Faith is about seeing with our spirits.

I love that the first Sunday out of the chute after the resurrection Easter we get Thomas, every year Thomas shows up on this particular Sunday one week after Easter. I love that Thomas he is just like us—with questions and doubts and maybe even a little baggage.

 

Now in many ways  doubting Thomas, as he is pejoratively come to be known as,  gets the wrong end of the stick--Thomas request  for some sort of proof isn’t all that surprising given what is at stake— a man who is stone cold dead comes back to life---  who’s not going to have questions about that.

I am not surprised  that he says to the disciples who have already had their own opportunity to examine the wounds " Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” 

Can we blame him?  This is huge leap—to believe that someone who was stone cold dead –is back to life.

Someone I read this week said Thomas request for proof might be similar to being asked to critique a movie we had never seen or a book we had never read . 

How would we respond to someone who has asked us to critique a movie we had never seen?

We might say “Well I’ve heard that it is good, but I haven’t seen it. Let me see it first and then I can tell you what I think about it”  

We who live here in the 21^st century  are people who have been very much shaped by the Enlightenment-- we  have become conditioned to not believe things that we can’t see with our two eyes. We want to be able to touch things with our own  two hands-we want to be able to use our brains to reason and to understand the world around us.  We want tangible proof.   We want to see the marks in His Hands.

Bertrand Russell, a noted philosopher and  agnostic, was asked if it turns out that there is a god and you get the judgement day and God asks about your unbelief--- what would you say, “You gave us insufficient proof.” 

“You gave us insufficient proof.” 

That’s the thing about God,—there’s not a lot to work with at least with through our enlightenment eyes—there’s not a lot of proof when it comes to things like God or the resurrection.   There is no mathematical formula that  we can develop that points to God-there is no scientific explanation for a man being raised from the dead after he sealed up in the tomb for three whole days. 

But faith is more than just seeing with our eyes and touching with our hands or being able to reason a way to God.   

Faith is about seeing with our spirits—seeing things through the lens of our souls, faith is about connecting with the divine through our hearts—  all things that can’t really be measured by science, all things that we can’t put our hands on and touch. faith is about seeing not with our five senses, but with something beyond our eyes and our ears.   

I can remember when I began to ask discern whether I was called to be priest.  At first I began to think man it would be a lot easier if Jesus would just show up at the end of my bed and said “Be a priest in my church.” 

But would that have been easier? Maybe it  would have--  until it I started to think maybe that was a dream or a hallucination. I wouldn’t ever be able to prove it wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t until I began to sense something   and something connected in here did I began to become more comfortable with  the idea that God might be up to something.  

When we see with our hearts and see with our souls we begin to see God and Jesus in everything— when we see like that expressions of love become moments when God tears into our lives and we begin to know God’s unconditional  love .

When we see with our spirits a perfectly timed word, or poem or piece of scripture or a song on the radio becomes pearl of wisdom spoken from God’s mouth to our hearts.

When we see with our hearts a moment of peace that surpasses understand or  a moment when we are filled a supernatural  strength to face something we never knew we could—those  become moments of God blowing his ruach his spirit within us. 

We are enlightenment people who want proof—who want to touch who want to see but that will probably never get us to Jesus--that will never get us to God—we don’t get to see the wounds on this side of life  at least not with our eyes. 

However when we see with our hearts, see with our spirits we are going to begin to see that  God is right here and all around.  

And that my friends is good news.