Coming to Faith

Coming to Faith

John 20:19-31[1]

Faith is not easy. It never has been. And it’s certainly not easy in this day and time. In a skeptical world that demands proof of just about everything, faith is something impossible to prove. How do you prove something so inward, so personal, and so mysterious? It can seem nearly impossible to get a firm grip on faith.[2] Living a life of faith can leave you feeling like you’re hanging in mid-air at the end of a rope, and you have no idea what that rope may be attached to![3] After all, how can we ever be certain about things like salvation, the afterlife, and eternal destiny? Those are matters of faith. The plain truth is that faith is not easy. It never has been!

Yet we live in a time when many of us want “easy” answers to all our questions. Especially our questions about faith. I’ve never found that helpful. For me, the questions I’ve had about faith have always been as real as my faith itself. In fact, I would say my questions have played just as significant a role in shaping my faith as anything else. But it’s not easy to face those questions. In fact, it can be positively frightening. It can leave you wondering whether there’s some “line” out there you may cross over in the process of asking your questions, and find yourself lost and alone, without a hope or a prayer left in the world! Whether we want it to be so or not, faith simply is not easy. It never has been!

I believe our Gospel lesson for today addresses this issue. It recounts the familiar story about “Doubting Thomas.” In our lesson, Thomas, one of Jesus’ hand-picked apostles, refused to believe that Jesus was alive after his death on the cross. Refused to believe! No matter what the others told him, he simply would not accept it. Unfortunately, this incident earned him the nickname “Doubting Thomas.” As a matter of fact, when Jesus addressed Thomas, saying, “Do not doubt, but believe” (Jn. 20:27), the word translated “doubt” should probably be rendered as “faithless.” Jesus told him, “Do not be faithless, but believe.” I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Thomas found that having faith in the resurrection of Jesus wasn’t easy for him, at least at first!

But in fact, if you look at the way Thomas is depicted in John’s Gospel, he was by no means “faithless” in his relationship with Jesus. Quite the opposite. When it became clear that Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem to die, it was Thomas who said to the others, “let us go, that we may die with him” (Jn. 11:16). That doesn’t sound much like Thomas was “faithless.” And it’s important to note that Thomas was absent the first time Jesus appeared to the apostles. While the others were hiding in fear behind locked doors, Thomas was out there somewhere. We don’t really know where he was or what he was doing, but he wasn’t hiding with the others!

I think it’s entirely appropriate for us to wonder why Thomas didn’t believe the report that Jesus was alive. I think it’s appropriate to wonder whether he may have had a good reason for that! I wonder whether it was his devotion to Jesus that made the pain of his death hard for Thomas to move past. I also wonder whether it was because he’d seen some of the others falter in their faith, especially Peter who had denied knowing Jesus, and he wasn’t prepared to rely on their word alone. What Thomas said was, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” (Jn 20:25). Thomas, one of Jesus’ hand-picked apostles, refused to believe!

 Whatever the reason for Thomas’ “doubts,” a week later Jesus appeared to them again. This time Thomas was there, and Jesus invited him to see for himself that what the others had said was indeed true. When Jesus appeared to them, he let Thomas see the wounds he still bore on his body. He invited Thomas to do just exactly what he said he would need to do to believe: he invited touch Jesus’ wounds. Jesus overcame Thomas’ apparent “faithlessness.” And in response, Thomas made one of the strongest confessions of faith contained in the Bible: he called Jesus “My Lord and my God!” (Jn. 20:28).

It’s a fair question to ask what it takes to convince people in this day and time to put their faith in the message we proclaim: that Jesus died and rose again to bring us all new life. I don’t pretend to be able to answer every question we might ask about how that was even possible. But I think that our questions can help us come to faith. Asking questions can help us make the faith that we have been taught by others into our own faith. Many of us here today know by experience that pursuing our questions can be the path to deeper faith. It’s not an easy journey to take, but coming to faith never has been easy.

I would have to say that the context in which you set out on this journey makes all the difference in where you wind up. Having the support and encouragement of a family and a faith community plays a crucial role. We have role models who have shown us how faith has made a difference in their lives. Our role models didn’t have answers to every question. But if you’re like me, those role models had a faith that was real. By living out their faith in the push and pull of life, they shaped my faith and encouraged me to continue the journey. Our families and our faith community give us all the support we need to continue coming to a faith that is real for us.

Faith is not easy. The truth is that it never has been easy. I would say faith boils down to a choice: choosing to look at life from the point of view that God’s love creates at least the “possibility of goodness” in this world.[4] In some respects, we only find faith by having faith. It’s very much like setting out on a journey without even knowing where you’re going, like Abraham and Sarah did. Today is the day when we celebrate a group of our students who are in a sense “setting out” on their faith journey. I would be shocked if they all didn’t still have questions. Maybe a lot of questions. Because this isn’t the end of the journey for them. It’s another step along the way. Just like them, “coming to faith” is something we’re all continually called to do. As we face challenges and opportunities that we could never have expected, if we are going to respond with a faith that is both true to life and true to who we are, we’ll need the courage to wrestle with our questions honestly. As we do that, as we continue the journey of faith, life will always challenge us to “come to faith” in new ways. Because faith is a journey, it’s not going to be easy. But it’s always worth it.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/27/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 15, where he speaks of faith as longing for “a reality beyond reality.”

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Dogmatics 2.1:159, where he describes faith as feeling as if we are “suspended and hanging without ground under our feet.”

[4] Cf. Keith Ward, God: A Guide for the Perplexed, 209, where he defines faith as “committing ourselves to the continual possibility of goodness.”

Why Should I Believe It?

Why Should I Believe It?

1 John 1:1-4[1]

We live in a time when skepticism is a virtue. The continual explosion of information technology and the almost exponential rise of new platforms to share information has, I think, played a role in this. Instead of making information easier to process, it’s much harder, if only because of the sheer volume of information that is available to anyone using a smartphone on any given day. You just can’t process it all. You can’t even scroll through it all! So instead of taking the time to ask whether the information we’re using is from a reliable source, or whether it results from sound research, or whether it even makes any sense, we just “browse” our so-called “news feeds” on various media for what holds our interest, or what reinforces our opinions, without taking the time to even think about the question, “Why should I believe this?”

