St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church – Delafield, Wisconsin
2nd Sunday of Easter/April 8, 2018
V. Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Acts 5:27-32/John 20:19‑31]
"Seeing is believing." This common sense commonplace is fairly straightforward. If you can't see it, can't verify it through your own experience, it isn't real, isn't believable. I'm sure that many folks would say that "doubting" Thomas should be the patron saint of scientists. Didn't he have the researcher's mind as he looked for the evidence to corroborate the other Apostles' assertion, "We have seen the Lord"? Sure, he had seen Jesus bring Lazarus back from the dead, but this was different. Thomas had seen Jesus on the cross. He had seen the nails and the spear do their work. He had seen the stone seal the entrance to the tomb. For Thomas to find this hypothesis credible there would have to be a lot of hard evidence ‑‑ nail prints and spear wound touched and probed ‑‑ before he could believe.
To be honest, Thomas wasn't much of a scientist. While science ‑‑ and I should remind us all that scientia, knowledge, or its pursuit, is the proper description for more than just the physical or experimental disciplines ‑‑ involves facts, evidence, and proof, it also requires belief. A true scientist believes in what she or he is about. Thomas Kuhn changed the way scientists looked at their field when he introduced the concept of the ‘paradigm shift’ in his Structures of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn, however, ultimately framed his description of paradigmatic shifts in religious language: faith, belief, conversion. One has to have faith in the paradigm, believe in the work undertaken, and/or be converted to a new way of perceiving what one sees. Thomas, it seems to me, would have benefited from meeting his twentieth century namesake.
When I was in high school we watched a film on the circulatory system, "Hemo the Magnificent." Something from that film has always stuck with me. At the very end of this rather fine documentary on research into how our life's blood works there was a reflective section on the task of the researcher. They quoted Max Planck – the father of quantum physics – who said: Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.
[Where Is Science Going? (1932)] And then they quoted Paul to Timothy, "Prove ye all things to see if they are of God."
You see, a believer isn't a Polyanna, a naif. Frankly, I distrust those who blithely wish to discount the value of the intellect and reason. My studies of the Christian faith have led me to believe because of the keen intellects who have been witnesses to the wonder of God's work among us in Jesus Christ. Scholars like Anselm of Canterbury who uttered what I have taken as my own motto: Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeks understanding) or “America’s theologian” Jonathan Edwards, who saw God's beauty not only in the Word, but in his studies of biology and botany as well. Christians stand in a marvelous intellectual tradition, as Anselm said, "I believe in order to understand" (credo ut intelligam); to that I say 'Amen.'
Thomas got his chance when Jesus again appeared in the locked upper room, spoke his calming words, "Peace be with you." And then he took the 'Thomas challenge,' saying to him, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." He saw and he believed, but Jesus had more to say, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe." Those words, that blessing is for us ‑‑ for you and for me.
Peter declared the core of the Christian proclamation, the essence of our story, when he stood before the council, just as he had before his fellow Israelites in Acts chapter two. He preached that God raised Jesus up from death, "because it was impossible for him to be held in its power." John Chrysostom in his Easter homily speaks of how death thought it had gotten hold of just another poor mortal and found itself facing God‑in‑the‑flesh and was overcome. Peter and the other witnesses to the resurrection were brought beyond their own limited understanding of life and death; through Christ they were brought into the presence of the author of life and death. The beauty of Peter's proclamation is realized in his first letter, "Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls" (1 Peter 1:8-9). As Jesus said to Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."
The truth of the matter is that even the apostles had to go beyond experience to come to faith in the resurrection. Although they were "eyewitnesses" to this remarkable occurrence ‑‑ how else could you explain the presence of the Lord in his glorified body being able to come through solid walls? ‑‑ they had to come to a whole new understanding of God's presence and of themselves. For the Christian, believing is seeing.
Thomas saw and believed. We do not see, yet believe and as a result begin to see the world in a wholly different way. When we come to know that believing is seeing we look at ourselves differently. We realize that here is a person loveable and possessed of enormous worth ‑‑ a child of God ‑‑ as the hymnist says, "Changed from glory into glory." When we come to know that believing is seeing we look at those around us differently. We see all persons as loveable, children of God, children for whom Christ died and was raised up again. How can we possibly judge ourselves, or anyone else, in the manner we used to? How can we possibly ever look down upon or condemn another ‑‑ one for whom Christ died and was raised up ‑‑ because they do not rise to our standard? How can we look at any material thing in the same way, since it also shares in the benefit of the fresh start given all creation by the resurrection?
John tells us that, "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." If believing is seeing, Jesus continues to do many signs through his body: the church. If believing is seeing, you and I become the signs through which others may come to believe and have life in his name. If believing is seeing, and I believe it is, the stuff and the people of everyday life become sacraments, means of encounter with the living Christ.
Believing is seeing and what we see in our believing leads us to cry out: "My Lord and my God!" Amen. Alleluia!