Do Not Doubt

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 20:19:29:

Nicknames are interesting things. Sometimes they seem strange, sometimes they hit the mark, and sometimes we might not even know what they mean or where they came from. And as nicknames go, sports stars often end up with some great nicknames, especially those who are the best of their craft. There is Walter Payton, known as Sweetness, and Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, and Jack Nicholas, the Golden Bear.  But of course, the best nicknames come from baseball.  There is Stan the Man, and Cool Papa Bell  and Double Duty Radcliff. Some nicknames become so famous, like Babe Ruth, Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean that we forget their real first names.  But for every great nickname like Mr. October or Hammerin’ Hank there are also those nicknames that are a little less glorious, a little more likely that people probably wish they would have gone away, like Luke Old Aches and Pains Appling, or Ernie the Schnozz Lombardi, but perhaps the worst nickname belongs to Hugh Mulcahy who, because he never had a winning record in any complete season in which he pitched, was known as Losing Pitcher Mulcahy.  I am sure that if you were to have met Mr. Mulcahy he would not have appreciated you calling him by his nickname and just wished it would all go away.  But just like those nicknames are a little unfair, so too is the nickname that has been forever appended to Thomas, who, for some reason, for 2000 years has been the poster boy for doubt, an idea that is not really fair either to Thomas or to the concept of doubt.

Today we begin a new worship series entitled the nots of Jesus, which has nothing to do with ropes, but instead with the things that Jesus tells us not to do. Normally we talk about the things we’re supposed to do like forgive or feed the hungry or be peacemakers, but there are actually quite a few things Jesus tells us not to do, and so we’re going to spend the next nine weeks, which seems like a lot, but doesn’t cover all of the nots, looking at, interpreting and trying to figure out how we should not be doing certain things. And that’s sort of the point because often the things Jesus says not to do are things that also often cause us to tie ourselves in knots. And so, we’re going to find ways to free ourselves through Christ. And today we start with the injunction that gets read every year after Easter and that is Jesus telling Thomas “do not doubt,” form which Thomas gets his terrible nickname, and so I’d like to take just a moment to give a defense of Thomas, which I think will also help us to get at the subject of doubt and what it means for us.

Connecting In a Divided World

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Romans 13:8-14 and Matthew 18:15-17:

On May 22, 1856, in what is considered one of the low points in the history of the US Congress, Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery representative from South Carolina, entered the senate chambers and attacked Massachustes senator Charles Sumner with a cane beating him within inches of his life for an anti-slavery speech that Sumner had delivered two days before. The violence was seen as the beginning of the “breakdown of reasonable discourse”, contributing even more to the polarization of the country around the issue of slavery, and a precursor to the increasing violence that would lead to the civil war. And yet many historians say that the civil war became inevitable several years before that when the churches began to split, including the Methodists and later the Baptists, which is the reason we have a southern Baptist church over slavery. That when churches could not stay together, people believe, there was little chance for the country itself.

And so most of you here are probably aware of the issues now swirling around the Methodist church and the potential, or maybe likely, schism, which has been postponed at least until next year. And if you’ve been paying attention to the southern Baptist gathering this week, you also know that there was considerable debate there about actions that could lead to many or most African-Amercian congregations, and many others as well, leaving that denomination. This has led to some speculation about what churches splintering again means for us as a country. And then what the last election showed us is that 100% of the country believes that 50% of americans have lost their minds. And so it probably isn’t surprising that one of the things that several people have asked me to talk about, or just asked for advice itself, is how, in these troubled and divided times, we are supposed to deal with, let alone get along with, people who are on the opposite side of some issue, especially if they, or maybe even us, resort to anger and name calling and other derogatory behavior to make their point.