Do people you know outside church, your work colleagues, your friends, your neighbours, know that you go to church or are a Christian? In one of the Lent groups this year we had a discussion about what it means to openly be a Christian, to acknowledge our faith at work or with non-Christian friends. Many within the group felt vulnerable talking about their faith in the work place where colleagues might be very sceptical, questioning or perhaps even pejorative about the Christian faith.
As soon as we admit to being a Christian we potentially open ourselves up to, at best, intense curiosity and at worst, questions that we feel we can’t answer or criticisms about how we do answer.
Why do you believe in God? How can you believe in God? What about evil? What about suffering, where is your God then? It can seem that people want definitive proof for the existence of God. Without it Christians can be deemed naive, credulous and emotionally weak.
Admitting to sharing in the Christian faith can also mean we are subject to certain expectations. Suddenly people can assume that we will be remote from the ordinary human fears, anxieties, temptations or sense of loneliness that we all face, whatever our faith. Others might imagine that as card-carrying Christians we have everything neatly sewn up, that we are free from doubt and that we question neither ourselves nor God if things go wrong.
Today, we hear about 2 groups of people whose faith in God is being severely tested: both groups suffer fear and anxiety and question God and his purposes. The Israelites, who are on the verge of escape from slavery and oppression, nevertheless now fear that the Egyptians will catch up with them and that their lives will be worse than they were before. They question their leader Moses and say it would be better to be slaves than to die in the wilderness. It seems they fear the risk that freedom brings.
Similarly in the reading from John the disciples fear what the Jewish authorities might do to them; after all they are known followers of a man who was crucified for blasphemy. They have locked themselves in through fear of what might be done to them.
Moses responds to the criticism and complaint of the Israelites by saying: “The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still”.
In fact the Israelites will have to journey for many years to come before they reach the Promised Land but a certain sort of stillness will be necessary; they will have to trust and let the LORD fight for them. This is something they and many of us I suspect, find hard to do.
The Israelites throughout the OT do not trust in God; instead they make allegiances with other powerful neighbouring kingdoms and worship other gods because to keep still and trust seems too risky. I imagine many of us today find it difficult to hand over control to God. To do so doesn’t mean we are to be passive, or that we lack responsibility. But in a certain way we do have go against everything that our education and upbringing teaches us, which is to be independent, autonomous and in control. In some sense mature Christian faith can mean unlearning these things and acknowledging our dependency upon God and our mutual interdependency.
The disciples are also at a point where they are about to be set free but at the beginning of today’s reading they are slaves to their fear of what the religious authorities might do. Jesus appears in the midst of their fear and his first words to the frightened, confused and grieving disciples are ‘Peace be with you’. Words which could be equated with those of Moses “The LORD will fight for you and you only have to keep still.”
In both Exodus and John we have signs of God’s glory; his desire to liberate his people from sin, oppression and death. At the same time we also have human voices of scepticism and doubt. The same voices that we might hear within the work place when we admit to being a Christian or the voices we speak within ourselves when confronted by situations which confound our faith. In Exodus and in John those who doubt are given clear signs of God’s power and might.
In the story from Exodus God proves himself by parting the red sea and “Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.”
In John’s gospel Thomas, having not seen evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, refused to believe. It is only when Jesus appears to him and shows him the wounds from the crucifixion that Thomas can say ‘My Lord and my God’.
Very few of us will have such direct, concrete, physical evidence of the presence and power of God and the resurrection, so how do we come share to share in the Christian faith?
In my experience few people believe in God, in Jesus Christ, or call themselves Christians, because they feel they have irrefutable evidence that the God of the church and scripture exists. Often we believe because of something we’ve seen in the lives of Christians we know- perhaps a sense of peace, or love, serenity, or perhaps a passionate concern for justice: All things which speak of our relationship with the Creator who cares deeply about every aspect of our lives. In this way a Christian life becomes a sign of God’s compassion, love and desire to be in relationship with us. In time, we, through our lives and relationships can become evidence of the existence and presence of God.
We are now at a point in the church year when we are required to do a bit of housekeeping. We have to keep a record of all who feel they belong to this church. Everyone who is a regular member of our congregation is invited to fill in an electoral roll form. Interestingly there is no creedal statement that you have to sign, simply a declaration that you have been attending this church for the last 6 months. Perhaps this shows us that belief in God and the resurrection of Christ comes about not through unquestionable evidence but through relationships where we worship God together, share in the Eucharist, read God’s word together and in this way learn of God’s love and compassion.
Jesus says ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you’. Easter prompts us to consider God’s commission and how we live out this call to forgive and be at peace in our daily lives.
We are equipped to do these things through Christ’s gift of the Holy Spirit and we are given a model for this Easter life in the Eucharist. It is here that we confess our sins, and are absolved of our sins. It is only at the end of the service, when all these things have happened that we can be ‘dismissed’ or rather we are sent out into the world ‘to love and serve the Lord’ and be living signs of his presence.
Amen