St. Mary’s Episcopal Church

As Aimee concludes her year of deacon training with us, she leaves us with a love letter. Thank you, Aimee, for being a part of our community. May we continue to be the community you found this year. What a blessing you have been.

Today’s Gospel is a big, rich, deep, multi-faceted, multi-layered story. If this story were a meal, it would be a multi-course feast with appetizers, a salad, entrée, dessert, a cheese plate, and beverages with each course. There is a lot going on in this Gospel.

I think if we take one step back from this story it gets a little easier. We realize there are four stories, not just one. Each of the stories is rich enough that each could have its own Sunday, each with its own sermon. The calling of Matthew is one story, the story of Jesus eating with the “wrong” kind of people is another. There is the story of the healing of a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years, and then the story of the raising of a young girl from the dead. Four different stories. 

But, if you take one more step back and let your vision blur, we will see that these four stories are really two stories. The first story of the calling of Matthew and then the story of Jesus eating with the tax collectors and the sinners is connected by the tax collector bit. The word sinner is a catch-all. He was eating with the tax collectors and the others who were screwing up. 

Why are the tax collectors so reviled? It is not just a simple I-don’t-like-the-IRS type of thing. These tax collectors were collaborators with the Roman empire. These were local folks who had decided to help Rome in extracting resources and helping keep the people down. The tax collectors were collaborating with the oppression of the people, and were disliked for that very reason.

On top of that, the way that Rome worked with the tax collectors is that they made their income by getting a little extra. So Rome says collect 5%, and your salary will be whatever else you can get out of the people. Take an extra 1% for yourself, not a big deal. Rome doesn’t care if you only take 1%, Rome doesn’t care if you take 5% more. So you can see how this can cause some temptation for the tax collector. We find that some of them were very wealthy. They didn’t need to take as much from the people, and the people felt they were being cheated. They were certainly being cheated by Rome, who is extracting their resources, and they were being cheated by their fellow Jew who was taking even more from them. The tax collectors were really disliked, and the people wanted them pushed aside, punished for the wrongs that they were doing.

And Jesus says, that is not the way of God. First of all, who needs a doctor? Is it the healthy person? It is the sick person who really needs the doctor. Jesus is not saying these tax collectors are doing the wrong thing, he is not saying that collaborating with the Roman Empire is a positive, that extorting people for extra money is the thing to do. He is saying that we need to help heal these people, not push them away, but bring them closer in. It is only through relationship that we can do that work of being shown a better way.

The second thing Jesus asks is, what does God mean when he says I desire not sacrifice, but mercy? Jesus is quoting the first reading from Hosea that we heard today: I desire not sacrifice but mercy. Jesus is trying to show them that the way of God, in a world in which bad things happen, people screw up, people do the wrong thing by mistake or intentionally. But when they do, the way of God is not simply to punish. We do not have a God of retribution. We have a God of restitution. We have a God whose vision is a world reconciled, pulled back together. The rupture between the tax collectors and other sinners and the people is a tragedy. It is not the way of God. He wants us to come back together. And God does not want to create a new group of outcasts by shunning and punishing those folks who are being critical of what Jesus is doing. He wants everyone at the table. 

That is the first story. The other stories in this Gospel reading are stories of healing. We know these two stories are really one because one of the healings is embedded within the other. This is like a play within a play. In literary classes, we are taught that the play within the play tells us something important about the other play. 

The woman who has been bleeding for twelve years, twelve years of great suffering, gets healed. But notice that she doesn’t get healed because of anything Jesus does. It is the power of God working through Jesus that heals her, but it is not Jesus doing anything. Jesus tells her it is her faith that made her well. Her faith that believed she needed only a slight touch, just a thread of that power to heal her great suffering. If she could just touch the hem of his cloak, that will be sufficient. That is a depth of faith, isn’t it, just to need a little kindness and mercy? Jesus said that faith is enough to transform her, to give her her life back.

The other story is about the faith of this father who has heard about Jesus and the way he heals, but really has no idea Jesus can raise someone from the dead. That is an audacious thing to go from healing someone with demons or a vision problem or a problem walking. But to undo death is a huge leap. We have not seen Jesus raise anyone from the dead. This is before Lazarus, before Jesus’s own Resurrection. There is no reason for the father of the girl to think she can be risen from the dead. And yet, this father had that faith, this trust that God is working through Jesus to such a degree that he can undo this horrific tragedy in his life. So he comes to Jesus, Jesus goes, Jesus heals in a way that does not just improve her life, but gives her new life. This is a profound story of healing.

