Seeing and Knowing God

Easter 6, Year A
Readings: Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:7-18 1 Peter 3:13-22 John 14:15-21

Do you know God?
Have you ever seen God? How do you know God is real?

Bob and Joyce are driving to Houston. As they come into the city, traffic starts to pick up. Just as they enter a construction zone, Bob spots a car stalled, partly in their lane because of the construction barricade. He looks in the mirror to move over, and there’s a semi in the other lane – there’s not enough space for all three vehicles – and nowhere for Bob and Joyce to go.
They both flinch, expecting impact – and then, somehow, they’re on the other side.
“How did you do that?” Joyce asks, amazed.
“I don’t know,” Bob says. “It wasn’t me.”

How do you know God is real? Have you ever seen God?
Lots of you have children and grandchildren. Think back to holding that brand new little baby for the first time – those perfect, delicate ears, beautiful eyelashes and tiny fingernails.
Look at your own hand and the lines on your knuckles, the roadmap of purple veins just under your skin.
“The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” (Acts 17:24-25)
It feels like this is true – that there must be somebody responsible - It feels like there must be a God, but how do we know God is real if we can’t see God?
Can you see your eyelashes? Why not? Because they’re too close to your eyes.
Maybe we can’t see God because God is too close. Paul tells the people in Athens, “indeed he is not far from each one of us.”
Can you see your heart? Why not? Because it’s inside of you.
Maybe we can’t see God because God is inside of us. Jesus tells his disciples, “You know [the Holy Spirit], because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”

Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Sometimes you can feel what you can’t see
You can’t see your eyelashes because they are too close to your eyes. But, you can move the tip of your finger near your eye and feel the tiny hairs brushing against your skin, so you know they are there.
You can’t see your heart, because your heart is inside you - but you can put your thumb in the little space between your collar bones and feel bom-bom as it pumps blood through the arteries in your neck.
I can’t see God, but there are times when I feel that God is with me. I remember once in early spring, taking a walk in the middle of the afternoon, and suddenly, I felt that God was walking with me. I didn’t see him, but I knew he was there. It seemed that if I leaned my head over, it would be resting on his shoulder.
I remember how familiar and simple it felt to be walking together like that with God, and I remember feeling surprised that it was so familiar and so simple – as though we already knew each other very well.
You don’t have to see God to know him. And you already do know God, and he knows you. “Indeed he is not far from each one of us.”

Jesus told his disciples, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth …. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
Jesus, the Father and the Spirit are all connected with each other and with us, so when we encounter God, it will probably feel familiar rather than strange and frightening.
In a way, this can make God’s presence hard to recognize. If we are expecting God to be completely different from anything we know, we may be surprised to encounter God in a way that feels close and familiar.
Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples, asked him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
And Jesus said, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.”Don’t make it more difficult than it is – you know this already
Sometimes, we can make things more difficult than they are.
Some things are difficult and complicated; that’s true. But some things are simple, and we make them complicated when they don’t need to be.
For example, how do you feel about Algebra?
x + 2 = 5 Solve for x. If you’re like me, just hearing ‘ x’, you feel a mild panic. But relax and think about it – slow down. You already know this. It’s actually familiar. If you start with 2, how do you get to 5?
You have to let yourself recognize the familiar parts and realize that you know them so that you don’t panic or give up. Don’t make it more difficult than it is.
For some people, reading and spelling cause the panic.
How do you spell ‘Episcopalian’?
It’s so long and has all those syllables! I can’t do it.
Yes, you can – slow down – listen to the sounds. What are the letters that make those sounds? Just do one at a time. You already know this. It’s actually familiar. Don’t make it more difficult than it is.
Learning to read is similar – for someone learning to read, looking at all those words can be intimidating. They’ll just start guessing. You have to tell them, “Slow down, look at what’s there; don’t guess.“
When it connects – that those letters represent familiar words – it’s like epiphany – like revelation.
Knowing God is similar. It may seem intimidating or even impossible to think about trying to know God.
How can I know God? I’ve never seen God. God is totally ‘other’ – completely beyond human comprehension.
Except that Jesus and Paul both say it’s not like that.
We’re God’s children, Paul explains, so we know God already, because God made us and takes care of us. In him we live and move and have our being, and He is not far from each one of us. We know the Spirit, Jesus says, because he is with us and will be in us.
God is familiar, even if we can’t put words to it or explain it. So don’t worry about what you can’t see, what you don’t know; look at what’s there. We’ve seen God reflected to us in thousands of ways. We’ve seen God reflected through people and events; we’ve seen God reflected through the beauty of the world around us; we’ve seen God reflected in scripture, in the liturgy, and we’ve seen God reflected in our own hearts.
CS Lewis says we each have a ‘God-shaped hole’ in our hearts, so even before we recognize what’s missing in our lives, the shape of the emptiness traces an outline of what God must be like to fill it.
Don’t make knowing God more difficult than it is – you already know God. And He knows you.
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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
April 27, 2008

Thomas - not falling for that again

Year A, Easter 2
Readings: Acts 2:14a,22-32 1 Peter 1:3-9 John 20:19-31 Psalm 16

A lot of times, people refer to this story as being about 'Doubting Thomas,' because Thomas didn't believe the disciples when they told him they'd seen Jesus. He said he'd have to see it for himself. He'd have to put his finger in the nail holes in Jesus' hands before he'd believe that Jesus was really alive.
Fr. John has talked before about doubt, saying that the opposite of doubt is not faith; the opposite of doubt is certainty. Just because you sometimes doubt, doesn't mean you don't believe or you don't have faith. You can be in both of those places at once; it's actually a pretty common thing to be partly believing and partly doubting at the same time - or mostly believing with a little prickle of doubt - or mostly doubting with just a tiny piece of hope that would even just like to believe.

