One of my friends in seminary was fond of the statement, “CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL.”  In that light, I have a confession to make:  I like to mow my lawn.  I like to mow my lawn because I like to see the results of my actions.  I like to see the patterns that are created by my pushing the lawn mower back and forth across the grass.  And I enjoy seeing the fruits of this work—a neatly and uniformly cropped backyard. 

   I think the disciple Thomas might have liked mowing lawns too—because he liked to see proof.  It was Thomas who, upon hearing from the other disciples that Jesus had appeared to them after his death said, “UNLESS I SEE IN HIS HANDS THE PRINT OF THE NAILS, AND PLACE MY FINGER IN THE MARK OF THE NAILS, AND PLACE MY HAND IN HIS SIDE, I WILL NOT BELIEVE” (John 20:25). 

   Eight days later Jesus appeared to the disciples again and graciously gave to Thomas the proof that he was searching for.  He walked up to Thomas and said, “PUT YOUR FINGER HERE, AND SEE MY HANDS, AND PUT OUT YOUR HAND, AND PLACE IT IN MY SIDE;  DO NOT BE FAITHLESS, BUT BELIEVING” (John 20:27)  Thomas then knew that this was indeed Jesus and he replied, “MY LORD AND MY GOD.”  And Jesus then asked rhetorically, “HAVE YOU BELIEVED BECAUSE YOU HAVE SEEN ME?  BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN AND YET BELIEVE” (John 20: 27-28).

    That’s the kind of faith that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews is writing about—THE ASSURANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE CONVICTION OF THINGS NOT SEEN.  That’s the most difficult kind of faith, isn’t it?  It is easy to believe in the power of a lawn mower when you can eyeball the results of your labor.  But it is more difficult to trust in that which we do not see and cannot scientifically measure.

   We hear the word FAITH use a lot these days:  Someone might say, “I have FAITH that it will not rain on my wedding day,” and what they really mean is, “I HOPE that it does not rain on my wedding day.”  Last week one of my nephews, an avid Yankees fan said, “I have FAITH that the Yankees will catch the Red Sox in the last half of this season and end up winning their division,” which is DELUSIONAL THINKING….I HOPE!  And recently a commentator on NPR said, “It would take a leap of faith to believe that Barry Bonds has not taken steroids.”  And that is called DENIAL.

   One of the best definitions of FAITH that I have ever heard comes from my second-cousin, Vanessa.  When we were in the Youth Fellowship Group we were asked by the advisors to come up with a personal definition of FAITH.  And Vanessa, who was a teenager at the time, devised an acronym for FAITH that has stayed with me.  Taking the five letters of the word FAITH, she insightfully said that FAITH means this:  FORSAKING ALL, I TRUST HIM.  That can be adapted, of course, to fit alternative conceptions of God:  FORSAKING ALL, I TRUST HER or FORSAKING ALL, I TRUST HIGHER-POWER.  Faith is about trusting in that which we do not see—the living and loving God, the compassionate and benevolent Creator of the universe, the loving One in whom we “live and move and have our being.”

    Abraham had this kind of faith.  God called Abraham in his old age to leave his home and all that was familiar to him “TO GO OUT TO A PLACE WHICH HE WAS TO RECEIVE AS AN INHERITANCE, AND HE WENT OUT NOT KNOWING WHERE HE WAS TO GO” (Hebrews 11:8).  This was a stepping out on faith, forsaking all that was familiar and comfortable, and trusting in the grace, compassion, and guidance of a companionate God, a God who would go with him, wherever he would go.  It involved trusting that God was leading somewhere (even if Abraham did not know)…and trusting that God knew what God was doing (even though Abraham did not know)….and trusting that God could see what Abraham could not see. 

   Sarah had that kind of faith too.  At a stage in life when she believed that she was past her child-bearing years, God revealed that she would give birth and that the descendants of the family she and Abraham would create would be “AS MANY AS THE STARS OF HEAVEN AND AS INNUMBERABLE AS THE GRAINS OF SAND BY THE SEASHORE” (Hebrews 11:12).  Having a child late in life had not been part of Sarah’s plan or expectation.  But she trusted that it was God’s plan and that God knew what God was doing.  So she, like Mary later, trusted in what she could not see—the grace, compassion, and guidance of an invisible, yet actual, and loving God.

