"THE POWER OF THE BOOK"

Acts 5:27-32; John 20:19-31

It's the first Sunday after Easter,

and I know you think that we have to talk about Thomas today.

We're going to.

But in order to talk about Thomas,

we have to talk about the nature of scripture.

I think of the scriptures that we call the Old and New Testaments

the way that my professor Bob Shelton from Austin Seminary

described the Lord's Supper.

Isn't it amazing, Bob says,

how the one thing that's supposed to bring us all together

is the one thing that most divides us?

Scripture is that way too, I think,

or at least it can be.

We are a people of the book,

or, as theologian Stanley Hauerwas says,

we are a "story-formed community."

Not only are we a people of the book,

we are shaped by it as much individually

as we are as a whole.

Those who seek to hold ordained office

in the Presbyterian ChurchUSA

are asked if they "accept the scriptures of the Old and New Testament

to be, by the Holy Spirit,

the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the church universal,

and God's word to you."

Second only to the sovereignty of God,

we Presbyterians confess the authority of scripture

as the foundation of our faith.

Now, how we use scripture,

and what we understand by that phrase "the authority of scripture,"

is another matter altogether. 

People use and misuse scripture for their own purposes all the time.

Just as some say that statistics can be used to prove anything,

scripture has been used to condone slavery,

to demonize people of other faiths,

and to keep women out of the pulpit.

(You're not so lucky this morning)

Some even will use the Bible like a Ouija board,

letting it fall open to some page

and then zeroing in on one isolated verse

as God's word for them that day.

There's a great story about that -

One day a man was doing that very thing.

He was trying to figure out what God wanted him to do with his life.

So he opened the Bible wherever it fell and,

without looking, pointed to one verse on the page. 

It must have been somewhere in Proverbs.

The verse said something like,

"Fool and dolt perish together and leave their wealth to others." 

Knowing for sure that verse couldn't be God's will for him,

he tried the same technique again. 

He shuffled the pages of the bible,

stopped somewhere different, and pointed.

This time, the verse said,

"Go thou and do likewise." 

It's a good thing that scripture is sturdier than we are!

We may, by ignorance or by design,

use and abuse and misuse the words of the Old and New Testaments,

and read into them what we want them to say.

Even so,

the Word of God tends to survive anyway.

Scripture is God's gift to us

to help us understand who God is

and what is God's good will for our lives.

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That brings us to our gospel reading this morning.

John's gospel gives us an amazing lesson //

wrapped up in a deceptively simple story.

Much more

than being about someone who has to see it to believe it,

John himself tells us

that this story is for you and me!

For those of us who were not eyewitnesses

to the miracle of Easter morning,

John says something radical:

It's not miraculous appearances through locked doors

that bring about faith.

It's not even being an eyewitness to that kind of miracle.

What brings about belief, and ultimately life,

John tells us,

is encountering the story.

That being the case,

listen for God's word now

as we find it in the 20^th chapter of the gospel of John,

beginning with verse 19.

And whether you choose to read along in your bible

or just listen to the story,

I invite you to let the word of God do its thing.

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(John 20:19-31)

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So how can this be?

How can the reading of less than twenty verses of scripture

give us the capacity to believe, and to have life?

It can do so

through a fascinating gift that Jesus gave his followers that day.

When the resurrected Christ entered that room for the first time,

he said to his followers, "Peace is with you."

Far more than wishing them well

or trying to calm them down,

Jesus was merely stating a fact.

Because of the resurrection,

God's peace was indeed in the middle of that room.

And what do you think was going on

when Jesus breathed on them?

He wasn't just demonstrating his own aliveness.

Jesus breathed on his disciples

much in the same way

that God breathed on Creation in Genesis:

to bring life

to those created in God's image. 

In greeting them after the resurrection,

Jesus proclaimed the arrival of God's victory,

and breathed on his disciples

the breath of blessed, resurrected life.

You can always tell that God's in the room

when something life-giving comes to pass.

Scripture doesn't have any magical powers in and of itself. 

Though we should treat our bibles with respect,

the paper and the printing and the binding

aren't what put the "Holy" in "Holy Scripture."

It's the Spirit,

promised by Jesus during his life

and delivered at his resurrection,

that enlivens the words on these printed pages

and awakens within us the presence of God.

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I think it's also interesting to note

for whom the story of Thomas was written.

It wasn't written for strangers.