This is actually not a “modern” problem. It’s a logical fallacy that’s been around for a long time. It’s called “Confirmation bias.” What that means is that people only pay attention to information that confirms what they already believe, and they dismiss as false whatever challenges it, simply because it challenges it. We’re not open to information that contradicts what we already believe. That’s not the only logical fallacy going around. There are a lot of them. Calling something “fake news” just because we don’t like it is a kind of logical fallacy that skirts the issue by simply attacking the source. In fact, it’s considered to be one of the weakest logical arguments. Ironically, some of those who complain the loudest about “fake news” are the ones who are out there pushing information that can be demonstrated as false based on actual facts.

But then part of the problem is that we don’t even agree on what constitutes facts. And that leads us deeper into this whole question by raising the issue of how we know what we know. There are some things we know based on intuition, like whether or not someone loves you. You just know “in your heart” that’s true. There are other things we know based on some kind of demonstration. Most of our scientific knowledge falls into that category. If someone can come up with an experiment that generates the same results every time, it’s considered to be fact. But then there is a lot of “knowledge” that falls somewhere in between, relying on a combination of objective facts and a subjective, more personal point of view. A lot of what we “know” falls into that category.

I think one of the reasons why faith can be so difficult is because it falls into that “in between” category of what we know. There are certain criteria that most faith traditions in the world rely on, but it’s a matter of how you balance them. One basis for faith is an accepted canon of Scriptures, or a collection of authoritative writings, like the Bible. That can be helpful, because an authoritative text is a fairly fixed source. But any text is always subject to interpretation. And there is plenty of evidence for the wide variety of interpretations of the Bible. Another basis for faith is the authority of a certain tradition of teaching. This takes faith and puts it into a practical framework that can help us translate what we believe into a way of living. But a tradition is a living thing, always developing in dialogue with changing times. Except, of course, when it doesn’t. We know people who belong to faith traditions that have not changed, perhaps for centuries. A final basis for faith is the authority of personal experience. It’s hard to dispute someone’s personal experience. But then personal experience can be (and has been) used to justify just about anything.

Because all these criteria for faith have their strengths and weaknesses, it’s important to find a balance that makes sense. I would say that a healthy approach to faith is going to combine all three: a sound use of Scripture, combined with a time-tested tradition of interpreting and putting into practice the truths of faith, combined with personal experience of the value of faith in our own lives. To some extent, my sermon today is a brief summation of what I taught for years in my biblical interpretation class at Seminary. You might wonder whether a sermon is the time and the place for going into that. But I also think that our Scripture lesson from 1 John for today raises the issue of why we believe.

During the season of Easter, we celebrate the message that that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and rose from the dead. But there are many these days who would ask the question why they should believe it. It speaks of things that most of us have never actually seen for ourselves. We weren’t there to see him die on the cross. We weren’t there when he appeared after his death and resurrection to his disciples. And even though our Scripture lessons throughout the Easter season give us their testimony of what they saw and experienced, many question whether we should accept it.

That’s also not a new problem. It was a challenge for the first generation of believers, as our Scripture lesson from 1 John shows us. The message of the Gospel included the claim that those who were with Jesus were eyewitnesses to his full humanity, to his very real suffering, and to his bodily resurrection. Our Scripture lesson puts it this way: “We declare to you … what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1). Jesus was the “word” they had heard with their own ears and seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands. There’s a kind of dual reference going on here: it’s a claim that they heard Jesus teaching during the time of his ministry and they saw the amazing things he did. At the same time, however, it’s also a claim that their encounters with the risen Christ as eyewitnesses of his resurrection were very real.[2]

For some of us that’s enough to support our faith. The testimony of the original eyewitnesses in Scripture is enough to satisfy the question why I should believe Jesus is alive now. Of course, there have been all kinds of efforts to explain away what the disciples claimed about Jesus’ resurrection. But it’s one thing to say that they only thought they saw and heard him; it’s hard to explain away the claim that they actually touched the risen Christ.[3] Again, however, a balanced approach to faith must move beyond the testimony of the eyewitnesses in the Bible. And so it’s important for us to remember that we have our own very real encounters with the risen Christ in our lives. It may be hard for us to put them into words, but they are very real nevertheless. We may not be able to see him with our eyes, or hear him with our ears, or touch him with our hands, but that doesn’t make our encounters any less real. Perhaps more importantly, we can answer the question of why we should believe the story of Jesus because we are not standing alone before the witness of Scripture. There have been generations of believers who have embraced the Easter faith before us and who passed it on to us. That living tradition has not only taught us faith but also modeled it for us. In a sense we have “seen with our own eyes” the effect of faith in their lives.

From my perspective, the answer to the question “Why should I believe” that Jesus rose from the dead and lives among us now is going to be as individual as each person. For some of us, it’s enough that the “Bible tells me so.” “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” That’s enough. For others, “he lives within my heart” may be what convinces us. “You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart.” For still others, the fact that we continue the “ancient church’s story” of “the faith of our fathers” and mothers. Or perhaps even more importantly that “we walk with each other” and “we walk hand in hand” is the key to faith. For some of us, in an age in which many people get along just fine without giving second thought to God or faith or the risen Christ, we need all of it: the witness of the Bible, the experience of our own personal encounters with Christ, and the support of those who have gone before us and those who walk the path with us. We need all of that to maintain Easter faith.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/7/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman NE.

[2] Cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, 174-75, where he says the primary effect of this text has been to secure the authority of eyewitness testimony for the Johannine writings. He insists that this still holds true even if the author of this letter was not John the Apostle but an unidentified leader of the Johannine community because the statement still reflects the reality of the manifestation of the word, but through the means of preserving the eyewitness testimony of the Beloved disciple to the life and ministry of Jesus (cf. similarly Jn. 20:29–31; 21:24–25).

