Easter 2A
27
April 2014
Saint
Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver
BC
Focus Text:
John 20.19-31
On
the 21st of December 1981 I was ordained to the priesthood after six
months as a transitional deacon. In The
Episcopal Church the 21st of December is celebrated as the feast of
Saint Thomas. After all, it is the
shortest day of the year and, in some cultures, rituals were held on this day
to coax the sun to return and warm the earth in time for the spring planting. It seems a fitting day to remember a saint
who is sometimes called ‘doubting’ Thomas.
I
had been experiencing my own bout of doubt.
My position on the staff of the diocesan office was a temporary measure
and the Bishop had been searching for a curacy. Just before my ordination, the word came that I was to become the
curate at Christ Church in Denver, one of the larger parishes with a
congregation that included ‘high church’ Anglicans, Evangelicals who wanted the
richness of Anglican liturgy and members of the so-called ‘charismatic’ movement. One of the constant challenges for the Rector
of Christ Church was maintaining a balance in the clergy staff and I was to represent the modern face of the ‘high church’ tradition.
As
it often happens in Anglican parishes, the newest member of the clergy staff,
especially if he or she is younger than the other clergy, is given
responsibility for the children and youth programmes. So one of my first responsibilities was the
preparation of a large group of teenagers for confirmation.
Christ
Church had a long history of lay involvement in the confirmation
programme. Married couples, young and
old, were recruited to be small group leaders.
A detailed curriculum had been prepared with learning modules as well as
question and answer sessions. Most of
the learning modules were based on the memorization of certain facts and
teachings.
I
really liked the four couples who had volunteered to be mentors and I was
looking forward to working with them and the young people. But I hated, absolutely hated, the curriculum. Now don’t get me wrong. There is some value in learning about the
church’s traditions and practices; confirmation is simply not the place for
that kind of learning. Confirmation,
whether of younger or older people, is about exploring our faith and deciding
how we are going to live that faith in the world. In confirmation, those who were baptized as
infants or young children make a commitment to live their lives as baptized
members of the Christian community. We
choose to follow Christ and need to learn what following Christ really means for
me and for the community in which I live and what following Christ costs in
today’s society.
I
filed the curriculum away and drew up a new programme based on the promises of
the Baptismal Covenant, those eight, now nine, affirmations and promises we
make at baptisms and on those occasions when we all renew our commitment to
following the way of Jesus of Nazareth.
At
my first session with the teenagers, I asked them what they thought it meant to
say, ‘I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.’ All of these kids were product of North
American education. They knew more about
science than I did at their age. They
were familiar with the theory of evolution and the ‘Big Bang’. Half of the group came from single-parent
families and of those families two-thirds were headed by the mother. I was not interested in those days with a
feminist critique of male-gendered language for God nor was I interested in
participating in the tiresome debates about whether belief in evolution
contradicts the witness of the Christian scriptures. I simply wanted them to think about how God
is and is not a father, to consider how our earthly fathers show and do not
show us the loving face of our Creator, to ponder not how the universe came
into existence but why it came into existence.
The
small group discussions were lively and the four couples thanked me for the
opportunity to talk with the kids about something important and relevant. There was no ‘fill in the blank’ answer
sheets as in previous years; there was only adults and young people talking
about their faith and about their uncertainties. That night I sent the kids home with an
assignment: Have the same discussion
with your parent or parents.
A
few days later the Rector called me into his office. He had been overwhelmed by telephone calls
and in-person conversations with several parents of the young people in the
confirmation preparation programme.
‘What kind of crazy curate have you hired?,’ was the theme of these
conversations. The parents wanted their
kids to learn the answers about being an Anglican, about navigating the prayer
book and such, not plague their parents with uncomfortable questions about one’s
relationship with God! Fortunately, the
Rector supported me and the crisis was weathered.
For
far too long people, both religious and non-religious, have assumed that
religious life is about answers rather than exploring the questions of our
lives in the company of others. Some of
those others we can touch and see every day, while others we can only know
through their experiences as recorded in the Christian scriptures, in the
theologies and histories they wrote and in the stories of their own struggles
to live in relationship with the Holy One of Israel who sent the Word into our
midst and who continues to guide us through Holy Wisdom.
What
this fascination with ‘answers’ rather than a commitment to loving the
questions that our relationship with God raises has accomplished can be quickly
stated. On the one hand, it has led to
people leaving communities of faith when they begin to ask questions about the
tradition. Perhaps this is why so many
young people leave the church, not just because they become more and more
involved in various activities, but that we do not take their questions
seriously and compassionately nor do we share with them our own questions and
uncertainties. I once suggested a
replacement liturgy for confirmation; I called it the ‘Rite of
Questioning’.
When
a child turned twelve or thirteen, I suggested that we invite them forward
during the eucharist for a very brief ceremony.
I would begin by telling them the story of Saint Thomas. Then I would say, ‘You are now entering a
time of your life when your job is to ask questions about everything, even
God. I ask you to make only one
promise. When you have a question about
God or Jesus or the Spirit or the church or anything else about the Christian
movement, I want you to promise that you will ask one of us first. We promise to take your question seriously
and to be honest when we do not have an answer or are unsure ourselves. Will you promise to do this?’ No one has taken me up on this suggestion
yet.
On
the other hand, our fascination with answers rather than questions has given
rise to both conservative and liberal fundamentalisms. Fundamentalists have answers for all the
questions you or I may have about any aspect of our faith. Since fundamentalists rapidly lose patience
with people who have questions or doubts, they also contribute to the growing number
of people I mentioned above who leave the community of faith when they realize
they and their questions are not welcome.
I
love today’s story of Thomas; every time I hear it, I become more convinced
that the role of the Christian community is to embrace those who have questions
and those who have doubts. In this story
I see a model for our own times. The
apostolic community has just experienced the complete re-orientation of their
world and their expectations. Even
first-century people knew that no one rises from the dead, yet here in their
midst was Jesus, their teacher and, by his own words, their friend. That experience was not ‘an answer’ but an
invitation to live life in a new way, a way that would lead many of the early
community to the farthest boundaries of the world as they knew it.
Even
Thomas could not stay away from this community, despite his not having shared
their transformative experience on Easter.
And he was welcomed into their midst, with all his doubts, with all his
questions. Why? Because even though the first witnesses to
the resurrection had seen Jesus, they also had doubts and questions. They also were uncertain as to what the
future might mean for them. But
together, doubter and witnesses, they could face that future. In prayer and study and conversation they
could explore what the resurrection meant for them and for the world in which
they lived.
I hope that we are just such a community that welcomes the questioner and the doubter, a community
that is willing to share our own uncertainties.
But let us also be a community that is committed to following the way of
Jesus together, committed to the truth that God is not yet finished with us nor
with our world, committed to living compassionately, generously, courageously
even when we are uncertain as to what lies ahead.
As
the American expatriate author Gertrude Stein came to the end of her life, she
asked her long-time companion, Alice B. Toklas, ‘What is the answer?’ When Toklas remained silent, Stein is said to
have laughed and said, ‘In that case, what is the question?’ The life of faith is filled with questions
and we are rewarded, from time to time, with insights that satisfy our longing
for God and our longing for the coming of God’s promises. But it is in the courage to question within the community of faith and to welcome the questioner and the doubter that the
insights come. Amen.
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