   I think that one of the most difficult spiritual challenges that we face as Christians is trusting that God really is who Jesus reveals God to be—a radically welcoming, social-justice seeking, forgiving, present, and benevolent God.  And I think that a second difficult spiritual concern is trusting that we are really who God says that we are—the fragile, finite, fallible, yet beloved children of God..

   In the Christian mystic tradition there is a spiritual discipline that is called “practicing the presence of God.”  It means really believing that that which we have learned in Sunday School classes, confirmation sessions, and heard in sermons is actually true—that God exists, that God is always with us, that God always loves us, that God is always helping us—even when we do not understand what God is doing….and even when we fear or believe that God is doing nothing at all.  And it means paying attention to that vital, life-giving reality.

   “Practicing the presence of God” means trusting, by faith, that we are eternally and fully loved and cared about and that God, like the “prodigally generous” father in Jesus’ parable about the rebellious son, is always reaching out to us to comfort us, hold us, sustain us, guide us, and love us into being. 

   Recently a friend e-mailed me a story that I knew I had to work into this sermon somehow.  It is called “Saying Grace in a Restaurant.”

      Last week I took my children to a restaurant.  My six-year old son asked if he could say grace.  As we bowed our heads he said, “God is good.  God is great.  Thank you for the food, and I would even than you more if Mom gets us ice cream for dessert.  And liberty and justice for all.  Amen!”

      Along with the laughter from the other customers nearby, I heard a woman remark, “That’s what’s wrong with this country.  Kids today don’t even know how to pray.  Asking God for ice cream!  Why I never!”

      Hearing this, my son burst into tears and asked me, “Did I do it wrong?  Is God mad at me?”

      As I held him and assured him that he had done a terrific job and God was certainly not mad at him, an elderly gentleman approached the table.  He winked at my son and said, “I happen to know that God thought that was a great prayer.”

      “Really?” my son asked.

      “Cross my heart,” the man replied.  Then in a theatrical whisper, he added (indicating the woman whose remark had started the whole thing), “Too bad she never asks God for ice cream.  A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes.”

      Naturally I bought my kids ice cream at the end of the meal.  My son stared at his for a moment, and then did something I will remember the rest of my life.  He picked up his sundae and without a word, walked over and placed it in front of the woman.  With a big smile, he told her, “Here, this is for you.  Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes, and my soul is good already.” 

   I thought it would be wonderful, sacramental even, to have ice cream sundaes after church.  But I did not have time to make that happen.  But this story is about more than ice cream.  It is about the generous, undeserved, and radical grace of God exemplified by this thoughtful child.  We cannot literally touch grace, like Thomas reached out and touched the body of Jesus, but the assurance of our faith is that we can indeed trust in the kindness and care of God—THE ASSURANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE CONVICTION OF THINGS NOT SEEN.  GRACE, LIKE ICE CREAM, IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL.

   There is a wonderful story in Brendan Manning’s book, “The Ragamuffin Gospel” that goes like this:  A woman was claiming to have visions of Jesus.  An archbishop in her area decided to make a visit to her home to assess these visions were legitimate or the products of mental illness or an overly active imagination.  The archbishop decided to test the woman.  He told her, “The next time you see Jesus, ask him to tell you the sins that I confessed in my last confession.”  When he returned a week later, he asked the woman if she had indeed had another vision of Jesus.  She said yes.  He asked her if she had asked Jesus what he had last confessed.  She said yes.  And he asked her, “What did he say?”  She looked this religious man in the eyes and replied, “Jesus said, ‘I don’t remember.” 

    Forgiveness—we can’t reach out and touch it as Thomas reached out and touched the body of Jesus.  But we can trust in its reality in our lives:  THE ASSURANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE CONVICTION OF THINGS NOT SEEN.  FORGIVENESS, LIKE ICE CREAM, IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL.

