Jesus: The Man of Mirth

“Jesus laughed.”

You won’t find that verse in the Gospels. It should be as prominent as “Jesus wept,” but it’s not there.

I think that must be an oversight on the part of the Gospel writers because, surely, Jesus’ contemporaries who saw him eat, drink, sleep, and weep, also saw him laugh.

Maybe the Gospel writers didn’t mention it because they thought it was unMessiahlike to chortle, or - more likely - because Jesus’ laughter was so familiar they forgot to mention it.

The problem for us is that the lack of an explicit Gospel reference to Jesus’ fun side makes it difficult for us to imagine a joyful savior.  “Did Jesus ever laugh?” a woman once asked in a Bible study class I attended. “You never see any pictures of Jesus laughing.”

That’s true. And part of the problem may be that we have been trained to see religion as humorless.

When I was in college, a popular cereal manufacturer made a feeble attempt at humor by printing funny sayings on its box.

The one-liners began with the words, “Confucius Say.” 

“Confucius Say, ‘Best way to save face is keep lower part shut.’”

“Confucius Say, ‘’To make long story short, don’t tell it.’”

“Confucius Say, ‘Last will and testament is dead give away.’”

None of these lines are particularly funny. Perhaps the “Confucius Say” was added so you wouldn’t notice.

I can’t remember the name of the company that used Confucius to shill its products in the sixties, but I remember one revealing reaction to the campaign. I was sitting sleepily in a history class on ancient China when the professor interjected, “What’s so funny about ‘Confucius Say’? Would we find it funny if an ad campaign used the phrase, ‘Jesus Say’?”

Well, back in 1968, probably not. Confucius, who lived 500 years before Jesus, was a respected Chinese teacher, writer, and politician. Like Jesus, Confucius advocated personal and public morality and justice. His teachings were enormously influential in China and throughout Asia. He wasn’t a stand-up comedian and he didn’t make jokes, any more than Jesus made jokes in the Sermon on the Mount.

Unless, of course, Jesus did make jokes in the Sermon on the Mount. Some contemporary scholars claim we miss Jesus’ humor because we don’t understand his times or his audience. 

A foolish man built his house on sand? (Matthew 7:26). Jesus’ practical audience would have burst out laughing – just as soon as they caught their breaths following his hilarious lines about giving your kid a stone to eat (Matthew 7:9) or walking around with a log in your eye (Matthew 7:4). 

Come to think of it, maybe the shtick has possibilities. “Jesus say: man who eat too much toast get stuck in jam at narrow gate.”

Back in 1968, when Confucius was quoted on cereal boxes, religion was not a rich source of humor. Today, Confucius thrives on the Internet in memes so vulgar they can’t be repeated in mixed company. And Jesus is no longer untouchable when it comes to humor, even in toy stores. Action Jesus rolls up his sleeves next to plastic effigies of GI Joe and The Rock, while bobble headed Jesus competes in stores with bobble headed Barack.

The question is, how much humor are you able to take with your religion?

One Sunday evening a few years ago I drove into the parking lot of White Plains First Baptist Church. As soon as they recognized my car, two women – mature mentors of teenagers – ran up to me in obvious distress. I asked them what was up.

“Are you familiar with Life of Brian?” they asked simultaneously. 

Of course I was familiar with Monty Python’s irreverent movie about Brian, one of many two-bit evangelists who gathered small followings in Palestine at the time of Jesus. 

The film pokes fun at the soldiers, Pharisees, and peasants who interacted with false prophets, although Brian’s story is obviously close to Jesus’. Even the Magi briefly attend Brian’s birth until they realize they have mistaken the hovel of the Virgin Mandy for the crèche of Mary. When they realize their error they rudely grab their gifts out of the young mother’s hands and beat a pious path to the manger.

Life of Brian, like all of Python’s offerings, is not for everyone, but the two women were shocked by what they had just shown to the adolescents. Literally wringing their hands, they asked, “Do you think we’re in trouble?”

Life of Brian is only offensive to people who mistake it for a spoof on the messiah, which it is not. In my own view, I think it’s safer to show the film to teenagers than to encourage them to Google the tasteless and generally lascivious offerings of Confucius Say.