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, Arise! God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth, 47-48: “The women and the disciples didn’t ‘see in their hearts’ or ‘with their spiritual eyes’. They didn’t have intuitions, while they were ‘caught up out of this world’, nor did they receive enlightenment in trances. The accounts tell us that it was with their normal five senses that they perceived the risen Christ.”

Confirmed

Confirmed

John 1:29-49[1]

These days the question of whom you believe can be a controversial one. People line up behind certain news outlets, for example, and draw a line in the sand to separate themselves from those “on the other side.” There are a lot of reasons offered up for why we as a people have become so “polarized” around this question. Some say it’s the influence of social media. And it’s true to some extent that we may be too quick to believe something we read on Facebook or someone we hear on YouTube without really checking the facts. Some say our problems are the result of fundamental differences among us regarding our attitudes toward education, patriotism, and the very nature of truth itself. Others trace the problem back to different groupings or “tribes” among us going back to the very beginnings of our country.

I’m not sure about all of that. Some of it seems like it’s “above my pay grade.” What I think is that the human family has always had a tendency to believe whatever confirms what they already suspect to be true. The phrase “that sounds about right to me” is one that we use to confirm what we hear. In many ways, that can be just an idiom. But behind that, there may be something more. For example, the spread of rumor and gossip is nothing new. It’s been around as long as there have been groups of people. It’s not a new phenomenon that we’re drawn to those who share our opinions, and we’re suspicious of anyone who dares to voice something “different.” If anything, I would say that the technology behind email and the internet and social media has only made rumor and gossip much more powerful. And it’s made it much harder for us to sort out fact from fiction. After all, the real question isn’t whether something “sounds about right to me.” The real question is whether something is true.

That’s a much harder question to answer. Especially when the truth is inconvenient, or challenges our long-held beliefs, or we simply don’t like it. Some of us use facts to try to answer the question of truth. What’s true is what is backed up by facts, by hard data. That sounds reasonable, but as many of us have learned the hard way, people can “spin” the facts to prove whatever point they want you to believe. Others rely on common sense. They trust what makes sense based on their life experience. Again, that sounds reasonable, but the problem is that our life experience is limited. That’s true for all of us. Nobody can know the lived experience of every member of the human family. Others rely on “gut instinct.” Basically, they go with what “feels right.” Again, that can work sometimes, but we all know that our feelings can lead us astray.

This problem with discerning truth in our daily lives also applies to our faith. When you look at the spectrum of churches out there and the different ways they approach faith, you may wonder why that’s the case. It has to do with how they answer the question of what is true. For many, the basis for truth is an authoritative book, the Bible. You might think that’s obvious for all Christians. But the problem is that the Bible can be difficult to read, and harder to understand. Between the Bible and every truth claim based on a Scripture text is the interpretation of the person reading it. And we’re all flawed and fallible Bible readers. I’m sure we’ve all heard of cult leaders who twisted the Bible to get people to carry out their bidding. But a more common problem is how to sort out all the different ways people can “spin” the Bible.

This issue with interpreting the Bible has been around from the beginning. That’s why many Christians believe that the basis for the truth of their faith is an authoritative church. Because we are all fallible Bible readers, they believe it takes the guidance of the “right” church and its leaders to know what’s true. Usually, the “right” church is their church, and other churches are judged to be right or wrong based on how they line up with their church’s teachings. But the problem is that every church that has ever been is a human organization, made up of flawed and fallible people. More than that, because every church is made up of fallible people, the more attention, the more power, the more influence someone has in a church organization, the more they are subject to the temptations of their own self-will. As one famous observer noted, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”[2] He was talking about the church!

In the face of the fallible interpretations of the Bible by fallible church leaders, some Christians believe that the basis for the truth of their faith is an authoritative experience. They claim that in order to truly have faith a person has to have a dramatic spiritual experience, much like that of the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road. Once again, however, whether or not one’s spiritual experience is “real,” and therefore a sufficient basis for faith, depends on how well it conforms to their experience. Those who insist on a particular spiritual experience tend to make themselves the yardstick by which they measure the faith of everyone else. And if it doesn’t match up closely enough with their experience, then it’s not “true” Christian faith.

If we can’t rely absolutely on an authoritative book, or an authoritative church, or an authoritative experience, some might be tempted to think that there’s no way to know whether our faith is true or not. In fact, I think there are many these days who harbor that thought. But I wouldn’t say we have to just throw up our hands and give up. As with many things in life, I would say that the answer lies in finding balance. We rely on the witness of the Bible as the foundation for our faith, and rightly so. But we also rely on the tradition of interpreting the Bible that has been handed down to us by the Church. And our own spiritual experiences serve to reinforce our personal faith convictions. I think that, at the end of the day, what all of this means is that it’s more honest to say “I believe” with much of our faith rather than “I know.” It’s not a matter of uncertainty, but humility, and I believe there is wisdom in that.

You may be wondering what all of this has to do with the Scripture readings for today. In John’s Gospel, those who met Jesus expressed their faith that he was the “lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” the “Messiah … about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote,” and the “Son of God.” We might wonder what basis they had for making those claims. I would say it was based on their first-hand experience of Jesus, which they understood in light of the Bible, as they interpreted it through the faith they had been taught. I think the same is true for us today. We can affirm our faith in Jesus based on our spiritual experiences, which we understand in light of the Bible, as we interpret it through what we have been taught by the Church.

That way of putting it may sound rather ordinary compared to the way other people talk about their faith. It lacks the appeal of a dramatic spiritual experience. It lacks the certainty of those who are supremely confident that their understanding of the Bible is undisputable. It lacks the assurance of those who are convinced that their church is the “true” one. But as it has long been observed, it takes at least three legs to make a sturdy stool. Affirming that our faith is based on our spiritual experiences, which we understand in light of the Bible, as we interpret it through what we have been taught by the Church provides us with a solid foundation for faith. It doesn’t give us absolute certainty. We can’t look down our noses at those who believe differently as if we “know” the truth and they don’t. What we can do is humbly affirm our faith as one that is confirmed not only by our own experience, but also by the Bible, and by the teaching of the church. At the end of the day, I think that’s a faith that can withstand the challenges of life. And after all, that’s what faith is about.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 1/14/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Lord John Dahlberg-Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887.

