A Believing Heart (Easter 2A)

 

The Doubt of St. Thomas, James He Qi 

   

“A Believing Heart”
Second Sunday of Easter (Year A)
12 April 2026
Homily Delivered Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Sutherlin, Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

10 am Sung Mass 
Acts 2:14a, 22-32 ; 1 Peter 1:3-9 ; John 20:19-31 ; Psalm 16

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

 take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

Moments of hopeless despair come to us occasionally.  One for me occurred in Lewes Delaware in the early 80s:  my wife Elena and I had taken our still growing family to the beach.  After a long, relaxed day, the sun was about to set. No one was left on the beach but us.  Elena was sheltering from cool evening wind under a blanket; I was reading.  We each thought the other was watching the children, playing in the sand beside us. Elena suddenly said with terror in her voice, “Where’s Lonnie?”  We looked up and down the beach as far as we could see.   Our four-year old was nowhere to be seen.  Panicking, I began to run along the beach in the direction we had last seen him, trying to spot him on the beach in the lowering mists and scanning the water: that vast Atlantic Ocean only feet from us, its rising treacherous surf just high enough to sweep our little boy off of his feet.  The last people we had seen on the beach, maybe 15 minutes before, looked sketchy at best.  Now, in our imaginations, they seemed like monstrous threats to children.   The growing twilight focused our fear into one spot of sharp despair in our hearts. Holding hands, Elena and I prayed against hope, “God please help us find Lonnie.  Please keep him safe.”   Then Elena said, “It’s a distance to the changing room, but maybe he went to the bathroom without telling anyone. You know how private he is.”  So I ran back toward the barrier dunes. Just as I got to the boardwalk, there was Lonnie, walking calming and quietly back from the rest room.    I hugged him hard. He seemed puzzled at all the sudden attention from Mom and Dad.

 

Elena and I were very thankful.  Lonnie was safe as we had prayed.  Thinking about it afterward, we wondered, had God answered our prayer?   Or had we just misunderstood things and gotten very frightened needlessly?  No one had bothered Lonnie in the restroom, and he had not lost his way.  And he most certainly had not drowned.  From his point of view, nothing remarkable had happened at all.  From ours, the world itself had changed, and we were very thankful. 

 

It’s like that a lot with answers to prayers and miracles in our lives:  though from inside they seem to be overwhelming evidence of God’s care and love, perhaps even providence or supernatural intervention, from the outside they can be explained as misunderstandings, the resolution of groundless fears, the normal working of nature, or, perhaps mere coincidence. 

 

When I was a boy, I was taught that God heard and answered prayers, and that miracles just like those in the Bible could happen to us, if we were righteous enough.   But then I grew up.   We live in an age of science and of sophistication.  Growing up means absorbing that. 

I admit it: Doubt is a good thing, something that helps keep us safe from hucksters, grifters, and con-men, and from misunderstanding the varied and puzzling sense perceptions that pour in.   God placed doubt in our hearts, and made it a part of growing up, to help keep us safe.  It is part of our survival instinct. 

 

But we are diminished if we let doubt rob us of our sense of gratitude and wonder.   A subtle, niggling voice in the back of my head now is almost always there, ready to chime in at moments of joy and thankfulness and say, “An answered prayer?  A miracle? Maybe not so much.”  It discourages me from praying, or at least actually asking God for what I desire in my heart.  I am afraid of having my heart broken:  asking what I desire deeply, something good and right, and then getting that hope slapped down.  

 

I admit this by way of confession:  whatever change has happened in my heart, it is not entirely good.  I can confess it publicly today without much embarrassment because I think that most of us have suffered a similar loss as we became adults. 

 

In today’s Gospel, it is clear that Thomas has suffered such a loss of innocence: “I won’t believe Jesus has come back from the dead unless I see it with my own eyes touch it with my own hands!”  It’s really unfair to sum up this story and the whole of St. Thomas’ life by saying that he, Doubting Thomas, was the lone skeptic among the disciples.  In every one of the stories of the resurrection of Jesus, all the disciples—bar none—at various times expressed doubt or fear at what they were told or even what they saw. 

 

The heart’s disposition reflects who we are.  As the Proverbs say, “As a person thinks in their heart, so are they” (Prov 23:7).  And as we see in the story of the choice of David as king, “Human beings judge people on outward appearances, but Yahweh looks on their heart” (1 Sam 16:7).

 

So in today’s story, Jesus tells all of us, along with Thomas, “do not doubt, but believe.”  The Greek text is clearer than our translation here:  do not be apistos, but be pistos— do not be unfaithful but faithful, do not be untrusting but trusting, do not be untrustworthy but trustworthy. 

 

Be believing.  Be faithful.  Be trusting.  There are so many scriptures that play on this theme!  Jesus ends most of his parables with “let the one who has ears, hear!”  Without a trusting disposition of the heart, we are deaf to any voice that matters. 

