A Matter of Trust
A Matter of Trust
John 20:24-29
Have you ever been to Niagara Falls? Our family went years ago. We were officiating at a wedding in Buffalo. We had some extra time. We tossed the girls (who were still pretty young at the time) into the rental car and we headed off to see something new. There were all the usual tourist trap stores on the American side. The Canadian side by contrast seemed rather tasteful by comparison. The real focus though were the falls, themselves. I found myself standing and staring straight at them and putting my hands up like blinders on either side of my face to blot out all the commercialism. Such power and force! Such a plunge!
Then, because “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” we boarded the Maid of the Mist touristy boat, donned our ponchos, and headed toward the base of the falls. At this point, one daughter (whose name I won’t mention but which happens to rhyme with “Farah,”), for reasons that still remain unclear, began sobbing. Trust me when I tell you that the goal when we left our hotel room that morning was not to make sure that one of us sobbed. She remained largely inconsolable until we reached shore again. In the meantime, though, I took my hands from the side of my face and placed them over my ears and enjoyed the view.
As I stood there considering what I was looking at, I remembered a story that I had heard years before. The central figure in the story was a man named Charles Blondin. The year was 1859. Blondin strung a line across the falls, a quarter of a mile long, 160 feet above the falls. A huge crowd of Canadians watched on their side. An equally huge number of Americans jammed theirs. They went crazy as he walked across the tightrope, not once, but back and forth, several times.
Over the course of the summer of 1859, Charles Blondin was a virtual rock star about a century before anyone knew what a rock star was. Once he crossed in a sack. Another time he crossed on stilts. No one could believe it the next time when he lifted a bicycle onto the rope and proceeded to pedal his way across. The crowd went wild when he took a little stove with him and then proceeded to cook an omelette and enjoyed his breakfast on the line.
On July 15th of that summer, Blondin started out on the American side and walked backward, all the way to Canada. (I have to be honest and say that I’m certain that if I had to walk any distance backwards on solid ground, I would fall on my backside pretty fast!) Blondin didn’t falter. Once he reached the Canadian side, he lifted a wheelbarrow onto the line, blindfolded himself and made his way back to the United States. The crowd was “Ooing and Aaahing” the whole time. They went wild when he stepped down.
Charles Blondin had proved that he could make his way across the falls in just about any way imaginable. No one doubted him. As he stepped back down to the ground, though, he did something he had never done before. First, he asked the crowd a question: “How many of you believe that I could put a person in this wheelbarrow and make my way safely across?” Everyone cheered! No one doubted him at all. Then, he stared down the crowd, making eye contact with as many people as he could, one by one, and he asked the fateful question: “Who will get in the wheelbarrow? Who will be my volunteer?” Of course…no one stepped forward that day.
Historians tell us that later that summer, in August of 1859, Harry Colcord—Charles Blondin’s manager—rode “piggy back” on Blondin as Blondin crossed the rope. Still though, I think you get the point. It is one thing to watch someone else do something amazing. At first you doubt them. You come to believe in them. You become so convinced of their skills and talents and gifts that you cannot imagine them failing. However, it is an entirely different thing when that person turns to you and asks the question: “Do you trust me?”
My personal experience of this happened at the Torey Pines Glider Port in California. Having thrilled at the sight of people taking off in hang gliders and parasails from the cliffs all day, I was even more thrilled when one of these daredevils (who turned out to be a retired farmer from Canada!) asked if he could have lunch with Tracy and me. He was a great guy and an incredibly experienced hang glider. I loved hearing his stories until he turned and looked me in the eye and said, “You should come with me!” I looked at Tracy, convinced that she would say a forceful, “No!” Instead, she just sort of chuckled and smiled and said, “Maybe you should?” I didn’t.
For the most part, I enjoy reading about adventures more than I like actually having them. Have you seen the movie, “Free Solo?” I heard everyone has a little time these days. You should watch it. Tell me it’s not interesting. However, tell me you would ever try it yourself. I like my adventures to be between maybe a 4 and a 6 on a one to ten scale. I also like to have them in the company of people who know a lot more about what they are doing than I do.
Trust is hard. However, we can’t talk about the power of love as we have been for the last few weeks, especially the power of unconditional love, and not talk about trust. Really, this is the sticking point for most of us when we think about God as the loving parent. None of us have had perfect parents. None of us who have had the honor of being parents have been perfect parents. We can be wholly loving but sooner or later we will fall prey to our own brokenness and the people we love the most will feel like we weren’t trustworthy. We may end up wondering if we can even trust ourselves. And, vice-versa, sooner or later those we trust and love will do things out of their own brokenness that leave us feeling like we were foolish to trust them. Love—real, concrete love in this very real world—is a daredevil adventure. Sooner or later, we all get a bit banged up. Again, trust is hard.
