There Is No Ticket Counter--April 19, 2023

There Is No Ticket Counter--April 19, 2023

"But Thomas [who was called the Twin], one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord.' But he said to them, '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'." A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!" [John 20:24-28]

It's not our faith that makes God's forgiveness possible, but the other way around.  It's because God chooses to set aside our failures with grace that we are able to believe.  If we weren't clear about that already, Thomas' story here shows it to us for sure.

Here in this scene from the same story many of us heard this past Sunday, we get our heads on straight by the way Jesus initiates things with Thomas.  He doesn't chastise Thomas for not believing well enough, strongly enough, or correctly enough; rather, Jesus meets him at his place of honest skepticism and lets faith grow from there.  Jesus starts by assuring Thomas that he's not holding his past doubts ["Unless I see the nail marks for myself I won't believe!"] against him, but instead has come to enable Thomas to trust that Jesus is indeed alive and risen.  

This is important for us to understand, because honestly, a lot of times we Respectable Religious Folk get it backwards.  Sometimes we make the Christian faith sound like a transaction between us and God, where our belief is the currency that we trade in, like ticket and Chuck E. Cheese, for prizes of grace.  Believe well enough, or firmly enough, we say, and then your sins are forgiven.  And we end up packaging it in the slogan, cribbed sloppily from the sixteenth-century reformers, that says, "We're saved by faith."

But of course, the Reformers like Luther, Calvin, and the rest didn't mean to say that our believing the correct facts about God earns God's forgiveness.  After all, forgiveness, like all forms of grace, cannot be earned--that's part of the definition.  And second, those voices of the Reformation understood, too, that even our faith itself is a gift we receive from God in Christ, not something we present to God as our accomplishment in exchange for prizes from under the glass ticket counter.  Faith doesn't start as our bright ideas about God, for which we win a reward, but as the new creation made possible by God's coming to us first without holding our doubts or disbelief against us. In other words, God doesn't wait until we believe correctly enough to forgive our sins or skepticism; rather, it's God's coming to us while we're struggling that enables us to believe and trust God.  That's what makes the Christian story good news rather than a deal we transact with God.

And it's that willingness of God to come to us without preconditions or grudges, that leads Jesus to appear for Thomas' sake a week after that first resurrection day.  A Savior who kept score and held our failures against us would have left a note under the door to the upper room that said, "When Tommy gets his act together and can recite the catechism or at least the creed, then I'll make another appearance."  A Savior whose forgiveness was contingent on proficient faith would have given a theology exam for Thomas to take before letting him know he was in the club.  But that's just not how God's kind of love works--it doesn't withhold acceptance until we've proven our worth, but announces that we are already accepted even before we can believe it's true... in order that we can come to believe.  Getting that straight is a matter of putting the horse before the cart, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Today, a lot of the folks we'll cross paths with have gotten it in their heads that God's waiting on them to believe well enough or hard enough before telling them they have enough faith points to win the big box labeled "Salvation" up on the top shelf of prizes.  And that not only sucks us into the vortex of constantly fearing our faith is never good enough, but it also just doesn't align with the way the risen Jesus shows up for Thomas while he still can't bring himself to believe the resurrection.  Today's a day for us to be clear that it's God's grace that makes our faith possible, not our faith that wins us a clean slate from the Almighty.  Today's a day for us to tell someone else who needs to hear it that there is no ticket counter... and there never has been.

Lord Jesus, meet us where we are, and let your grace call forth faith from us to follow you where you lead us.