Fairhaven Sermon 4-27-2025

So I have been a pretty big reader since I was a small child and actually I probably read way less now than I did when I was in like middle school, which is probably a combination of two things I think. First is just being burned out from eight or seven years of higher education where you like read hundreds of pages every night. I got kind of sick of that. And like the rest of you, social media has fried my attention span.

So there's that. But reading has always kind of been the way that I understand and process things. So if I hear about something new or interesting, I wanna do some reading on it to get a fuller picture. I want to really intellectualize it, to understand it inside and out.

I wanna explore what other people have said about it so I can internalize it for myself. And I do this about things it makes sense for, you know, like theology, history, science things, but also for things that it kind of doesn't, I guess. And something that comes to mind for me on that is running. This was a while back, but whenever I took up cross country in high school.

I read a number of books about training technique, how to run, one of which I distinctly remember. I can see the cover of it. It was called Run: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel. And the basic thesis of that book is that your body knows how long and how hard you can run on any given day, and that you train best by listening to what your body is telling you.

Unfortunately, my body has not told me to run in like 10 years, but it will. It was a good book. But the irony is that it was telling me to trust my own experience of running when what I really wanted was for the book to tell me specifically what to do to get as fast as I could be. And the entire point of the book is that following some program to the letter is just not going to work for you if you want to reach your full potential because you're an individual, you're unique, you need different things.

But that's my tendency. I want to grasp everything in my brain crystal clear. Just tell me how it is. So about that same time in my life, I was becoming a Christian.

So this would have been early high school. And I'd been in church a couple years. I really loved it. I wanted to understand the faith for myself.

And I wanted it the same way. I wanted it to be cut and dry in a way that I could hold on to, in a way that I could unimpeachably explain it to someone else. Here's what I believe. Here's the reason that it is true.

True. So I gravitated towards an area of theology called apologetics. If you're not familiar with that, apologetics, it comes from the Greek word to speak in defense, not like apologize. It's different.

It's basically a type of evangelism that seeks to prove that. the existence of God, and then more specifically prove the God of Christianity, prove Jesus Christ by appealing to science, to logic, philosophy, math, and so on. And there are some very sophisticated arguments. Some of the great thinkers in history, the physicist Blaise Pascal was a big apologist.

C.S. Lewis, the writer of Narnia, was an apologist. The Apostle Paul is kind of doing that throughout a lot of his letters.

He's seeking to explain Jesus to the Gentiles and convince them to follow him by using images, principles from the Greeks' religion and philosophy. It's like using other languages to explain and prove Jesus. So about at the same time in my life, what I really found myself drawn to was apologetics. And the figure I was drawn to was Ravi Zacharias.

I don't know if any of you are familiar with that person. But he was an Indian-born pastor and apologist who, until his death a few years back, was one of the most influential in the world. Right? He had a radio show every week that I'd listen to at work. I read a couple of his books.

And I really found this way of relating to faith useful, logical. It helped me digest it. It helped me understand it in the same way I might process information from history or for science, nice and cut and dry. And he was obviously brilliant.

So by the time I applied to college, I remember writing in my application, I always planned to study religion. that my prime interest in that field was apologetics, understanding the faith and explaining it to other people. And I wanted to be able to preach and teach convincingly like Robbie Zacharias, long before I knew I wanted to be a pastor. So he died in 2020.

I'd largely switched gears by then. I relate to Jesus now in a way that's different, not logical, not analytical so much anymore. But just a few months after he died in 2020, accusations started pouring out that he'd engaged in all kinds of sexual misconduct, abuse, coercion against, I think, like 200 women in multiple countries. His own ministry hired investigators to look into these reports.

His own ministry concluded that they were true. And so I was left with this question. How could it be That a man who helped teach me and millions of people how to believe in Jesus in our minds didn't really seem to know Jesus at all and indeed behaved like the devil in his private life. Our gospel text this morning describing Jesus' appearance to the disciple that we unfairly name Doubting Thomas helps us understand, I think, because it makes us confront what it actually means to believe in Jesus.

So think about that just for a second for yourself. What does it mean to believe in Jesus? If you believe in Jesus, what does that look like for you? How does that belief function? What does that mean? Is believing to decide in your mind that something is just empirically true, that it's verifiable by the evidence that you've been given? So in my apologetics era, I think I'd have said, yeah, basically that's what it is. I had faith. I believed because the information I'd received about Jesus seemed to be factually correct.

