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Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.
John 20:21

           Have you ever wished that you had lived during Jesus’ lifetime and “known Christ after the flesh” (2 Corinthians 5:16)?  Today’s gospel does not suggest that closeness in time to the Christ event is any special privilege.  Jesus’ words to Thomas almost sound like a reproach, as though the need for seeing expresses the deficiency of the faith on which it is based. 
            Earlier in this same chapter, the Beloved Disciple comes to faith simply by seeing the grave cloths and grasping their meaning (John 20:5.8); he receives no vision of the risen Lord.  His intuitive insight into the significance of something which had evidently eluded Peter (vv. 6-7) provides us with a model for coming to faith.  For we are the ones of whom Christ says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:21).
            Contrary to the common slogan, seeing is not believing.  Rather,“faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).  A life which is lived on the basis of this principle will be very different from the way most people live their lives.  A religious life, consistently and conscientiously pursued, tends to make a person exceptional and out of the ordinary, and people who are out of the ordinary do not have it easy.
            Yesterday I attended a symposium at the University of Toronto on Coptic Christianity.  In recent years the number of Coptic Christians has grown greatly both here and in the United States.  One reason for this is the discrimination and persecution they suffer in their native Egypt at the hands of Muslim extremists.  I thank God that we can take religious tolerance for granted here in Canada, but it is good to be reminded, as I was yesterday, that faith can exact a price.
            In the Acts of the Apostles we have a description of the Christian communism which was supposedly practiced in the Jerusalem community (4:32).  Just as we might wish to have lived during Jesus’ lifetime, so we might wish to have lived among Christians who had such a selfless attitude towards worldly goods. 
            But one doesn’t have to be an economist to recognize that the practice of selling lands and houses and using the proceeds to help the needy (Acts 4:34-35) could not have gone on for very long without bankrupting the community.  Jesus himself said, “The poor you have always with you” (John 12:8).
            The contrary assertion that “there was not a needy person” among the Jerusalem Christians (Acts 4:34) is more an expression of idealism than a statement of fact.  The first Christian community is represented as fulfilling the prophecy which Moses made to the Israelites as they were about to enter the promised land (Deuteronomy 8:9).
            Living by faith does not mean that we have any magic answers to the problems in our lives or the problems of the society in which we live.  Faith has nothing to do with the “feel good” evangelism we often see on TV.  Faith means hoping against hope and in spite of all appearances.            

March 30, 2008

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