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Today's Sermon
Mar. 30th, 2008 04:58 pmMarch 30, 2008 Low Sunday
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 am.
Readings: Acts 2:42-47; Ps 118 2-4, 13-15, 22-24; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
In the 1950’s one of the most popular TV programs in the United States was Life is Worth Living. The presenter was Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. It was required viewing in my grandmother’s house, and I remember watching the very dashing figure of Bishop Sheen speaking to a studio audience and to the viewers. He dressed not in a suit and clerical collar, but in fullest regalia: purple skullcap, full purple cape, cassock with purple piping and buttons, and shining pectoral cross. He is credited with the conversions of several famous people to Roman Catholicism in the United States.
I mention him because I’d like to talk about a saying of Bishop Sheen’s that has passed into the books of memorable quotations. His definition of an atheist is: “Someone with no invisible means of support.”
The Church seems to think that this Gospel for Low Sunday is quite important, as it is one of the few Sundays of the year which has the same Gospel for each year of the three-year cycle. The result is that I have preached on Doubting Thomas four times, or 10 percent of the sermons I have preached since I arrived in the United Kingdom.
Faith is, by its nature, a belief in something that is invisible or intangible. When we flip a light switch, we express our faith that something invisible, the electricity supply, will do something visible: produce light for our use. Unfortunately for us, we cannot turn faith on like a light switch.
We hear about “faith” in church almost every week; we say we are of the “Christian faith”. The struggle comes when we leave the church building on Sunday after Mass and try to bring that invisible characteristic “faith” with us.
The disciples had this very difficulty after the first appearance of Jesus in their midst. They saw him, they heard him speak, they received the Holy Spirit from him. However, when they brought that news to Thomas, outside the locked doors of the place where they encountered Jesus, it escaped them as if it were water being carried in a sieve.
Thomas’s reaction to the disciples reporting their joyful news of faith to him was predictable. Perhaps he was a bit annoyed that Jesus had chosen to appear to the disciples without waiting for him to arrive. It’s like starting a marriage service without the best man, or beginning High Mass without a deacon. He demands visible signs that their report is true. Visible signs of an invisible faith are what he needs, and he won’t take any less. He will never believe it otherwise.
I’m certain that Thomas then told them: Don’t you dare even think of meeting without me next time! I imagine them expecting Thomas to arrive, bolting the doors behind him, and then waiting nervously to see what would happen.
Jesus came and stood there, and gave Thomas the tangible proof he had demanded: here is my side, here are my hands: now, believe!
What is interesting is that the Gospel says that Thomas did not actually put his hand into Jesus’s side, nor his fingers into the nailholes in his hands. The only reaction Thomas gives is: “My Lord and my God”.
The lesson that John obviously wished to convey here to those reading his Gospel, which was written very late in the first century AD, is that they, who had not seen Jesus, must believe in those unseen things, just as those who had seen Jesus believed. They were only one generation removed from eyewitnesses. We are 60 or more generations removed from the eyewitnesses; they have returned to dust just as surely as we will become dust.
How can we, believers in something that happened 2000 years ago and in an invisible God who loves us all, convey that belief to other people who ask for proof that God exists?
We certainly cannot simply conjure up Jesus and offer his side and hands to those who are today’s Doubting Thomases. Richard Dawkins would not be convinced by anything we could say or do or produce.
Someone who has recently tried that is a Hindu priest who, in India, said that he could, using the power of his prayers, strike dead anyone he wished. A skeptical presenter, on Indian television, challenged the priest to come onto his show and strike him dead. Predictably, despite the priest’s best efforts, the presenter lived. Another effort later on also failed.
Do we say, therefore, that because of this failure the Hindu gods are imaginary? Our faith might impel us to do that, but that would be wrong for us to say.
The tangible signs of faith in our society are not great and mighty cathedrals, or the prayers of billions of Christians, or the good works that Christians do. You and I and every Christian on the planet today are the only tangible signs of faith today.
Just as Jesus was alive and showed himself to the disciples, we are alive, and show ourselves to many dozens of people every single day.
Our faith in God should not be left at the door leaving the church; in order to show that God is alive and working in us, we need to take it with us. Be a friend to everyone, kind to those we know and those we do not know. Be charitable; don’t just give the coppers in your pocket to charity, give as much as you can without compromising your own financial position. Give your time to help those less fortunate than yourself: tutor a child who has difficulty with reading or arithmetic, help out in a soup kitchen, read to a blind person.
We show in our lives that we do indeed have an invisible means of support: Christ Jesus, who died and rose again. And through our words and actions, we make our invisible means of support visible to all. AMEN.