So we have two stories. A story about God’s vision for a world in which everyone is at the table, a world of restitution and reconciliation, not punishment and retribution. And a story of people’s lives being transformed so they can flourish and thrive in this world, including bringing new life to that which is dead.

I ask that you indulge me, take one more step back and let your vision blur a little more. And when you do that, I think you will see this is all one story. One story about the grace, mercy, and love of God. I think we have a microcosm of the entire Gospel. We have Jesus coming—the Incarnation—God coming to the world in the position of Jesus Christ. Jesus is coming to people, pulling them together, sharing the vision of a Kingdom, the Reign of God, the vision that God has for this world so that people can be restored and healed and have new life through Resurrection. Is that not the entire Gospel message in one story? It is a story about the Good News of the power of God’s grace, mercy, and love found in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

AMEN.

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit come! Move in and through these words, reveal yourself to us in ways that show us the beauty and glory of God. In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, one God. Amen. 

Today’s readings offer us several views of the Holy Trinity. That sometimes confusing, always mysterious, human attempt at defining the nature of the Creator of all that is! In the beginning, the great wind of God, in Hebrew, Ruah, moved over the waters and created life. God the Creator, the life-force hovering over the void, bringing everything into being. The animating, creating Spirit of God. All living things called into being through God’s word. And it was so. God saw everything that God had created and indeed it was very good. In the Creation story God’s proclamation of goodness is about you and me an everyone. In that goodness and out of that goodness, we were created. In God’s image. Indeed, we are very good, beloved creations of God! God the Creator, God the life-giver. Everything in creation bearing witness to the glory and goodness of God, creation itself the first testament to the nature of God. 

In our Epistle the author of Second Corinthians offers a lovely blessing that points to the three aspects of God. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. The grace of Jesus: Jesus 100% God AND 100% human, offers us grace, freely given forgiveness. Jesus the divine human, knowing us fully well, showing God’s love in human form. Jesus points to, and together WITH the Creator, shows us how loved we are. Loved enough to give up everything, even divine nature and power, loved enough to offer his life to testify to our Creator’s loving desire for relationship. The blessing asks for the communion of the Holy Spirit to be with us. This coming together, co-unity, you and me and them, US, in blessed community with our good and loving God, the Creator, the Grace-giver, and the force that brings us all together. 

And in today’s Gospel, Jesus sends the disciples out to invite everyone into community, to be baptized in the name of the Triune God: the Creator Parent, the divine human example of love, and the unifying Holy Spirit. 

Last Sunday At our 11 o’clock service we had a baptism. Such a great celebration and reminder of how central the Trinity is to our understanding of God and what it means to follow Jesus 

Pay attention to the prayers that come from the baptism service in the book of common prayer:

We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water.

Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.

Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage

in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus

received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy

Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death

and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.

We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are

buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his

resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.

Therefore in joyful obedience to your Son, we bring into his fellowship those who come to him in faith, baptizing them in

the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Notice what we believe in happening at baptism:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy

Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the

forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of

grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them

an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to

persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy

and wonder in all your works. Amen.

(B.C.P., 305-8)

As Jesus sent his disciples out with the instructions to baptize in the name of the trinity, we too are called to share the aspects of God shown forth in the Holy Trinity. 

Through our baptism we receive adoption as God’s children, our Creator reaching out, claiming us, very good children of our good and loving God. 

Through our baptism we join in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We receive forgiveness of our sins and the reminder that with the help of the Holy Spirit we are to follow in Jesus’ steps of love, inclusion, and grace, working to create justice, peace, and dignity for all. 

At baptism we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to sustain, comfort and lead us. Through our baptism, our physical bodies become temples for the Holy Spirit, that Spirit of God in us communing with the Creator and with the Son. 

My siblings in the divine mystery of God that is the Blessed Trinity. Our Episcopal faith is rooted in the Holy Trinity, the tri-fold nature of God revealed in the Creator, in Jesus Christ, God incarnate, and in the wind, the flame, the dove, the Holy Spirit. And so I pray that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all this Trinity Sunday and forever.

Amen. 