Religion and Christianity are no longer hands-off topics when it comes to humor. A popular meme on the Internet shows Jesus annoying a bartender. “Just water please. But put it in a carafe.”

These witticisms show a steady trend toward the demystification of religion and, perhaps, the final secularization of society.

But it is becoming increasingly obvious that the biggest joke of all has been hanging over our heads for two-thousand years.

The punch line is the Messiah himself. The joke is in the vast difference between the Messiah we were expecting, and the Messiah we got.

Rabbis tell us the Jewish concept of Messiah has remained unchanged for 4,000 years: a human warrior descended from David who would rebuild the temple, and enable the world’s Jews to return to Jerusalem and live forever in peace.

The Messiah would emphatically not be the Son of God, because the very idea would be anathema. 

The Messiah the people of First Century Palestine were awaiting was a Judah Maccabee on Steroids, a bigger-than-life, pumped-up superhero with a cape and an M embroidered on his chest. 

But what did they get?

Ha. They got a vulnerable baby too frail to lift his head. 

They got a weakling who would grow to manhood indifferent to the political milieu in which he lived.

They got a gentle philosopher who talked incessantly about the reign of God.

They got a pacifist who called upon enemies to set aside their enmities and love one another.

They got a drifter who lived among the poor, engaged lowly women as equals, healed the sick, and expressed God’s compassion for all people.

They got a wise-cracking jokester who had no choice but to live out the irony he was: a vulnerable, puny, delicate human who personified the Almighty God, very man of very man and very God of very God.

And they got a Messiah who asserted his power in powerlessness, and who declared that God always honored the weakest and the last above the strongest and the first.

If the essence of humor is surprise, the utterly unexpected result of our assumptions and desires, then the coming of the Messiah is the funniest event in history.

For those who were praying for Messiahman the Mighty, the coming of the babe of Bethlehem was a warning to be careful what you pray for.

The coming of the Messiah is so different from all our expectations that all we can do is shake our heads in astonishment and delight.

And what else can we do when we hear the angels singing on high, when we finally get the great joke God is playing on us?

It’s funny. Laugh.

The One True Myth

When I’m in a media-binging mood I’ve often pulled out my DVD collection of all 104 half-hour programs of Adventures of Superman. 

The show appeared on ABC TV for six seasons from 1952 to 1958. Based on the comic book character created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938, the series was hugely popular among Boomers. George Reeves, a square-jawed replica of the comic book drawing, was Superman.

My brother Larry and I spent hours imitating the man of steel. We approximated Superman’s uniform by pulling our socks past the calves of our pajama leggings, wearing our tightie-whiteys over our pants, and tying towels around our necks. 

That wasn’t so farfetched because even Reeves complained he was too old to work in his pajamas. Unlike many children, fortunately, Larry and I didn’t jump out windows pretending to fly. But there is a family story that I once pushed Super Larry off the top bunk and he thudded loudly onto the hardwood floor. It’s a subject we avoid on Throw-Back Thursdays.

But even if you aren’t familiar with George Reeves’ Superman, you can hardly have missed subsequent incarnations by Christopher Reeve, Dean Cain, Brandon Routh, and, most recently, Henry Cavill.  All of these guys shared the lantern-jawed profile Superman’s creators gave him. 

I suspect that for most Boomers, including me, the best Superman was George Reeves. The actor was personable and indefatigable when it came to appearing before his fans and signing autographs. When he smiled and winked at the camera at the end of most episodes we knew he was letting us in on the joke. 

Reeves died in 1959, probably by his own hand, when it became clear the series would not be renewed. Many boomers remember where they were and what they were doing the day Superman died.

It would be difficult to explain why Superman made such a powerful impact on my generation. One could surmise that George Reeves – who was in his forties when he donned the blue and red pajamas – was an amiable father figure who modeled exemplary behavior. His Clark Kent didn’t smoke, favored milk or ginger ale over hard liquor, was a gentleman to the ladies, treated kids with empathy and affection, and was a stalwart defender of the powerless. 

But there’s more to Superman than that. In 1979, when Superman the Movie debuted with Christopher Reeve in the title role, many church folk had an epiphany. Back then I wrote an editorial for The American Baptist Magazine entitled, “Messiah in Blue Tights.” 

