Proof

Easter 2A—Text: John 20: 19-31

Love/Hate relationships. We’ve all got ‘em. I have such a relationship with this gospel. This gospel we attribute to a writer we know simply as John. Tradition has held that this was a man that lived a ridiculously long time, was a disciple of Jesus, wrote the least historically accurate gospel, and then decades later was exiled on the island of Patmos where he wrote the Book of Revelation. Oh, and he is the beloved disciple in his own gospel. Our brains know better. We hear these things and I imagine we look like a Lewis Black routine [-exploding head-].

And yet, we love John, anyway. We love the writing—it’s clearly the best written gospel—and we love the imagery. We love the depiction of the distant, transcendent Jesus that has no qualms about his divinity, and has a downright cockiness that we want the Son of God to have.

Unfortunately for us, John, on the other hand, is human. Last week he needed to prove that he (the beloved disciple) is both better than Peter and humbler. He bests him in a footrace, but lets Peter go first. Aw, shucks! What a guy! Look how morally superior he is!

Then you have this week’s gospel which seems to have two very different and very interesting conundrums:

1. Chronology: this gospel shows Jesus’s appearance to the disciples twice and the disciples don’t seem to be expecting him.
   
2. John’s humiliation of Thomas.
   

So, Jesus appears to the disciples twice. And a week apart. Think about that for a second. Last week we rejoiced in the risen Christ, right?—Jesus appears to Mary M. She is to tell the disciples that Jesus will appear to them, Jesus then shows up, though they don’t seem to be expecting him (remember the door is locked). But one of them is missing, so he leaves, comes back a week later as if to say “Is Thomas here yet? Jeeze Louise! Where the hell have you been?” I don’t know what Jesus was doing for that week. None of the other gospels suggest this double return—just John. And the room is locked. And Jesus just sort of…shows up. They look one way and then: “Oh Jesus! You scared me!”—he’s there.

And then there’s Thomas. If we read this gospel as most of us are inclined to—calling the singled-out disciple “Doubting Thomas”—we are led to believe that he is a bad disciple for suggesting that he would like proof—for suggesting that a crazy man standing in front of him could be the risen Christ.

Our favorite obsession is for the proof. This is not an obsession for the truth, mind you, but for the proof of a defined reality. Two high profile stories were in the news over the last few weeks, one you definitely heard about and one you probably didn’t.

The first was the retired black pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, The Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He is the spiritual guide for Sen. Barack Obama, and you no doubt heard the clarion call for the proverbial public execution of this man’s character; on the eve of Holy Week no less. And you probably missed the symbolism of the denigration of his message, a message about our embodying the Kingdom of God all because of a YouTube soundbite. Pastor Wright had the audacity to preach about injustice among us—about how far we are from what God wants from us and from what Jesus taught.

The second is a death row inmate in Georgia named Troy Davis. On March 16th, the Georgia Supreme Court decided in a 4-3 decision not to give Mr. Davis a new trial, after spending the past seventeen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. This was his final appeal and he will soon be executed. The court wasn’t swayed by the rescinded testimonies of virtually everyone that testified against him at trial, including the man who has since confessed to the crime. DNA evidence does not place him at the scene and there is evidence of police tampering and coercion of witnesses. The court is not interested in a current understanding of truth, but in defendingold proof.

Both of these real experiences have a lot to do with racism and fear and injustice and oppression. They deal with our fear of the real truth discussed here—a truth that exists with or without proof.

A truth that flies in the face of how we have been conducting business. But if you’re still not convinced, look at how we react to the Bible, to the historical record, to the tradition—we demand proof. We demand that we see those nails to believe. No doubt when anyone stands up and talks about the human that wrote these words, and that these words are not historically accurate we get scared. We worry about our faith, our tradition, our inherited beliefs, and we even fear for our personal experience with the divine—that it might go away. We are frightened. We are those disciples locking that door, protecting ourselves from the outside world that may attack us. The world won’t execute us for sedition, but to bring facts and findings and questions. It would bombard us with all manner of concern and interest in why we gather each Sunday, what we rattle on about, and why we continue in our arcane worship of a deity that we have colluded in silencing for 1,700 years.

But listen to these words:

"Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

Elaine Pagels in her book Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas discusses a first century conflict between two communities of believers: those that followed John and those that followed Thomas. If you have read the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in the middle of the 20th Century, you can see a very physical and Jewish understanding of Jesus—so different from John’s transcendent and powerful Jesus. John’s community was more powerful and John manages to sneak some jabs into his gospel about Thomas, most prominently found in this passage. He knocks Thomas for not being with them, shows up and not believing them, then believes only after touching a physically present Jesus.

But I don’t think that the story is about Thomas needing proof that Jesus was raised, but about the coming work and about the nature of belief in a proof-less post-Easter world. Jesus’s message is still a kingdom-building ministry. He comes to the disciples on Easter to prove to them he was raised and comes again a week later for Thomas. But he is using a living parable—he is showing us the nature of how we believe. He comes to the disciples to prove and gives them the opportunity to help Thomas believe—and he does what any of us do—he demands proof! In using this living parable, we are exposed to what changes in the Jesus Movement when Jesus is not physically present to lead them. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” he says—a blessing not for the apostles, but for those that come after. That includes us!

Jesus offers the grace of God to new followers through the work of the disciples and belief that has nothing to do with proof.

This is the crux of this gospel—and this is the thing that separates us. We watch in our public sphere as politician’s pastors and death row inmates are condemned for public fear of the truth. We watch this, and we ignore how easily we are swayed by so-called proofs: of convincing arguments. Whether it is a phrase extracted from a passionate sermon, or it is the testimonies of people coerced by the police, we latch onto it and we wrap our belief in it.

Proof is the foundation of the Intelligent Design debate in schools (Creationism repackaged) and is also the theme of Richard Dawkins’ attacks on behalf of science—as if the scientific community really wanted him to write The God Delusion. Both sides are arguing over proof—as if this were the foundation of our belief. In a course in Philosophical Theology, it became abundantly clear to me that proofs for the existence of God were just as faulty as proofs against: they all fail. But the truth is that both of these groups are clearly missing the point.

John, in all of his confusing and conflicting writings has given us the most clear understanding of our call to ministry as a church: belief. This doesn’t have anything to do with theology or creeds or recitation of facts or memorization of scripture or the focusing our attention on evangelism, it is about belief despite all these things. It is belief that the Kingdom of God is worthy of our time and that Jesus is a persona worth following. It is about your personal faith and our corporate faith. It is belief that the community gathered brings us to Jesus, not Him to us. It is belief that the Christ risen will help us—save us—and bring us closer to God. Belief is not about existence, it is independent of existence. May we soon believe in God in the same way God believes in us.