Coming to Faith (Again)

Coming to Faith (Again)

John 20:19-31[1]

Faith isn’t easy. As people of the 21^st century, we have some challenges with faith. In the midst of a skeptical world that demands proof for just about everything, it can seem impossible to get a firm grip on faith. Pretty much all efforts to “prove” faith fall short. As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put it, “for every proof there is some disproof”.[2] As a result, we may find ourselves feeling like we’re hanging in mid-air at the end of a rope and we have no idea what that rope is attached to! If we cannot prove our faith in God and salvation and eternal life, how can we be certain about them? And if we cannot be certain, how can we have faith? Faith isn’t easy. 

And yet we could say that our Gospel reading for today about Jesus’ resurrection attempts to do just that. We are told that the “signs” Jesus did are recorded here “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (Jn. 20:31). Unfortunately, one could say that’s just restating the problem. For the most part we are not moved by the “signs” that moved people in the First Century. They simply don’t commend the same kind of faith as they did in ancient times. I would say this problem of “certainty” is fundamentally built into our search for faith. If it’s faith, we can’t prove it, can we? And if we can prove it, where’s the need for faith?

While it does seem important that our faith rests on something more substantial than “wishful thinking,” I’m afraid that all efforts at demonstrating exactly what that “something more” is fall short of being convincing. I know there are those who come up with all kinds of “evidence” that supposedly “proves” why we should believe. But at the end of the day none of those arguments can achieve certainty for us—at least not the kind of certainty most of us are looking for. A “faith” that is something we’re “compelled” to believe by whatever means—whether “fulfilled prophecy” or “miracles” or “the authority of scripture”—has never done much for me. I tend to think that in the long run it doesn’t do much for most people. This is part of what makes faith so hard for us: it’s simply impossible “prove” spiritual things.

At the same time, the conclusion that since we cannot have certainty we cannot have faith at all has never worked for me either. I grant that in this day and age it’s impossible to avoid the suspicion that if something sounds too good to be true it must be. But if our “suspicion” is the final judge of all things, including spiritual things, then all we have to go on is our own (limited) intellectual ability and our own (incomplete) experience of life.  If that’s it, then the only things you can count on really are death and taxes, and we’re all trapped in a vicious circle that leaves us hopeless and godforsaken in this life. That approach to spiritual things doesn’t do much for me either!

In our Gospel lesson for today, we find that Jesus himself did not endorse the approach of seeing the evidence in order to believe. He said “blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed” (Jn. 20:29). This is consistent with what we know of him elsewhere. The multitudes kept coming to him and asking him for some kind of miraculous sign in order that they might believe that he was who he claimed to be. But Jesus refused those who wanted him to prove himself to them. I think he knew that any so-called “faith” that depends on some kind of proof constantly needs more evidence. Those who look for evidence are always looking for more, and they never truly find their way to faith. 

Faith isn’t easy! I would say that at the end of the day, faith is a choice. It is a choice to look at life from the point of view that God is making all things new rather than that death is the ultimate reality. But that kind of choice is going to be a personal one. It isn’t something you can justify to anyone but yourself. Faith is also a response. It is a response to our experience of something beyond us, something that perhaps even strains our ability to understand. That experience is also always going to be intimately personal. But it’s rarely something we can do alone. We tend to experience Jesus calling us by name more effectively when we wrestle with these questions together with a community of faith.

Faith isn’t easy. Part of the reason for that is the whole experience is not something that happens once and then you’re done. Those who study the development of faith in the course of a human lifespan have determined that there are some fairly common stages we all go through.[3] We may start out feeling very sure of ourselves, but that’s just the beginning of the journey. Many of us go through a stage where we question everything we’ve been taught. That’s normal. We may find ourselves becoming more interested in a relationship with God than in maintaining religious structures. That’s also normal. A few of us may finally reach the point where the entire focus of life shifts from self to God. At each stage, we have a kind of “conversion” where we choose faith all over again. To do that we have to remain open to the stages and changes in our faith journey throughout life. As we stay open to the one who urges us onward, we find that Jesus calls us to make the choice to come to faith again and again.

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[1] ©2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 4/11/2021 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] See Charles E. Moore, ed., Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 256.

[3] There are many approaches to this but James Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning, is a classic.

More Than We Can See

More Than We Can See

2 Corinthians 5:7-9, 14-17[1]

Most of us, I think, are people who process information through what we see. I would say that the advent of television shifted the test of what we believe from “I heard it” to “I saw it.” Personally, I don’t remember a time when television was not a daily part of life in our society. I think that the developments with the internet that I’ve seen in my lifetime have only made us even more dependent on what we see. We have access to live video feeds from all over the world, almost as soon as events are happening. This is a reality that my children have grown up with.

The problem is that you can’t base your faith in what God is doing in our lives and in our world on what you can see. Think about it, it really isn’t that hard to believe what we see through various media—news, internet, or social media. But anyone with experience in photography can tell you that the lens can dramatically alter how we understand life. We are actually taking a step of faith to believe that those media are accurately depicting the events they portray. That’s just as true for our faith in God as it is for what we choose to believe about our world. It depends to a great extent on the lens through which we view our faith. Believe it or not, that can make all the difference in the world in where we come out with our faith.

I think St. Paul was continually trying to get the people he was serving to adjust the lens through which they were viewing their life and their faith. There were all kinds of competing “visions” of reality in his day, just as there are today. For some, the notion of a crucified Savior was utter foolishness, if not outright blasphemy. For others, the idea that a dead man could come back to life was simply “non-sense.” These weren’t theoretical obstacles; St. Paul had actually encountered people who raised these and other objections to his gospel.