Even a Sunday school dropout would recognize the plot [I wrote]: A wise, all-knowing father in the sky looks down on the earth. He sees a torn and primitive planet badly in need of help, and he sends the world his only begotten son. The son, whose miraculous arrival on earth is heralded by a star in the heavens, learns the virtues of working with his hands from his adopted earthly dad. The lad grows in the favor of his friends, even as he begins to notice that he has powers and abilities far beyond those of mere mortals. Then, the boy senses that his time has come, and he departs to the barren wilderness for a time of testing. While meditating in the wasteland, the spirit of his other-worldly father prepares him for the mission to come. Finally, transfigured and self-assured, the young man returns to society, which stands in awe of his miracles, his goodness and his power. Only the forces of evil stand in his way, and these forces launch a never-ending struggle against him … 

I think of this messianic connection when I read the story of the cleansing of the temple (John 2:13-22). As Jesus grabbed a whip and hauled ass, raging as he thrashed money changers and ejected them from the temple, there was nothing gentle, meek, and mild about him. He’s much more Superman than Clark Kent.

And the Superman of 1950s television did have a mean streak. Like Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, his preferred method of subduing the unruly was to knock their heads together. He also pacified crooks by popping them in the jaw. Many arrested criminals showed up in Inspector Henderson’s office with the lumps and scars of their encounter with Superman. 

Of course Superman is only one of thousands of Messiah metaphors in literature and film. Among the most obvious are Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, Aslan the Lion in the Chronicles of Narnia, Simon in Lord of the Flies, and Billy Budd. 

Harry Potter, John Coffey in The Green Mile, and Randall Patrick McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, are all obvious messianic figures. In the musical Hair, Claude sings, “I am the Son of God, I shall vanish and be forgotten,” and in the end – as a draftee during the Vietnam War – he gives his life for his friends.

The myths are so ubiquitous that many have been tempted to regard Jesus as just another myth created by humans who probe the empty universe in search of God and the meaning of life.

C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist, was an expert on myths of ancient cultures. Many cultures, he noted, worshipped powerful warriors and saviors who gave meaning to their lives. All of these figures were myths.

Now the story of Christ [Lewis wrote], is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call “real things.”

One of the “real things” that helps us distinguish reality from myth is the nature of the God who is doing the expressing.

This God is described in scripture: rich in mercy, great in love – loving us so much, in fact, that he gave his only son to save us all.

Of course we take this God of love for granted. But what could we do about it if the all-powerful creator of the universe was a dastardly deity, a sadistic entity who enjoyed watching us suffer? Or, even worse, what if the creator ignored us? What if God was a guilty bystander, indifferent to our struggles and suffering?

Early mythological deities toyed callously with their human minions, raising them up before casting them down, infusing them with hubris before crushing them into the dirt. Early in human intellectual evolution, the worst and the best of human attributes – pride, cruelty, compassion, love – were believed to be gifts of capricious gods.

Finally, about four millennia ago in Mesopotamia, the children of Abraham brought unique clarity to theological insight: the idea that the Lord our God, the Lord is One. The Shema linked God with the concept of Love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). The obvious syllogism is that God loves you, too. God is love.

If you are a Superman fan, you know that Jor-El is the father of Superman. I wonder if his creators – comic artists Siegel and Shuster – formed his name out of random syllables, or if they were aware that Jorel means “God will uplift” in Hebrew. 

Whatever their intention, Jor-El’s intentions for earth were not loving. His own planet, Krypton, was disintegrating beneath his feet and earth was the nearest place of refuge for his baby boy. For Jor-El, Earth was an orb of convenience, not a venue of love.

Thus, Superman dissolves into one of thousands of myths that fall short of introducing us to the True Creator, the One God, the God of Love.

The words of scripture are so familiar to us that we no longer react to them with the shock and awe they deserve.

They are nothing less than a proclamation of God's intentions for creation. And they blaze in our minds with an incomparable intensity for a very important reason. 

They proclaim the one true myth that sweeps all other myths away.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

The Joy and Mystery of Resurrection

 

NOTE: This sermon was prepared for delivery at an online Service of the Word at First Lutheran Church of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on April 18, 2021. Revised Common Lectionary.