On this Feast of Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, we commemorate, we remember, we celebrate the moment when the Disciples were gathered together, and the Holy Spirit came down upon them like a rushing wind and tongues of flame. It empowered them to preach the Good News, and 3000 people were baptized that day. I cannot imagine that number. I am super excited because we have one baptism today. Can you imagine 3000? That would be a long service.

The Holy Spirit is the focus of Pentecost, but who is this Holy Spirit? Of course, the Holy Spirit is God, part of the Trinity. Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday, so we might unpack that more that day. 

In terms of the Scripture, the Holy Spirit is there at the very beginning. In the Creation Story we hear about the Holy Spirit moving over the waters. And in the story of Creation we hear that God breathed the Holy Spirit on Adam to make life. 

The Holy Spirit is there time and again throughout Scripture, filling the leaders and the prophets to give them the power they need for the work they are to do. The Holy Spirit is there in the life of Jesus, making it all possible. The angel proclaimed to Mary what is about to happen, and she says that is not possible. But the angel said it is possible. All things are possible with God because Holy Spirit will make this happen. 

The Holy Spirit was with Jesus like a dove, coming down upon him at his baptism. The Holy Spirit led or pushed, depending on the translation of the Gospel, Jesus out into the desert. The Holy Spirit was with him at the beginning of his ministry, at his first sermon in Nazareth when he said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. The Spirit has sent me to preach Good News to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to give sight to the blind, to give liberation to those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. The year of the Lord’s favor is a particular phrase that means a jubilee year, a year in which all debts are erased so we can try again. It levels everything out so we can give it another go. Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus teaches us about the Holy Spirit. He says it is like water, a river of Living Water that will give us eternal life. Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to the Disciples after the Resurrection, as we heard in the Gospel reading today. He breathes the Holy Spirit upon them.

Today, on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is likened to wind or fire. Paul, as we heard in today’s Epistle reading, teaches us the Holy Spirit is the one that gives us gifts. All the gifts we have are given to us by the Spirit. He names some, like wisdom and knowledge and prophecy, speaking in tongues. The Epistle goes on to list more, including that wonderful passage in 1 Corinthians 13, the great ode to love that comes out of this section describing the gifts of the Spirit. Faith, hope, and love are gifts the Holy Spirit gives us, and the greatest of these is love. 

When we look at all the stories about the Holy Spirit in Scripture, what are the takeaways? First of all, the Holy Spirit is intangible and ineffable. The Holy Spirit as wind, rushing wind, the breath of life, flames, birds, water are things we can only grasp through metaphors, including paradoxical metaphors that contradict each other, life fire and water. 

The Holy Spirit is a little chaotic and uncontrollable, like wind and fire, and like doves. Have you ever spent time looking at doves? They are chaotic, going in ways we don’t expect them to go. That is like the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is also quite powerful. A powerful and combustible energy that is transformative. And the Holy Spirit is motivating, empowering, an insistent present in our lives. The Holy Spirit is the giver of gifts and the giver of life itself.

The Holy Spirit is intangible, ineffable, chaotic, powerful, empowering, motivating, life-giving, gift-giving. This thing that we cannot get a handle on completely, and we certainly cannot control it, will come and go as it will. The best we can do with it is to pray, to pray for the Spirit to come upon us. 

We will soon pray for the Holy Spirit to come upon the person being baptized here today, so that she can join those 3000 baptized on the Day of Pentecost and become a part of the Body of Christ. We will pray that this chaotic, ineffable, powerful, transformative, gift-giving, life-giving Spirit is going to fill her and make her one with Christ, and one with us as a member of the Body of Christ.

My prayer for you on this Pentecost, my friends, is that the Holy Spirit may come upon you like the wind, and fill you with the breath of God, the breath of life. I pray that the Holy Spirit may burn above you like tongues of flame, and may burn below you to get you moving. I also pray that the Holy Spirit may burn within you, and the light of that flame may shine brightly into this world, shining to illuminate the love of God. I pray that the Holy Spirit may soar around you like a bird, like a dove, and bring peace to your life and those you interact with. And I pray that this Holy Spirit may guide you and lead you and sometime push you, empowering you and transforming you with those spiritual gifts, most importantly the gifts of faith, hope, and love.

That is my prayer for you, my friends. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

AMEN

“Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is within you.” In my first year of Seminary on the first day of my first preaching class, the professor gave us an assignment to prepare a 5-minute speech, memorized, on the hope that is within you. And for that assignment, I told the story of Jonah. 

