Easter 2 B

I was once at a workshop on legal advice for clergy, and the speaker was a former attorney who had become a baptist pastor. He was disgusted by a recent article that he had read about pastors who secretly admitted to being what the article called “secret atheists.” So, these were pastors who professionally administered their job of leading people of faith but at the same time secretly expressed doubts about their own faith. I don’t know if it had anything at all to do with the workshop topic, but our presenter spoke about being very concerned that these secret atheists might be out there leading our churches.

I remember feeling kinda sorry for him and wishing that he was a Lutheran, because then he might share my fairly radical belief (and I always get in trouble for saying this) that we are all secret atheists, that by our very nature as humans we disbelieve in God every chance we can get. If, for example, you could spend a typical day in my brain, based on the uncharitable thoughts that I have toward others, and the time and attention that I pay on my own selfishness, you might surmise that I spend a lot of time as a secret atheist, or maybe you’d sense that I do believe in God… But that I believe that God is me.

This strikes me a very human condition that we at the same time find we can believe and trust in God while doing and thinking things that suggest that we actually don’t. This is part of what it means to be both saint and sinner as Luther would say. Or, as one biblical character cries out to Jesus: “I believe; help my unbelief!” The truth is that unbelief is our default state, and we need God’s help even to believe. In other words, we are all atheists until that point that God gives us faith.

This is why we baptize infants like McKinlye. She hasn’t passed any test. She isn’t able yet to recite the Apostle’s Creed. Her relationship with God is all about what God does.

In the Gospel we have heard today, the first disciples, too, seem to exhibiting signs of secret atheism. They have now witnessed the crucifixion. They have seen or heard that Jesus had been raised exactly as he said. Between Jesus’ life, death, and the empty tomb, you might think that they have seen enough to believe. Look, they’ve seen more with their eyes than we have. Even though they have spoken with, eaten with, pledged allegiance to the Son of God, on the night after the resurrection, they are hiding. And afraid. Acting as if it wasn’t God’s work all along. Acting as if God had forsaken them. Even the closest followers of Jesus struggle with secret atheism.

Thomas says out loud that he needs to see to believe. But it sure seems to me like all the disciples are struggling in their faith, locked in hiding, still afraid of what the death and resurrection of their Lord meant for their lives. After all, the world didn’t look much different. The same people who were shouting ‘crucify, crucify’ were still out there. Pain and anger were still out there.

Because of Thomas, we have the phrase ‘seeing is believing,’ but I wonder if it doesn’t work the other way. For the disciples, for us, maybe believing is seeing.

Maybe the faith that God creates in us, the trust that fills our lives with hope, helps us to see differently.

You don’t have to be an accomplished theologian to realize this world post-easter doesn’t look a whole lot different than it did before. In the same week that Christians around the world celebrated Easter a man was shot in the back by an police officer. Children went to bed hungry. Christians and others worshiped behind closed door because their faith is against the law.

But even still we are given faith for seeing life where it looks like death. Seeing strength where it looks like weakness.

This is not just spinning the story or re-framing the same picture, but becoming the new creation that we see.

You will see new life because you will have new life.

As we heard from the 4th chapter of Acts, not long after the resurrection, after the disciples experienced a new kind of life, they gathered and attracted all kinds of people that saw a new way of living.

“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” (Acts 4.32 NRSV)

See, those who believed, those who were given faith, saw the world in a new way. They were a new creation. They saw their sisters and brothers not as competitors but as part of their own body. They saw gifts and resources not as things to horde or protect, but to share with one another. Where before they saw scarcity, now they saw abundance.

What a promising beginning for the church. A body of people that saw life where others saw death. Can we be that body?

A know a guy who has lived a long and accomplished life. From the time he was about 8 years old, he’s lived on his own. He learned early on that if you want to make it in this world, you have to be strong. And he was. And even now in his mid eighties, he is a big, strong man. Even though he’s spent most of his life in the church, he has told me that he’s also spent a lot of time doubting his faith, unable to reconcile Jesus, who tells us to turn the other cheek, with his life experience which has told him that ‘might makes right.’ But this year, as he worshiped through Holy Week into Easter, he told his pastor something was different. Not that he lost all doubt, but that he saw the story of resurrection with different eyes. His pastor told me he told him he was cramming for finals at the end of his life. But actually, I think he had already tasted new life.

No one is too old, too stubborn, too skeptical to experience resurrection. No one is too comfortable, too knowledgeable, too strong to experience the surprise and renewal of new life.

The same is true for congregations. We aren’t the newest or biggest church in town. You don’t have the snazziest pastor in town. But resurrection happens here. Faith happens here. As a body of people, we can — together — see the world with new eyes. Strangers and newcomers become friends. Guilty people become forgiven people. Sad and disheartening things in our world become opportunities to imagine new life. Resurrected life.

Where is resurrected life in your midst? When you are held tight in that loving relationship with God called faith, what around you looks different? If you could fully believe that the pain in your life and the lives of others will never get the last word, how will you see things differently?

Through our baptism, we have been named by a faithful God, made into a new creation, and then given a different way of seeing. Instead of ourselves, we see others and the world God made. Instead of enemies around the world, we see work for justice and peace. Instead of locked doors keeping others out, we see doors that open out towards our neighbors.

Instead of wounds, we see love. Instead of a cross of violence, intended for fear, we see a symbol of new life, and a promise from God that we will never be forsaken in fear, and never be alone in pain.