In the face of the skepticism and cynicism of his world, Paul continued to declare the good news of the resurrection of Jesus from death to new life. For him, that becomes the lens through which to view all aspects of our faith in what God is doing in our lives, in our world, and ultimately in all creation. If we do not view our lives through the lens of the resurrection, then as St. Paul says elsewhere, our faith and even the gospel itself are useless, and “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). But, of course, the Apostle would never concede that to be the truth. He never stopped insisting that we view what we can see through the lens of what we cannot see: that Jesus was indeed raised from the dead on the third day, and is alive and working in each of us to this very day.

And so it is that St. Paul insists that “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). One of the most important aspects of this faith is the conviction that, just as God raised Jesus from death to new life, so he will raise us to new life as well. In one respect, this applies to what happens to us after we die. And, unfortunately, the Bible is perhaps unnervingly silent about just exactly what that looks like. But here, St. Paul says it in a memorable way: to be “away from the body” is to be “at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). While he doesn’t describe it in detail, I think the image of being “at home” is one that can help us to be “confident” as he was.

But St. Paul goes beyond what our faith means for the afterlife. He insists that our confidence extends to this life as well. And he expresses that confidence in this way: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17). St. Paul reaches back to the prophet Isaiah for a concept that may be hard for us to grasp: the idea of a new heaven and a new earth. According to Isaiah, what God is up to is nothing less than the complete renewal of everything and everyone. And for St. Paul, that constituted a whole “new creation” that has already begun in our lives here and now. But here as well, we have to be able to put our trust in more than we can see!

I think this is difficult for most of us. We live in a “matter-of-fact” world, where we look for results that can be measured. “What have you done for me lately” becomes the basis by which we evaluate the people, ideas, and experiences we encounter in life. But the problem with this approach is that when all you have to go on is what your eyes can see, then the story of our lives really is nothing more than you pay your taxes and then you die! Might makes right, cheaters prosper, and money talks. While there may be many in our world who embrace that outlook on life, it can only end in despair, both for this life and for the next.

What St. Paul wanted the people of his day and ours to understand is that God does not operate within the limits of what we can see. God demonstrated that conclusively by raising Jesus from the dead! And that means we are called to put our trust in “more than what we have yet seen.” At least part of that “something more” is that God is working in this world to bring about a whole new creation. The first act of that new creation was raising Jesus from the dead. But God didn’t stop there. God continues to work in all of our lives and in the whole creation to “make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). It may seem too good to be true. If so, it means that we are called to stretch our faith beyond the confines of our doubts to trust in more than we can see.

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[1] © 2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 6/17/2018 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Faithless?

Faithless?

John 20:19-31[1]

I think there are all kinds of reasons why people keep their distance from Christian faith. In many cases, it’s not necessarily the faith that keeps them away, but the church! In some cases, I’m not sure I blame them. In view of the way some Christians justify their faith, it’s no wonder there are many who don’t want to have anything to do with it. For some, “faith” is simply a matter of maintaining a tradition from their childhood. Of course, tradition can be a good thing as long as it’s more than just a matter of keeping things the way they were. For others, “faith” is more a conclusion based on evidence that “proves beyond a doubt” what we believe is true. Like many, I find the words “faith” and “proof” to be at odds with one another. Don’t get me wrong—I believe, and I do so joyfully. It’s the “proving beyond a doubt” that I don’t get.

It’s amazing to me the evidence some people think proves beyond a doubt that their faith is true. Some people point to supernatural, miraculous experiences as their evidence. In fact there are shrines all over the world that claim to house the evidence that proves faith beyond all doubt. The church across the street from one of my previous pastorates was called “The Shrine of the True Cross,” because they believed they had an actual piece of Jesus’ cross. And that was a crucial factor in their faith! Others point to a higher, infallible authority; sort of a “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” approach.  For some this infallible authority resides in a particular church. For others, infallible authority resides in the Bible as God’s word.  But at the end of the day, in my opinion, all these efforts fail.  Faith isn’t something you can “prove beyond a doubt,” any more than love or hope or mercy.

As I mentioned last week, embracing faith in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead can be challenging for some of us. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, because it was challenging even for Jesus’ disciples, even for those who were closest to him! In our Gospel lesson for today, Thomas, one of Jesus’ hand-picked apostles, refused to believe without proof. No matter what the others told him, he simply would not believe.  Unfortunately, this incident has earned him the nickname “Doubting Thomas.” As a matter of fact, when Jesus addressed Thomas, saying, “Do not doubt, but believe” (Jn. 20:27), the word translated “doubt” should probably be rendered as “faithless” (as the King James Bible does). Jesus told him not to be faithless, but to believe.

But actually Thomas was by no means “faithless” in his relationship with Jesus.  Quite the opposite was true—he was one of Jesus’ most diligent and devoted followers. When it became clear that Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem to die, it was Thomas who said to the others, “let us go, that we may die with him” (Jn. 11:16). That doesn’t sound like Thomas was “faithless.” I wonder whether the intensity of Thomas’ devotion to Jesus made the pain of his death particularly difficult for him to move past. Perhaps he had seen some of the others waffle in their faith, and wasn’t prepared to rely on their word alone. Like many today, Thomas may have had good reasons for his difficulty in believing.

 Whatever the reason, a week later Jesus appeared to the apostles again. This time Thomas was there and Jesus invited him to see for himself that what the others had claimed was indeed true.  He let Thomas see the very wounds that he still bore on his body. He invited him to do just exactly what Thomas said he would need to do in order to believe: to touch his wounds. He overcame Thomas’ apparent “faithlessness” and accommodated his need for more than the word of the others. And in response, Thomas made one of the most exalted confessions of faith in Jesus contained in the Bible: he called him “My Lord and my God!” (Jn. 20:28).

But Jesus’ approach to faith was not one that generally endorsed seeing the evidence in order to believe. He said “blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed” (Jn. 20:29).^[2] This is consistent with what we know of him elsewhere. The multitudes kept coming to him and asking him for some kind of miraculous sign in order that they might believe that he was who he claimed to be. But Jesus refused those who only wanted him to prove himself to them. I think he knew that any so-called “faith” that depends on some kind of proof constantly needs more evidence. Those who look for evidence are always looking for more evidence, and never truly find their way to faith. 

