"Doubt and Believe" - The Rev. Dr. Kurt Gerhard, April 11, 2010

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John 20.19-31

Peace be with you. My name is Kurt Gerhard. Thank you for your prayers as I have transitioned to the St. Patrick’s community and moved to the Washington DC area. I very much look forward to building meaningful relationships with you as we progress together on a path to deepen our spiritual lives. Over the next few months,

I will introduce myself and listen to you as we begin our ministry together. Before I begin this sermon, I want to express my gratitude to the many people who have led this parish through the transition between rectors, most especially the vestry, search committee, the clergy and staff who have toiled long hours to continue the mission of this parish. At the same time as I express gratitude for your service, I also warn you that your work as leaders is not done. As we turn to a new chapter in the ministry of St. Patrick’s, we will work together to set the priorities of this congregation of faithful Episcopalians, to do the work God calls of us.

I come to St. Patrick’s after serving as a full-time school chaplain and a part-time parish priest. For some of you, that may raise some doubts about my priorities. You might be asking, “Will he concern himself with the church needs or will his primary focus be on the ministry of the school.” I’m sure that there are other doubts. Doubt is good, it comforts us, and it will no doubt always be with us. Doubt offers us the chance to feel like we can control the things around us. I have some doubts of my own. I’ve joined a new community of people. I’ve met a few of you but the majority of us have only met through St. Patrick’s able leaders. This being my first day, I am unsure where we are headed or what will happen along the way. Doubt trains us to believe that if we just had a little more information, we might be able to take a chance on something new. On the other hand, St. Patrick’s mission concludes by saying, “We dare to dream and to take risks.” That is what Jesus called us to do and I hope that we can dream together about where St. Patrick’s is going.

When I was a child, I had a set of encyclopedias in my room. Each letter had its own slim volume reporting about things that people had discovered or facts about a famous person’s life. When I didn’t know something, I would sit on my bed, open up the encyclopedia and discover something new. It was Google or Wikipedia before the internet. There was a special encyclopedia volume titled “Space.” Each planet was highlighted with pictures, drawings, artist renderings, graphs, and long written descriptions about what people knew. This volume was my favorite. I read every single word printed on its pages. Then, not now, I could recite facts about the different planets, their size, distance from earth, and the number of moons. I could spew trivia about space like I had been there, but really; I had just read and memorized it from this over-sized book with full-page color pictures. The facts on those pages were truth. I can’t tell you how I knew, but I did. I had the same confidence with the statistics printed on the back of baseball cards and what my favorite adults told me. It’s only later in our lives that we begin to doubt and as we begin to question the things around us, we demand more information and proof before we believe. And that is why today’s lesson from the Gospel of John resonates with who we are. It is about two things. One, it describes how Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on the disciples and sent them on a mission to change the world, and about an absent disciple who demanded proof before he would believe.

We hear this passage every year on the 2nd Sunday of the Easter season. The story begins on the original Easter with the disciples huddled in fear in a securely locked home in Jerusalem. The doors were locked because the disciples “feared the Jews.” They feared that they might meet the same fate as Jesus. While they waited there for the authorities to forget about them, Jesus appeared. He greeted them with now familiar words, “Peace be with you.” And then Jesus showed them physical proof that it was truly him before breathing the Holy Spirit upon them and charging them with a new mission. The disciples were to go into the world doing the things that Jesus had been doing. It was now their turn. They were the Church. The disciples believed, at least we think so, except for Thomas who was inconveniently absent when Jesus appeared. I don’t know where he was or why he wasn’t hiding in fear like the other disciples. But for whatever reason, Thomas heard about Jesus’ visit secondhand. Although he had spent years with the other disciples and with Jesus, had heard all that Jesus taught about his overcoming death, had been a part of the Last Supper only days before. Thomas told them that he wouldn’t believe unless he could see and touch Jesus’ crucifixion wounds for himself. This is pretty reassuring to me. Don’t we often want proof, don’t we take time before we join the bandwagon, aren’t we taught to critically think about what is happening around us? Was Thomas the first Episcopalian?

For whatever reason, Thomas’ doubts about what his friends experienced kept the entire group holed up in that same home. On the following Sunday, a week later, Jesus appeared again. He immediately turned to Thomas and offered the proof he requested (Jesus knew about Thomas’ demands). But instead of reaching out his hand to touch the wounds, Thomas proclaims, “My Lord and my God.”

It’s somehow easier to see ourselves in a disciple like Thomas. I, for one, breathe a tremendous sigh of relief when I hear Thomas admit, “Unless I see … I will not believe.” Seeing really is believing – we want to see to be sure – we’re not really certain something is real, or right, if we cannot sense it for ourselves.

But at the same time, we don’t have the opportunity afforded those disciples. Jesus doesn’t show us his wounds on Easter Sunday. Not in a literal sense, but we come to believe through the work of disciples. The ones on whom Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on that Easter Sunday, who have passed that breath to each successive generation. We see and experience Jesus through our liturgy, in Baptism and Eucharist, through song, through Handel, through service in Haiti, through our school, through our love for others. Doubting and questioning faith strengthens our journey but doubts can also frighten us from doing anything. They can cloud our dreams and stifle our desire to take risks.

We, like the ancient disciples, want to control everything and we want to be safe at any cost. At times, we symbolically lock ourselves into the status quo. This makes us content with the way things are and therefore we fail to take the risks that will change our lives. We want to see the proof and to question out every possible issue. Jesus calls us to open the locked doors of our lives, to see the need of the world and to move forward to address them.

The work ahead of us cannot be done alone or in a vacuum, we need the support of everyone. I ask you today to join St. Patrick’s as we dream together about our future. Lets join this journey with an open mind, dare to dream about what the future might hold, and be willing to take the risks to answer God’s call. It means unlocking the door, having faith for things unseen, gaining strength and insight through the sacraments, receiving support from the gathered community known as the church. It means stretching ourselves to set our priorities: in education, in service, in love for all those who depend upon the ministry of this place.

We can be a place that acts on our dreams and at the same time doubt and question together in the hope that we come to know the Lord as Thomas did.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Peace be with you. [Amen]

The Rev. Dr. Kurt Gerhard - kurt@stpatrickschurchdc.org

St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church 

April 11, 2010

2 Easter C