The Reverend John E. McGinn, Rector
Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Sandwich, Massachusetts 02563
March 30, 2008
2
Easter
Today’s sermon is taken from
the Gospel of John and is the story of doubting Thomas.
There are some people who are
very disturbed about the so-called conflicts between science and religion. On this Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter,
we remember Thomas, the famous doubter.
I think this would be a good time to talk about those people who still
think we can get along without God, as well as those people who would rather
get along without science; but first I want to look at today’s Gospel story.
The setting is after Jesus’
resurrection, and it was Sunday evening.
The disciples were meeting in a house with the doors locked for fear of
their enemies. Suddenly Jesus came, and
he stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he showed them his hands and side, and
the disciples were overjoyed as you might imagine. After this, Jesus said to them a second time,
“Peace be with you. As the father has
sent me, I am sending you.” And with
that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are
forgiven, and if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Now Thomas, who is really
called
Didymus, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came,
so the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail
marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand in
his side, I will not believe.” And a
week later the disciples were gathered in the house again, and Thomas was with
them; and though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said,
“Peace be with you.” Then he said to
Thomas, “Put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand and put it
into my side. Stop doubting and
believe.” And Thomas said to him, “My
Lord and my God.” Then Jesus told him,
“Because you have seen me, you have believed.
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
It’s a beautiful story about
an honest and devoted disciple for whom the resurrection seems simply too good
to be true. Thomas could not believe
until he saw for himself, and each time we read the story of the man who has
forever been commemorated as “doubting Thomas,” it gives the opportunity to
remind ourselves that it is alright to doubt.
That’s why God gave us a brain.
God wants us to wrestle with the meaning of life and faith. This is the way God works to create souls
worthy to dwell with God in paradise.
You may have read recently
about the doubts that plagued Mother Theresa all through her ministry. Most of us understand about those
doubts. If we had witnessed all the
suffering that Mother Theresa had witnessed, we would wonder where God was
too. But she never gave up serving
God. And that’s the important thing to
remember. She never stopped serving.
There’s a difference between
unbelief and doubt in this way: (Jesus
himself never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief.)
-doubt is cannot believe, and
unbelief is won’t believe.
-doubt
is honesty, unbelief is obstinacy.
-doubt
is looking for life, and unbelief is being content with the darkness.
Some of the greatest saints
who ever lived struggled with doubt. In
fact, the more committed you are to serving God, the more intensely you will
struggle with the things of faith.
Persons for whom faith is nominal never struggle. That’s because they don’t really care. But if you really care, if you are really
seeking to give up everything to follow Jesus, you are going to wrestle with
the meaning of it all, as well as the reality of it. Thomas really wanted to serve Jesus.
There is another incident in
the New Testament when Thomas is prominent; this time before Jesus went to the
cross. After the raising of Lazarus,
Jesus announced that he had to go to Jerusalem, and the disciples were
disturbed. And Jesus’ enemies were
gathering in Jerusalem. There was a
great danger there - danger that finally resulted in Jesus’ crucifixion. Remember it was Thomas who said, “Let us go
also that we may die with him.” Thomas
didn’t have a nominal faith. He really
cared, and so he struggled as many great saints since have struggled.
One of the issues that many
people struggle with is the relationship between science and faith. A hot issue in some parts of our land is an
effort by some Christian leaders to have schools teach a subject called
“Intelligent Design.” The rational for
this is that there are some people who believe that science, as it is being
taught in many schools, particularly the teaching of evolution, undermines
belief in God. Teachers of Intelligent
Design want equal time. They want to
show that, properly understood, the evidence of science supports the idea of a
divine creator. It’s an issue that will
not go away.
I would like to give you a
couple of principles that might help you if you are one of those who struggle
with such questions. It may prove
particularly helpful to young people.
The first principle is that science deals with how, and
faith deals with why, and there really is no conflict between the
two. Anything that is true is true, and
God is a God of truth. If science says
that the universe is fourteen million years old, and that turns out to be true,
it’s true. That’s how long God took in
fashioning life. If God used evolution
to achieve God’s goal, so be it.
Science deals with how, faith
deals with why.
There are some people in our
modern world who believe that everything happened by chance. If you get into a discussion with someone
like this, don’t get bent out of shape.
They’ve been taught that this is an enormous universe, and that in a
universe with such enormity, anything is possible. And they are right; this is an enormous
universe. We don’t serve a small
God. But ask them: If they believe we simply evolved by blind
chance, how do they explain beauty? Why
do our eyes and brain not see in black and white? That’s all we need for survival, that’s all
evolution should have given us. Yet we
live a world of incredible beauty.
Why? And why are we so
constructed that such beauty satisfies something deep in our soul? Who has not been taken aback by the beauty of
a sunset here on Cape Cod or of a sunrise?
Nature is an amazing force and indeed we came to this place, if indeed
we came to this place by chance.
And how…and this is the
question I really want to ask…how do you
explain four-part harmony? That seems
frivolous perhaps, but think about that for a moment. Four-part harmony is certainly not required
for survival. Oh, to be sure, it is
helpful to hear a range of pitches, but why do our voices make such a wide
array of sounds, and why when those voices are blended, can they make such an
awe-inspiring sound? Alto and soprano
and deep, deep base and tenor -- we’ve all heard music that has transported us
right to the portal of heaven.