It was written by The Beloved Disciple

about one of the hometown favorites

for a group who knew how the story would end.

And that group includes every one of us.

Poor old Thomas usually gets a fairly bad rap

at this time of year.

He's seen as being obstinate, doubtful,

and some even say sullen or lazy

because he didn't show up the first time

when Jesus appeared to all the others. 

Well, even if he was all those things,

that's not all bad.

It tells me there's hope for those of us like me

who have our own moments

of being obstinate, or doubtful, or lazy, or sullen.

Throughout the whole of John's gospel,

a variety of people in a variety of circumstances

are led to believe the good news of the gospel:

a woman with five husbands;

a wise and devout Pharisee;

a man born blind;

another man who'd been paralyzed for 38 years;

even a very close friend of his

that Jesus brought back from the dead,

and his two sisters,

who were always trying to find the balance between doing and being;

a handful of disciples who couldn't stay awake for one night;

and a right-hand man who denied Jesus three times

on the last night of his life.

Cap it off with someone like Thomas

who believes that the proof is only in the pudding,

and this cast of characters

sounds like just about every Session I've ever served on!

This was the "in crowd," friends!

These are our parents in the faith,

this ragtag group of men and women full of shortcomings

both physically and mentally,

but especially spiritually.

If they can do it,

if they can be enlivened by that Holy Spirit

and be given new life in the name of Christ,

well, then,

there's got to be room for us too.

John himself tells us

that the story of Thomas isn't written to stave off our own doubt,

though that's not a bad thing.

John tells us that the story of Thomas,

and many others as well,

were written so that we may believe,

and in so doing have real life.

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So: What would our lives look like

if we took seriously

that notion that we are a story-formed community,

formed in particular by this story?

John tells us

that the followers of Jesus were invigorated and enlivened

by the breath of holy spirit,

and that we too are invigorated and enlivened - //

just by hearing the old, old story,

and believing it,

                        and taking it in and owning it as part of our very being.

A lot of churches spend days and weeks

agonizing over coming up with a mission statement

which will accurately depict and direct its life together.

And ours is a pretty good one.

But what if scripture itself became our mission statement? 

What if we were totally intentional

in basing not only our preaching around scripture,

but all of our teaching,

all of our programs,

all of our committee meetings?

What if everything we do as a congregation

was bathed in God's word?

There's no telling what that Holy Spirit can do

to enliven each and every aspect

of the life of First Presbyterian Church.

If we were to take seriously //

the notion that the story of Thomas

was written not to demean Thomas' doubt

but to enliven our faith,

then there would never be one concern in this part of Christ's body

about money,

or membership,

or attendance.

When Paul and I were in Russia almost six years ago now,

we got to attend worship at a Russian Orthodox church

one very cold Sunday morning. 

Because of our schedule,

we had to attend the eight a.m. service. 

The parish we attended

didn't have more than about ten or fifteen parking spaces,

but there were at least a hundred people in worship that morning.

Most of them had walked to church that day,

through snow that was about calf high,

to attend an eight o'clock service that ran an hour and fifteen minutes,

and stand the whole time!

That's how enlivening they find the word of God.

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We started out this morning

talking about Bob Shelton's notion

that the thing which most unites us

is often the very thing that fractures our unity.

I still contend

that it's not just the sacraments which function that way.

Sinful creatures that we are,

we creatively find ways to take God's word

and try to shape it to our own designs.

Even though God's word will not be held captive,

that doesn't stop us from trying.

Look at some of the contentiousness we've had

in our Presbytery, and in our denomination.

There are those on all sides of tough issues

who will read into scripture what they wish to see there

instead of allowing Holy Spirit to work unimpeded

in the lives and hearts of all.

It's scary business to let Holy Spirit have the run of the mill. 

We preachers have to grapple with that every Sunday,

and we don't always succeed.

But I commend it to us anyway.

In our life together as a congregation,

as a denomination,

and as brothers and sisters in the larger body of Christ,

all of whom are the intended audience for the story of Thomas,

why don't we give it a try?

Instead of hurling scripture at each other

in order to determine winners and losers

and separate out the wheat from the chaff,

let's return to the reason this story was told.

Remembering that we are a story-formed community,

let's let scripture work its magic

in our lives

and in the lives of all.

As difficult as it may be,

engaging ourselves with God's word in an intentional way

is the most important thing we can do

to believe,

and in that belief,

to have life in Christ's name. 

Amen.