We see this struggle of faith at work throughout history: The people of God saw Him deliver them with His mighty hand from slavery in Egypt, but they doubted, grumbled against Him, and exchanged their relationship to the living God for a golden calf. God promised to give them the Promised Land, showed it to them, and still they quivered to trust God, preferring in their sin to stay in the wilderness. Later, the prophets foretold of God’s provision and Messiah’s coming, the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords who would come to save the world, and even after they saw some of the prophesies come true, they killed those same prophets to silence them.
When Jesus came, He did all the works that the prophets said that He would and miracle after miracle, and they still sought to put Him to death to silence Him. And now, standing on this side of His glorious resurrection, Christ shows them and us His empty tomb. He visibly appears to His disciples and a great number of others. He shows His resurrected body to them. He grants them His peace. In all, He appears to some 500. Again, we read, “some doubted.”
After all the events, after all the miracles that the disciples have been eyewitnesses to, after Jesus has given sight to the blind, made the lame walk, fed the 5,000, healed the paralytic, cast out the demons, turned the water into wine, and, raised the dead, and most important of all, raised Himself as the new ‘Adam,’ by which He has created a new race of man through baptism and Chrismation capable of likewise defeating death. Still, some doubt. On the cross, after all the signs and miracles, they rail against him, saying, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him.”
No, it seems that seeing alone is not sufficient for faith; it takes more than sight to believe. There are miracles all around us, even in our own lives: steps we have taken forward in faith, passions we have been healed of, the joy of the Kingdom we’ve experienced and seen. But still we doubt. Why? Because we have not ‘seen’, we often struggle to believe.
But faith involves more than seeing. In fact, seeing and touching, as Thomas insists on, isn’t at all necessary for the one who believes and sees with the ‘eyes’ of faith, as the other disciples did. Is growth in love, healing from addictions and passions, growth in humility and Christ-likeness any less ‘tangible’? This is what we need to ask ourselves. Peter, after his three denials, was more than ready to run to the empty tomb at the testimony of the myrrh-bearing women.
Faith starts and is built on a desire to believe, to grow closer to God. We don’t all start out with great earth-shattering faith, but faith can and will grow in us if we desire it to, if we are open to receiving more from God. Faith is watered by this desire: to know God, to be in relationship and communion with Him, to seek Him and answers to the mystery that God is as the Truth.
We can convince ourselves that these historic accounts are true and come to faith—their historic reality and continuity is unmistakably evident in the Church’s witness for all those who are open to seeing it. But reason can get us only so far. We can’t “convince” ourselves to have faith any more than we can just wish ourselves to be Saints. Instead, faith’s achieved through cooperation with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, step by step through obedience, humility, prayer, worship, and the Sacraments—the recipe Christ has left us through His Body, the Church. If we don’t have faith, we have ourselves to blame. But we don’t have to stay there—in that ditch.
We can participate in our growth, our healing, by being open to God’s work in our lives, by asking, even pleading for God to help us to trust Him more, by praying diligently for faith and the healing and growth in the life in Christ that we need. We pray daily for the things we are lacking and need and against those things that hold us back and cause us to sin, and which are a reflection of our brokenness—all those vices that we need God to heal, all those things about us that aren’t yet reflective of the princes and princesses of the Kingdom that God has made us to be. God does not let these prayers go unanswered, but it is we who often present a roadblock to our healing by holding on to these souvenirs of hell. God Himself doesn’t withhold salvation from—no! Communion with Him is what He created us for, but here’s the key, we have to be open to becoming the likeness of Christ. We have to die to selves to be raised in Christ.
We’re inheritors of the faithful who’ve come before us—who’ve believed even though we’ve not seen with physical eyes. Those of us who’ve journeyed through Holy Week have seen the holy and historical events of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection unfold before us. We’ve heard the 12 Gospel accounts of the Passion and 15 of the many Old Testament readings that point to God’s faithfulness to Israel, His power to save. We’ve seen what only spiritual eyes could reveal.
In Thomas’ case, God’s blessing to him was that physical encounter with the risen Lord, Jesus Christ. His profession of faith became as strong as his doubts were before. Prior to his own martyrdom, Thomas went on to proclaim the Good News to the people of India, where to this day the so-called Thomas Christians continue to live the Gospel and Orthodox Faith.
My prayer for each of us is that these seeds of faith, planted in us by these holy and life-saving events, in continuity with all those witnesses who have come before us, will continue to be watered by our desire for God and the life that is only in Him. Through our prayers, our repentance, and our willingness to change, even our mere attendance at church, making use of the tools of salvation Christ God has lovingly entrusted to us in His Church, our efforts will produce great fruit in our lives, in our community, and in the world around us. That’s God’s faithfulness to us. In this way we along with others will come to see what only the eyes of faith can see and come to the knowledge and love of God, finding healing and life for their souls.
Christ is risen!
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Thomas Sunday, Second of Pascha
12 May 2013
Epistle: Acts 5:12-20
Gospel: John 20:19-31
