The power of belief

Second Sunday of Easter April 11th, 2021 Confirmation and Reception John 20, 19-31 Why is it so hard to believe? You would have thought that Thomas would have wanted to hear the good news. You would think that Thomas would have been elated to hear that Jesus was alive. But no, Thomas refused to believe. Or put it in other words Thomas wanted to believe that Jesus was dead, he didn’t want to believe that Jesus was alive. Thomas had spent all that time with Jesus. He had heard the message and seen the miracles. Thomas even witnessed the Resurrection of Lazarus. You would have thought that Thomas would have done anything to hear the good news, but maybe for Thomas the one thing worse than a world with Jesus dead was one in which he was alive. We don’t seem to want to believe good news. We want to hear the bad news. You know we hear the bad news, we hear that Tiger Woods was seriously hurt in the car crash, but does anyone know how he is recoverying? That doesn’t get covered. We hear about mass shootings and the tally of 4 in Orange, 6 in Georgia and 10 in Boulder, but we don’t hear the stories about those who survived. The same is true of the 13 who were killed in the car crash in El Centro, but what about the 12 who survived? Even this whole pandemic, many stories about those places where the virus is spreading, the number who have died, but very few stories about those places where the virus is under control or about folks who have gotten better. It is easy to deal with death and despair. Someone dies and we have an elaborate funeral service. Someone gets better and they just show up again. We have grief ministry but we don’t have celebration ministry. It seems that we know how to handle grief, we know what to say, but hope is much harder. Maybe Thomas didn’t believe because he wanted to grieve. Maybe he wanted to be alone in his despair. The terrifying prospect of Easter is that God was calling Thomas to return to the place that crucified Jesus with a a very dangerous gift: hope! Hope in the power of God; Hope in the unending reservoir of forgiveness and Hope in an abundance of love. It would make Thomas seem like a fool. Who could believe such a thing? Today we celebrate the sacrament of confirmation and we welcome new members into our church. You are called to be a fool who dares to believe in God’s power to call dead things to life. You are invited to join a church that is called to be a sign of hope when people seem to prefer despair and death. We are getting ready to leave this pandemic. Our governor has just announced that the 15th of June all restrictions will be lifted. It is time to leave the isolation of quarantine but we can’t return to “normal” we can’t return to the way things were. We live in world with people who like Thomas find it so very hard to believe Good News! The work that Jesus left us his disciples is to believe. Believing includes showing compassion and forgiveness and working for a more just world. Believing involves a whole lot more work than not believing. It is harder to believe the Good News than to believe the Bad. Like Thomas we find it hard to believe but we do believe and because we believe we are called to share the Good News. See this article by Esau McCauley for a fuller explanation in the power of belief.

https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=the+unsettling+power+of+easter