During these past several weeks of the season of Lent, we have been looking at different spiritual challenges that we all face in our lives. These challenges relate to our identity, our trust, our passion, our healing, our focus, and our humility. We’ve been calling these “wilderness challenges” because Jesus faced the challenge of being in the wilderness for forty days at the beginning of his ministry.
On this Easter Sunday, our Gospel reading for today offers us another challenge. It’s the challenge of our belief and specifically, our belief in the resurrection of Jesus.
A while back, I heard someone direct this sobering question to preachers: “You’d all be surprised how many people in your churches really struggle in believing that God exists, compared to those who say they’re believers. They might not admit it, but for many, they find it really difficult to believe. Trust me. They’re in your pews. They are looking for a church that welcomes their questions and doubts and one that doesn’t judge them.”
So this observation has been on my mind as I worked on this Easter sermon. And I got to thinking. How many people might be struggling to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead? And in particular, how many church type people, the “go to church every single Sunday church member” who attends, but finds it difficult to believe in the resurrection, what many would say is a central claim of the Christian faith.
So, obviously, as a preacher, I would like to think that everybody is a believer in the resurrection. But here’s the thing. If we all simply believe this story without any questions or doubts, than that leads me to wonder if we might be missing the explosive nature of this story.
In John’s telling of that early Easter morning, he wants us to see that even the first people who encountered the empty tomb were far from ready to sing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” They needed some time to process what they were experiencing.
For those first visitors to the empty tomb which included Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the other disciple who is unnamed in our Gospel reading, they weren’t prepared for resurrection to happen. They knew, as we know today, that when people die, they don’t come back to life.
During the time of Jesus, there were some Jews who believed that there would be a resurrection of God’s people at the end of time, what they referred to as the end of the age and the beginning of God’s kingdom here on earth, but they had no belief that resurrection could happen to only one person before the end of time. Even though Jesus hinted to them that he would be raised on the third day, they still didn’t see this coming.
So this is why we find Mary Magdalene early on Easter morning running from the tomb to tell two of the disciples that somebody had stolen Jesus’ body from the tomb. Not exactly what we would call an Easter faith. It wasn’t until Mary returned to the tomb and saw the resurrected Lord that she came to believe.
When Peter and the other disciple arrive to the tomb, they realize that Mary had it right. No body to be found, just some grave clothes. We are told that the other disciple “saw and believed,” but what does that even mean? Does it mean that he believed what Mary told them that the body had been stolen, or does it mean that he believed that Jesus was resurrected? Kind of cryptic. And then, we are given this mystifying comment that these two disciples simply went back to their homes.
You get the impression after listening to this story that the gospel writer is giving us permission to respond to Easter in a variety of ways. Maybe for you, you need time to process it like Mary whose first thought was that somebody had stolen the body. Or maybe you can relate to the two disciples who saw the empty tomb but it’s a little unclear what conclusions they were making.
Or maybe you identify more with Mary when she returns to the tomb weeping only to encounter the Risen Lord and shout with joy, “Rabbi!” And like Mary, you can’t wait to leave this sanctuary and tell others about this joyous moment that you’ve experienced. You can’t wait to share what a powerful Easter service we had today.
There are all kinds of levels of belief in this powerful moment, and the same is true for us as well.
Flannery O’Connor, the highly acclaimed 20th century American short stories novelist was a Roman Catholic who often included the Christian faith in her stories about the Deep South. At age 19 when she was a college student, she kept a private prayer journal.
Here is what she wrote for her first prayer reflection:
“Dear God, I cannot love thee the way I want. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon.”
Her prayer entries are often filled with spiritual questions rather than with satisfying answers. In some journal entries, she prays for spiritual trust. She prays for forgiveness. And then Flannery O’Connor writes this insightful line in her prayer journal, “Please help me to get down under things and find where You are.”
Even though she was a person of faith, Flannery O’Connor was willing to wrestle with the mystery of God and questions about her faith. I wonder if we have lost some of this curiosity where we approach faith thinking that the goal is to have absolute certainty where we remove doubts and questions altogether.
When I arrived at seminary fresh out of college, my hopes were high. To be honest, I was wondering what an academic institution of higher learning would offer someone like me who already had a strong belief in God. Little did I know that my faith was about to be suddenly rattled by the remarks of one of the seminary professors at our first day of orientation.
This wise New Testament scholar offered us this analogy which I continue to remember to this day. He said, “Think of your faith as a brick building. Our job at the seminary is to blow up your building and then help you reassemble the bricks so that you will leave from here with an even stronger and more well-rounded faith.”
I remember shaking my head and thinking to myself, “Yeah. Whatever. Don’t be messing with my bricks. They’re fine the way they are.”
It was only a few months into my first year of seminary, that I began to realize the importance of that brick building analogy. Not only was I being introduced to a variety of biblical and theological perspectives that l never knew even existed, but I was also meeting other seminary students who represented a variety of faith experiences and backgrounds so different from my own.
Professors were challenging our long held assumptions and had the audacity to make us think and rethink and then think again! That professor at orientation was right. My faith was beginning to blow up brick by brick. I was feeling unsettled, anxious, and even angry at times. I’m not sure when I started to finally begin feeling like the bricks were starting to get reassembled, but I remember leaving seminary with a deep appreciation for that experience as difficult as it was at times.
I think we are constantly facing the wilderness challenge of belief. As we go through life, we encounter new situations and new experiences. We meet people and hear how their faith perspectives are different or similar from our own. Maybe we go to a bible study or read a book about the Bible that forces us to rethink our long held assumptions. This is what it means to learn, grow, discover, and rethink our faith.
These times of growth can be unsettling at times, just as unsettling as it was for Mary when she first discovered that the tomb was empty. Mary had a strong belief before she arrived at the empty tomb, but an even greater one after she had seen the Risen Lord.
Mary and the other two disciples would go on to share the good news of Easter with others. There would be more for them to learn and discover about their faith even after that surprising Sunday morning. And this is true for us as well.
Maybe the more important question about the wilderness challenge of our belief isn’t so much if we can recite the Apostles’ Creed by heart, how many years we have attended church. Maybe it’s more about how we live out our faith in the best way we know how however strong our beliefs may be.
Maybe the real test of our belief comes down to this question that I came across on Twitter recently. This person asked the question, “Do you want to know if you’re a Christian?” And then offered this insightful answer to his own question: “Just ask your neighbor.”
Happy Easter!
Wilderness Challenges - Our Belief
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