At Christmas time you are familiar with the practice of leaving up your decorations. For the 12 days immediately following Christmas, tradition tells us to keep turning on the Christmas tree. We only sing certain carols—like Joy to the World—after Christmas and not before. Just because December 24th (and 25th) come and go, does not mean that the season ends. But right through the New Year our houses demonstrate that the "Christmas Spirit” lives with us.
Sadly, this conclusion, or this practice, is often not appliable for Easter.
On Easter Monday, the candy was mostly consumed, and the decorations were likely gone from our homes. Almost as soon as the benediction was pronounced here in worship, and the Easter meal was spread before us on the table, the season was complete. I know that I sighed as I drove back home in the rain noting that things were coming to their end for another Lenten season.
And because the season is complete, a new challenge takes shape. It starts to step out from the shadows and into the light; a sense of now what? Because Advent and Lent are so closely tied together, both in proximity on the calendar, and theologically in the church, the sense of “Now What” is quite real.
While the timing of post-Christmas offers us some time to think about the miracle of the Jesus’ incarnation, the lack of time after Easter does not afford us as much space to think about how we are going to take the miracle of the Empty Tomb, or your reflection on Mary’s tears, and do anything with them.
Today we read about Thomas and his, hesitation, to express his belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Those doubts when held up next to our text from 1 Peter, offers us a challenge. For we all face hardships, personal opportunities to doubt, to hesitate, to privately question, to stop listening to what God is doing around us. It is in the face of those moments that we can also choose to: praise God.
Move 1- not easy
Just because you are a follower of Jesus, and simply because of have the word of God in your lap today, or because you were in Sunday School earlier today, or even attended Bible study recently, that does not mean that you understand Jesus’ teachings. Or what Jesus did.
Last week we read both Matthew 28 and John 20. Those texts contain the accounts of His resurrection. And while there are details that are different in both stories, the message is the same. Death could not hold the Jesus; he is resurrected for us. We know this.
On a more mirco level, Thomas had plenty of evidence to believe what Jesus taught. He had enough communal evidence and he also had a week’s worth of testimony from the disciples as it is written in John 20. And yet his story is famously taught and labelled in a negative tone.
This is the man would not believe in the resurrection unless he touched the open wounds of Jesus. This is the man who would not accept the testimony of his 10 other brothers in Christ who walked beside him as Jesus taught for 3.5 years throughout Israel and Galilee. This is the same man who likely heard of Mary’s tears that first Easter morning and yet none of that moved him enough to wonder.
And so, my first question is: I wonder when the last time was that your faith practices mirrored Thomas’.
You knew what you were confessing, but still the full revelation of God did not take root enough that faith grew and the hesitation (the doubts) were silenced?
You grew in your faith as Thomas grew walking with Jesus and learning from the Messiah. Learning. Listening. Experiencing all that Jesus is and would become. You saw things that spoke loudly about God at work throughout His creation.
And yet when your moment came to take your own step of faith, when the moment came to invite someone to join you in worship, the lesson from Jesus might not have been enough to cause praise to come forth for the true miracle of faith that took place in your life.
Perhaps we are more like Thomas then we would like to think.
Move 2-
This is where 1 Peter comes into focus. For there are always hardships when it comes to believing what God is doing in our life, our community, our church. It is far easier to say that God is not at work around us, God is not moving in that situation, in that person’s life, that God does not want me to testify to the good things that are happening . . . and thereby I find no reason to experience the joy in the miracle of new birth—regardless of how new birth takes shape.
And when I find no joy, no space for a miracle, no reason to testify then there is also no room to continue to praise God both individually and communally. If there is no blessing around me, no place of wonderment, then why should I seek to praise God more and more?
Our 1 Peter text begins and ends with the choice to praise. That’s an important way to begin reading and thinking about 1 Peter.
This book was written to the Christians living in Asia Minor. This was not a region that was not hospitable to the Church. Of course, the early church knew of persecution and oppression; this is the Roman world. But they also knew the feeling, and the reality, of seeing their neighbors not really ‘buy in’ or accept what they/we believe as a fundamental truth claim—like the resurrection.
Imagine that for a moment, knowing something so deeply in your heart, having a personal experience with it, and yet trying to share that experience with someone only to have them smile and politely nod their head in a placating way. All the while, in your heart you know, that person does not believe a word of what you are saying. . . for example, ‘Seriously Thomas, we saw him appear behind this very locked door after he came from the tomb. Mary heard him call her name and she saw those two angels. Didn’t you, Mary.”
And yet there is still hesitation.
While Peter’s words are not shy about affirming to us that after we praise God, Peter knows that we will also suffer (verse 6). And yet 1 Peter also does not tell us how we will suffer. Defining suffering would make this whole idea of addressing the pain easier, I think. If God told us how we will suffer, we could prepare ourselves for it. We could try and steel ourselves against it or for it. Instead, it just happens.
Again, I wonder how it would feel to stand before someone you love, someone you trust and pour out your heart to them about the gospel, and the richness of your experience with God, only to have them balk at the last step of faith as you share the truth of how Jesus transformed your life.
That is a whole different level of suffering. A suffering of the mind and heart. A suffering of isolation, of not being believed.
This is the suffering Mary knew about when she wept before the tomb as well. A 1 Peter tells us that this will happen to us as we follow Jesus.
Yet there is also good news also.
For as Peter does affirm in this text, joy and suffering go together. This is a lesson that seems to be missing from Thomas’ story following the Resurrection. His story seems to hint that he wants only the positive lessons of the faith without the reality that Jesus taught—namely that there are times when we struggle. There will be times when it is hard to muster our faith. And, in those moments, in the moments when faith can be hard to muster, and those around us seek more proof than we can offer, we have to lean in all the more to God and praise Him.
Move 3- depth of faith.
For the genuineness of our faith, verse 7, is expressed, as we show our true depth of relationship with the Lord honestly before others. For, as verse 4 states, we have an inheritance that is undefiled, protected by God. That inheritance is based upon our relationship and our faith with the resurrected Lord. Jesus is right there by our side not condemning us for our hesitation, as Thomas doubted and hesitated. But Jesus is still there as reminder of the solidarity that our relationship always offers.
This is an interesting detail because of Thomas’ doubt Jesus could have remained a bit distanced from him. But instead, the Lord seems to stay closers and offers Thomas the exact proof that Thomas wants. And yet at the end even Thomas finds his way back to praise God amidst a mindset that seems to doubt. He confesses in words of praise: “My Lord and my God.”
Thomas, as we know, will take the gospel further geographically than any of the other disciples making it as far as present-day India. Strong faith would be needed to walk that far teaching and preaching about the Savior who did not reject him when he doubted and hesitated. And we can believe as well that Thomas would find people along his missional path who doubted and hesitated, just as easily as he would find people of suffered. So Thomas’ life-lesson of praising God would be helpful for them.
Like Thomas we show that we do know something about suffering and the true reality of it while also affirming the necessity of joy of praise in these moments. For in Christ, and with Christ, both concepts are reality.
Conclusion
And so, as Lent has come to its conclusion, and we move into the season of Eastertide, and the next phase of our faith journey begins, we are confronted with both the suffering of each day… and the opportunity to praise God.
When doubts and hesitations come, and I know that come for each of us, I wonder how might God be asking you to find your way to praise him?
DM
No comments:
Post a Comment