Turn: Pause, Listen, and Follow Jesus

Sermon for Sunday, April 7, 2024
"Walking the Way of Love" preaching series

As we begin this sermon series about Walking the Way of Love, I want to share a story from a long time ago now, when Ann and the kids and I were in seminary in Austin. 

It was my senior year, and Ann had been hospitalized for several weeks.  I was doing field education at a parish there – the time when you get a little foretaste of what life is like as a priest.  Another student, who had just begun her time at the seminary, was doing the first-year students’ version of field ed at the same congregation.  This other student was blind, and I got to know her by being her ride to our field-ed parish.  She’d had a strong vocation even before coming to seminary, having made her way through law school and practiced as an attorney for several years.  I can’t imagine the dedication and talent it took for her to overcome all that she’d overcome to be a lawyer … and now she was starting professional training all over again to follow her calling as a priest.  On one of our rides back to the seminary, I said all that to her – how much I admired her strength, and resolve, and commitment as she headed down this new vocational path.  She said, “Well, you know, this isn’t just about professional dedication.  I’ve come to see that following Jesus Christ pretty much means everything to me.  So, this isn’t a career transition.  I stake my life on this.”

So much for the wise senior encouraging the new seminarian. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, with Ann lying in the hospital and our path rather foggy, but this was a turning point for me – not in the sense of changing my direction but in the sense of understanding it.  As I said last week – for me, going to seminary had felt like more like a change in career than a change in identity.  But in that semester when I had no idea what was coming next for Ann and the kids and me, and as I was relying so deeply on our families and the seminary community to get us through, I heard this other student’s witness and thought, “What do you know?  That call to follow Christ in the darkness – that’s my call, too.  It turns out, I am staking my life on this.”  And though I haven’t spoken to this other student since I graduated and now can’t even remember her name, I’m very grateful for how clearly she could see where God was leading her and for how deeply she trusted in that.

In this sermon series about Walking the Way of Love, our first step is “turn.”  Now, in our Baptismal Covenant, those promises we renew at every baptism and confirmation, we frame this step in terms of repentance, turning from sin and evil; and that’s certainly part of our journey.  But turning can be much less dramatic yet even more life-changing.  And, as a spiritual practice, turning happens more often than we might think.  In fact, as we walk Jesus’ Way of Love across our lives, I think we come to one turning point after another.

In the Gospel reading today, we got to hear about a famous turning point involving the much-maligned disciple Thomas.  Now, when you hear that name, what descriptive word always comes before it?  Right – “doubting Thomas.”  Well, that’s just unfair; he wasn’t the only one struggling to believe in resurrection.  All the other disciples were hiding out on Easter night, scared to death about what the religious authorities might do to them, having crucified their leader.  They had the doors locked and the lamps burning low … despite the fact that Mary Magdalene had told them what she’d seen that morning – that Jesus had risen, and was walking around, and was telling her to go share the news.  The disciples had an eyewitness, and two of them – Peter and John – had gone to see the empty tomb for themselves.  But there they all were, with the doors locked, paralyzed in fear.  So, who was doing the doubting?

Anyway, they were then blessed to witness the risen Christ for themselves, as his transformed and transfigured physical body passed through the locked door.  He gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Pentecost moment in the Gospel of John; and he empowered them to bear his peace and his power of forgiveness to the world. 

Unfortunately, Thomas missed it.  And when the rest of the disciples told him what happened, he reacted just like they’d reacted to Mary Magdalene:  “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,” Thomas said (John 20:25).  Bookmark that last word, “believe,” because we’ll come back to it. 

But for now, the story then jumps ahead seven days to the next Sunday, when Thomas is back; and the risen Jesus again walks through the locked door and stands with them.  It’s not just a courtesy call.  Jesus has come to give Thomas precisely what he needs.  “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says, letting Thomas “see” the way little kids need to see things, by touching them.  “Reach out your hand and put it in my side.  Do not doubt but believe.” (20:27)

Press “pause” there for a minute, and let’s think about that word, “believe.”  We postmodern folks don’t use it like ancient people would’ve used it.  If you ask me, “Do you believe in the resurrection?” you’re probably asking, “Do you think that Jesus really was dead, and that God really raised him from death, and that Jesus really experienced bodily life again?”  In other words, do you think it’s factually true?  For the record, the answer is “yes,” but that’s not the point.  The point is that when the writer of John’s Gospel used the Greek word pistos, which we translate as “believe,” it meant much more than just thinking something’s true.  And when the bishops of the early Church got together in Nicaea and consolidated the faith of the Jesus movement into a creed and began its three sections with a Greek word we translate as “We believe,” it meant much more than just thinking something’s true.  For the ancients, believing something wasn’t just acknowledging its veracity.  Believing something meant trusting in it, setting your heart on it, guiding your life by it.

So, back to Jesus and Thomas.  “See my hands and my feet,” Jesus says.  “Do not doubt but … trust in this.  Set your heart on this.  Guide your life by this.  Because resurrection happens.”

And Thomas turns.  As he walks the Way of Love, Thomas comes to a crucial moment, a cross in the road, where he sees where he’s heading and sets his face toward it.  “My Lord and my God!” he exclaims (20:28).  Now, the verb there matters.  Thomas “exclaims,” not “explains.”  There is nothing logical about Thomas’ turning point.  His logic was sound right up until Jesus walked through a locked door.  It made all the sense in the world – all the worldly sense – for Thomas to say, “Dead people don’t walk into the room and start talking.  I’d have to see that to believe it.”  Wouldn’t we? 

Jesus knows this – which is why I don’t hear him chiding Thomas at all for not setting his heart on something he hasn’t experienced.  Jesus is simply inviting Thomas to look and see precisely what Thomas said he needed to see … and then set his heart on it.  And Thomas responds with the single clearest ascription of divine authority any character in John’s Gospel ever speaks about Jesus.  He isn’t just the rabbi anymore.  He isn’t just the king of Israel anymore.  He’s “my Lord” – in Greek, kyrios, the same word used for the Roman Emperor – and he’s “my God.”  God has been crucified, and has risen, and is walking through locked doors to find Thomas. 

And the call to us?  As today’s step in Walking the Way of Love puts it:  “Turn – pause, listen, and choose to follow Jesus.”  In other words, notice what God’s up to in your life.  Notice how it might be precisely what you need in order to set your heart on this illogical and transforming reality.  It’s the risen Christ who called a blind attorney to turn in a new direction and trust in a new path.  It’s the risen Christ who called a lost seminarian to trust in friends and family and a parish yet to come, all of whom would show that the Spirit could carry him far better than he could carry himself.  It’s the risen Christ who comes to find us when we pause, and listen, and choose to follow – when we say, “You know, actually, I stake my life on this.”