Proof and Belief

Weekly Word from the Interim Pastor

Our scripture lessons this week continue to explore the intersection of “proof” and “belief,” one of the great unsettled, perhaps unsettleable, duos in faith and theology.  While the debate goes back into the early centuries of the Church— St. Anselm finally came down that he believed his way into knowing, whereas rationalists went from knowing to believing— each generation, maybe even each person, must work out whether we go from some kind of tangible knowledge toward belief that God loves us in Jesus Christ enough to save us from death and mistakes or that we start with the leap of faith and slowly grow to know the evidence supporting our faith.

I love that Pope Benedict XVI arranged for the viewing in person and TV and internet of the Shroud of Turin as a gift to the church as he left office.  What people think of the relic has been such a wonderful parable of the complex, conflicted relationship of religious tradition and science, especially in the late twentieth century.  Of course, since the 1978 STURP testing, the so-called clash of faith and science has gone back and forth over how the image might have been formed, but many people come to that interesting center position like the official Roman Catholic stand that it doesn’t take a position on how the image was formed but that the Shroud is valuable for deepening faith among the faithful.  Frankly, it seems that shortly after physical testing reaches a conclusion, the next round of testing finds otherwise, and the cycle continues.  And after each round, it still comes down not to science but belief.  It always stays tantalizingly beyond “proof.”  And, since as a Presbyterian serving a UCC congregation, I don’t have any stake in the Roman Catholic doctrine, I find it a wonderful ongoing parable of belief operating at a different plane as science, which may mean that they can enhance our understanding instead of being contradictory.  God may be pushing human science and human religion equally!

Like most Sundays after Easter, the disciple Thomas, often known as the patron saint of Missouri, the “Show Me State,” arrives in this week’s Gospel reading.  The key phrase for all of us is “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  In fact, it is harder for us because we, millennia after that night in the upper room, never had Thomas’ opportunity to touch and convince himself that Jesus was really resurrected; we have to take it on faith.  We have to believe having not seen.  Sometimes I wish we had it as easy as Thomas and the others.

Yet that is exactly where the ongoing witness of the Church through all its years truly bridges those twenty-one centuries to help us believe and know and believe and know that Jesus is alive in our hearts and minds and souls.  And that is what makes all the difference.

Please join us as we puzzle on this together this Sunday at 10 am.  God will be there; I hope you are too!
                                                                                                            In Christ,
                                                                                                                   David
                                                                                                                     


Texts For Sunday Worship:
New Testament       Acts 5:27-32
Epistles                  Revelation 1:4-8
Gospels                  John 20:19-31

Note: These texts will be read in the worship service and the one with an asterisk will be used as the focus for the proclamation of the word.