   Sometimes the challenge of faith is trusting that God is actually with us when our lives are filled with extreme pain and unrelenting suffering.  In the familiar poem, “Footprints,” the writer is looking back on his life and he sees that when he was going through the most difficult times in his life, there was only one set of footprints in the sand.  At other times, when his life was smooth and comfortable, there were two sets of footprints.  Confused, he asks God why it was that when he most needed God, God had left him alone.  And God replies, “My precious child, I love you and would never leave you.  The times when you have seen only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

     In an article called, “Awakening,” Wayne Simsic, who has written several books on spirituality, writes, “Therese of Lisieux reassures us that even when we go to sleep at night, we are embraced, like a child, by our loving Parent.  God never forgets us.  We are always in the presence of the Love for which our hearts hunger.  We do not have to bring God into our lives as if God were somewhere else.  The presence of God is already the very context of our lives and of all reality…Intimacy with God has been present from birth.  We simply need to wake up to the spark of eternal Love at the center of our being.”

   We cannot reach out and touch God’s presence like Thomas reached out and touched the body of Jesus.  But by faith, we can experience God and trust God is indeed there--THE ASSURANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE CONVICTION OF THINGS NOT SEEN.  GRACE, LIKE ICE CREAM, IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL.

   In the last year Barbara Walters had a TV special about heaven.  She interviewed people from various religious traditions about their understandings of heaven—whether they believed it actually existed and, (if they did believe it existed), what it might be like and where it was located.  When I was a teenager our family dog, a female beagle named Buttons, died.  I was very distraught about this.  So I asked our pastor if he thought that that dogs go to heaven.  He replied that he believed that heaven would be more wonderful, beautiful, and peaceful than we could ever imagine.  He stated that he believed by faith that in heaven we would be reunited with all that we had loved here on earth, including our pets.  This brought great comfort to my troubled adolescent soul.

    The author of the Hebrews speaks of trusting that there is a life, a “homeland” beyond this one.  The writer speaks of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants as persons who journeyed in faith, who understood that they were “strangers and exiles on the earth” and who yearned for a “better country, a heavenly one” where they would be with God” (Hebrews 11:15-16).   

   And Jesus is recorded in John 14:1-4 as saying this:  “LET NOT YOUR HEARTS BE TROUBLED; BELIEVE IN GOD, BELIEVE ALSO IN ME.  IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY ROOMS; IF IT WERE NOT SO, WOULD I HAVE TOLD YOU THAT I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU?  AND WHEN I GO AND PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU, I WILL COME AGAIN AND WILL TAKE YOU TO MYSELF, THAT WHERE I AM YOU MAY BE ALSO.”

   In the fall of 2005 my father was diagnosed with a very virulent and fast-moving cancer that affected his lungs and spread to his bones and liver.  He was in the hospital the last two weeks of his life and he received there wonderful care from doctors and nurses and others.  My sister, Corinne, and I were with him as he breathed his last breath and when he transitioned from this life to the life that is to come.  While it was very painful to lose Dad, it was extremely comforting to trust that while he was no longer here on this earth, he had somehow passed into a new dimension of life that we who are here could not see….and can only imagine….and trust.  In that moment I was incredibly grateful for my faith—that I could trust that there is something beyond this life and that my father, who had been held and sustained by God during his earthly life, was now being held and cared for by God in his eternal life.

   Heaven—we cannot reach out and touch it like Thomas reached out and touched the body of Jesus.  But we can trust by faith in its reality--THE ASSURANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE CONVICTION OF THINGS NOT SEEN.  ETERNAL LIFE, LIKE ICE CREAM IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL

   A few weeks ago I was visiting a conservative church that is attended by one of my relatives.  I sat in on the adult Sunday School class.  The topic of the day was death.  And during the class the issue of death bed conversions came up.  It was the consensus of the group that it was possible for individuals to have legitimate spiritual turn-arounds on their deathbeds, and that despite a long history of sinful, even criminal behavior, these persons would go to heaven to be with God.  The thief who made a confession on the cross next to Jesus was cited as an example of an authentic death-bed confession.

    However, the group also agreed that if the person did not experience a conversion while he or she was still alive, that all bets were off….that the time was up….that the choice had to be made during this earthly life and that persons who did not find God here would be eternally condemned to hell.  The thief who died on the other side of the cross was seen as someone who falls into the category of the unconverted and, therefore, condemned.