It's hard sometimes to figure out what's true and what's real and so what to believe.
All four of the gospels describe situations where various people encountered Jesus after he rose from the dead - and all four gospels talk about people not believing it at first when they heard about it - some of them even had a hard time believing it when he was standing right in front of them.
Thomas wasn't the only one who doubted - he's just the one who got stuck with the label.
Listen to some of the other stories about what happened after the resurrection.

Here's part of the story from Luke ..on the first day of the week, at early dawn, [several of the women] went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise." And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Mag'dalene and Jo-an'na and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles; but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
-That had to have been really frustrating for those women. They saw two men in shining clothes, who told them Jesus was alive. So they went and told the apostles and all the rest - but the apostles thought it was 'an idle tale' - some ridiculous story they all - collectively, the whole group of them - made up or imagined... you know how we women can be so hysterical sometimes...

Here's how the story goes in Mark -

Now when [Jesus] rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they sat at table; and he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. (Mk 16:9-14)

So, here, it's not just Thomas - it's everybody who has a hard time believing that Jesus is really alive. I don't blame them. It's been their experience - mine too - that people who die...stay dead. But with Jesus, suddenly that doesn't seem to hold true. It had to be very shocking and hard to believe, even if he was standing right in front of them - maybe especially so because he was standing right in front of them.
Hearing the story as we do after the fact, and after many centuries of getting used to the idea, it doesn't seem so shocking. We can think about it abstractly - I believe in Jesus, that he died and rose again, that he is here with us today... And I do - But it's not like I can see him physically standing here saying, like he did to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side..."
I believe that Jesus died and rose again, but it's pretty much impossible for me to really know that. I didn't see him die; I didn't go to the tomb and see the angels; I didn't touch his feet. I wasn't there...

Some of the philosophers, when they talk about knowledge, say that we can only know what we experience. The rest, we have to believe - or not. It's a choice we make, based on a lot of factors. One of the biggest is trust - trust in the person giving the information
Once a few decades ago, when people were less skeptical than they are now, a radio broadcaster began giving a fake newscast about an alien attack, and people became very panicked because they believed it was real - the joke really backfired, because people took it seriously. Then, after that, they were uncertain whether to believe the news or not.
Trust is much easier to break than to rebuild.

What's the rest? ......... "Fool me twice, shame on me."

This is what I'm hearing when Thomas says,
"Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe."Thomas had put everything into the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, the one his people had been waiting for. He trusted Jesus. He believed him. Totally. Hook, line and sinker. Gave up his whole life to follow.
But then Jesus got arrested and killed. And what is a dead Messiah? A dead Messiah had to have been, as CS Lewis framed it, either a liar or a lunatic. Only a live Messiah could be the Lord, but this one was clearly dead.
That had to be a hard pill to swallow, especially on that 'long Saturday' when no one knew what was going on and all they could do was wait to see what would happen next. Nobody had any idea. The hope that Jesus' followers had for a Messiah had been crucified with him. They had put everything into that hope, and it was gone. He was gone. What now?

Nothing - nothing to do but wait.

In TS Eliot's The Four Quartets, he writes

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting." (East Coker, III)

Then, suddenly, people are all over the place saying that Jesus was alive again. He had risen from the dead.

It's hard enough to bury the beautiful dream that you had to watch die so painfully. It's unbearable to have people teasing you with the hope that it's not really dead. Because that's what you wish so much could be true that you can hardly bear even to let yourself think it, much less say it out loud. And when other people are saying it, it's hard not to at least want to believe. But he was not going to fall for that again.
Some people hold their hope close to the surface, and it blooms at the first hint of spring. Others push it down deep where maybe it will survive a freeze. But I think God's the one who planted it in all of us.
This is why I think that, even though Jesus gets on Thomas a little for making it so hard for himself to believe, he still walks through that wall of doubt, past the locked door, to reach him inside.

Whatever it takes, Thomas... Whatever you need to believe it's true - because it is true...

"Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing."

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
March 30, 2008
In our society, we've had a lot of broken trusts - in the family and in the larger culture - divorce rates and spousal abuse, child abuse and elder abuse are pretty high; political scandal is commonplace now; we can't keep track of all the professional sports, music and movie stars who are on drugs; not only stockbrokers but even economists are gambling with the finance markets; leaders in corporations and non-profit groups embezzle money frequently - and the church is not immune to any of these things, certainly. The preacher's wife murdering her husband, TV evangelists confessing to everything imaginable, priests molesting children.
Belief in anything truly good has become kind of a quaint notion. People in my generation grew up in a very commercial culture. There's not a lot people my age believe in - although it seems there's a lot they would like to believe. It's just that we've learned by experience that most things are a lie - to sell you something or get something from you. Exploitation, not charity is the normal motivation for a lot of interactions in our culture.
Why do people from various companies, organizations, or colleges call at 6 pm on a weeknight? Because they want you to give them money, obviously.
Why is public school attendance encouraged and rewarded and non-attendance punished? Because education will make children's lives better or because attendance figures determine state funding? What about all those tests? Hard to say sometimes.
What about the health care system - who determines your treatment?

Many people by now expect to be used and mistreated - it comes as a suprise when someone seems genuinely honest - and the key word there is 'seems.' Because even our desire for authenticity has been caught up in marketing strategy - I encourage you to notice this week how many ads use words like 'real' 'genuine' and 'authentic.' Some are beginning to pick up on that also, and we're even more suspicious when we meet someone making claims of truth or authenticity - because we're waiting for the real truth to come out - it almost always does - what is it you want from me?

Mainly, the goal is not to be taken in, not to be hoodwinked, taken for a ride or taken advantage of.
Do you know these?
"Once bitten, twice shy"
"Fool me once, shame on you...."