Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Acts 2.14a,22-32; psalm 16; John 20.19-31

Why do people come to faith? And why do they lose it? I was a very rational nine-year-old and have a very clear memory of going to an older brother with a crisis of faith, feeling that my Sunday school religion couldn’t possibly be true.  He wasn’t interested, and I lost interest in God. When I came back to the church at 19, though, it was for emotional reasons. You see, viewer, I had fallen in love. 

I had already chosen to study philosophy and theology out of a compulsion to make sense of the world, which had at least answered some of my nine-year-old questions. But I went to church for the first time in ten years because a very pretty girl asked me to.I find it hard to explain what happened next. All I can say is that I had an overwhelming sense of the presence of God; not far from terrifying, not far from discovering your wife has made you a great pile of bakewell tarts; not far from your first crush at a school disco: it was a calling. Looking back, that moment has been the most decisive experience of my life.

After being a victim of the best-selling evangelism strategy of ‘flirt to convert’ – and people like Jesus and St Paul must have had some charisma to attract such a following – I naturally questioned my experience.  I’ve seen destructive spirituality, where ‘religious experience’ turns quietly into manipulation and abuse; enough to be sceptical; but I have also seen how faith can change people; can lead them to remarkable things.

 Our spiritual journey may be barely perceptible, may look like a steady walk, may be a sprint and hide, may all be done at high velocity going backwards. It will have different phases related to what’s going on in our lives. Through my mid-twenties I only went to cathedral evensongs because I found that there I could engage with ‘the beauty of holiness’, but avoid the two things I hated about Christianity – bad sermons, especially long bad sermons, and other Christians, who after all can be unfriendly, judgemental and above all dull.  This was somewhat ungenerous but eventually I did find a church which I fell in love with, and felt I belonged, and again experienced that sense of calling, this time to serve as a priest.  If I’m going to have to listen to long, bad sermons I can at least give them myself. 

Now St John’s gospel has an odd character. He’s never given a name but referred to just as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’, or the ‘beloved disciple’.  He’s usually understood to be St John, one of the 12 apostles, and author of the Gospel.  What is clear, is that for the original readers of the Gospel, the beloved disciple is the hero and the disciple with whom that particular church had a personal connection. When the church read (red) of the beloved disciple they identified with him as the founding father of their church. As a follower of Jesus, there at the last supper, the crucifixion, running to the empty tomb (as we heard last week), it’s his testimony that’s the basis for the gospel and the faith of this particular church where the Gospel was written. 

 But there’s something funny going on here. In today’s reading we have Thomas, one of the twelve who finally meets the risen Christ in the most physical way:seeing and touching the wounded body, proclaiming: ‘My Lord and my God!’ But what does Jesus say? ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

This is the original end of the Gospel, where the point of the book is laid bare, that reading you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God and so have life in his name. St John’s Gospel is written as the generation of original witnesses to Jesus’ life and resurrection comes to an end. The testimony of these disciples is recorded for future generations. We have here a transition where we’re moving from Christianity as people who followed Jesus, to the Church that will spread across the entire world; and there’s a new kind of encounter with Christ, through word and sacrament. But how will Christianity continue when we no longer physically meet Jesus?  It’s a little bit like the question Christians are asking themselves today across the world: What is my faith without buildings, sacraments, after-church-coffee and real people?

Jesus answers here, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’, The non-experience of the new believers is superior to that of the apostles. This is the new faith. If your faith can live beyond the show of church, the polished singing, the impressive lectern, the high ceiling; the familiarity of sacraments, then you are truly blessed.

 And in last week’s Gospel there was an even stronger endorsement. If you remember the Marys have all gone to the tomb to prepare the body and found it empty. Upon hearing this Peter and the beloved disciple get their daily exercise, running to the empty tomb. Being the hero for this community, the beloved disciple, outruns Peter. And then we’re told ‘Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed’.  He saw and believed. But what did he see? He saw an empty tomb. He saw nothing. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’.

By the time this Gospel is written Jerusalem and the temple have been sacked and burnt to the ground. The centre of the new Church, the Jerusalem church, has also been destroyed, the apostles martyred.  This community of the beloved disciple, away from the centre, possibly in Ephesus, stands at the beginning of a new age, a growing network of churches, Jews and Gentiles who have never been to Jerusalem and were born after the death of Jesus. No wonder then that their hero is one who has not seen and yet come to believe.

Each one of us here has a different story and a different experience of faith. We may have an experience sometime in the past that we draw a quiet assurance from, we may feel regularly, or occasionally, touched by the presence of God, through music, sacrament or the Word.  It may be David Cameron’s patchy reception of Magic FM in the Chilterns. We may never have had any experience of God but still follow what we cannot see because we know it’s right, because of our love for our fellow creatures, or because our partner does.  But in times of doubt it may comfort us that the hero of the most spiritual and theological gospel has not seen and yet came to believe. That it’s the empty tomb that is the first scene of revelation in all its ambiguity, that does not seek to prove God but asks us to trust him.

 Much of what is most important in the world is what is not seen; from oxygen and gravity to our hidden desires, music played from a window to encourage the neighbours, and the invisible God.  Right now, we may already have forgotten what the inside of St Margaret’s looks like; for some it’s the longest you’ve ever gone without receiving bread and wine. It may seem foolish to base one’s life on things that are not seen; it can be a struggle, and involve sacrifices. And yet all the things that raise us above being mere animals are connected to this realm of the unseen.  The community of the beloved disciple has spread throughout the world, but it remains a contested community, whose experience and belief is always questioned. As we find ourselves once again in the Easter Garden, the empty tomb raises its perennial challenge: is it the scene of death or of life? The Gospel answers with its 2000-year-old benediction: ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’