You know the story: Jonah, the prophet, who was told by God to go to Nineveh, and Jonah went to Tarshish, the opposite direction. Through a great wind and a great fish, God redirected Jonah, and tried again to get Jonah to go to Nineveh and call out over them, for their great evil had risen up to God. So Jonah goes and cries out over them, and the people of Nineveh do the darndest thing: they say they are sorry. They repent, and so God decides not to destroy them. This makes Jonah really upset, so he goes to the edge of the city, crosses his arms, and waits for God to smite them. God asks Jonah, what are you doing? Jonah responds that God should have destroyed them, but he knew God was too loving to do that, which is the reason Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place.

God sends a plant, which Jonah loves, but then God sends a worm that destroys the plant, which makes Jonah even more upset. God says, Jonah, this is not making any sense. Why do you care so much for this plant? You didn’t create the plant, you didn’t sew the seed, you didn’t give it growth, you didn’t do anything for this plant. Yet you are upset that it is gone. Why, then, shouldn’t I care about the people of Nineveh who I did create, and who have a lot of animals? And this is the end of the story. It ends with a question. We don’t know how Jonah is going to respond. Will he finally come around and understand what God has been saying? Is he finally going to grasp the depth and height of God’s expansive love that will include the people of Nineveh? I don’t know, but we are left with this impression that even if he doesn’t come to grasp it now, that God is going to keep working with Jonah. God will keep working with him in spite of all of Jonah’s recalcitrant disobedience. In spite of his lack of understanding and his ignorance, probably willful ignorance, God will keep working with him.

In my speech for that class, I said this is the hope that is within me. That God’s love is so expansive that it includes the people of Nineveh and the great evil that they did; that God’s love is so expansive that it includes Jonah and all his recalcitrant disobedience; and I, who certainly have my own limitations and failures, all the things I do wrong, all the lack of understanding I have, sometimes willfully so, I think there is room for me within the expansiveness of God’s love.

I think there is room for you, too. In fact, I think there is room for everyone. God’s love is so expansive that it includes everyone. That is the story we hear in Scripture from beginning to end, from Creation to New Creation. A story of a God who loves more than we can ask for or begin to imagine. It is in the story of Creation when after each day, God looks over it and says, it is good. Sometimes God says, it is very good. 

I think Desmond Tutu puts it in my most favorite way in his children’s Bible. He says God’s love bubbled and overflowed. It bubbled up and spilled over into Creation. We, this created order, these created beings which include you and me, are the result of God’s love bubbling over.

God’s love is so expansive it includes Sarah and Abraham, who initially had some faith, but eventually had all sorts of doubts and questions and push-back and laughter about what God had promised. It includes their trickster grandson, Jacob, and Jacob’s kids: the borderline narcissistic Joseph and his resentful siblings. God’s love includes Miriam and Moses and all the suffering they undergo. It includes the foreigner Ruth and her grandson, David, who is considered the greatest of all the kings. But in some of his stories, he is not all that great at times.

God’s love includes all those people the prophets cry out over. And God’s love includes all those Disciples and all of their misunderstandings that at times look like bumbling idiocy. God’s love includes them being restored, even after they abandoned and denied Him. God’s love includes Saul who becomes Paul, who had taken part in murdering people, legally, if that makes it any better. God’s love included him, it includes you, and God’s love includes me.

The thing about God’s love is that it is so expansive that every time we think we have reached the border of it, we discover that we are nowhere close. There are a lifetime of adventures to explore in the unknown territory that is God’s love. God loves you, more than you can ask for or begin to imagine.

Sometimes people say that love is just a bunch of fluffy stuff. It is a soft Gospel that we preach. Why don’t we talk about the hard stuff? Whoever says that has not yet really explored the depths of God’s love. They have not gone on the adventure of unknown territories. When we go there, we discover love is anything but soft and easy. The expanses of God’s love, as the Jonah story tells us, includes the people we might call enemies. It includes the people that are truly doing wrong things in this world. It includes the person who makes our blood boil. That person is also loved by God. They are included in the expansiveness, the breadth and the depth of God’s love. God’s love is that expansive, and more so. 