In Luke 24:36b-48, the resurrected Jesus startles the disciples with an abrupt and unexpected appearance. 

He appears ghost-like through a solid wall.

But Jesus insists he is no ghost. He demonstrates the solidity of his flesh by eating fish. 

How does he do it? What is  going on?

Even for lifelong mystics and dedicated theologians, the resurrection of a dead Jesus may be hard to accept. I have known Christian educators who confessed their doubts.

“The resurrection is just not essential to my faith,” whispered one such educator as we sat drinking beer in a darkened pub.

My companion was several years older than me and seminary educated, which I am not. Otherwise I might have quoted Paul’s admonishment: “If Christ was not raised, your faith has nothing to it and you are still in your old state of sin.” (I Corinthians 15:17, REB). 

But I kept my mouth shut and my learned friend and I sipped our beer in silence. 

Recently my friend passed to the other side where eternal truths were surely revealed to him. But for me, awkward questions persist. If Christ was not raised, what did happen that got everyone so excited that long-ago Passover week in Jerusalem?

Each year my Lenten devotions include readings from Jesus: A Pilgrimage by the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest. 

I was “gob-smacked” (to use Martin’s phrase) by his reference to a claim by New Testament scholar and archaeologist Jerome Murphy-O’Connor about whether the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the actual burial place of Jesus:

The most important argument for the authenticity of the site is the consistent and uncontested tradition of the Jerusalem community, which held liturgical celebrations at the site until 66 years after the crucifixion.

Father Martin speculates that these celebrations had been taking place since about the year 45, less than 15 years after Jesus’ crucifixion. Many of the celebrants witnessed that event and were so profoundly affected by subsequent events that they returned to the site for years to express their awe. What moved them so? Was it a contagion of hope? Mass hysteria? I prefer to believe they actually caught glimpses of a resurrected Jesus. But what exactly did they see?

Even the biblical accounts leave open questions. Immediately after his resurrection, Jesus’ closest friends didn’t recognize him. Mary Magdalene, the first to arrive at his empty tomb, didn’t realize Jesus was the man talking to her until he called her name.

In Luke 24, the resurrected Jesus joins two of his disciples on a walk to Emmaus, but Luke reports “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” (v.16). Mark reports, a bit mysteriously, that Jesus appeared to them “in another form” (Mark 16:12) which, as author Garry Wills writes in What Jesus Meant, is “hard to interpret.”

“Jesus appeared in numinous form (Wills writes) … his body was not the earthly body anymore, but one both outside time and space and affecting time and space.” 

The resurrected body of Christ could pass through walls and, ultimately, ascend into heaven, but Jesus could also allow Thomas to touch his wounds of crucifixion. Even more amazing, Jesus could eat with his companions.

Looking back on my unfinished conversation with my Christian educator friend, I wonder if his problem with the resurrection was that he knew beyond doubt that a dead body could never spring back to life in the same form as when life dwelled in it. 

Most clergy see dead bodies all too often and have observed they are cast-off, useless shells of the vibrant creature that once occupied them. 

Whether an individual dies in bed or in a violent accident, it is obvious to witnesses that something essential has departed from the body. A young cop viewing a murder victim for the first time never forgets how similar the inert remains look to that of a dead raccoon decaying on a country road. Dead is dead. Funeral directors whose business it is to make the deceased look lifelike know they must act quickly because death is immediately and totally disfiguring. The millions of microbiota that dwell within us become ravenous foragers of decaying flesh.

The most convincing argument against the resurrection of Jesus is every dead body you see – especially the ones that have lain three days without benefit of the mortuary arts.  

Even so, something extraordinary happened that Passover long ago that kept Jesus’ contemporaries returning worshipfully to the site of his crucifixion and inspired his disciples to risk their lives to keep his story alive.

How closely did Jesus’ numinous body resemble the body of the Jesus his disciples knew and loved? That’s hard to tell. As we have seen, Resurrected Jesus was often not recognized until he did something to call attention to himself. Only on rare occasions could the disciples actually touch him, and Jesus – when he chose to affect time and space – could eat food and – when he chose to be outside time and space – could disappear in front of their eyes.

