Hope or Belief?

A Reflection for the the 2nd Sunday of Easter Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher St Mary’s Episcopal Church, Gatesville, NC April 27, 2025 Acts 5:27-32 Revelation 1:4-8 John 20:19-31 Psalm 150 Hope or Belief? Today’s Gospel lesson is the one that is the reason for the phrase “Doubting Thomas”. It is when I wonder what was in my father’s mind when I was born and as he was filling out the forms in the hospital in St. Louis gave me the name “Thomas”. The story he used to tell was that as my mother was in labor, he took a break from the waiting room and went next door to a bar where the man sitting at the stool next to him was named “Thomas”. My father liked telling stories; believing that stories should be mainly enjoyable, the bigger and taller the better, and where truth was a negotiable factor. Shakespeare must have had my father in mind when he has Hamlet say: “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” I grew to get used to the idea of being a “doubting Thomas” and I grew to expect to ask questions and use my brain to doubt. I understand the difficulty that Thomas had, when the other disciples told him that they had seen Jesus, the dead Jesus, alive as he could be. Doubt was a good fall back to have. I found it helpful when I made a living being a counselor who understood when people felt the need to shade an elastic truth. It was helpful when I taught in a College as students had so many reasons for papers being late, with so many parents being ill or dying. When I became a Priest, I got used to hearing stories from parishioners, and indeed other clergy, which omitted certain details that they did not want to be a cause of my Priestly dissaproval. C.G Jung, the 20th Century Swiss Psychiatrist, had the concept of “Persona”, which is a mask that we humans begin developing about the time we start interacting with the world outside our home, like going to school. We develop and wear our persona as we interact with, or hide behind from, other people in our daily life. In order to really know someone, we have to get past their persona. When I met a person called Pat the month after I was ordained in 1984, I focused on her “persona”. I figured I knew everything about her the first time I attended a meeting she was running. I walked away from that crowded meeting figuring she was a waste of space and my time. Luckily, I had to attend a lot more meetings with her, and five years later we got married for 34 years of the happiest times of my life. The longer I worked as a Priest, the less important it was to be judgmental of a person who might be shading the facts of his or her life, and the more important it was to focus on the hope in each person. It is what St. Francis called, and the late Pope Francis, who died this last week. echoed in his life, is “Listening with the ear of the heart.” I am reminded of the old television show I saw in my youth, “Dragnet”. There was a character called Joe Friday, who is pure “persona”, who wanted “just the facts!” You can hear the “Persona” in his voice and see it in his face. What a sensible way to look at crime and misdemeanors. Just the facts! The story in the Gospel is the story of “Doubting Thomas” who is pure persona. Thomas is a man who looks and wants to get just the facts. He wanted the facts of Jesus’s body being dead, the nail riddled hands, the gaping wounded seared side. However, he discovers there was a deeper reality than the facts. In the 150th Psalm for today, the Psalmist says that when we enter the Presence of the Holy, we are encouraged to enter with Thanksgiving and praise. So how did each of you enter the church for today's service? Was it a look at how well the church was all fixed up, or not fixed up, to meet your standards? Did you come to the sanctuary to give or withhold your approval based on your exacting standards? Or did you come to listen with the ear of God’s heart, and see with the divine vision? When I was in Seminary, we would have daily morning prayer and a weekly Holy Eucharist and each of us would have times of Chapel duty getting everything ready for the service. Oh, how important it was to get everything right. After all, when we finally graduated and got ordained, it would be important that we would make sure the Altar Guilds in the Parishes, we might be called to after we graduated, would get it right. Getting it right! That is one of the issues in the lesson from the Acts of the Apostles. The local authorities want to have a well run community and urge the disciples not to stir up emotions. The Disciples, on the other hand, want hearts to be moved, hopes to be raised and faith to be deepened. In the same way, we ask ourselves why we do services? Are we here to make sure our religious duties are done, or are we here to give ourselves, to give prayer for our neighbors in our world and to forgive others. Hope or Belief ? First seeing her was a stab of belief, thinking; it’s all I needed to know, not allowing for any hope to grow; but it did; sneaking in like a thief. It was mixtures of some new laughter with tears as she read some of my pain, then deciding to pray for a help again, in an here and now; not the hereafter. She, of course, wanted to be perfect, but Savior’s job was beyond taking, so she had to settle in the making, stabs, showing love more respect. Trusting each other’s vision scope; years of believing in blessed hope.