In a very real sense, faith is a choice; a choice to look at life from the point of view that God is making all things new rather than that death is the ultimate reality.^[3] But that kind of choice isn’t something you can prove. Faith is a response to our experience of something beyond us, something that perhaps even strains our ability to understand or even imagine. Some of us need help to get over the obstacles we face with faith. Whether it’s the love of a community, or a sense of God’s presence, or the feeling that Jesus is calling us by name, most of us need something to help us make that choice. And making the choice of faith is not something you do once and then you’re done with it. Like any relationship, “the decision to trust … has to be made again and again.”^[4] So it is that we are called by Jesus to continually make the choice not to be faithless, but to believe.

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[1] ©2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/8/2018 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 226, where he points out that even those who had seen had to make the transition to believing without seeing.

[3] Cf. Keith Ward, God: A Guide for the Perplexed, 209, where he defines faith as “committing ourselves to the continual possibility of goodness.” 

[4] Douglas John Hall, “Faith: Response in Relationship,” in The Living Pulpit 1 (April-June 1992):14-15.

Believing and Seeing

Believing and Seeing

I Kg 18:30-39; Lk. 7:1-10[1]

  One of the hardest ideas to grasp is that the way you look at the world in which we live determines what you see.[2]  For example, just within the last few days there have been public servants who have died in the line of duty, seemingly random drive-by shootings, and children taken away from parents for colossal neglect.  Seems like our world is filled with tragedy.  And that’s just in Houston—and it’s just what the local news reported.  You don’t have to look too hard to see even more tragedy—loved ones and homes lost in storms; women and children killed in the collapse of a clothing sweat shop that makes it possible for us to shop at discount stores; and we need only mention the wars that are still going on after years of fighting.  If that is the primary focus of what you see in this world, it’s easy to believe that the world is a place of suffering.  And it can be easy to think that “God” must be a fantasy.[3]

  There are others in our world who seem to take a completely opposite approach.  God is the only reality they see, and so they tend to minimize the suffering and tragedy in the world, because they assume it’s part of “God’s plan.”  And since they assume that God is good and loving, they can’t bring themselves to believe that God would allow anything bad to happen to people who are good.  And their evidence for this is that they see miracles everywhere.  Someone whose cancer goes into remission, a child who lives despite the odds, last-minute gifts that supply their needs.  These are evidence to them that everything that happens is God’s will. These kinds of things serve as proof that God directly intervenes in our lives in everything—from our grades in school to our love lives to our careers to our finances.  And whenever that happens, it always seems to be something miraculous or supernatural.  If God as a miracle-worker is the primary focus of what you see in this world, it’s easy to believe that the world is good and our lives are exactly what God intends for us.  From this perspective, suffering is the fantasy.

  In our lesson about Elijah, it would seem that the biblical view is the second one.  God is the one who proves his existence with signs and wonders—like fire falling from heaven to consume an offering.  Prior to that, the people of Israel were “wavering” regarding what they believed.  But the miracle demonstrates to them that God is real.  Once they see that, they are convinced: “the Lord is God indeed; the Lord is God indeed” (1 Kg. 18:39)!  But you don’t have to read very much farther in the biblical story to find out that it never took much to shake Israel’s faith.  The prophet Hosea, speaking in the name of the Lord, told them that their faith was about as lasting as the morning dew (Hos. 6:4)!

  That’s the problem with faith that is based on what you see.  If you need some kind of miraculous sign or wonder in order to believe in God, you’re always going to be dependent on another miracle to bolster your faith.[4]  That’s why even Jesus refused to work miracles for the people who came to him looking for a sign.  He knew that after the “awe” wears off, they would find themselves back where they started: doubting, wondering if God is real or not, begging for God to give them another sign so that they could believe again.  That’s not the kind of faith God wants from those of us who claim to trust in him.

  I think our lesson from the Gospel presents us with a different approach—faith as a deep conviction within that doesn’t need any external confirmation.  The story begins with some Jewish leaders coming to Jesus and asking him to heal the servant of a Roman Centurion.  Apparently this was no ordinary Centurion, because he had been very kind to the Jewish people in this community.  So Jesus agrees to go with them.  But on the way, the Centurion sends word that he is not worthy to have Jesus come to his house, but that if he would just say the word, his servant would be healed!  That’s pretty remarkable faith.  Normally in the Gospels people express their faith in Jesus after he worked a miracle.  But in this case, without seeing any kind of sign or wonder, the Centurion has faith that Jesus can just say the word and heal his servant.[5]  It’s not surprising then that Jesus said, “not even in Israel have I found such faith!” (Lk. 7:9).

  It seems to me that is what genuine faith is like.  It’s a decision you make, no matter what the circumstances of your life.  Believing that God is utterly faithful, that God loves us no matter what, and that there is nothing that can separate us from that love, is a conviction you choose to believe.  And it makes all the difference in the way you see the world around you.  I don’t think this kind of faith ignores tragedy in the world.[6]  It is simply too much a part of the reality  of our lives to ignore.  But this kind of faith also does not surrender to the tragedy in the world.[7]  Without needing any kind of supernatural intervention, without looking for “signs and wonders,” this kind of faith believes that God is always working in our lives for his good purposes, to bring peace, and wholeness, and joy, and life to all of us.  And when we believe in God in that way—with all our hearts—we can see the goodness and beauty and joy in the world, despite the tragedy and suffering.[8]

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[1] © 2013 Alan Brehm.  A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 6/2/2013 at First Presbyterian Church of Dickinson, TX.

[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 91, where he lays out the options: believing that the world of faith is what is “really real,” believing that faith is “unreal” in comparison with the observable forces at work in the world, and a third way, in which faith is directed toward the reality that is beyond what our senses perceive as real.