What is that to us?

According to Paul, the numinous body of Jesus gives us a glimpse of our own numinous bodies when he shed our earthly shells.

“So it is with the resurrection of the dead; what is sown as a perishable thing is raised imperishable. Sown in humiliation, it is raised in glory; sown in weakness, it is raised in power; sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (I Corinthians 15:42-44, REB)

What will our numinous bodies be like?

We hope, of course, that our resurrected bodies will be young, attractive, and – God willing – sexier versions of the husk we carried through life.

But more than that, I think.

Our daughter Katie had a dear friend who, like her, was developmentally disabled on the autism spectrum. Joseph was a charming young man who, despite his limitations, was a loving and delightful presence in all our lives. He was a caring and giving person and I have no doubt he walked this earth exactly as God intended him to be.

When Joseph fell ill with leukemia, neither he nor Katie were fully able to understand what was happening. We loved him and when he died, we mourned him deeply.  

Not long after his death, I dreamed I was sitting at a table with a young man I slowly recognized as Joseph. He was relaxed and his eyes twinkled and we engaged in light conversation. It was only after I woke up that I realized Joseph and I were conversing at a level he could not have attained when he was alive, a conversation filled with humor and subtle nuance. He demonstrated insights and understandings that would have been beyond him.

I like to believe I was receiving an important message in that dream. I was introduced to Joseph as he will appear at his resurrection.

I certainly do not suggest that Joseph was incomplete when he lived among us, but there were many things his disability prevented him from understanding. But so it is with all of us: while we live on this earthly plain, there are many mysteries we will never comprehend. 

But the promise of Jesus is that God will restore us to a higher level of understanding when our own numinous live outside time and space but continue to experience the effects of time and space. 

Exactly how that will happen, as Professor Wills acknowledges, is “hard to interpret.” 

But for those who view death as an inevitable result of the time and space in which we are imprisoned, it’s good to be reminded that God transcends our earthly limitations.

Regardless of the forensic details, this is most certainly true:

The Creator God who loves us all unconditionally sent God’s son into the world to conquer death. Regardless of how God did it, Christ is raised. And because Christ is raised, so will we be raised.

We cling to this hope: that what has been sown in us in weakness will be raised in power.

Christ is Risen. Hallelujah.

The Cost of Deaconing

NOTE: This sermon was prepared for delivery during an on-line Service of the Word at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, Rye Brook, N.Y., on April 18, 2021. (Acts 6:1 - 7:2a, 44-60, Narrative Lectionary.)

When I was 17 I began exploring the possibility of Christian ministry. I consulted my pastor – a young man barely ten years older than me – and he pulled a worn paperback book off his bookshelf.

It was The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

“Read this,” my pastor said, “and we’ll talk.”

I was too young and uninformed to realize what a scary thing my pastor had done. 

I did not realize, at 17, that for Bonhoeffer the cost of discipleship had been severe. He had left a tenured position at Union Seminary to return to his native Germany to oppose the Third Reich. On April 9, 1945, barely a month before the war in Europe ended, Bonhoeffer was cruelly executed by the Nazis for participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Piano wire was wrapped around his neck and he was strung up until he slowly strangled to death.

For those who ponder discipleship, this account should be kept in mind. When Bonhoeffer decided to become a Lutheran pastor he may have anticipated a quiet life of writing and teaching. Instead, he died a martyr at 39.

As we read today’s text in Acts, we might suspect that when Stephen decided to join his fellow Greek Christians in a worshipping congregation he was looking forward to a life of sweet prayer, worship, and social service. 

He was probably aware that tensions were rising in the Christian community between the original Jewish coverts and the more recent Hellenist converts. When the Hellenists complained that their widows were being short-changed in the daily distribution of food, Stephen may have welcomed it when he was one of seven Hellenists chosen to make things fair. 

Stephen and the others, whose names are remembered in today’s scripture but nowhere else, became the first deacons of the church. The disciples defined the role simply: they needed deacons to wait on tables while they attended to the word of God.

That arrangement was not intended to minimize the deacon role.

Whatever your view may be of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – AOC – I think she made a great point when one of the learned GOP lawyers in Congress taunted her for being a mere waitress and bartender.

