April 19, 2020
Thoughts on the Second Sunday of Easter:
Doubt does not keep God away.
Doubts, and we have many, do not scare the Risen Lord Jesus.
We have come to think of relationship with God
In binary terms––all or nothing.
We believe in God, or we don’t.
God exists, or God doesn’t.
Jesus rose from the dead, or he didn’t.
God has learned we human beings are like that.
We think of love, grace, relationship itself,
As things, things that must be proved, plotted, predicted
Or, we will not believe them,
We will not trust our life to something insubstantial.
There is enough fake news in life,
Enough inconsistency, loneliness, disappointment
To feed a lifetime of doubts.
In the last few months we have come to doubt
All the sure, measurable, trustworthy aspects of our life:
Science, medicine, government,
the way business works
our careers, our future,
our ability to take care of those we love,
Our own body even,
The country we are, the country we will be,
When we will get our next hug,
Are all in doubt.
God knows that about us.
From one vantage point we spent an entire Bible
teaching God how we doubt.
Abraham, Moses, David, Gideon, Jonah, Job, Jeremiah
At the start, even Mary and Joseph had doubts.
Peter, James, John,
Martha and Mary
The woman at the well,
Nicodemus,
Judas Iscariot, Thomas
All of them really, as much as they wanted to believe Jesus
Believe that love is stronger than death
Had their doubts-
Doubts confirmed by Good Friday
Doubts not easily dispelled by stories of a resurrection.
From another vantage point
The Bible is not accumulated stories of our doubt.
It is God’s story of persistently chasing after human beings.
God is never discouraged.
God comes to us even as we spit on his face.
God reaches through centuries of doubt with this story,
this gospel: love, grace, connection, attachment,
Relationship that cannot be proved, plotted, and predicted
Are real, the origin, the very stuff of life.
They are the reality that beckons us
when this chapter of life ends
Our doubts die, and at long last
God has us all to Herself.
That’s what heaven is, being with God-sans doubt.
So maybe this Easter you believe with all you have and are,
And maybe you don’t and haven’t for a while.
Maybe as much as you want to believe,
Like Thomas (who really is all of us) you have your doubts.
We drift between believing and not being so sure,
Between commitment and looking for something else to trust.
None of that changes God.
None of that stopped the Resurrection.
None of that keeps God from loving you
with everything God’s got.
That is what Easter means:
A God of love, who, believe it or not, never quits on you.
Amen.