RCL Easter 2A [i]
12 April 2026
Saint Helen’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Belonging not believing is the starting point.
As someone who was ordained priest on the feast of Saint Thomas, I have always had a particular devotion to an apostle whose image has been tarnished by the adjective ‘doubting’. Many people tend to forget that, when Jesus announced that he was going to Jerusalem knowing full well that the religious authorities were seeking to rid themselves of this trouble-making rabbi from Galilee, it was Thomas who said to the others, “Let us also go, so that we may die with him.” [ii]
After all, what did Thomas want that was more than the remaining ten apostles also desired. They did not believe Mary Magdalene and the other women when they told them that the Lord had been raised from the dead. While the women went about doing what needed to be done, it was these stalwarts who met behind locked doors for fear of the religious and Roman authorities. It was only when the risen Jesus appeared in their midst, when they saw the wounds in his hands and side, and when they heard his voice, that they believed.
So, just as the apostles had not believed the women who bore witness to the resurrection, so too did Thomas not believe the witness of his ten colleagues when they shared the news of their encounter with the risen Jesus. He only wanted what they had received. What is most remarkable about this story is not that Thomas does not believe, but that the Ten do not shun him because of his disbelief. One week later, despite his disbelief, Thomas is with them in their hideaway, continuing to belong and to behave as a member of their small community of disciples who are seeking to make sense of and to recover from the trauma of the preceding days.
Thomas’ transformation does not begin with his belief in the resurrection. His transformation begins with his continued belonging to the apostolic community and his continued participation in its way of behaving in a hostile environment. Belonging and behaving is what led to Thomas’ believing. Belonging, behaving and believing prepared him to be a witness to the new life made possible to all humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We all need to belong.
We all need to belong to a community that gives us an identity and meaning. One of the enduring myths of our society is that of the self-sufficient individual. Even those who ‘live off the land’ are dependent both on the providence of nature and on how the rest of humanity exercises stewardship of our fragile planet. We are all inter-connected and inter-dependent upon a network of relationships, some we can influence and others we cannot and can only marginally influence.
There are communities which define themselves so narrowly that they cannot see the necessity of this inter-connectedness and inter-dependency. When they describe how their community gives them meaning, they often describe themselves as ‘other than’ or ‘superior to’ or other exclusive terms.
Despite the many failures of the Christian community over time and throughout the world, the good news of God in Jesus of Nazareth is that there are no ‘others’ from whom we exclude from our communities. The death and resurrection of Jesus is not for ‘some’ but for ‘all’.
We all need nurture in life-giving and generous behaviour.
Communities that are truly meaningful, that embodied what I dare call truth, nurture and model ways of behaving that are life-giving and generous. Life-giving and generous communities resist evil and are not afraid to acknowledge when they fail and when they need to repent. Life-giving and generous communities seek Christ in all persons, seeing only neighbours not ‘others’. Life-giving and generous communities know that respect for the dignity of every human being leads to justice and peace for all. Life-giving and generous communities believe in the stewardship of the resources of our world so that every one of us has what we need to flourish.
We all need to believe, to fall in love with the way, the truth and the life.
When we belong to a community that is inter-connected and inter-dependent, when we find ourselves behaving in life-giving and generous ways, we discover that believing is birthed in us, a falling in love with the way, the truth and the love we have come to know and to experience.
Most of the time we think of believing as holding ‘certain truths to be self-evident’, dogmas that require primarily our intellectual assent. To some degree this is true; religious faith does come with a package of beliefs that have come into being over the course of two thousand years of reflection, conversation, controversy and reform. But it’s good to remember that the English word, ‘believe’, has its linguistic roots in the Germanic word ‘to fall in love with’ or ‘to hold as loved’.
As a priest I promised forty-five years ago that I believed in the Scriptures as the Word of God and that they held everything necessary for salvation. As a baptized member of the community, I have joined you in renewing our baptismal faith and commitments on numerous occasions. But, as I have grown older, I realize that I have made this confession of faith and these promises, because I have fallen in love with them and, more especially, with the community that holds this faith and these promises holy and life-giving.
I recently participated in a podcast as part of a series being made by Saint Matthew’s Anglican Church in Abbotsford. At one point I was asked, in one way or another, why I ‘believe’. Here’s my answer. Seventy-three years ago, my parents brought me into the life of the Christian community. From the day of my birth, I have belonged; my questions were not dismissed and my identity as a child of God was honoured. From the day of my birth I have behaved in the manner that my community taught me was life-giving and generous. When I have failed, I have had to face the consequences, but I have not been shunned or expelled. I still belong. And, after so many years, I have fallen in love with the God who has brought this community into being. Like anyone who is love, there are times when I’m don’t like what’s going on in my community, but I’ve never fallen out of love.
Our love of the Scriptures, even the parts that confuse and infuriate us, nurtures me and gives me life. Our respect for the intellect, even when we acknowledge that we are far from understanding, nurture me and gives me life. Our fidelity to tradition, even when we recognize the need for change, for reform, for setting aside, nurture me and give me life.
It is our belonging, our behaving and our believing that makes us, just as it did Peter and Thomas, witnesses to the new life that has come into the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It is our witness to a life of faith that begins in belonging before it comes to believing that is the leaven that will raise the lives of those who find their way to this place.
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