Faith, The Final Frontier

John 20:19-31 (The Message)
Later on that day, the disciples had gathered together, but, fearful of the Jews, had locked all the doors in the house. Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, “Peace to you.” Then he showed them his hands and side. The disciples, seeing the Master with their own eyes, were exuberant. Jesus repeated his greeting: “Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you.” Then he took a deep breath and breathed into them. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he said. “If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?” But Thomas, sometimes called the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, “We saw the Master.” But he said, “Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won’t believe it.” Eight days later, his disciples were again in the room. This time Thomas was with them. Jesus came through the locked doors, stood among them, and said, “Peace to you.” Then he focused his attention on Thomas. “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving. Believe.” Thomas said, “My Master! My God!” Jesus said, “So, you believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.” Jesus provided far more God-revealing signs than are written down in this book. These are written down so you will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and in the act of believing, have real and eternal life in the way he personally revealed it.

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“Space, the final frontier… These are the voyages of the starship…” I’m sorry… That’s the opening for something else, but it’s still relevant to what we are talking about today, which is faith. Faith in both things that we can see and cannot see. Maybe we don’t have a starship to chart undiscovered star systems, but I think it might be an appropriate metaphor for us as we navigate today’s passage from the Gospel According to John. 

But since I mentioned it, it was in 1966 that the first episode of Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry aired on televisions across America. Star Trek, which first began with the adventures of Captain Kirk and the starship Enterprise soon evolved out of the realm of science fiction… Over the years, it addressed issues that were relevant to its viewers, pushed the boundaries of what was and wasn’t acceptable to broadcast, and inspired generations to imagine what lies beyond our own solar system. While Gene Roddenberry had distanced himself from his Christian upbringing, his series would still occasionally ask questions about faith, “What does it mean when we can’t observe something or hold it in our hands?” “What does it look like to believe in the spiritual when it seems like everything can be explained  using the scientific method?” “ Is there still room for faith and a belief in things that aren’t able to be quantified or studied?”

Perhaps then faith really is the final frontier… There are no scans, no notes that can be made, and no way to hold hope in our hands. It’s a little disconcerting when you think about it. We trust in our senses… We put stock into the things that we can see, touch, smell, hear, and taste, but faith doesn’t lend itself to any of those and as a result faith has become shrouded in mystery, which makes it hard to talk about. I admit that as Presbyterians, we are not always great when it comes to talking about our faith. We’d much rather talk about sports, things that are going on in the community, friends, family, and dare I say even the tumultuous realm of politics, anything else, but faith.  So let’s try and demystify religion for the sake of exploring that final frontier. 

I think it would be helpful to take a look at what faith is not before we look at what faith is…  If faith is the final frontier, then that means we have to dive in and explore what faith is, taking in all of its complexities, faults, triumphs, joys, and sorrows. Because if we aren’t willing to confront the mysteries of faith, how can we hope to know not only ourselves but this God whom we profess to worship and serve each and every week? 

Well, for starters, faith isn’t a litmus test… There’s the tendency to view faith as being something that indicates whether or not someone is truly a follower of Christ, but let me tell you that we have no way of knowing what goes on deep within the human soul. If Thomas, a disciple a Jesus Christ, a witness to countless miracles and signs, still had questions and doubts where does that leave us? This is the whole point of the Easter story! It’s the reason why God came down to earth and took on human flesh because God wanted to know what it meant for us to live in a world that wrestled with both tremendous joy and unspeakable suffering. There is no definitive answer when we talk about having faith.  It’s something that is always changing. 

Whether we are new to the faith or have been going to church for decades, faith is something that does not lend itself to a clear-cut answer to whether or not someone is “in” or “out.” There is no decoder ring to determine who belongs and who doesn’t. We as Christians have tried this before, and each time we have failed miserably. You look back to periods in history such as the Spanish Inquisition, the fighting between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, and the segregation of churches here in America. When you process these things, you begin to realize that all of our attempts to section off parts of the body of Christ have been futile. If we do not live with the hope that is found in the resurrection, then what are we doing? How can we possibly expect to understand ourselves in relationship to God better, if we exert so much energy into creating an exclusive club? 