Yesterday I went to see River
Dance. The music, the voices, the
dancing were absolutely incredible! The
Alleluia chorus alone ought to win over the most cynical skeptic. Chance that that all comes together? I don’t think so..
Science tells us how, faith
tells us why.
Scientists, no matter how
brilliant, are merely mechanics. They
are tinkering with the machinery that God has created. They are discovering new things all the time,
and I’m really glad for that - that’s why I am alive today! That’s what God intends for them to do. Their role is just like yours and mine: To improve life upon earth. But when some scientists say pompously,
“There is no God,” he or she has stepped out from science and has entered the
arena of faith. In fact, I can say to
you that there is nothing that science can discover that ought to shape our
faith.
One sincere believer said that
if ever they were to find the body of Jesus, that all Christianity would come
tumbling down. He was trying to express
the importance of the resurrection, but he’s wrong. Last year the National Geographic reported
that a group of scientists had discovered the tomb of Jesus and his family, but
the evidence was too flimsy to be taken seriously. It was the worst kind of sensationalism, but
even if they had discovered Jesus’ tomb, that would not be the end of the world.
St. Paul said in 1st
Corinthians 15, that “at death we throw off our physical bodies and put on new
spiritual bodies.” And notice in the
story of Thomas, Jesus was able to appear to the disciples behind locked
doors. The doors were not a barrier to
his resurrected life. How would Paul know
about the new spiritual body unless he had heard from the apostles’ report
about Jesus’ appearances. Jesus had a
body, but it was not exactly the same body he was crucified with. A physical body does not go through closed
doors. The important point is that there
is nothing in the physical world that can destroy our faith, and don’t let
anyone mislead you.
Science deals with how and
faith deals with why.
And here I think is the
second important principle. There are
two kinds of truth in the Bible:
Historical truth and spiritual truth.
When the writer of Genesis wrote about the creation of the world and
said that it occurred in six days, and God rested on the seventh, he wasn’t
really giving historical chronology. If
you want to know how long it took, ask a mechanic or ask a scientist. The writer of Genesis was writing about two
spiritual truths. One was, of course,
that God created everything that is, and God spoke, and there was light. And the second is the importance of the
Sabbath. God worked six days and rested
on the seventh, and so ought God’s people.
The Sabbath rest was a very important principle for the Hebrew
people. It ought to be more important to
us. But the Bible is a mixture of
historical truth and spiritual truth, and the important thing is that God
speaks through this book, and we need to heed what God says. If we try to make the Bible into something it
is not, we make the faith look foolish.
Back in the sixteen hundreds
most people believed quite naturally that the sun revolved around the
earth. The sun rises and the sun sets,
so naturally it must revolve around the earth.
Then there came a man called Galileo who said that that was not so. Religious people, you can well imagine, were
up in arms, and Galileo was excommunicated from the church. And after all, Psalm 93, verse 1, and Psalm
96, verse 10 and Chronicle 16, verse 30 all include text stating that the world
is firmly established. It cannot be
moved. In the same tradition Psalm 104,
verse 5 says, “The Lord set the earth on its foundations. It can never be moved.” And further, Ecclesiastes 1, verse 5 states
that, “The sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises.” And Galileo claimed that it was never his
intent to dispute the Bible. In fact, he
said this was not contrary to those scriptural passages. He took St. Augustine’s position on
scripture: That we should not take very
passage literally, particularly when the scripture in question is a book of
poetry and songs; not a book of instruction or history.
Don’t compare apples and
oranges. There is historical truth and
there is spiritual truth. There are
parts of the Bible that are poetry and parts that are parables. These are intertwined with historical
narrative, and it is difficult even for scholars to separate the two.
Science tells how, and faith
tells why.
There is historical truth,
and there is spiritual truth. And here’s
the final thing I want to say this morning:
We walk by faith, not knowledge.
St. Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 13, “For now we see
through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”
And it’s true. There is very
little certainty in this world. And
notice Jesus’ words in response to Thomas’ acclamation of faith: Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me,
you have believed. Blessed are those who
have not seen and yet have believed.”
And that’s a powerful
statement: “Because you have seen me,
you have believed. Blessed are those who
have not seen and yet have believed.”
One of my favorite
theologians, Woody Allen, asked why God couldn’t give us some kind of sign that
He exists, like depositing a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in his
name. That’s not the way, unfortunately,
that God works. Any of you who have ever
sat beside the bed of a loved one in a time of crisis know that God sometimes
hides from us. Why? I don’t know.
Again, maybe it’s because that is the only way that God could help us
grow spiritually into souls worthy to spend eternity with God. People who do not struggle with their faith
remain forever spiritual adolescents.
The important thing is this: All
saints of God go through times of doubt, but do not let the world mislead you. There is a Creator, and who could
doubt it?
Science tells us how, faith
tells us why.
There are historical truths,
and there is a spiritual truth; and we walk by faith, not knowledge. Jesus said to Thomas, “Because you have seen
me, you have believed. Blessed are those
who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Amen