That is the hope that is within me, my friends in Christ. That God’s love is so enormous, so vast that there are no words to describe it, and I will never find those words. I will spend all my days exploring it until the day I am reunited fully with God and I experience it in its purity. That is my hope, the hope that is within me.

I also have a prayer, my friends, that you may know that love in your life, as well. That you may know deep down inside of you, that God loves you. That you know in your mind and in your heart and in your marrow that you are beloved. God made you in love, God loves you, and nothing is going to take that away. I pray that you know that God loves you more than you can ask for or begin to imagine.

AMEN

My sister Trudy has been visually challenged her entire life. A good friend who had perfectly fine corrected vision until a few years ago, is experiencing the center of her field of vision slowly fade away due to macular degeneration, while another friend has a difficult to treat form of glaucoma so her peripheral vision is disappearing. With these people constantly on my mind, I never take my eyesight for granted. Rather I give thanks daily, often when I’m out walking, that I can see the extraordinary beauty of the world around me. The blue sky, green grass, the shrubs, trees and flowers that are in bloom this time of year - what an extraordinary gift to be able to see and appreciate it all. At the same time, I’m acutely aware that what we see is only partly informed by the light waves that strike our eyes which in turn send signals to our brains that register as blue sky, green grass or whatever. The reality is we only see a fraction of what passes before us largely because we tend to see what we expect to see while failing to notice everything else. This can be problematic for law enforcement personnel trying to find out what happened during an accident or when a crime was committed when what witnesses to the event claim to have seen doesn’t agree.

One of the things that influences what we see at any given moment is what we’ve been taught over a long period of time to expect to see. I’m sure you’ve all heard some version of that rhetorical question, If you encountered Jesus on the street today, would you follow him? This is immediately followed with, Well of course you would, if you knew it was Jesus. But how would you know? What does Jesus look like after all? I know I’m not alone when I tell you I grew up looking at countless images of what I call the Scandinavian Jesus. You know who I mean, that light skinned fellow with the sandy hair in kind of a page boy and light brown eyes. The man was Semitic!! I can’t help but think that images like those I just mentioned were at least partly responsible for an exchange I witnessed during a multigenerational education time in a small church I attended decades ago. We were studying the catechism I believe and I don’t remember what triggered the question but suddenly this very precocious six year old exclaimed, Wait, Jesus was Jewish?!? Well yes, replied the vicar. Huh, Christopher gasped… I always thought he was British! Spoken like a true Anglican, responded the vicar. But really, if in every picture of Jesus he’d ever seen Jesus looked like Sir Lancelot, why wouldn’t Christopher have leapt to that conclusion? For once I can assure you this is not simply a Caucasian issue. My two favorite images of Jesus, of all the paintings and other artwork I’ve seen during my life anywhere in the world, are two pictures that hang in the diocesan center in Cuernavaca. In one Jesus is laughing, and in the other he’s looking down at a baby in his arms. In both cases Jesus is moreno, that is, he has dark hair and brown skin. I’ve read that in many churches in Africa Jesus is portrayed as black. This is not illogical when you think about it. We’re taught all our lives that we are created in the image of God. If we understand that to mean we look like God, then it’s only reasonable to conclude that God looks like us. The issue then becomes, how narrowly do we define us?

So considering all of this, I would argue that the most important seeing that occurs in our lives doesn’t rely simply on the light that strikes our eyes, but on what we see, or rather experience, with our hearts. Consider the disciples on the road to Emmaus whom we heard about in today’s Gospel reading. They spent hours, hours! walking with Jesus without ever realizing with whom they were walking. Think about that. These were people who walked the earth with Jesus. While it doesn’t sound like they were from the inner circle of twelve, they’re referred to as disciples so they surely had listened to Jesus teach, probably had seen him heal the sick, perhaps had been part of one of the crowds that he had miraculously fed. Yet they had no idea they were walking with Jesus. Why not? Because there was no way it could be Jesus. Jesus had died two days before on the cross. They hadn’t dared get too close but they’d seen him up there, they knew he’d died, that his body had been taken down from the cross and buried. Oh sure, they’d heard what the women - there’s the issue! - had reported, that when they went to the tomb this morning Jesus’ body was gone and angels told them that Jesus was alive, but come on! Everybody knew Jesus had died. Not until at their invitation Jesus joined them for the evening meal, and then during the course of the meal took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them did they recognize Jesus for who he was. Only then, in retrospect, did they remember that their hearts had burned while Jesus had been teaching them as they walked together. In other words, their hearts had recognized something that their minds didn’t consider possible and because they relied on their minds rather than their hearts they were unable to recognize who was right there with them. They say seeing is believing, but maybe sometimes we have to believe in order to be able to see.