   As I sat in that class—feeling out of place theologically with this last belief--I thought of the preaching of our former senior minister, Jim Crawford.  The one word that I most associate with Jim is that magnificent six-syllable word, “INDEFATIGUABLE.”  What a divine, easily mis-pronounceable, and rarely used word.  In fact, Jim is the only person I have ever heard use that word.  One of the things that I remember most about Jim Crawford’s preaching was his assurance of the INDEFATIGUABLE LOVE of God.  He would stretch out those enormous basketball arms, as if to enfold each and every one of us, and remind us that we are indeed upheld and held in the INDEFATIGUABLE LOVE of God—the love of God that never ends. 

   So I have a second confession to make:   I’ve decided that I do not use enough six-syllable words.  So I am going to add to our Old South theological vocabulary another marvelous adjective to describe the grace of God: UNERADICABLE—the love of God that cannot be eradicated.  If we take seriously Paul’s affirmation that, “NOTHING, NEITH DEATH NOR LIFE, NOR ANGELS, NOR PRINCIPALITIES, NOR THINGS PRESENT,NOR THINGS TO COME, NOR POWERS, NOR HEIGHT NOR CDEPTH, NOT ANYTHING ELSE IN ALL CREATION, WILL BE ABLE TO SEPARATEUS FROM THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD” (Romans 8:38), then it seems to me that the love of God extends to us, even after our earthly lives have ended and that somehow, unseen, mysterious, the love of God continues to be present.

   Eternal love—we cannot reach out and touch it like Thomas touched the body of Jesus, but we can trust by faith that it is real—the ASSURANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE CONVICTION OF THINGS NOT SEEN.  ETERNAL LOVE, LIKE ICE CREAM, IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL.

   On the front of this year’s UCC Desk Calendar and Plan Book is a quotation that I like very much:  “I LOVE MY CHURCH BECAUSE IT’S SORT OF LIKE THE WIZARD OF OZ--IT’S ABOUT HAVING A HEART AND A BRAIN.  AND COURAGE!”  It does not take courage to trust in the power of a lawn mower when you see the visible results.  But it takes tremendous courage to trust, especially in the invisible aspects of life, like grace and forgiveness and presence and eternal life and eternal love.

   As individuals, families, and a congregation I would invite us to ponder a couple questions in the days of this new week.  Where and how is God calling us to trust, by faith, in that which we cannot see?  And what step of faith is God beckoning us to take?

   As we seek that discernment, may God grant us the courage of Abraham—to trust that God is leading us even when we do not know what we are doing or where we are going.

   May God grant us the courage of Sarah—to trust that God is actively present and involved in unexpected births and miraculous surprises.

   May God grant us the courage of Thomas—to trust that it is alright to reveal our fears, doubts, and insecurities and to reach out for hope and healing.

   May God grant us the courage of those who have not seen and yet who believe—to trust in Your eternal care.

   Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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JOHN 20:24-29

   NOW THOMAS, ONE OF THE TWELVE, CALLED THE TWIN, WAS NOT WITH THEM WHEN JESUS CAME.  SO THE OTHER DISCIPLIES TOLD HIM, “WE HAVE SEEN THE LORD.” 

   BUT HE SAID TO THEM, “UNLESS I SEE IN HIS HANDS THE PRINT OF THE NAILS AND PLACE MY FINGER IN THE MARK OF THE NAILS, AND PLACE MY HAND IN HIS SIDE, I WILL NOT BELIEVE.”

  EIGHT DAYS LATER, HIS DISCIPLES WERE AGAIN IN THE HOUSE, AND THOMAS WAS WITH THEM.   THE DOORS WERE SHURT, BUT JESUS CAME AND STOOD AMONG THEM, AND SAID, “PEACE BE WITH YOU.”

   THEN HE SAID TO THOMAS, “PUT YOUR FINGER HERE, AND SEE MY HANDS.  AND PUT OUT YOUR HAND AND PLACE IT IN MY SIDE; DO NOT BE FAITHLESS, BUT BELIEVING.”  THOMAS ANSWERED HIM, “MY LORD AND MY GOD!”  JESUS SAID TO HIM, “HAVE YOU BELIEVED BECAUSE YOU HAVE SEEN ME?  BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN AND YET BELIEVE.”