But the thing is, that's a pretty new idea of what belief is. That's not really how belief is talked about in the Bible. Believing in that sense is an Enlightenment-era concept that's only really existed for like 500 years now. Because in scripture, particularly in John's gospel, belief is not a noun, something that you acquire with enough evidence, like you believe in the theory of gravity or something like that.

Believe is a verb. You don't have it. You live it. And so for John and for Thomas, to believe is to be in an ongoing relationship with Jesus.

In the New Testament, to believe is to live your life as if something is true, and that is to live your life as if Christ is risen indeed. So in the days after Jesus' crucifixion, the disciples were obviously not interested in doing that. They just witnessed him arrested, tried, condemned, tortured, killed. They knew that he'd been placed in a grave to rot.

They'd rolled a rock in the front of the cave entrance like this final punctuation mark declaring the end of his life, of their hope. And there was nothing left to believe in, as far as they were concerned. Why would they live their lives as his disciples when there was nobody to follow? And things changed pretty rapidly after those three days. Mary Magdalene sees him.

We read that on Easter Sunday. She speaks to him at the tomb. And Jesus sends her back to announce to the disciples that he is alive and is coming to them. And she tells them, I have seen the Lord.

but we can assume, I think, that the disciples don't really buy it because that's where we pick up in our reading from John today. And after Mary's given her report, they're still in hiding, right? She said Jesus is alive. He's coming. He's around.

But they're still hiding in this locked room, so they don't really seem to believe it very much. Mary's word apparently isn't good enough, and they're still afraid. and Thomas is perhaps even more devastated than the rest of the remaining 11 disciples, and he has simply run away. He's not with them anymore.

John's gospel doesn't tell us where Thomas is. But by Sunday evening, despite this locked door, they have fortified themselves in the upper room. Jesus miraculously shows up and stands among these 10 disciples and says, Peace be with you. And I think that's beautiful.

Jesus' first words to his handpicked disciples after literally going to hell and back are, Peace be with you. Peace must really be something that he wants for them and for us if it's his first priority when he's resurrected from the grave. And then after that, after he's done that, he shows them his pierced hands, his side, scarred but transformed in his resurrected body, and they are filled with joy, John says. Now they believe.

Jesus breathes on them with the Holy Spirit. He gives them the authority to forgive sins, and they are back in business. They believe again. Not in their heads, mind you.

but in that they are once more living their lives as his followers in the world that tried and failed to take his life. We know that they believe because they go out despite the risks. But Thomas is absent, right? Thomas misses Jesus' visit. And not only is he absent, when the other disciples find him, he completely rejects the possibility that Jesus could be alive.

Unless I see nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the wounds left by the nails, and put my hand in his side, Thomas says, I will not believe. I will not believe. He's not getting disappointed again. He wants empirical, unassailable proof, which to me it seems he sure isn't going to come.

Whenever he's saying he's not going to believe unless these things happen is kind of a when pigs fly sort of thing, right? But, And so a few days later, when Thomas has rejoined the group, Jesus returns to them again, again despite these locked doors. And again, those same words, peace be with you. And he has a message for Thomas specifically. Put your finger here.

Look at my hands. Put your hand into my side. No more disbelief. Believe.

And he has, out of love for Thomas, met him on his own terms. Okay. You know, you said you wouldn't believe unless you could see and feel the wounds from my crucifixion. Well, here they are.

And Thomas does indeed get that proof that many of us would like. Wouldn't that be nice, right? But the remarkable thing is that he doesn't seem to take it. John doesn't tell us that Thomas actually insists when Jesus comes to touch the nail marks to put his hand in his side the opportunity arises, Thomas doesn't do it instead it's when he meets Jesus when he hears Jesus' voice calling out to him his response is to be overwhelmed with faith my Lord and my God, he says He sounds a lot like what we heard Mary Magdalene say last week Whenever she said, And Jesus now comes to each of his followers in the way that they need him. Not the way they think that they need him, but the way that they need him So that they can call him mine, my teacher, my Lord, my God.