So what does all of this have to do with living in today’s world? For starters it means if we have any desire at all of convincing others that being a Christian is a worthwhile way of life, we can’t rely on words alone to do it. After all, that didn’t work for the risen Jesus. Besides, the world is beyond tired of Christian rhetoric. Indeed, what is being passed off as Christian teaching by some these days is such a horrible perversion of the teachings of Jesus it makes my skin crawl. None of that is going to inspire people to become followers of Jesus. No, people need to experience behavior that touches them in a way that convinces them at the deepest level that being a Christian is not about separating oneself from those who are different, or about lording it over people deemed inferior for one reason or another, but rather that being a Christians really and truly is about loving one’s neighbor. They need to experience first hand that it’s about helping those who need help, defending those who are frightened, raising up those who have been beaten down.

Paradoxically though, sometimes living our faith doesn’t have to be about what we do, but instead can be something as simple yet powerful as taking time to be, just be, with someone who feels utterly alone. In one of his midwinter meditations Retired Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning describes being at home in New York City with his wife Patti as a blizzard raged outside. They were enjoying being cozy and warm indoors when the daughter of a friend called from Connecticut. She had given birth way too early, the baby weighed less than a pound and wasn’t expected to live. Could Bishop Browning come and baptize the baby. They went. He said that he didn’t know a human being could be that small, that he could easily have held the child in the palm of his hand. A nurse gave him a paper medicine cup of water and he baptized the baby. He said in that moment he knew he saw Jesus. He said that he had done baptisms in some pretty magnificent places, but he had never felt the presence of Jesus more clearly than he felt it that night. He added that the little boy lived, and as he wrote the meditation was a bright and busy toddler. “He does not know,” Bishop Browning wrote, “that he was Jesus to me when he was born.”

The idea of being Jesus to someone sounds pretty daunting, so we need to keep in mind that tiny infant. He didn’t do anything, he simply was. I’ve said many times that anyone who has looked into the eyes of a child has seen the face of God. It’s that sort of wordless heart to heart connection that the world is dying to experience from us. It is the spirit to spirit connection that occurs when the Jesus in us is truly able to connect with the Jesus in another person. Once that connection forms, it can carry us past a whole host of superficial differences. This doesn’t mean we’ll never again experience interpersonal conflicts. Keep in mind that Jesus lost patience with even his closest followers, was downright angry with Peter at times. He was frankly rather nasty in some of the things he said, like when he implied helping the Syrophoenician woman would be like giving the children’s food to the dogs. But he didn’t stay angry with Peter. He acknowledged the faith displayed by the Syrophoenician woman as she continued to seek help for her daughter even after he initially rejected her plea. In other words Jesus let go of momentary anger, he looked past cultural differences, in order to ultimately see and respond to the intrinsic value of every person fortunate enough to cross his path. We may or may not be able to do that, but we can at least try. Even when we fail, and we will - none of us can connect with everyone - if we sincerely look for the Jesus in other people at least once in awhile we’ll succeed in finding that holy inner being. When that happens, when the Jesus in us finds, perhaps sets free to be seen for the first time, the Jesus in another person, we will have succeeded in showing the world in a way that truly matters, what it means to be a Christian.

Amen.

Poor Thomas. Poor, poor Thomas. We have nicknamed him “Doubting Thomas”, and I think it is a most unfair nickname. He already has one, Didymus, which means “the twin”, but think of other nicknames people have received. Simon Peter—Peter, the Rock. That’s a good, solid, strong nickname. How about “the Beloved Disciple”? I’m pretty sure John gave himself that nickname, but it’s a good one. We still call John the Beloved Disciple today. Mary Magdalene is quite likely a nickname. For many years people thought it was Mary of Magdala, but archaeologists have failed to find a town called Magdala. Scholars have come up with the idea that it is “Mary Magdalena”, meaning “Mary the Tower”. They are all great nicknames, but “Doubting Thomas”?

For my sermon I am going to make an argument, and the argument is this: I am going to defend the proposition that we need to rebrand Thomas. No longer Doubting Thomas, but what can we call him? We’ll try to figure that out together.