Trust must have been particularly hard for Jesus’ disciple, Thomas. If you think about people who’ve been given a hard time in Christian history, I think about three people. First, I think about Mary Magdalene, whose main crime seems to have been that she was an extraordinarily faithful follower of Christ and she was female. She also seems to have been quite a leader in the early church. Over time, though, what developed was a whole non-Biblical story about Mary being a former prostitute. Gee…I wonder what that was about. Second on the list would be Judas, who was a faithful follower until he felt betrayed when Jesus wasn’t willing to be who Judas thought he should be. He hurt the person whom he thought hurt him. God knows that none of us have ever done that, right? Finally, there is Thomas, the man whom history has branded, “Doubting Thomas.”
What was Thomas’s crime? Thomas was not with the rest of the disciples when Jesus walked through walls to get to them. All of the rest of the disciples were flooded with regrets and fears and locked away. Where was Thomas? We don’t know. Maybe he was getting food for the rest of them. Maybe he was checking on someone else to make sure they were okay. Maybe he needed an individual “timeout” from the small group “timeout” that they were all going through (not that any of us would be able to relate to that.) Whatever the reason might have been, Thomas missed out. What he missed was really important. The risen Jesus showed up, offered everyone his peace, showed everyone his wounds, offered them some more peace, breathed the Holy Spirit on them and gave them the power to forgive others. Presumably, at some point after the risen Jesus, left, Thomas put his key in the door, entered the room, looked around at the disciples and said, “What’s up? What did I miss?”
“You should have been here!” This is the story that I’ve heard pretty much every time that I’ve gone fishing: “Whoa…last week the fishing was amazing!” This is the story that I remember hearing again and again, when friends would regale me about the concert that I chose to skip, “Seriously, dude, it was unbelievable!” Have you heard about “F.O.M.O.?” This is the phenomena that current cultural historians attribute to social media use: the fear of missing out. I’ve got news for everyone. For as long as there have been human beings, people have been missing out: “Gronk…you should have been with us on the saber toothed tiger hunt today, it was ‘amaaaazing!” said one cave man to the other!
Thomas is furious that he missed out. All the other disciples got to see the risen Jesus. They got to check out his wounds. They got the Holy Spirit and the power of forgiveness (which Thomas probably didn’t even really understand but it sounded good and he didn’t get it!) I always imagine him pounding his foot like a little kid and saying, “I’m not going to believe anything until I get proof, until I get to see for myself!” At that point, if I’m having a good day, I stop myself and think, “Hold it. I’ve done that exact thing myself!” It’s hard to get a clear look at how much like us Thomas is if we’re sitting on our “high horse.”
It’s important to realize how important this issue is in the future of Christianity. For three years, people got to hear Jesus and watch him heal people and follow him. For six weeks or so, a handful of people got to meet the risen Jesus. From the moment Jesus died, the clock was ticking on how long the direct witnesses would still be around. In a world of short life-expectancy, pretty soon those witnesses were all gone. For the next two thousand years, everyone, including us, would be in Thomas’s position. Someone else had an experience that we didn’t have. Would we be willing to trust them or would we demand that we have the experience ourselves?
Thomas gets to have the experience! The risen Jesus shows up. Thomas had insisted that he wouldn’t believe until he could not just see the wounds but stick his hands in them. Jesus shows up, offers his peace to everyone, holds his nail-holed hands out to Thomas and says, “Give it a go! Do not doubt but believe!” There is no indication that Thomas ever comes close to actually examining the wounds. Instead, immediately he is astounded and amazed and cries out, “My Lord and my God!” Then, Jesus says the most interesting thing: “Have you believed because you’ve seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
How can you believe in what you have not seen yourself? That is the dilemma that every believer has faced for two thousand years, not just Thomas. Some people got to experience things that we didn’t get to experience. Upon what basis would I trust their experiences. Initially, Thomas wants proof. Initially, so do we. However, in the end, what we need is not for something to be proved. What we need most is to be moved—deep in our hearts. Something happens around us that triggers something within us that resonates at a depth that we didn’t previously even know existed. Like Thomas, we exclaim: “My Lord and my God!”
Welcome to the peace that passes all understanding, to the conviction that defies explanation, to the love that never ends…