 

Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7).  And because of this faith, he says, we are not afraid, either to live or to die.  Trust and love have replaced fear. 

 

Jesus in John’s Gospel says it is how we react to his words, in a trusting or a rejecting manner, that reveals who and what we are: “I came not to judge, but to save.  It is my word that has already created a judgment of sorts—how you react to it tells who you are” (John 12).  

 

I suspect that most of the stories of miracles and deeds of wonder in scripture tell things in such a way that this implicit judgment is evident in the telling of the story:  how could the Egyptians, the backsliding Israelites, or the Pharisees not be wicked when they persist in fighting God and Jesus in the face of such clear evidence of the miracles as narrated?

 

But I think that events in real human lives lying behind such stories probably were for the people there a bit more ambiguous.   For whatever reason, God seems to have made the world in such a way that we are never forced by evidence to believe in him.   God wants willing trust, not coerced obedience.   I suspect this is because forced trust is not really trust; compelled love, not really love.    To be sure, moments occur that seem overwhelmingly convincing.  But usually this is at the end of a series of small steps in the ambiguous dark.  We draw close to God in faith by little steps, and God responds once in a great while with a giant step toward us.  But then the moment is gone, and we are left with our memory.  And memory itself is very ambiguous.  Faith often consists in persisting in our trust and love from those high moments even in the dark, dry periods that follow. 

 

Whether you believe in God, or the Bible, or religion, is not the issue.  But having a trusting, believing heart is at the core of being a happy and balanced person.  It is at the heart of being a Christian.  Having a trusting heart is at the core of being trustworthy: honesty breeds honesty. A believing heart wisely lets the niggling voice raise its doubts, but does not let it rob us of our thanks, trust, and hope.  A believing heart persists in openness to the strange, the unprecedented, and the as yet unseen.  It does not belittle the faith of others, even when it seems strange or silly.  A believing heart continues to pray, and to act and serve as if all the good stories are true, even when doubt comes.  A believing heart is a great bulwark against fear.  It senses intuitively that there is no problem so big, no disaster too awful, no corner so dark that God cannot help us through it.  While a believing heart is not belief in magical control of things to suit ourselves, it cultivates and honors a sense of wonder and magic at the heart of everything.  It recognizes the love that is beneath and behind all things. 

 

Trusting God through the dark, expressing thanks through the ambiguity, praying and asking for help despite our niggling interior voice, and trying to be honest with God and ourselves through all of this leads us through the doubt and finally brings us to that light where there is no room for anything but thanks, just like for Thomas in today’s reading. 

 

John Bell and the Iona Community set words about this story to the traditional Scots Gaelic tune Leis an Lurghainn, and called it Tom’s Song:  

 

Where they were, I’d have been;

What they saw, I’d have seen;

What they felt, I’d have shown,

If I knew what they’d known.

 

Refrain

“Peace be with you,” he said,

“Take my hand, see my side.

Stop your doubting, believe

And God’s spirit receive.” 

 

So I made my demand

That unless, at first hand,

I could prove what they said,

I’d presume he was dead. 

 

All their tales I called lies

Till his gaze met my eyes;

And the words I’d rehearsed

Lost their force and dispersed.

 

When I stammered “My Lord!”

He replied with the word,

“Those who live in God’s light

Walk by faith, not by sight.” 

 

Some, like me, ask for proof,

Sit and sneer, stand aloof.

But belief which is blessed

Rests on God, not a test. 

 

Refrain

“Peace be with you,” he said,

“Take my hand, see my side.

Stop your doubting, believe

And God’s spirit receive.” 

 

Tom's Song  

 

As we go forth into our ambiguous world, marked with beauty and joy but also with terror and despair, a world that demands doubt from us as a self-defense mechanism but also gives us a hope for miracles, let us take faith and trust and belief to heart, and with hope transcending this world’s threats and fears, including death itself, come joyfully to that locked away upper room and with blessed Thomas take hold of our risen Lord’s hand. 

Thanks be to God, Amen

 

From Proclamation to Stories of Faith (Easter A)

  

From Proclamation to Stories of Faith
The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP. Ph.D.

Easter A
5 April 2026 9 a.m. Sung Eucharist

St. Luke Episcopal Church, Grants Pass (Oregon)

Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

May the light of Christ, rising in glory,
banish all darkness from our hearts and minds.   Amen.

 

The story of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the heart of our Christian faith.   But we live in a secular time, and I have gotten used to hearing the question about this time of year, from believers and unbelievers alike, But Tony, do you really believe it?

 

It just seems too fantastic, as some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy.  It goes against what our universal experience as human beings is:  Dead people just don’t come back to life. 

 

Occasionally some add, “How can you believe it? If you compare all of the stories about it in the gospels, it’s clear they are late, contradict each other, and grew in the telling.”