She replied:

“I’m proud to be a bartender. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

She added: 

“There’s nothing wrong with working retail, folding clothes for other people to buy. There is nothing wrong with preparing food that your neighbors will eat. There is nothing wrong with driving the buses that take your family to work. There is nothing wrong with being a working person in America and there is everything dignified by it.”

Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing more office holders who think of their role as one of diaconal service rather than opportunities for power.

When the disciples named seven deacons, they made it clear they saw the diaconal service role was as important a calling as the pastoral role. This is something for the vast majority of us who are not pastors to keep in mind. Whatever role we are called to fill in the church – usher, reader, knitter, lector, mechanic, electrician, editor, zoom host, scholar – that is the ministry to which God has called us. And we are all ministers.

According to Luke, in his role as deacon, Stephen “full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.”

At least at first. Perhaps he was doing too good a job. He may have made some of his fellow Hellenists jealous because resentful members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen began to challenge him.

Years ago, when I was a young magazine editor, I began receiving scores of angry letters from readers who thought the magazine was devoting too much space to social issues and too little to spiritual issues. I mentioned this to George Cornell, religion editor of the Associated Press, and asked him how he handled angry letters. George stroked his chin and said, in his Oklahoma drawl, “I tell ’em, ‘You may be right.’”

Perhaps it would have been safer for Stephen to take this approach with his critics. But instead he angered them even more with arguments so smart that they knew they could not refute them. So they began making up lies about what he said. They took him to the Council and accused Stephen of threatening the most holy entity the Council could imagine: the Temple. 

Luke writes: 

“They stirred up the people as well as the elders and the scribes; then they suddenly confronted him, seized him, and brought him before the council. They set up false witnesses who said, ‘This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.’ And all who sat in the council looked intently at him, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.”

But – alas for him – Stephen did not just sit there looking angelic. When the high priests ask him if the accusations were correct, he strikes back.

It is of particular interest to us as we move with hope toward the end of our pandemic-imposed isolation from our beloved church building that in his rant Stephen questions the importance of the Temple. In the midst of our own separation from our church building, we can almost welcome Stephen’s reminder that “the most high does not dwell in houses made by human hands.”

“Heaven is my throne,

   and the earth is my footstool.

What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,

   or what is the place of my rest?

Did not my hand make all these things?”

‘You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.’

That did it. Outraged, the people dragged Stephen out of the city and began to stone him.

But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he died.

Deacon Stephen, speaking truth to a power that refuses to hear it, becomes the church’s first martyr.

For Deacon Stephen, as for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the cost of discipleship was high.

For most of us, and for many pastors in many traditions, the cost may not be so high.

But here’s the thing: if there is no cost at all, it is not discipleship.

Throughout my forty years as a reporter, editor, layperson, and guilty bystander in church circles, I’ve observed many disciples who paid large and small prices for their discipleship.

Over the years I’ve known more than one pastor fired from his or her congregation for taking pastoral or diaconal stands they believed to be right:

For preaching against what they believed to be this nation’s immoral war in Vietnam;

For removing the U.S. flag from the church sanctuary on the grounds that God is the God of all nations and all peoples;

For participating in Civil Rights marches;

For presiding over the marriage vows of same-sex couples;

For preaching against the ownership of powerful assault rifles.

I’ve known married women pastors who have been dismissed from their congregations for getting pregnant, or for requesting a one-month leave to recuperate from a mastectomy. 

Today, in our hypertense environment, the moral questions we face cause many of us to ask whether we dare risk the cost of discipleship. Do we dare declare unequivocally:

That war and violence are always sin;

That Black Lives Matter; 

That Islam is a religion of peace;

That no person is illegal;

That no religious views should be forced upon anyone;

That everyone is entitled to express their sexuality in their own way without social prejudice or government imposition. 

That God is love;

And the greatest commandment is always to love one another as we love ourselves.

Two millennia ago, the first Christians established the role of deacon to reach out to all persons to assure they are sheltered, fed, cared for when disabled or ill, protected from prejudice or hatred, and treated with love, fairness, and justice. 

This is a role we all share.

