glow of the fires of God. Then we set out for another week to our appointed rounds, we are confronted once again by reality, bruised by the rough and tumble of it, and then return to the warm, loving ring of fire: the Gospel of Jesus. Our spirits restored, we venture forth to life, to live it once more. We live the rhythm of it breathing in and breathing out the Breath of God in our lives.

The Collect of the Day prays us to be the ones who bear the “new covenant of reconciliation” in this world because “we have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body.” This is precisely what the Church is called to be, something born anew to the living hope of reconciliation. 

Still you and I know that the work and ministry of reconciliation can wear you down. Just try to negotiate peace in a family torn apart by feuds and hard feelings, try to be one who mediates a community of any sort in the midst of controversy or conflict. Is conversation even possible between Republicans and Democrats nowadays? Liberals and Conservatives? The two Koreas? Israel and Palestine? And so on and so on...

It is no wonder we come back together as we do today, to hear the words of Jesus; “Peace be with you.” Quiet your hearts. Quiet the raging seas; hush, peace, be still. Be like Jesus asleep astern in the boat. Or as the Psalmist says; “It is God who makes wars to cease in all the world. God breaks the bow and shatters the spear. Be still and know that I am God.” ~Psalm 46, and again, “For God alone my soul in silence waits.” ~Psalm 62 

I believe that if Jesus were to stand at a joint session of Congress, he might begin with what the Psalmist says today.  “Oh, how good and pleasant it is, * when the people live together in unity!”

As good an idea as that might be, how can it really be that way? It didn’t last long in the church did it? Remember how it was in the beginning? We are told in the in today's reading from the Acts of the Apostles that “the whole group … was of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership … but everything they owned was held in common… There was not a needy person among them, for everything they had was laid it at the apostles' feet, and…was distributed to each as any had need.” Sadly, that didn’t last long.

Thomas hadn’t even gotten that far according to today’s Gospel, did he? How could he? He wasn’t there? He had not experienced what the others experienced. To his eternal credit, he was an honest man. He stated his doubt in a flat footed manner; "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” 

Likewise Jesus was equally direct with Thomas, just like the time he knocked Paul off his high horse. He came and stood in their midst and showed him his hands and his feet…and to confront the doubt straight on he said; "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

That’s when it came to Thomas in the experience of the Risen One; "My Lord and my God!”

As it was for Thomas, so it is for many of us. “How can this be?” My stepfather allowed as to how there probably was a God, nice of him to allow that.  He just could not bring himself to believe in the Resurrection.  Nor could my mother. She was a difficult and feisty woman and we loved her even though there were times it was difficult to do so. More than once I told my stepfather; “For living with my mother, you’re going to heaven whether you want to or not!”

Neither of them understood why I wanted to go into the church. What’s to understand? Nothing satisfies me more than to stand in your midst and proclaim the Gospel of the Risen Jesus or to be at the Altar of God and be in your midst as Christ becomes present to us in this Sacrament. All of which is incomprehensible to so many. 

What makes faith possible for me, is not so much the intellect, it is the heart. It is because I loved them and love them still that I can entrust them to the keeping of God…all of them; my mom, my dad, my stepfather and all my ancestors. This is what makes faith possible it seems to me, and I believe that this is why Jesus told us to love one another on that last night when we ate together. When we love one another, then faith becomes possible and belief follows.

As important as all this faith and believing is to me nothing is as important, nothing so holy as what happens as we go forth from this sacred space into that sacred space. It is when we leave here and go forth from this fellowship to live the life Jesus commands us to live. In the magnificent words of John’s First Letter which we read today; “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands…This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all…if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.”

This is what keeps us together as we go forth from this place into the Holy of Holies! The World! It is for the sake of the World that Jesus came into our midst, and it is for the sake of the World that Jesus sends us out to do the work we have been given to do. 

What it boils down to these days is Soup kitchens, homeless shelters, day care, music enrichment, recovery programs; these are the the efforts that find their home in many an Episcopal Church these days. We are finding our way to the mission Jesus commanded of us; on behalf  of those in need and the vulnerable in our midst. It is in the broken lives of those we know and love when we share our faith in the stories we tell. Perhaps then there will be faith and belief. Show them your wounds and your faith and then they may believe!

For me, Holy Week and Easter at Trinity Church was a time of heightened awareness of God. Never before in my ministry have I appreciated music, prayer, ritual, reading of scripture in the same way as I have here with you. Thank you.

Still when we roll up our sleeves after we’ve done all that...as Alex Stewart said...it is when we leave this place that we discover what holiness of life is, come nine o’clock on Monday morning!

In the Name of God the Most Holy, Undivided, and Everlasting Trinity. Amen.

Fr Paul 

Nagging Doubts

Nagging Doubts

We come now to the great feast day of Doubting Thomas. He would not believe until he saw with his own eyes, and touch the wounds with his own hands. That’s a graphic image if ever there was one.

There is the doubt we have of God.

There is the doubt we have of Jesus.

And then there is the doubt we have of the Church.

These three great doubts are epidemic in our time.

Modern Science and technology has built so much of its knowledge base and methodology on the necessary of deleting the God postulate from its purview. But that does not necessarily mean that there is no God.