 

But though these stories were in fact written decades after the events they recount, and though they show up all the marks of having grown in the telling, the earliest form of this tradition that has survived is not found in the stories in the Gospels at all.  It is not even a story.  It is a fragment of apostolic preaching found in St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians.  Writing barely a decade and a half after Jesus’s death, Paul tells us of what he was taught after his experience on the Road to Damascus:

 

 “For I passed on to you the tradition that I also received: that Christ died for our sins …, that he was buried, that he rose the third day, … and that he appeared, first to Cephas [Peter] and the Twelve, then to over 500 Christians at once (some of whom … are still alive), then to James [the brother of Jesus] and the apostles. … and last of all … to me” (1 Cor 15:3-8).

 

It is from this early citation of the preaching of Jesus’ comrades that grow the later gospel stories.  And the direction of evolution is clear. 

 

The earliest story as such that has survived is the Gospel of Mark, written about 40 years after Jesus’ death.  In it, the women return to the tomb early on the morning after the Sabbath with spices to properly anoint the body of Jesus, which had been dumped in the tomb in haste just before the Sabbath started.  They see the stone has been rolled back, and a young man (an angel) in a white robe tells them that “Jesus … has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6).  You see, the words of the early apostolic proclamation “he rose,” have been placed onto the lips of a character in the story, the angel: “He is risen.”  Then the angel adds, “Go tell the disciples … that he is going to Galilee.  There you will see him, as he told you” (Mark 16:7).  Here again, the early apostolic proclamation “he appeared” is placed onto the angel’s lips in this narrative, but now in the future: he will appear.  Mark does not narrate the resurrection of Jesus as such, but tells of an empty tomb and lets his audience’s imaginations do the rest. In the original form of Mark, the story ends abruptly with the women fleeing from the tomb in terror and saying nothing to others because of their fear (Mark 16:8).   

 

The next Gospels to be written, Matthew and Luke, about 15-30 years later, take Mark’s story and develop it. Matthew adds a lot of narrative detail. He develops the story about the guards and the stone, and brings in an earthquake that opens graves throughout the city, marking this event as part of the resurrection of the martyred righteous on the last day in Jewish apocalyptic literature.  This is how Matthew fleshes out the apostolic preaching’s “he was raised.” The women run excitedly to report to the disciples. As the women are running to tell the disciples, Jesus actually appears to them (Matt. 28:9) and the early apostolic preaching’s “and he appeared” becomes part of a narrative rather than simply the apostolic affirmation quoted in Paul or a report of the angel as in Mark.

 

In Luke, the women tell the disciples what they have seen, but they don’t believe them, thinking that they are just women’s “idle tales” (Luke 24:11).  But Peter runs to the tomb, and looks in—there he sees “the linen clothes by themselves” (Luke 24:12).  This added detail seems to be an effort to explain the actual raising of Jesus proper, suggesting that somehow the corpse of Jesus had simply evaporated when he rose, leaving the burial clothes lying there. This element of the story in Luke is later taken up in exquisite detail in John.  

 

Luke then adds the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus on Easter evening (Luke 24:13-35). Jesus incognito appears to them, talks to them, and finally they recognize him as he explains the scriptures (in the early apostolic preaching, Jesus died and was raised “according to the [Hebrew] scriptures.”    In looking back on it, they say they recognized him in the breaking of the bread, suggesting that the eucharist was one of the ways Jesus appeared. This story in Luke was circulating among early Christians, for it shows up in extremely abbreviated form in some manuscript copies of Mark where scribes added later, longer endings using these traditions found in Luke to help bring that originally truncated Gospel into harmony with the others (Mark 16:12-13). 

 

Luke then has the two disciples return to Jerusalem to tell the news.  All of this is on Easter evening.  When they tell their story, the disciples reply that Jesus has appeared to Peter (Luke 24:35).  Again, the apostolic proclamation is placed on the lips of characters in the story.  But Luke narrates Jesus appearing to the disciples as well (Luke 24:36-43).  There is great detail—“See my hands and my feet—it really is me!” he says, “I am no ghost, look I have flesh and bones!”  Then to prove it, he eats some broiled fish they give him. 

 

Today’s Gospel in John, written another 30 years later than Matthew and Luke, tells the story about Mary mistaking the risen Jesus for the gardener, the competition between John and Peter to run to get to the tomb first, and greater elaboration on the strangely placed burial clothes.  A form of Luke’s story of Jesus appearing to the disciples the evening of Easter is taken up by John.  It is the familiar story where Thomas is not present to witness Jesus reappearing bodily on  the evening of Easter, but then is there a week later to see a later appearance.   Interesting, for John, the sending of the Spirit occurred not 50 days after Easter on the Day of Pentecost, but on the evening of Easter Sunday, when Jesus “breathes” it into his disciples (John 20:19-29). 