[3] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 182: “when we experience tragic suffering in our own lives and see so much tragic suffering in the world, we wonder whether all talk about a loving and just God is not in fact ... wishful thinking.”

[4] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3:941, who points out that it is only “the mighty activity of the Holy Spirit” that can awaken faith and hope rather than “a miracle which can be understood only with the help of a mythology which includes all kinds of magical notions, and which is then to be rejected when it is found impossible to accept these notions.”

[5] Cf. F. Bovon, Luke 1: A commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1–9:50, 265: “Faith means trust, and more concretely, to trust without having seen.” Cf. also ibid., 264, where he observes that both Luther and Calvin “believe ... that the centurion ... can see the power of God in the person of Christ, and this suffices for faith ( see Martin Luther, Evangelien-Auslegung, 365; John Calvin, A Commentary on the Harmony of the Gospels, 249).

[6] Cf. Caputo, On Religion, 124: “We do not find the religious without the tragic, or when you do it is because the tragic has been violently suppressed, repressed, or excluded, which means that we are threatened with the return of the repressed, which is pretty much how the powerful convulsions of fundamentalist violence are to be interpreted.”

[7] Cf. Caputo, On Religion, 125: in the face of the “specter of a heartless world of cosmic forces,” “Faith is faith that there is something that lifts us above the blind force of things, .... That there is something ... or someone ... who stands by us when we are up against the worst, who stands by others, the least among us.”

[8] Cf. Keith Ward, God: A Guide for the Perplexed, 213, where he summarizes Kierkegaard’s view of the “religious sense” as “a way in which you see all things in the face of eternity, and you believe in eternal bliss, and love, and hope, despite the agonies life brings.”  Cf. also ibid., 215, where he paraphrases the Bhagavad Gita in describing faith in the following terms: “To look for the good in everything, to see everything embraced by goodness, ... is to be possessed by the Good.”

Taking the Leap

Jn. 20:1-18[1]

In the season leading up to Easter, we usually talk about the various aspects of our faith as a way of re-examining our own lives. There is so much about our faith that is beautiful and comforting and reassuring. To know that the very light that surrounds us is a sign of God’s love constantly filling our lives with mercy and compassion and grace is something that gives us great joy. To believe that Jesus gave his life for us so that we can find new life is humbling and moving. To hold onto the hope that God is working to transform us all into people of compassion is encouraging in the midst of the struggle that life can be.

But when it comes to Easter, I think we run into a wall. Most people can accept that Jesus was born. And that Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross. But when it comes to Easter, it’s a different matter altogether. Even many who have identified themselves as Christians all their lives have a hard time really embracing faith in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That means Jesus was dead. He was really dead. He was so dead that he was buried. And somehow he was raised to life.

It’s one of those aspects of our faith that moves us beyond the normal realm of our experience. For most of us, we live our lives based on what we can see and touch. But when you believe that all you have to go on is what your eyes can see or what you can touch with your hands, you have not necessarily rejected faith; you’ve simply embraced a different kind of faith. It is a kind of faith that believes that our future rests entirely on what we can do for ourselves.

But the good news of Easter is that God does not operate within the limits of what we can see! Easter faith in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead points us in hope to the possibility that God really is working to make all things new. That sounds attractive, but it’s still not easy. As one of my favorite philosophers puts it, our faith moves us beyond the realm in which we can understand and manage things.[2] It moves us into “the sphere of the impossible,” where “only the great passions of faith and love and hope will see us through.”[3]

I think, in part, that means that it’s not enough just to “believe” our faith intellectually. Rather, the miracle of Easter calls us to trust God with all that we are, to entrust ourselves and our actual everyday lives completely to something we cannot see. For some of us that comes fairly naturally—like John the beloved disciple from our Gospel lesson for today. Scholars speculate about why he was so quick to believe.[4] It seems to me that he was one of those people who simply have a natural tendency toward faith.[5] I guess in some respects I’m like that. When I think about the great questions of faith, in the depth of my being, in that place where all pretense is stripped away, the hope and faith that there is a God who loves us all, who is working to restore and renew everything and everyone, simply rings true. From that perspective, everything makes sense; without it nothing makes sense.

For others, Easter faith not so automatic, like Mary. When she came face-to-face with the risen Christ, she thought she was talking to a gardener who may have removed Jesus’ body. It was only when Jesus broke through her sorrow and her suspicion by calling her name, “Mary,” that she recognized him.[6] For some of us, it takes an experience like that to break through the walls we put up to protect our hearts. And there are many who have had such experiences—in one way or another, at one time or another in their lives, we have felt that we experienced the presence of God in our lives in a unique and profound way.[7] I think many of us put our faith in Jesus because an experience like that puts us in touch with the love and the hope and the joy and the life that is at the heart of all things, and therefore calls forth the best within us.

But how do we encounter this presence of Christ? It’s one thing for Mary to meet Jesus in the garden. It’s another thing for you or me to encounter him now. I think there are many answers to this question. For me, I find myself experiencing God’s love calling me by name through the presence of Christ in the community of faith. I experience the presence of Christ through the love and support and affirmation I receive from other people who have experienced that life and that love and have come away from that experience transformed.

Faith enables us to move beyond believing only what we can see to entrusting our lives to the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. It is a different path, a whole new way of life that sees the possibility of new life in every death, sees the light shining in the deepest darkness, and sees hope in the midst of despair. But it is not an easy path. At the end of the day, it takes something of a leap for all of us to really entrust our lives to the kind of hope that God awakened in the resurrection of Jesus on that first Easter morning. When we take that leap of faith, it can be frightening, because we are taking a risk, and that makes us vulnerable. But that’s how we open ourselves to the new life God brings. The leap is frightening, but when we make that leap, we find ourselves moving from a life that we have to manage and control into the arms of the God who continually offers us grace and peace and mercy and love and life.

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[1] © 2012 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/8/12 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 9: he says that religion moves us “past the manageable prospects of the present, beyond the sphere in which we have some mastery, beyond the domain of sensible possibilities that we can get our hands on.”