For the evidence of this argument we are going to look at the three stories we have about Thomas. The first is from the story of the raising of Lazarus. That is the first time we learn anything about Thomas. Before they go to Bethany for Jesus to raise Lazarus, Jesus gets word that Lazarus is sick and that he should go and heal him. But Jesus says he is not going to do that. A few days pass, Lazarus has died, and Jesus says it is now time to go. The other Disciples think this is a crazy idea. He’s already dead, so what’s the point. And they remind Jesus that they tried to kill him the last time he was in Jerusalem. Why go back there? And Jesus said, it is good. We must go back for the glory of God. Thomas is the one who responds by saying, All right, Jesus, let’s go so we can die with you! That’s not very doubting, is it?

The second piece of evidence: the night before Jesus died, after the last Supper, after the Washing of the Feet, Jesus has a long, multi-chapter monologue of teachings, and Jesus says, in my Father’s house are many dwelling places or many mansions. He goes on to say, I am going to prepare a place for you, and you know the way. Thomas says, wait a minute. We don’t know where you are going. How would we know the way? And Jesus says, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light. Thomas is not doubting, he’s questioning, bringing up a point of order—we don’t have the information that you think we have, and we need that.

Now let’s fast forward to the first day of the Resurrection. It says all the Disciples are gathered together in a room, and Jesus shows up. Thomas is not there, so the other Disciples tell Thomas about Jesus’s appearance, and Thomas says, I’m not going to believe you until I see with my own eyes and touch with my own hands. That’s why we call him Doubting Thomas.

If so, the other Disciples should also be called “doubting”. We should have Doubting Peter and Doubting James and Doubting John - Doubting Beloved Disciple - because they had already heard that Jesus had been risen from Mary Magdalene. She saw Jesus and she told them, and they didn’t believe. The other Disciples have now seen Jesus, but Thomas hadn’t and didn’t believe, so why is he the doubting one when the rest of them aren’t?

The next week Thomas is there with them and he gets his opportunity to see Jesus. Jesus appears and says, you can have everything you want, Thomas. You can see me with your eyes, you can touch me with your hands. Did you notice that Thomas does not do that? In that moment Thomas simply says, my Lord and my God. He did not need the very thing that he claimed he needed, the basis of his so-called doubt. I’m not sure that is doubting as much as wondering, questioning, insisting on what everyone else got.

So what other names could we use for this Thomas, formerly known as The Doubter? How about Inquisitive Thomas? The one who raises his hand to ask the question, the one who says, I need more information. Maybe Inquisitive Thomas would be a good nickname for him.

How about Courageous Thomas? “We’re going to die? Fine. I’m in it with you, Jesus.” That requires some courage (with perhaps a bit of stupidity—Stupid Thomas?) It was courageous to stand up to Jesus when no one else does. It takes courage to be willing to die, and to stand up to Jesus, and to stand up to all his friends. They had all seen Jesus, but Thomas does not believe them. He doesn’t give in to the group, but says I want a bit more. He also has the courage to keep hanging out with the Disciples. The others had had the experience and Thomas didn’t feel like part of the group anymore, but he still goes on with them. He still holds on to the hope that he, too, will have that experience. He stays with the group, seeking, wondering, questioning. We can add doubting to the mix because of some of the things that were going through his head. But what Thomas did required some courage to stand up to his friends.

Courageous Thomas. Inquisitive Thomas. How about Faithful Thomas? Isn’t faith a meal peppered with a little certainty and uncertainty? He certainly has both. Isn’t faith peppered with questions and wonderings and seeking and longings and desires and needs? Isn’t faith showing up even when you haven’t gotten what you need, yet, keeping on that journey to learn and grow and seek? I think that is all a part of faith. Doubt and belief are both a part of faith. I think Faithful Thomas might be a nice name for him.

Inquisitive Thomas, Courageous Thomas, Faithful Thomas. It sounds like he is a good model of the faith for us in our faith journey. To have some courage when things are tough. To have some wondering, some questions, but to keep seeking and showing up. To enjoy those moments of certainty and confidence and not give up when we have uncertainty. It seems like Thomas might be a wonderful model with all of his complexity, and all the adjectives that we could give him. Thomas would be a good model for us in our faith.

AMEN.