Amen. But he tells John, he tells all the disciples down the line, which now includes us, that the real gift, the real blessing is for those who do not see and yet believe. Belief in Jesus is just so much deeper, so much harder to pin down than this beyond all reasonable doubt standard of proof that we might find in a courtroom. There's going to be doubt.

Doubt. Instead, the belief that we're invited to in the resurrected Jesus is belief despite all reasonable doubt. It's belief without proof, let alone the kind of proof that we can lay down to somebody else to prove Jesus to them. I'm not sure many people in history have actually ever been convinced by logic, by reason, to believe in Jesus.

it's believing without that proof and then committing our lives to him anyway. More than anywhere else, we meet Jesus as we do his work in the world. We meet him as he appears before us in the face of other people, the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed specifically. Pope Francis was very insistent on that.

and we see him as we seek him out, as he speaks to our hearts, it's that voice that mattered so much more to Mary Magdalene and to Thomas than being able to physically touch Jesus in front of us. Just as he tells Thomas the proof kind of belief is great if you can get it, where you believe Jesus is Lord the same way you believe your sibling or spouse or some celebrity is real and touchable. But if you're a person like Thomas who struggles with faith in the resurrected Christ, you should know that that kind of belief that never has an ounce of doubt exists. is completely unnecessary to life as a disciple.

That's not the kind of belief we're asked to have in Christ. If you've ever been worried that you don't have enough faith in Jesus, you have enough faith by wanting to have faith. Relationship with him is the kind of belief that matters. Not seeing, yet believing anyway matters.

believing in your heart. It's the willingness to walk, to sacrifice, to serve as if he's alive, regardless as to whether you feel yourself feeling as if he's as physically real as me standing here. You are not expected to believe in Jesus with that same kind of belief that you believe in the Pythagorean theorem, if you remember it. Or that Columbus crossed the ocean in 1492.

Because that's not the kind of belief that transforms. You can know, you can believe in your head and not be transformed, not be changed, not you live your life any differently. Ravi Zacharias showed me that pretty clearly after my teenage years. And I would suggest to you that there are plenty of people who believe in Jesus in their minds, that he's a historic figure, that they are sure lived and died and rose again, and that doesn't make the tiniest bit of difference in their lives.

We know that this is true. Some 67% of Americans at the last poll identify as Christian, which simply means they believe in Jesus, right? Do you think that 67% of the people in this country are followers of Christ, believing in him in such a way that they stake their whole lives on him, that they seek to live in mercy and justice and righteousness and love, that he is their Lord, that he is their Savior, their everything as they seek to be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. 67% of America. Do you even think that 67% of churchgoers believe in Jesus in that way? And yet, that's what it's all about.

That's what belief is in the body of Christ. The ability and the willingness to say, my Lord and my God, from the depths of your heart, without ever having put your finger in his nail holes or a hand in his side, And I wonder if a lot of people who struggle with faith, who struggle with belief in Jesus, do so because they've been seeking a standard of evidence and apologetic that they don't really need. Because remember, Thomas didn't really need what he thought he needed. He just needed to hear from Christ.

this is never, ever, ever going to be something that you understand inside and out. That you can hold in your hand and analyze and grasp. That's not what Jesus is like. John Wesley had in his 30s what you might call a dark night of the soul.

He wasn't sure about his call. He wasn't sure about his faith. And a Moravian preacher and kind of a mentor of his, Peter Bowler was his name, famously told him, preach faith until you have it. And then you will preach faith because you have it.

And that's the challenge, I think, a beautiful one for those of us who are not lucky enough to meet Jesus at the mouth of the tomb. For those of us who have never gotten to touch his resurrected flesh in the upper room. Live the life of a believer, of a disciple, until you are one. Decide to trust Jesus until you really do.

And then you will live the life of a believer, of a disciple, because you believe. And you'll trust him because you found that he's trustworthy. And for many of us, that's not going to be a one-time thing. We're going to find ourselves recommitting to belief repeatedly over the years and relying on our siblings in Christ to believe for us when we can't.

But it is worth it. These disciples have decided in Scripture. and that face-to-face meeting that Thomas and Mary Magdalene got is coming for us to, each and every one of us, we will see him. We will touch his transformed body that has transformed our souls.

We will one day be able to look at him in the eye and say, My Lord and my God. Thanks be to God in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.