[3] Cf. Caputo, On Religion, 8; Cf. also Keith Ward, God: A Guide for the Perplexed, 204; see further Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, 29-30.

[4] Cf. Raymond Brown, “The Resurrection in John 20: A Series of Diverse Reactions,” in Worship 64 no 3 (May 1990):194-98.

[5] Cf. Brendan Byrne, “The Faith of the Beloved Disciple and the Community in John 20,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 23 (1985):86.

[6] Cf. Frank J. Matera, “John 20:1-18,” Interpretation 43 (Oct 1989):404. He says, “Resurrection faith is a gift. It occurs when God speaks to the hearts of believers, calling them by name.”

[7] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 257, where he says that what we experience here and now of the new life points us both toward Jesus’ resurrection and to the completion of the work of “making all things new” that began on the first Easter.

Finding Faith

Jn. 20:19-31[1]

Faith is not easy. I think we can all agree that we as people of the 21^st century have some challenges with our faith. In the midst of our skeptical world that demands proof for just about everything, faith is something inward, subjective, mystical and mysterious; it is something impossible to get a firm grip on faith.[2] As a result, it can easily seem like the life of faith leaves you feeling like you’re hanging in mid-air at the end of a rope and you have no idea what that rope is attached to![3] At the end of the day, how can we be certain about things like God and redemption, the afterlife and ultimate destiny? As the great Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put it, for every proof there is some disproof”.[4] Faith is not easy.

And yet it would seem that, like the other Gospels, John’s account of the resurrection attempts to do just that. In our lesson for today we are told that the “signs” Jesus did are recorded here “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (Jn. 20:31). Unfortunately, that’s just restating our problem, isn’t it? For us as people of the 21^st century, we are just not moved by the “signs” that moved people in the First century. Miraculous events simply don’t command the same kind of faith in us as they did for people of ancient times. But it’s not just a modern versus ancient problem. To a great extent, this problem of “verification” is built into our search for faith. If it’s faith, we can’t prove it, can we? And if we can prove it, where’s the need for faith? I guess that’s why many of us find our Gospel lesson for today so appealing. I think we tend to resonate with Thomas’ doubts. As people of our day, we don’t want a faith that consists of “wishful thinking” or “smoke and mirrors.”[5]

This problem gets a lot of attention when it comes to Easter and the resurrection. Even St. Paul recognized that “if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). It would seem that there is a lot riding on whether something actually happened on that first Easter Sunday. Somehow, if Easter was merely a symbol or a vision or some kind of spiritual experience that had no correspondence in this world, then the victory we proclaim over death seems less than real.[6] Without Easter, what is there to distinguish the death of this one Jewish man from the countless other deaths at the hands of cruel oppressors?[7]

While it does seem important that our faith rests on something more than wishful thinking, I’m afraid that all efforts at demonstrating exactly what that “something more” is fall short of being convincing. When it comes to faith, we just cannot present an airtight case that demands a verdict! [8] It’s just not the way faith works![9] At the end of the day, when we approach these matters solely with our intellect and our logic, it would seem that the doors to faith are permanently closed and locked shut.

So how do we find the faith to go out and live in light of the hope that God is working in this world to bring grace and mercy and peace and justice and love and joy and life to every life? Ironically, Easter gives us some help here. Or perhaps we might say that the risen Christ gives us some help. In some way that we simply will never be able to sufficiently explain or concretely prove, we continue to have the experience of the living Christ.[10] The same Jesus who surprised the first disciples huddled behind locked doors out of fear, also surprises us behind locked doors of doubt.[11]

Faith is not easy. The truth is that it never has been easy. In some respects, we only find faith by having faith. It’s very much like setting out on a journey without even knowing where you’re going, like Abraham and Sarah. But the question we face is how do we who seem to be so full of doubt set out on that journey? I would say that the answer is to pursue our doubts. It seems to me that genuine faith (1 Pet 1:7) always has generous helpings of doubt.[12] I think that if you are honest enough and courageous enough to face your doubts squarely, you will wind up with a faith that works for you. I think we’ve all seen through the myth that if you want to have faith you have to banish your doubts. Most of us have had the experience that pursuing our doubts proves to be the path to deeper faith. The questions raised by our doubts can provide the guidance and the motivation to set out on our journey of faith, even when we don’t understand what we’re doing, even when we don’t know where it will lead us.

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[1] © 2011 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 5/1/11 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 15 where he says, “To have a religious sense of life is to long with a restless heart for a reality beyond reality.”

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Dogmatics 2.1:159, where he says that the life of faith involves a feeling of as if we are “suspended and hanging without ground under our feet.”

[4] See Charles E. Moore, ed., Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, 256.

[5] Cf. Suzanne Guthrie, “Cousin Thomas (John 20:19-31),” The Christian Century (March 22, 2002): 10.

[6] Cf. G. C. Berkouwer, The Work of Christ, 190, 196-97.

[7] Cf. Emil Brunner, Dogmatics II:337: “Apart from the Resurrection Christ’s death on the cross is a catastrophe.”

[8] Even one so astute and erudite as Karl Barth failed (in my opinion) in his attempt to argue that the resurrection of Jesus was something that “actually happened among men like other events." Even he acknowledged that in this matter we are dealing with “comprehending the incomprehensible.” Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2.143-44.

[9] Ernst Haenchen, John 2, 211: “There is no verifying evidence (miracle!) by which we can be convinced of God’s reality with objective certainty.”

[10] As Kierkegaard also pointed out, despite all our questions and quandaries,  “Christ enters through locked doors.”

[11] Cf. Susan R. Andrews, “Jesus Appears,” The Christian Century (March 24-31, 1999): 341 : “The truth of Easter is that all of humanity is blessed with a God who defies the locks of logic and grief and prejudice and fear, a God who blesses us and then sends us, fresh and filled with hope, back into a hopeless world.”

[12] Cf. Caputo, On Religion, 33-34: “faith cannot be insulated from unbelief; it is co-constituted by unbelief, which is why faith is faith and not knowledge.”