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Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-31
I was brought up to hate two things: as a minister of the Gospel I am not particularly proud of that, but that's the facts of life.
I was brought up to hate communism. For many of us here communism was identified as the devil's own political system. While I no longer would view communism in the same paranoid way of my youth, I am still not enamoured of it. It has never really worked for human beings being what they are just can't cooperate that well fo or very long. Moreover, communism has inevitably ended up exchanging one form of tyranny for another.
The second hatred was being brought up to hate the New York Yankees. That really has nothing to do with the scripture today, but I still always root for the team that is playing against the Yankees. If the Cuban national baseball team, a communist team!, were playing the Yankees, I'd be cheering, "Go Cuba!" With such foundational thoughts, is it possible to be a Christian knowing that from the beginning the church is described as a fellowship and society in which everything they owned was held in common?
There has always been debate whether this Christian communism was reality way back then, or more importantly for how long? Is this really how we are supposed to live? Most Christians and churches have said No throughout the millennia. Private property is OK, competition enables us to grow, diversity enriches us.
Reform movements in the church have often reverted back to this utopian picture in the Book of Acts as the starting model, but just like secular communism, the church has found life in the common sense virtually impossible to maintain for an extended period.
My response is not theoretical and theological, but practical and pastoral. I have been in many a church who do great things together as the gathered people of God, ministering to the suffering and the weak and oppressed, but clearly were not based upon socialist or communist principals. I see their contribution to the Kingdom as real and not to be diminished, even if not everybody in the congregation was equal financially or held all they owned in common.
Nevertheless, they/we hold something in common which is even more essential to the faith than our material goods. The story in the Gospel of John right after the resurrection tells us what that common something is. Thomas is our guide.
Thomas is one of the most subtle characters in the Gospels. He is a man of great faith, but one who insists upon reality not dreams for his faith. For some reason he was not with the cowering disciples that evening of the first day of the week, and when he heard their excited, inarticulate reports of the risen Christ standing in their midst, he actually gave the correct response. "I won't believe it unless I see and feel the scars that are uniquely Jesus". No faith built upon hearsay; it has to be really experienced to be valid.
A week later Thomas was now with the other disciples, and again Jesus was in their midst. Jesus offered the feel of his scars for Thomas' faith, but there was no need anymore. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe ," concludes Jesus. That covers just about every Christian since that evening.
Thomas is not Everyman, for he is above average in his courage and truthfulness. The Christian Church in every place and time has held in common two things which bind us deeply together. What we have in common is our scars and our doubts. These sound like weaknesses, but the wisdom of God, after all, is foolishness to those who are perishing. God's weakness is stronger than human strength.
Thomas wants to see the scars in the hands and feet of Jesus, but it is our scars which mark us as brothers and sisters.
We are not the church of the perfect saints, saved and unblemished, but the gathering of those who bear the scars of our wounds. What makes us the church is the moment we recognize our own scars, as well as the those of our brothers and sisters. Then we are not only united with one another, but are united also with Christ, the wounded healer.
When I recognize my own scars and wounds, my own failings and shortcomings, I can no longer pretend to be aloof from my brothers and sisters who are scarred in the same way. I cannot be judgmental or arrogant when I see their scars and recognize my own in them: compassion and understanding are the only authentic responses possible. You know this from your own experience: find someone else with the same scar and you have found a soulmate.
Tradition has labeled Thomas the Doubting one, as if he were the only disciple ever to have doubted. What makes Thomas different is that he owned his own doubt, and was willing to accept the truth when it came before him.
Doubt is not the opposite of faith, but its necessary partner. There is no such thing as "blind faith" - belief in something or someone untrammeled by questioning and investigation. Blind faith is simply a veiled cynicism waiting to be unmasked. Doubt makes certain that our faith is real, ready to weather the storms of adversity and tragedy.
This is a church of doubters, thank God. I've heard the doubts almost every day. You may think of doubt as kind of a negative mode of being, but it is what pulls us together, for doubters know that there is still something to seek.
The deep fallacy of so much which passes for Christianity today is that caught in a world with so many ambiguities and unending problems, many just want to hide from doubt. They are told if they have the right kind of faith, they will be at journey's end. You and I know that that kind of faith is spiritual death, for our pilgrimage never ends.
As human beings we can never totally, finally, completely understand God, but that is no excuse for stopping, for giving up. Our greatest joy as Christians is realizing that as we continue to doubt, as we keep on seeking to understand, God is there with us on our journey, revealing herself a little bit more each day.
What really unites us in our doubts is that we doubters know there is something out there to seek, and we have discriminating tastes - only the truth will be acceptable.
Those who clutch their faith and deny they ever feel any doubt are those who are afraid to lose their faith, because then there will be nothing there. These people are never good risk-takers.
But those who doubt know that the only thing they have to lose is their doubts. Doubters are great risk-takers; only when we risk do we discover great things. And so our motto has to be Paul's self-description, "I believe; help my unbelief."
What binds us together as the continuing church of the Apostles - whose Acts are not yet finished - is not our commonly held property and money, but our commonly held wounds and scars and doubts, the things no one else wants to hold on to, but in our healing one another and our encouagement of one anohter on the long journey, we embody the inexplicable strength of God's wisdom. If God is for us, who can be against us?
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan
April 30, 2000
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