The Rev. Dr. Timothy Ives

First Congregational Church

Chappaqua, New York

April 22, 2001

John 20:19-31

“He takes a drag so long and deep on his cigarette that it can’t leave his lungs by the time he needs to breathe again, so he inhales the same smoke twice. ‘I don’t know what all goes on at your church,’ he says. ‘That’s your mother’s department.’

I want to control myself, I want to calm down, but I also want to slug Papa so hard that I knock the smoke right out of his head. Because it is a lie. It’s a bald faced, idiotic lie for him to sit there with his wrecked dreams and dead eyes telling me that church stuff is all ‘Mama’s department.’

‘What’s with you today?’ my dad grumbles. ‘You’re squirmin’ like a two year old.’

I can’t breathe, I can’t see, I can’t sit still.

‘Get those muddy boots down off the glove box!’ he snaps with fatherly annoyance.

And out it comes: ‘Then you quit smoking!’ I shout right at him. ‘And quit lying. And quit acting like you are dead.’

I see the fury come into his eyes, but I don’t see the fist that smashes into the left side of my face. My head feels like it is caving in. My mouth fills with blood. I cover my head and fall sideways. ‘Kade!’ My Dad calls my name.

I feel a stabbing in my eye and a roar in my ear. I feel Papa’s hands on me, hear wild apologies tangled in with the roaring.

‘Oh God I’m sorry!’ Papa moans through the roaring. ‘Kade I am sorry. But what is it with you? What do you expect from me?’

I don’t answer.

‘You know millwork isn’t what I want to do. It is not a game it is not an art, it is not even a skill. It is just a dead thing that I do so we can eat. I am a millworker Kade. And millworkers are the people who can’t be who they wanted. Do you understand that?’

I still say nothing.

‘Please, I never should have hit you! I never will again. I’m terribly sorry and I want to show it. So tell me please, right now if you can, what it is that you want from me. Tell me what you think I should be doing different, and if it is in my power, if it’s possible at all I swear I will try to do it for you.’

For a moment I say nothing, fearing I will sob, or choke on blood, if I speak. But then the words well right up with the blood, I am helpless to stop them: ‘I know you hate your work at the mill,’ I tell him and tears come the instant I speak. ‘I know you love baseball and aren’t doing what you want. But at least Mama fights. She says her dopey prayers no matter what! All I want is for you to fight, Papa. To fight to stay alive inside! No matter what!’

For a moment it seems as if he has turned to stone again. Then I hear him move toward me, till he’s inches away. I don’t turn or look, but I feel it now, ‘He’s just like a grown up boy, stuck in a body, stuck in life. And his life isn’t working. It’s not working at all. And he’s got no father, his mother can’t understand, he’s got no one to help fix him.’

Feeling this, knowing it, I turn to hold my father, as he’s so often held me. He makes a small rasping sound when my arms slide around him. He says nothing more, but I feel his broken breath, his broken love, his fear and his heartbeat.’

This is from a book that I have read from to you before. It says just about the first and the last thing about faith. And since more than anything else I am interested in teaching faith I thought I should read it. It is from The Brothers K by David James Duncan. It is a wonderful book about life, faith, baseball and learning how to love. It is well worth a read.

But this section is simply about faith. The boy tells his Dad what he has to do to have faith enough to live. He tells him to never give up.

This is essential to anyone who wants to live because there is so much in this life that conspires to just wear us out. It is so easy to give into the cynicism because optimism and a positive approach demands so much of us. It is so easy to give in to the idea that things can never change because to change things takes a whole lot of effort. It is easy to give in to hatred because love takes all we got. All the things of faith demand the very best of us and so it is not better but it seems easier to live without faith.

Which brings us to Thomas. Thomas gets a bad rap. Doubting Thomas, forever and always he is talked about as doubting Thomas. It reminds me of Judas. Judas means betrayal and forever and always it will mean betrayal but as I say quite often it was not so simple, the same is true for Thomas. We are to understand such doubt has no place in the world of faith, at least according to the Gospel of John. I don’t agree. Thomas doubts but his doubt is not an act of unfaith. It is an act of faith because what he is seeking to do is engage Jesus, and he does Again, doubting is not an unfaithful activity. In fact I believe that it is more faithful than just going along and asking no questions. Tell me who do you have a closer relationship? The friend who engages you in dialogue, who asks many questions, who trusts the bond of friendship enough to even challenge you on this or that or the friend who is afraid to bring up anything that might get a response? The answer is obvious. One person is a friend and the other is an aquaintence. I think you know which is which.

It was not enough for Thomas to be just an aquaintence of Jesus. He was looking for a closer relationship. He wanted to do this incredibly intimate thing. He wants to feel Jesus’ wounds. And demands it.

Nothing wrong with that. We can question God all we want. We can ask questions all we want. We can doubt God all we want. God is not afraid of this. None of that hurts anyone. The far greater danger is giving up on God. That is when faith stops and one’s life gets bound in a way that seems to have no hope.

So Jesus does oblige Thomas. Thomas comes to faith because of the questions he asked. And I think that he had a closer relationship to Jesus because of it. In fact if you read the words of Jesus after Thomas you can get the idea that Jesus is inviting not blind acceptance but rather a life time of seeking. Believing without seeing, without evidence of the outcome is exactly where faith is most powerful. So Jesus is not encouraging a kind of blind certainty but more doubting if we understand doubting to be a pursuit of God and not an escape from God.

Thomas was exactly right in what he did because he didn’t give up on the dead man. He didn’t give up on the dead man. The first step. God makes all things possible and if Thomas didn’t believe it he would have never asked the question.

Jesus got up. That is the message that Christianity is founded on and so there is nothing that we can ever truly give up on. Death is not final so hatred, division, fear, violence, oppression are not ultimate either. And so it falls to us to ask after all that afflicts this world and begin to heal it. That process begins with the faith to ask a question.