We Have to Believe It to See It

A sermon preached by the Rev. Terence L. Elsberry, Rector, at St. Matthew's Church, Bedford, New York, on the Second Sunday of Easter, Year C, April 18, 2004.

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I

A New Yorker cartoon. The rector is standing at the church door after the Sunday morning service. The parishioner stops, takes the rector's hand, and says: “What you're telling me is I'll have to believe it to see it?”

II

The cartoonist meant it as a joke, but that's what Jesus implies in this morning's Gospel. He says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Then John, the author of today's Gospel, goes further. He writes: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in His name.”

When John says “life,” he means life in two parts. Life in this body, in this world, that is enhanced and enriched and given new meaning because we believe in Jesus. Life in the next world – eternal life with Him.

We see two kinds of faith here. Thomas' faith in the resurrected Jesus comes because He sees with His own eyes Jesus alive.

Jesus tells us here that He expects us to believe in Him even though we don't have the tremendous advantage given Thomas: the advantage of seeing Jesus standing before us in the flesh.

Poor Thomas has been given a bad rap through the years. “Doubting Thomas” we call him.

But I'd like to change that this morning. I'd like to change his nickname to “Believing Thomas.”

Why? Because Thomas only doubted for a short time. Then he believed with a powerful, life-changing belief for the whole rest of his life. Thomas' faith was so strong after the scene we heard described here the first Easter night in the upper room, that he became a supercharged apostle for the Lord. Thomas was so on fire with faith in Jesus that tradition says he took Christianity to India, and founded there a Church that still exists today.

But Thomas had to go through something to attain such a mighty faith.

Sometimes you and I have to go through something to gain our faith. There are different kinds of faith. When we're children, we tend to accept the faith of our parents. We tend to believe as they believe, as they teach us to believe – in God, in religion, in all aspects of life.

Then, with time, we begin to question what we've been told. We begin to wonder, to ask ourselves questions like: “That faith worked for my parents. But does it work for me? Does what I've been taught as a child make sense for the man or woman – or teenager – I am today?”

Then, for many of us, there comes a struggle to believe, a struggle to find a faith we can live with, a faith we can build our life on.

Thomas is important to us. He's not important just as someone who doubted, who was a skeptic Jesus had to prove His resurrection to. No, Thomas is important to you and me because he validates our own faith battles.

You may be one of the fortunate ones. You may be a person who has always believed Jesus is the Son of God, believed it from childhood on. Or you may be still in the process of struggling to believe. I know people who come to me and say, “I can't believe all this. I love God, but I can't believe everything the Creed says. Sometimes I feel when I say certain parts of the Creed I should cross my fingers! What should I do?”

If you're one of those people, I say, “Don't worry. Trust God. Ask Him to show you the truth of His plan and purpose for your life. Ask Him to make the reality of the resurrected Jesus come alive for you.”

Then there's another group. It's the group I count myself with. We're the ones who have an “owned faith.” We believe Jesus is God the Son, but we've believed it because we've come through a struggle. We have battled our way to belief from unbelief.

Thomas is our man.

You look at me and you probably assume, “There's Terry. He's an ordained minister. He's up there preaching faith all the time. He's always been like this.”

But I have not always been the man of faith you see before you.

I've had my struggles to believe. I've had to fight through to the faith I have today.

But there's something about a struggle that empowers us.

I'll never forget the night when in my despair, at my point of desperation, I knelt down by the old high-backed chair in an apartment in Atlanta, and I prayed, “Jesus, I don't know if you're there or not, but if you are, I need help. Please come into my heart and save me!”

And I've never been the same since. But I've come through a lot of battles to get to where I am today.

You fall in love. Life is beautiful. You get married. You think, “I will always love this man – this woman – just the way I do today. It's true in many of our relationships, not just marriage. We start out full of joy, filled with hope. Then come the struggles. Then we are hit with the unexpected blows of life. But when we set our mind, our heart, our will to love the other person – spouse, child, family member, friend – and the other person is at least as willing as we are to fight through trouble to victory, then we have something in that relationship that is far more precious than if we'd never had to fight for it in the first place.

Look around you. You and I are surrounded by heroes and heroines this morning. We've all been through tough times. We'll go through some more. We're survivors. We have something worth fighting for.

III

If you're fighting to save something or someone you care about today, don't give up. Ask God to come into the fray with you and lend you His aid. Especially if your battle is for a deeper, richer, stronger, more profound faith in the resurrected Lord.

The fight may be long and hard. But always it's worth it. Because as Jesus tells us, in believing we have life in His name.