Deacon Stephen reminds us that it is not a role to be taken lightly and that it may come with costs.

But it is a role we must assume with faith in God’s grace; 

Because God’s work requires all our hands.

We are marked with the cross of Christ forever; we are claimed, gathered, and sent for the sake of the world.

Whatever the cost.

Doubt Along With Me

 

Then Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” John 20:27

I’ve known some serious doubters in my time and quite often I’ve been one of them.

I’ve also known some frivolous doubters who simply wish to distinguish themselves from silly simpletons of faith. They think Christians view God as a white bearded misogynist who sits on a cloud behind pearly gates, glaring at Muslims and grumbling ominously about same sex marriages. 

Those who don’t believe this god exists are welcome to their atheism, and they would include most church attenders.

Some doubters, however, are merely intellectual posers. They find it cool to be an agnostic or atheist. It makes them look smarter than their church going friends and it declares their emancipation from pious, controlling parents.

And there are doubters who doubt out of laziness, either because they don’t wish to trouble themselves with deep questions about the meaning of life, or because it gives them an excuse to stay in bed on Sunday mornings.

But I’m not thinking about bush league doubters. I’m thinking about persons whose doubt is on steroids, mounting daily, cramping the synapses of their frontal cortex, torturing them with illusions of insight while shrinking their cerebral testicles.

For doubters such as this, Thomas is the patron saint. 

His was not the kind of doubt that enabled him to sleep late or feel superior to his believing friends.

His was a throbbing doubt, and the toothy grins of his fellow disciples tortured him. 

What did Thomas want to believe more than anything else? 

That Jesus was alive. 

What did he know could never happen? 

That a dead man could return to life. 

While his friends snickered, he continued to mourn.

Many of us share the pain of knowing a loved one is gone and can never return. The pain may fade slightly over the years, but it never goes away.

As is often the case in social media, I have a Facebook friend I’ve never met. She is a Baptist minister and prison chaplain who contacted me at the National Council of Churches to ask the council’s help in securing clemency for a death row inmate. Interventions from the Council and from the Pope did no good and the prisoner was executed, but I remained in touch with the chaplain in Facebook.

Shortly after the execution of the prisoner, the chaplain learned her young daughter had a particularly dangerous form of cancer. The mother decided to share her pain with her Facebook friends. For months, I was among those who prayed and laughed and wept as this child’s prognosis rose and fell. At first it seemed the chemotherapy was working. Then the cancer returned, and the doctors said one of her legs must be amputated. This was a tough decision for the mother of a child who wanted to be a dancer, but there was still hope the operation would save her life. Nevertheless, this beautiful little girl died.

Not long ago, my friend placed this message on Facebook:

Not sure why I want my FB world to know, but I just need to share. I hurt. Being a bereaved mother sucks. I miss her smile, her crystal blue eyes and knowing how she would be thinking about the world. Not worth listing all the things I miss ... because it is every single thing. I know it isn’t realistic, but it doesn't stop my heart from screaming, “Please come home ... please ... I need you back.”

While his glib friends were smiling, Thomas the Doubter was feeling a pain akin to this. “Please come back home, Jesus, please, I need you back,” But as any sensible human being must, he would have added, “I know it isn’t realistic.” He doubted. And so would we.

Doubt is not a trifling thing. Doubt is pain. Doubt is facing the fact that we can never have what we want most, what we need most. Doubt is the ultimate darkness. It’s ironic that we have been raised to think of Thomas as a man of little faith, when in fact his doubts were logical. “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,” he said, “I will not believe.” It was a cry of agony, not arrogance.

In 2008, the National Council of Churches was observing the 100th anniversary of the founding of its predecessor organization, the Federal Council of Churches in the USA.

As webpage editor, I was assigned to develop a monthly series of “ecumenical moments” that highlighted special events in the history of the Council. 

I looked for leaders and events that called attention to the special ministries of the Council. There was Arthur Flemming, a Republican member of President Eisenhower’s cabinet who was an eloquent advocate for Civil Rights; Harold Stassen and J. Irwin Miller, often touted as men who should have been president of the United States; Cynthia Wedel, a pioneering advocate for women’s rights and a member of President Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women; Eugene Carson Blake, who linked arms with Martin Luther King, Jr., on the 1963 “I have a dream” march with Washington.

