Pascha II

The Second Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:452-47; Psalm 118; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

We have experienced so much betrayal by societal institutions including our own church that it is difficult to believe in anything today. The damage done to our minds and spirits by the purposeful manipulation of information and images through the internet and social media is incalculable. How long will it take for society to reclaim any sense of trust and belief in our institutions, in each other? And so it with the spiritual life.

Belief in God isn’t the same as it was in the year 1500 compared with today 2023, is it?

In earlier societies God was everywhere and religion was interwoven with everything. Blest candles kept us save from storms, medals of St. Christopher and St. Michael guarded and protected us, blest water sanctified us, our homes were as sacred as churches marked by sacred images, the praying of the Angelus marked the beginning, middle and completion of the day, and festivals to honour parish patron saints abounded with church bells calling us to prayer. We lived in Catholic fishbowls of like-minded believers and even society supported our holy days, fasts and feasts. It was a wonderful experience.

It seemed so easy back then as it was for the first disciples. The beloved disciple looks into the tomb and sees the burial cloths lying there and believes. Though Thomas staunchly refuses to believe unless he sees and touches the marks of the crucifixion; when offered the opportunity by the risen Christ, Thomas simply makes an act of belief, “My Lord and my God”.  Belief is so easy that Macy’s has a “Believe” campaign, though they never say what or whom you are expected to believe in. [I found out. It is Santa Claus.]

Since the dawn of humanity it was virtually impossible not to believe in God. Many of us grew up in a world where belief in God went unchallenged. But that is not true anymore. Our Christian faith and way of life are now only one option among many. Belief in God is no longer self-evident nor does it go unquestioned. And none of us is unaffected by this spiritual tidal change that is occurring.

There is a sadness in this that something is dying. And the religious world view of the ancient past that many of us grew up in is no longer available to anyone, believer or unbeliever alike.

What happened in the last 500 years?

With the Enlightenment and the separation of church and state, religion has become largely a private matter. It is as if the world and public spaces have been emptied of God. And when people try to force God back into the public sphere it just seems awkward if not sacrilegious as when a nation’s flag is wrapped around the cross of our salvation.

We are all aware of the falling off of religious practice. But is that the same as a denial of religious belief? How many people believe in God but no longer in the Church? Just because a person leaves the Church does that mean they do not continue to believe in God?

What does it mean to believe? What do you and I believe? Why do we believe what we profess? Could we explain to someone why we believe in God and in Jesus?

How different is the experience of the believer from the non-believer or the believer in another framework of belief?

Are we not all trying to catch glimpses of what the Catholic Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls, “fullness”? Or in the words of T. S. Eliot, “I have had a tremor of bliss, a wink of heaven, a whisper, And I would no longer be denied; all things proceed to a joyful consummation”.*

One hundred-thirty years ago, the atheist German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared, “God is dead”. What did he mean by this statement? He didn’t mean there was a God who had actually died, but rather that our idea, our understanding of God is dying. To my mind, that is not a challenge to Christianity or faith but a pathway on which to journey.

What is our idea, our understanding of God?

Is God dead and now being emptied from the public sphere or is the living God of Jesus Christ inviting us into an unfamiliar and deeper understanding of the divine life and our relationship with him? Is God leading the religious framework we were familiar with into a desert exile to be purified and re-galvanzied to return with a renewed experience?

Our God is a desert God, the God of Abraham and Sarah, and from the scriptures we learn that our God always returns to the desert with his people, for the sake of his people. Why would our living God not return to the desert with us again?

So Thomas and John you saw and believed. But for us, we need to first grapple with belief itself.**

_{*T. S. Eliot, “Murder in the Cathedral”}

_{**Ideas and phrases from Charles Taylor, “A Secular Age”, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2007.}