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 am.
Readings: Acts 2:42-47; Ps 118 2-4, 13-15, 22-24; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
In the 1950’s one of the most popular TV programs in the United States was Life is Worth Living. The presenter was Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. It was required viewing in my grandmother’s house, and I remember watching the very dashing figure of Bishop Sheen speaking to a studio audience and to the viewers. He dressed not in a suit and clerical collar, but in fullest regalia: purple skullcap, full purple cape, cassock with purple piping and buttons, and shining pectoral cross. He is credited with the conversions of several famous people to Roman Catholicism in the United States.
I mention him because I’d like to talk about a saying of Bishop Sheen’s that has passed into the books of memorable quotations. His definition of an atheist is: “Someone with no invisible means of support.”
The Church seems to think that this Gospel for Low Sunday is quite important, as it is one of the few Sundays of the year which has the same Gospel for each year of the three-year cycle. The result is that I have preached on Doubting Thomas four times, or 10 percent of the sermons I have preached since I arrived in the United Kingdom.
Faith is, by its nature, a belief in something that is invisible or intangible. When we flip a light switch, we express our faith that something invisible, the electricity supply, will do something visible: produce light for our use. Unfortunately for us, we cannot turn faith on like a light switch.
We hear about “faith” in church almost every week; we say we are of the “Christian faith”. The struggle comes when we leave the church building on Sunday after Mass and try to bring that invisible characteristic “faith” with us.
The disciples had this very difficulty after the first appearance of Jesus in their midst. They saw him, they heard him speak, they received the Holy Spirit from him. However, when they brought that news to Thomas, outside the locked doors of the place where they encountered Jesus, it escaped them as if it were water being carried in a sieve.
Thomas’s reaction to the disciples reporting their joyful news of faith to him was predictable. Perhaps he was a bit annoyed that Jesus had chosen to appear to the disciples without waiting for him to arrive. It’s like starting a marriage service without the best man, or beginning High Mass without a deacon. He demands visible signs that their report is true. Visible signs of an invisible faith are what he needs, and he won’t take any less. He will never believe it otherwise.
I’m certain that Thomas then told them: Don’t you dare even think of meeting without me next time! I imagine them expecting Thomas to arrive, bolting the doors behind him, and then waiting nervously to see what would happen.
Jesus came and stood there, and gave Thomas the tangible proof he had demanded: here is my side, here are my hands: now, believe!
What is interesting is that the Gospel says that Thomas did not actually put his hand into Jesus’s side, nor his fingers into the nailholes in his hands. The only reaction Thomas gives is: “My Lord and my God”.
The lesson that John obviously wished to convey here to those reading his Gospel, which was written very late in the first century AD, is that they, who had not seen Jesus, must believe in those unseen things, just as those who had seen Jesus believed. They were only one generation removed from eyewitnesses. We are 60 or more generations removed from the eyewitnesses; they have returned to dust just as surely as we will become dust.
How can we, believers in something that happened 2000 years ago and in an invisible God who loves us all, convey that belief to other people who ask for proof that God exists?
We certainly cannot simply conjure up Jesus and offer his side and hands to those who are today’s Doubting Thomases. Richard Dawkins would not be convinced by anything we could say or do or produce.
Someone who has recently tried that is a Hindu priest who, in India, said that he could, using the power of his prayers, strike dead anyone he wished. A skeptical presenter, on Indian television, challenged the priest to come onto his show and strike him dead. Predictably, despite the priest’s best efforts, the presenter lived. Another effort later on also failed.
Do we say, therefore, that because of this failure the Hindu gods are imaginary? Our faith might impel us to do that, but that would be wrong for us to say.
The tangible signs of faith in our society are not great and mighty cathedrals, or the prayers of billions of Christians, or the good works that Christians do. You and I and every Christian on the planet today are the only tangible signs of faith today.
Just as Jesus was alive and showed himself to the disciples, we are alive, and show ourselves to many dozens of people every single day.
Our faith in God should not be left at the door leaving the church; in order to show that God is alive and working in us, we need to take it with us. Be a friend to everyone, kind to those we know and those we do not know. Be charitable; don’t just give the coppers in your pocket to charity, give as much as you can without compromising your own financial position. Give your time to help those less fortunate than yourself: tutor a child who has difficulty with reading or arithmetic, help out in a soup kitchen, read to a blind person.
We show in our lives that we do indeed have an invisible means of support: Christ Jesus, who died and rose again. And through our words and actions, we make our invisible means of support visible to all. AMEN.