All were persons of great faith and all were activists for peace, equal rights, and justice.

But as I leafed through the pages of Outlook, a magazine published by the Council from 1950 to 1953, I realized I was missing an important ministry not always associated with the National Council of Churches: evangelism.

I was surprised to discover the Council had a director of evangelism in the early fifties. He was a fiery, energetic preacher named Charles Templeton, who happened to be a good friend of Billy Graham. A long article in Outlook described Templeton’s homiletical zeal and remarkable success in winning souls for Jesus.

Yes! I thought. Perfect! What better example of the Council’s little known evangelical side? Was Templeton still alive? Was he still in the evangelism biz? I jumped on my computer and began searching for him.

I didn’t find Charles, but I found his son and gave him a call.

“I was just reading an old article about your dad’s years as evangelist for the National Council of Churches,” I said.

“Oh,” he replied, sounding interested.

“Is your dad still around?”

“He died in 2001.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You knew, right?”

“What?”

“You knew he became an atheist and left the Council?”

Whoops.

So much for the NCC evangelism story.

Digging a little further, I discovered Templeton had written a book in 1996, Farewell to God, My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.

The book includes an account of his encounter with his old pal, Billy Graham.

In the course of our conversation I said, “But, Billy, it’s simply not possible any longer to believe, for instance, the biblical account of creation. The world was not created over a period of days a few thousand years ago; it has evolved over millions of years. It’s not a matter of speculation; it’s a demonstrable fact.” 

“I don’t accept that,” Billy replied.

Charles Templeton had become a man of doubt. And he was no facile doubter. He was a doubter on steroids.

But, like Thomas, his doubts brought him pain.

Lee Strobel, the Christian journalist and author of The Case for Faith, recounts an interview he had with Templeton when he was in his 80s.

Strobel asked the aging atheist to update his thoughts about Jesus. Templeton’s response surprised him.

“He was,” Templeton began, “the greatest human being who has ever lived. He was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique. He was the intrinsically wisest person that I’ve ever encountered in my life or in my readings. His commitment was total and led to his own death, much to the detriment of the world. What could one say about him except that this was a form of greatness?”

“Well, yes, he is the most important thing in my life ... I know it may sound strange, but I have to say, I adore him.  Everything good I know, everything decent I know, everything pure I know, I learned from Jesus. Yes. And tough! Just look at Jesus. He castigated people. He was angry. People don’t think of him that way, but they don’t read the Bible. He had a righteous anger. He cared for the oppressed and exploited. There’s no question that he had the highest moral standard, the least duplicity, the greatest compassion, of any human being in history. There have been many other wonderful people, but Jesus is Jesus.

“In my view,” he declared, “he is the most important human being who has ever existed.”

That’s when Templeton uttered the words I never expected to hear from him. “And if I may put it this way,” he said as his voice began to crack, “I miss him!”

What happens to the doubters when they near the end of their lives?

Thomas does not reappear in the canonical bible after his encounter with Jesus, but tradition says he sailed to India in A.D. 52 to found some of the world’s oldest Christian churches. It shows what a doubter can do when his faith is renewed.

But – and one might sigh, Alas! – Jesus never appeared to Charles Templeton to invite him to feel his wounds. Templeton remained in doubt to the end of his life.

But Templeton’s words to Strobel remind us of something Frederick Buechner wrote in The Faces of Jesus:  “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

At the end of his life, Charles Templeton did not retract his doubt. But his words suggest he never lost the ants in his pants, either.

And whatever state his faith was in when he died, it is evident he never lost his fascination – or adoration – for Jesus, “the most important human being who ever existed.”

Jesus has that way of grabbing hold of one, even one who has never encountered his resurrected body or touched his wounds.

What does Thomas have in common with Charles the Doubter and all the other doubters-on-steroids who struggle to understand the secrets of the world?

I think the answer is this:

We may have periods in our lives – long periods, endless periods, when we lose touch with God or Jesus.

But God’s Holy Spirit never lets go of us.

And whether we are able to speak the words or not, whether we know it or not, there will never be a time we are out of the loving presence of our Lord and our God.