So what else is not a part of faith… Well, faith isn’t an excuse to be ignorant of reality or the struggles in which we all encounter at some point or another… Maybe I’m not phrasing this in a way that really makes sense, so let me try and unpack it. We’ve all heard and used phrases like, “I’ll pray for you,” “I’m thinking of you,” “I’ll send you my thoughts and prayers.” They’re pretty common phrases that we use on a semi-regular basis, but there are some sayings that we probably shouldn’t use in certain situations depending on what is going on in somebody else’s life. While faith is a balm that can soothe both our body and soul, it doesn’t ask that we turn a blind eye to the fact that many things in life can’t be assigned a rational reason or purpose. 

I remember my time as a hospital chaplain and a family member told a patient, “If you have faith that God will heal you, then God will.” Really? Are you sure that we’re looking at the same person? They’re on their deathbed… How can you tell them that if they have faith, God will heal them? When we find ourselves in the valley of the shadow of death, both literally and figuratively, I don’t imagine that someone telling you to have faith would be much of a comfort. It wasn’t too long ago that we found Jesus hanging on a cross… That was real… There was real flesh, real blood, that was convicted of a crime that was not justified… On the cross, Christ looked down to find Mary weeping with a multitude of others… Jesus didn’t tell her to have faith that everything would be okay. Instead, we found a Jesus who cared about who would welcome her into their community once he was gone. Faith doesn’t give us a way to ignore these realities but asks us instead go around and seek out those who are hurting so that we can offer not only words but the physical sign of God’s presence as well. 

So we have a better understanding of the things that do not make up faith. So what fills in those gaps? What are the things that make up faith, and what is at the core of the belief that Jesus presents in this morning’s Scripture reading? Perhaps we’ll find that once again, Jesus breaks our expectations, our standards of ourselves and others, and comes to bring us into a deeper relationship that sustains and nurtures us, because we have a living a faith, a faith that calls us to action, to get up and go out from our pews into the world that God created, leaving behind our prejudices, fears, and hate.

Faith is a journey… Faith is something that should not remain static. It’s not a precious family heirloom that is meant to be shrouded in time-honored tradition and gathers dust and cobwebs. On the contrary, our faith should almost be like a quilt that is assembled by many different people. Some pieces make it unique, make it ours, but some parts demonstrate how our faith has been impacted by those whom we have met and by the events in our life. If my faith today was the same as it was 10 years ago, I should be concerned… Because that means that nothing has happened. Nothing has challenged me to ask where God is calling me amid everything else that is going on in my life. If our faith, if our identity as a church has not changed in the past 10 years, maybe we need to ask ourselves where God is truly leading us. We can’t just sit in “friendly territory,” at some point, we have to move into the unexplored realms of life and faith to continually discover what God is asking us to do. 

Faith is meant to root us in reality when the world is so chaotic… Sometimes we will falter, and that’s okay. Doubts, questions, they are an essential part of what it means to have a strong faith. Thomas often gets a hard time for having doubted that Jesus rose from the dead. There are some valid points to be made for why Thomas shouldn’t have doubted the others, but Thomas accurately reflects our lives in the here and now. We have doubts, we have questions, we wonder why there is so much death in the world, we question why evil actions are so prevalent, and we long for the days when our soul can find refuge from the darkness and chaos of the world. There may be reasons for us to critique, Thomas, but there are even more reasons why we should look towards Thomas as an example of what it means to have faith in an uncertain world. 

And do you know what the best part of all of this is? It’s that Jesus is there… Jesus is there offering an abundance of grace and forgiveness. Jesus doesn’t rebuke Thomas, Jesus doesn’t chastise him, because he knows what it is like to live with the tensions of having faith in the divine, the unseen, and the real-life problems that we encounter in our everyday lives. The story of Easter is not just a story, it’s a way of life… This Easter season, we are asked whether or not we will journey on with a faith that asks questions looks out for our neighbors and seeks to embody the love and grace of God. It means that we’ll change, we’ll grow, we won’t just stagnate in our relationship to God, clinging to traditions that are no longer relevant, but flourish as we continue on with faith that God will lead us, both in our own lives and in our various communities. Amen.