 

Other snippets of differing stories show up in addendums to the four Gospels, with Jesus appearing also in Galilee, whether on a mountain or on the lakeshore. 

 

If we move another few decades ahead, we start seeing in Gospels that were not included in the canon actually recounting in narrative the resurrection itself.  In the Gospel of Peter, the two soldiers see it all:  the heavens open, two angels descend in a great flash of light, the stone rolls away by itself, and then angels come out of the tomb, supporting a third person walking with difficulty, apparently Jesus still wounded from the cross.  There follows a glowing floating cross.  A voice comes from heaven “You have preached to the dead,” and the cross, which also is apparently a talking cross, replies, “Yes.” 

 

It is clear that over time, greater and greater details were added.  It is also clear that reflection on Hebrew Scripture, especially the Psalter, informs each retelling.  But those of us who pray the Psalms daily know that this collection of poems and hymns is above all a book about emotion—the whole range of human emotion, from love, and adoration, to joy, to sorrow, to homicidal rage.  It is understandable why such a book would have exerted such a central role in the process of the formation of memory and the retelling of such emotion-laden stories.   Memory, after all, is a matter of emotion, not stenographic recording.  And all memory morphs over time. 

 

But that does not mean that all the details in the canonical Gospels are simple artifacts of story-telling, with no grounding in events.  Remember—the earliest reports, even before the story-tellers’ art began to spin these tales—was this: “Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared.”  

 

As a historian, I find a purely mythological reading of the resurrection stories to be unconvincing. The early disciples were no fools.  They knew the difference between wishful thinking and personal experience.  The idea that the stories of Jesus’ being was raised were merely a figment of the imagination of Jesus’ disciples mourning him in grief groups is to my mind hardly likely.  There is just too quick a shift—from utter demoralization and despair at Jesus’ death to bull-headed and joyful optimism and willingness to suffer martyrdom for Jesus’ sake—at the origin of Christianity. 

 

For me, it is a much more probable to say that something shocking and unusual, something unique, happened on Easter morning than to argue that the early apostolic proclamation arose simply as the result of a group of Jesus’ followers sitting shiva and proof-texting the Hebrew scriptures.  The problem, of course, is whether we allow for the possibility of such a thing.  It was the experience of witnessing this unique thing, the bodily reappearance of a living Christ who had been dead, that led the disciples to reconsider everything they had seen in his life, and reaffirm their faith that he was indeed the hoped for Messiah, despite the fact that he didn’t conform to all the triumphant connotations that figure held in many Hebrew scriptures. It led them to relabel his miserable sufferings and death as the embodiment of the suffering servant songs of Second Isaiah as well as the psalms talking about suffering and persecution.    

 

I really do believe that Jesus of Nazareth, dead and buried after being brutalized by the Roman Imperium, was somehow raised from death into a new and more vital form of life, and came to his friends more alive than they had ever seen him before.  It was so unusual, in fact, that in some of the stories, the disciples don’t even recognize Jesus. But they all eventually recognize the one standing before them as the same person as their friend who had died on a cross days earlier.

 

Siblings in Christ:  Christ died for our sake.  He was buried.  One and a half days later, he came forth again, and he appeared to his disciples. He appeared in such a way that they knew he was no resuscitated corpse, no ghost, no dream, no wish-fulfillment.  It was wholly unprecedented and the disciples clearly had problems finding adequate language to express what they had seen, felt, and experienced.  They finally settled on an obscure mythological image from the Book of Daniel to describe what they had seen and experienced.  There, the deep injustice of the death by torture of righteous Jews by the Seleucid Greek Syrians before the Maccabean revolt was seen as rectified by the idea that in the last day, the dead martyrs would come to life again, be reconstituted with their bodies, only “shining like the stars in heaven” (Dan12:2-3).Thus the historical experience of Jesus’ bodily reappearance seen in the apostolic preaching was interpreted and explained as “resurrection from the dead,” an eschatological act of God.  Many of the details in the stories as they evolved reflect this mythological understanding of that unique historical event.    

 

Christ’s victory over death, hell, and evil is a victory over fear. meaninglessness, bitterness, and remorse.   It is God’s great joke on the world, and must silence all hopeless irony that says “don’t you believe it!”  No.  Rather, “BELIEVE IT!” We are not doomed to failure and despair.  We are not destined for permanent oblivion after sickness, diminishment, inevitable decline and dignity-destroying death.   We are invited to share in his life. 

 

Jesus’ coming forth as life itself means that death does not have the final word.  Fear does not have the final word.  Law and judgment do not have the final word.  Vengeance does not have the final word.  Oppression will cease.  We are not doomed to regret and pain.  War does not have the final word, nor does violence. 

 

Alleluia!  Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!