Object Permanence

Please pray with me: Creator God, you bestow on us peace in all things. Be with us when we marvel at your world and your works, and stay with us still even when our minds cannot comprehend what is right in front of us.

Amen.

So as most of you know, I have parrots. If you count the four parakeets I have 8 Parrots: 4 Parakeets, 3 conures (small/medium parrots) and a scarlet macaw. And he is, in fact, THE standard bearer species for macaws, the red, yellow, and blue one. Its scientific name is actually Ara Macaw. His name is Juancho, which is the diminutive of Juan.

He’s big. He’s noisy. He curious, impulsive, spontaneous, and loves to play. And he loves his favorite daddy, me. One game he loves to play as part of our daily routine is a kind of hide and seek. I hide around the corner behind a wall. You can hear the clickety clackety of his talons and feet as he is moving the top and sides of the outside his cage and soon enough, out around the corner pops this red head with wide black and grey eyes on patch of bare skin, and says, “Helooooooo! Ha-ha-ha-ha.”

The secret behind this game, is more than just smarts. It’s called object permanence, which is the cognitive developmental concept defined as the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or otherwise sensed.

Parrots do this in the wild too. After a time in the trees, which obscures their view of each other, they will call out, and the birds in ear-shot will call back. This is called a contact call. It’s to check and see who’s still around and hasn’t been eaten. They know the rest of the flock is out there but that can’t see them.

This seems so obvious, but it’s not. Human children can’t do this at all for around the first 8 months of life and only a handful of other animals can do it.

When you don’t have this ability, if you have an object and cover it up, as far as the observer is concerned, it doesn’t exist.

And this brings us to poor Thomas. Every time this passage comes up we refer it as “The Story of ________ Thomas. Doubting Thomas. That’s right.

Thomas suffers from a really bad PR staff, because he has traditionally come off as the skeptic who wouldn’t believe until he got proof. BUT he’s not the only one! Mary Magdalene saw the Jesus the morning of the Resurrection and ran to go tell the disciples and they thought she was over wrought and hysterical. The didn’t believe her.

But then, when they are huddled together in a dark room afraid of the powerful people that opposed Jesus and what they might do to them, the door closed, Jesus somehow appears in the room to their shock and amazement. So these bunch of scaredy cats (and I’m not saying they didn’t have reason to feel threatened) but scaredy cats hiding in a big closet, who told Mary Magdalene to stuff it when she told them that Christ had risen are suddenly confronted by the risen Jesus himself, and what does Jesus say before anything else…? Peace be with you.

Not you guys are losers, not you all failed me that day, and you are still disappointing me, but Peace be with you. Still your selves and your souls. Be at peace. I still believe in you so much that I’m about to bestow upon you the tools that you need to go and change the world. Even on the other side of the cross Jesus is STILL upsetting the apple cart and changing up the script. He breaths upon them with the Holy Spirit and says go forgive the world.

That’s an amazing charge to folks who are basically hiding in a closet.

BUT, Thomas wasn’t there that day. Maybe his donkey needed an oil change or the line was too long to get coffee at Kohchavim-bucks which made him late, but he wasn’t there. Like Lois Lane looking for Clark, who just can’t seem to ever be there when Superman shows up, he missed the show.

They all try to tell him about it and he says noway! We all saw what we saw. It’s not possible. You can hear the hyperbole in what he says. “ I tell you that guy better walk through the door and show me his scars or I won’t believe it. It’s NOT POSSIBLE. You’ve all been in this closet too long! You are losing your minds. Which is kinda what THEY had all already told Mary.

So the next week comes around and they are all back at the house, doors locked and sure enough, Jesus shows up with advanced knowledge of what Thomas had said, BUT as before what does he say? Does he berate Thomas? Nope. He says, Peace be with you. He begins not with condemnation, but with Peace and love.

Then, not only shows Thomas the wounds but invites him to stick his fingers inside. It’s over the top in the same way that Thomas words were before. It just ups the ante. Lest there be no doubt. Thomas, though, doesn’t need to take Jesus up on the offer and simply and humbly calls to Jesus as “My Lord and God,” one of the first Creedal Statements of belief.

It’s then that Jesus asks if he believes because he’s seen? And before he get’s an answer he tells us that “Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe.” The NRSV translates the Greek word there as Blessed, which has a lot of gravity to an English speaker, but the spirit of the word is more like happy or “good-on-ya.”

This was not a condemnation or a questioning of the veracity of Thomas’s belief, but a message to the rest of history. By the time this is written down almost everyone who would ever have seen Jesus in his earthly ministry would be gone. And Jesus is encouraging those of the rest of history in their belief.

We all have doubts from time to time. That is one of the things I hear from people who want to know the wisdom of the Vicar is how this all works and if it’s true, or hokum, or outdated, or too supernatural for the modern mind. Why did these books make it into the Bible? Which one is true? Where is the right answer? And the truth is there. There is truth in it all because we believe. The specifics of what are described in one Gospel or the other is not the point. These are ancient documents written to specific audiences to address specific persuasive ideas to different people in different contexts and they do that perfectly. There is great truth in all of them even if they don’t empirically square. That’s not the important part. John 20:31 tells us what the important part is: “But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” That’s the important part.

We have all grown up in the modern age. The age born of rationalism that taught us all to test and verify. To trust only what we see., just like Thomas demanded. But Jesus had risen, even if Thomas couldn’t test it with his own eyes…, or fingers.

The western church, Lutherans especially, love to try and explain the mysteries of the faith in exacting ways, like with communion for instance. Jesus said, this is my body. And so the Catholics say that’s literally what he meant and so in the eating of the bread it actually changes into flesh. The Lutherans were like, “No, it’s bread, but the spirit is present with the bread,” so they found a middle ground. And then the Calvinist were like, nope, he said remembrance, so this is a symbol only.”

I was discussing this with a friend of mine who is an Eastern Orthodox priest and he stopped me and said, “You see… That’s what’s wrong with you Westerners. You try and explain everything. It JUST IS. That’s it. It is. Jesus said it and it is. Full stop. No need to try and explain it. It is a mystery. Just let it be a mystery. Faith is mysterious. Let yourself stand in the wonder of the miracle.”

It’s easy to doubt such fantastical things as the resurrection. It’s normal. But, Jesus didn’t condemn Thomas or the other disciples. Doubt is the opposite facing side of the faith coin. Doubt gives faith and conviction power.

Luther himself wrote that, “faith is not the absence of doubt, but trusting in God despite doubt.”

According to church tradition, that Doubting Thomas would go on to found the Church in India which today is 26 million strong. Pretty amazing for the guy who gets tossed aside for being the last of the apostles to come along for the ride.

The rest of the disciples doubted as well and yet still went to the ends of the earth and took the gospel to the world.

Your own doubt bolsters your belief. It tests it and tempers it, strengthens it. Gives it substance.

I heard once of two friends who argued about faith and belief while they were walking along a ridge from which, in the distance, you could see a large granite statue. They day wore on until it was dark, and the believing friend asked the other if there was a statue out there, and he replied, Yes.

He asked again, “Is there a statue out there?” And, again, the other replied yes.

Then the believer said, “But I can’t see it. How do you know it’s there?

“Because it is,” the doubter replied.

The believer said, “That’s how I know God is there.”

Fear not. Be at Peace. Believe.

Amen.