[Propertalk] Thomas thoughts

[Ann Fontaine]

 From Lane Denson of Tennessee -- to receive these

join-oon at go.netatlantic.com

Easter 2B Jn 20.19-31

That we seem to remember the disciple Thomas more for his doubt than  
for his faith probably gives him a lot more grief than he deserves. We  
call him Doubting Thomas. Considering his enterprise and its quandary,  
Braveheart Thomas might be more appropriate.

While the rest of the disciples were cowering full of resentment and  
fear that they’d bet their lives and whatever fortunes on a loser all  
with the Romans breathing down their necks, Thomas was out pounding  
the pavement, risking arrest, renewing old contacts, checking the want- 
ads, and looking for work. He didn’t believe the talk about Jesus, and  
he wanted better evidence than the cowering behavior of his former  
colleagues.

But then, when he got what he wanted, he signed on for good or ill. He  
accepted his commission as an apostle, wrote a gospel, and, some say,  
started a church over in India. "Brother Thomas’s Sawdust Trail.  
Sounds like an evangelist to me.

We don’t have the hard evidence Jesus presented to Thomas. (If walking  
through closed doors with holes in your head and your side and your  
hands and feet can be called "hard evidence.") John, the Gospeler,  
knew that, but he apparently knew something else, as well. Faith is  
not only always surrounded by doubt and without evidence. Faith  
creates doubt and evidence.

Faith is risk, and risk wouldn’t be risk without doubt. And faith that  
comes only after evidence is no faith at all. It is trust, yes, but  
not faith. Faith is that act of the will, that daring commitment that  
climbs out on life’s limbs and leaps. And that is all the evidence we  
get.

It works two ways. My faith is a kind of evidence for me and maybe  
also for you. And your faith is a kind of evidence for you and also  
maybe for me. Our faith as a community — all that touch and go — is  
what makes church church. The ekklesia — the called — doesn’t even  
deserve the name if it is not first and foremost a community of faith  
— and probably of doubt, as well. And there is no evidence for that —  
even the kind that moves mole hills, let alone mountains — until there  
is a pulsing, dynamic, non-judging heart of love and justice at its  
core.

The disciples in the upper room would probably never have convinced  
Thomas until he experienced the vision of the risen Lord, himself. Nor  
if fear is keeping us in the closet would we ever convince those who  
pass by. Not until we show the world by the way we love one another —  
a rather risky leap, itself — can our witness ever become a winsome  
and compelling evangel for the Lord.

For it is in that nourishing and healing love that transcends both  
faith and doubt, wherever such love is found, within or without these  
buildings and their naves — and only there — and that is where the  
Lord is risen, where He is risen, indeed. It is there that we find  
"church."





Ann Fontaine
Wyoming GC2009 c3

http://seashellseller.blogspot.com

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