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| "Pacific
Currents"
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference
Minister, April, 2002 SEEING IS BELIEVING
Seeing is believing. On Easter morning, before dawn, three women went to the tomb and saw that it was empty. They believed. Mary Magdalene met the risen Christ in the garden. She believed. The women told the twelve, and the twelve didn't believe. But Peter and John saw the empty tomb-and believed. Seeing is believing. On Easter evening, Jesus appeared to the disciples who were hiding behind locked doors. Those disciples believed. But Thomas wasn't there with them. [Maybe he wasn't fearful enough to have been hiding? Maybe he had other business. Who knows?] Anyway, he hadn't seen so he wasn't about to believe. In that regard, Thomas wasn't any different from any of the other followers of Jesus. Over the centuries, though, it seems that preachers and teachers of Scripture have really liked to dump on Thomas. However, to talk about "doubting Thomas" seems unfair unless we also talk about "doubting Peter" and "doubting Matthew" and "doubting Cleopas" and all the rest of them. Until they saw with their own eyes, they doubted. Seeing is believing. Yet , the Gospel contends, there are those who have not seen, but have come to believe. Consider these words scrawled on a wall of the children's section of Auschwicsz: I believe in the sun, even if it does not shine. I believe in love, even if I do not feel it. I believe in God, even if I cannot see God's face. Believing does not require seeing. More likely, believing requires courage. Courage to go beyond the world of manageable size we have constructed for ourselves in our spiritual blindness. Courage to use the sight we have been given. Writing on March 11, I am aware that most of us feel that we've seen too much, now that we've seen how the twin towers crumbled, and the nation shuddered, and airliners roared and flared into instruments of carnage. Even those of us who had managed, until mid-September, to be insulated against the driving winds of poverty and despair, garbed in the Kevlar-like protective coloration of white privilege, strangers to capricious violence and malice now sense the fragility of fortresses, the elusiveness of security. Will we see that massive bombings have not eradicated terror? Will we have the courage to go beyond the satisfying flexing of well-defined military muscle, to new stretches of ingenuity in weeding out the roots and runners of terrorism? At Christmastime we told the story of how, in the bleakest hours of the night, during the season of the shortest days, while the peace of the Roman Empire fell like a shroud over Europe and Western Asia and Northern Africa, muffling the cries of conquered peoples, and, at their expense, building up the freedoms and wealth of Roman citizens, there came glad tidings. The people who had walked in darkness-the darkness of oppression; the shadowlands of grief; the gloom of despair; the dusk of depression; the fog of loneliness-saw a great light, the beaming of extravagant love from the core of creation. That's the light shining through the Savior who exasperates us by talking about needing to die in order to live; giving up everything, so that we can have abundant life; putting our trust in God rather than anything earthly. This is counter-intuitive, non-sensical, virtually unbelievable stuff. But, seeing is believing. There's a story-too long to relate here in its entirety-about a woman named Ruth Degrafenried, who encountered an escaped convict on her front porch in rural Tennessee; told him to drop his gun, come in and have a meal, and then go back to prison. After she fed him and got him dry clothing she phoned the State Police who arrived in great numbers and heavily armed.. Mrs. Degrafenried told them to put away their weapons, the young man was coming back voluntarily, and not to hurt him. Asked later how she had had the courage to do all that she had done, she simply replied that she was a Christian. So what if the serenity of her household was disrupted? So what if the world suddenly loomed menacing and unmanageable on her front porch? She saw that she could not control what would happen, all she could do was act faithfully. We are all made in the image of the One who loves us whole-heartedly and irrepressibly. We follow a Savior who exasperates us by talking about needing to die in order to live; giving up everything, so that we can have abundant life; putting our trust in God rather than anything earthly. Have you seen? Do you believe? 
~ Mary Susan Your comments are
welcome For previous editions of "Pacific Currents", click here. |
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