God is the Cook!

Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Fergus Falls, MN

April 12, 2015

Second Sunday of Easter

John 20:19-31

If faith was something you could cook up in a kitchen, how would you do it?   What equipment would you use—a microwave oven?  Or a crockpot?

I know that sounds silly, but play with me for just a few moments.  Is faith an instant micro-wave thing or a slow-cooking crockpot thing?

It’s tempting to say that faith is obviously a microwave matter.   It comes as a sheer gift from God, transforms us at our core, makes the lightbulb come on—just like that!  

Here in John 20, Thomas (who was absent when the Risen Jesus first appeared to his disciples Easter evening)…..Thomas, having voiced his doubts about the resurrection, shows up with his fellow disciples one week later…..Thomas is there, he sees Jesus with his own two eyes (doesn’t even have to touch Jesus’ scars as he said he would)….and Thomas just blurts out:  “My Lord and my God.”

Set the microwave on 10 seconds cook-time and out pops the grandest confession of faith in the whole Gospel of John!

And that’s how it happens, or seems to happen, for many folks.  

It’s an especially American thing, this predilection for imagining faith as a micro-wave, all-at once-reality.   

American Evangelicals, long before Billy Graham, championed the revival meeting as the best means for evangelizing and bringing persons to faith. 

Lay down some sawdust, pitch a huge tent, bring in a fiery preacher, round up all the local sinners, sit them down in the front row for a rip-roaring sermon, plead with them to “make their decision,” help them pray the sinners’ prayer, and convert those lost ones!  Usher them from sin to salvation, from death to life, right here, right now—just like that.

We may roll our eyes when we hear stuff like that, but honestly, don’t we Lutherans have our own take on “microwave-faith?”

In fact, we saw it happen just moments ago.  

Sienna and Oliver were brought to the baptismal font, and in the twinkling of an eye they were rescued by the water of their Baptism into Christ, transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, signed, sealed and delivered into the loving arms of God forever.

Set the microwave on 10 seconds—and the deed is done!

And we really and truly do mean that.   Baptism into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus….being buried with Christ and raised with Christ in baptism…..this “baptism now saves [us]” as it says quite clearly in I Peter 3:21.

So there you have it:  whether you’re an American Evangelical or a true-blue Lutheran….faith is clearly a microwave thing.   Faith comes to us from heaven above, faith changes us and makes us new, just like that!

Except that it doesn’t always happen that way….or, more accurately, faith doesn’t happen only in that way.

There is this another way.  Faith and dwelling in faith often seems more like a slow-cooking, long-stewing crockpot.

So here in John 20, it’s not the first time we meet the disciple Thomas.

Although he’s mentioned in all four gospels, Thomas only speaks here in John’s Gospel.  Thomas has four brief “lines” in John’s dramatic script—and when Thomas speaks, it’s always with the voice of cold, hard realism.

In John, chapter 11, when Jesus tells his disciples that his friend Lazarus has died and they must go to him, Thomas--always Mr. Sunshine!--glumly responds: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

In John 14, just after Jesus tells his disciples that they know the way to the place where he is going, Thomas the Realist begs to differ: “Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”

And then, here in John chapter 20, we see Thomas in all his skeptical glory.  Demanding certified proof--visual and tactile evidence--that Jesus is really alive again:  “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

You gotta love a guy like Thomas--unvarnished skeptic that he is.  His story didn’t get edited out of the Scriptures! –it didn’t wind up on the editorial cutting-room floor.

What this string of brief Thomas-sayings in John’s Gospel suggests is that Thomas had been stewing on matters of faith, believing in Jesus THROUGHOUT his whole time of following Jesus-in-the-flesh.

Thomas’s last and greatest word here “My Lord and my God!”—DIDN’T just pop into his mind like a bag of microwave popcorn!    It was, rather, the product of a long, twisting, turning pilgrimage with Jesus, a conclusion formed and shaped by the Holy Spirit who had been brooding over Thomas for years!….

…..and Thomas’s bold confession here wasn’t the end of his story, either!

Although the Bible doesn’t tell us how Thomas’s life later unfolded, historians of the earliest church tell us that all of Jesus’ closest followers proclaimed the Good News, started Christian communities, were persecuted for their faith, and were scattered across the whole world.

A pious legend, believed to be true by many, holds that Thomas traveled all the way to India, where he bore witness to the Crucified and Risen Christ and was martyred on a hillside near the city of Chennai, close to our companion synod alongside the Bay of Bengal.

Six years ago my wife Joy and I visited the purported site of Thomas’s death and paid homage to his memory in the Santhome Cathedral where a part of Thomas’s body is enshrined.   When we were there we learned that there are still Christians in the Mar Thoma Church who claim St Thomas as their founder and spiritual father in faith.

So, in this telling of the story, Thomas’ faith wasn’t just a one-shot microwave experience.   Rather, it was a long, low, steady “cooking” process.   Thomas was marinated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the rest of his life.  His was more of a crockpot faith than a microwave faith!

So too, with precious little Oliver and Sienna this morning….and so too with our own lives of faith.

We pray, and we have promised to help shape for Sienna and for Oliver a long, slow, steady unfolding of the faith in Jesus Christ into whom they have been baptized.    We have publicly declared that, in both the peaks and the valleys of their faith journey, we and other Christians will always, always remind one another of our Baptism in Christ, as together we follow Jesus toward the open future he has brought into our midst when he stepped out of the Grave on Easter morning.

Oliver and Sienna were baptized here this morning—just like that!

But it is equally true to say that Oliver and Sienna BEGAN their baptism this morning….inaugurated their baptismal life, right before our eyes.   

And this baptismal life will continue for them….until their days on earth come to an end and they begin the next chapter in the story of all that God has in store for all the baptized:  the life of the world to come!

The point isn’t whether faith is a microwave thing or a crockpot thing.

The point is that, thank goodness, God is the Cook!    And God calls us to help out in his “kitchen”….so that Christ might be formed in everyone whom God calls, however God calls, into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus our Lord and Savior.

Amen.