Many years ago I debated an Oxford scholar on the notion of God. His arguments ran something like the following;

1. How do you explain the suffering of God’s people?
2. Science has a better explanation than anything religion can offer.
3. There is no evidence of God’s existence. Can you point to any evidence of God?

I stayed with the man and his wife in a northern London suburb and so on the second night I offered these rejoinders;

1. Assuming that there is no God what then do you propose as the meaning of life. Ultimately he said there is none. Ultimately, life is Absurd with a capital “A”. I said I renounced that because it makes no sense.
2. So then I said when you remove the God postulate you remove a powerful inner ethical force. With what would you replace it? How would you keep in check the very powerful destructive human urges that is intrinsic to human nature. Well, he said, obviously we’ll need strong weapons, armies, and police forces. Aha! That explains British Imperialism and American hegemony and makes might right; but removes God from the human heart. When you remove that foundational ethical power you remove the cornerstone of civilization itself.
3. It is a historic fact that the church has given us some of our finest institutions; hospitals, universities, art, architecture, music and literature. Shall stand by and let our heritage crumble around us? This inspired some ire from my friend. The thought that the finest of Britain’s great cathedrals face the very real possibility of crumbling seemed to give him pause.

Neither of us convinced the other to change our mind.

But to me, there is no doubt that the more we operate without the reality of God within our hearts the more danger we fall into ethically and spiritually. There seems to be no ethical compass to direct us. And talk about depression? Imagine a world where there is no God. Where there is no meaning to our lives whatsoever. Imagine a world where our lives are ultimately meaningless and absurd; where there is no spirituality at all. Now that’s depressing!

Danger! Depression! A world without God? Such a world could give rise to an increase in violence and mental illness. We renounce such a world view because we know that God is our guide and our moral compass and that God loves us and forgives us. 

Which brings us to Jesus. Apparently God loves us so much that God became one of us in the flesh and blood of Jesus. It began so beautifully over the little town of Bethlehem. Shepherds and wise men and angels all came to kneel down offer their gifts and join with all of heaven and nature to sing “Glory to God on High and Peace to All on Earth”. That was a good beginning. 

Then he taught us and fed us on the hillsides of Galilee. He walked on water, healed the blindness of all, the lame, the halt, reached out to the rejected, marginalized and outcast of the Temple. And that’s when things got a bit dicey.

With his questionable retinue in tow, there were the tax collectors and the prostitutes and so on, he arrived in Jerusalem. There was his triumphal entry with the palms and the donkey and all that and then he had to go and spoil everything by upturning the tables of the money changers. His fate was sealed. He was tried and convicted of blasphemy. Then he was crucified, dead and buried. On Easter Day he rose again from the dead and what a surprise that was!

So surprising that it pushed the credulity of Thomas the Man from Missouri, the “Show me” state. So Jesus did show himself to Thomas and he believed. And so it is that the rest of us fall into two camps; believers and those who will believe it when we see it. Take a look around you if you will. there is some evidence that Jesus lives. It is in the hearts and minds and the lives of those around you now. In the words of Theresa of Avila, “Christ has no body now but yours”. It is you and your love now that persuades us that Christ is alive.

Which brings us now to the church. Suppose I believe in God, and suppose I even believe in Jesus, but what of the institutional church? Especially when the church’s record on race, ethnicity, class, gender, and orientation is not quite what it could be. How can I believe in such an institution.

First of all, let me say that this church and many of our churches have struggled with the biblical notion that we are “A House of Prayer for ALL People”. All means all. And we are taking that seriously. We are building an emerging “welcoming set of communities” and seeking to be faithful to a Christ whose outstretched arms on the cross include all without exception.

But what of the “institutional church”

Some time ago a lawyer came to me to arrange for a baptism for his daughter. We met together over a cup of coffee and were going over arrangements when I asked him about his membership status in the church. He told me he believed in God but not in the institutional church. This remember was a lawyer. I had heard this line a thousand times and there was something that snapped in me at that moment. 

So I said to him; Do you believe in Democracy? 

Yes, of course I do.

Well then it follows that you will have to believe in Congress and Politicians.

What about Justice then? Do you believe in Justice?

Yes, of course I do.

Then you will of necessity need to believe in the Courts and Lawyers. Egad, I added, that’s asking a lot. Lawyers? Politicians? 

Saying I believe in Lawyers and Politicians is like asking me to sit down to a nice big plate of bird feathers. Not the least bit appetizing.

So that begs the question.

You say you believe in God. What then of his Church, which is the Body of his Christ? What of the Men and Women of God who are God’s messengers. Not quite the same as a walk in the woods or a sunny day on the golf course. If you want Democracy or Justice, you will have to put your back into it and make it work. Likewise with God. You want God to live? Put your back into it. It is not enough to allow God to exist by some lazy form of intellectual assent. 

There’s a lot at stake here. Our civilization depends on the ethical and spiritual presence of the Church. 

I said to the lawyer, I rest my case. He did come to church the following Christmas and Easter. Oh well, I only go to a lawyer when I have to! 

Do I have my doubts about God?

Or the resurrection of Jesus?

And do I run into frustrations on how well the Church as institution is running?

Of course I do.

But underneath these doubts there is this faith that will not go away; a faith that is built upon the knowledge and love of God and of the people of God. 

“For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  

~Romans 8:38,39

Fr Paul