“That’s it for now!”

Karen Sloan 24/04/2022

Readings - John 20:19-31

I Wake Close to Morning – Mary Oliver

‘Why do people keep asking to see

God’s identity papers

when darkness opening into morning

is more than enough?

Certainly any god might turn away in disgust.

Think of Sheba approaching

The kingdom of Solomon

Do you think she had to ask,

“Is this the place?”’

What to say on my last sermon for a little while.  Not that its my last sermon for ever, it’s not, just for the next few months, then you will still hear from me once a month.

But what about today.  Maybe it’s serendipity that the reading is about Thomas, who I actually love, because he was one of the earliest materialists.  “I won’t believe unless I can see the facts, nothing exists except those things that can be measured and weighed.”

So much of my journey has been from that purely scientific, pretty rigid position when I was younger, to something that embraces the mystery of life, and the mystery of God. And I have said it so much in the last few years you are probably sick of it.

A faith that’s flexible, a bit unconventional, and hopefully inclusive of other searchers.

A faith that says, while we are made of blood and guts, and bone and tissue, there is something else, something extra, something almost unexplainable that is also part of being alive.   Something that can’t be measured but that interacts with our inner world and raises us to a different level of living.  That drives us to love, to connect, to help one another.  This something has always been present in life, in the developing universe, in the process of evolution, and is present in us.  A separate entity yes, but just as cells are separate entities and together make more and more complex substances, so this makes us more than what we could be.  What emerges is something greater than the sum of the parts. 

This extra mysterious bit is often called God, spirit, breath, or wind and is a creative force so central to life and all its goodness it cannot be distinguished from us. For me all people are carriers of this light for it is found within all people, at all times, and in all places.  It drives us to be better than we are, both as individuals and as a society and a world, even if we don’t acknowledge or worship it.  

And I do see it, strangely, in the life and teachings of Jesus, not as the sole window, but a window for me, that speaks to me.

As Frederick Buechner has said,

“Being a Christian is about living, participating in, being caught up by the way of life that Jesus embodied, that was his way.   Thus it’s possible to be on Christ’s way and with his mark upon you without ever having heard of Christ and for that reason to be on your way to God though maybe you don’t even believe in God.”

And so with this pretty loose understanding, I forge on, exploring how to be a God botherer in the world, using the human Jesus as my guide.

Maybe that’s Thomas’s story as well.  He ended up writing a gospel or at least one of his followers, and being faithful until death to the message he saw and heard in Jesus.  Even with all his doubts.  The story of him touching Jesus wounds, reminds me of a metaphorical awakening that all of us might have sometimes, that what is true sometimes comes from a vision or experience that touches us at a very deep level.  Marcus Borg had one of those, and it changed his life.

It is called the great encounter by Henri Nouwen.

Someone shared their encounter with me a few weeks ago, and after that I pondered what was mine. 

When I think back I have had odd moments when the truth of what we say and do here becomes so real, so right.  Words from the preacher, songs or quiet time.

But for me I have never doubted there was something more to life, like I said before, since I became involved in teaching anatomy and human biology.  In that space, the fact of  us, that we are alive, that we think  and feel and love, is so amazing that it has led me to here.  And while I sometimes have thought I’ve  made it up, like my favourite quote, the sense that there is more, so much more has never left me. I would have to say that was my great encounter.

And since then, along my journey, I have sensed what the celts call  thin places. Where the spirit of God breaks through my consciousness and reenforces the idea that we are not alone.

These thin places can be anywhere, and can happen at any time, often they can happen when we get in the flow of the love of the universe.  Regardless I would encourage you to pay attention, for it is those times which make the other times, the dark times bearable.  God as I have said many times, doesn’t disappear, it is us who wander off.

So let me in the end leave you with encouragement and love and hope for the future.  A future bound together.  And my favourite quote from Kari Jo Verhulst, who is a writer for the Sojourners magazine.…

 `I sometimes wake at 3am with a start, jolted by the certainty that we had made God up. Given the dispassionate nature of the world, and the banality of our cruelty and self-absorption, the idea of a loving, present God seemed overwhelmingly absurd, a feeling as sad as it was terrifying. Thus it has been a great and humbling relief to discover that I exist in the company of millennia of God lovers who also awaken to this dreadful sense of improbability. Those wiser than I, rabbis and poets, theologians and preachers, locate these midnight churnings squarely within the life of faith. I heard one say that if you are not convinced you are making it up at least a third of the time, you are spiritually dead. So, I now say to myself on nights like these, `This is what it is to be alive`.

Amen