For Curiosity

There was a time in my life when I was almost entirely certain that my parents were the smartest individuals on the entire planet. The naivety of childhood is funny like that. Not that my parents aren’t super smart, they just are normal human beings that don’t know the answer to every single iteration of a 4 year old’s favorite question… “why...”

The thing is they were good at the game. They gave me answers to every single “mommy/daddy, why” whether or not it was a scientifically factual answer or not. I took their answers at face value, because that’s what you do when your momma tells you the sky is blue because it’s God’s favorite color. They answered my questions with answers that my little developing mind could understand at the time. And life was good.

Until I learned some things. Which seems to have coincided perfectly with that developmental stage when as humans we go from thinking our parents are the smartest humans to being absolutely sure that they are clueless about everything. So when I began to understand the world a bit deeper and began to realize my parents maybe weren’t entirely forthright with me as a child about why the sky is blue my worldview began to crumble, right? Like what if everything is a lie! (it wasn’t).

But this is one of those instances in life where you know, I grew as a human. I had to reckon with the fact that my parents were not super computers, they had not downloaded all of the information to be found in those Encyclopedia Brittanica volumes that some door to door sales guy sold us, and they certainly were not able to translate the mysteries of the natural world into language that a pre-ker can digest.

They were, in this instance, not what I had told myself that they were. So a period of deconstruction happened in which I began to see my parents exactly as they really are, humans who love me so much that they pandered to my incessant questioning rather than telling me to sit down and shut up. They were people who cultivated in me a deep love of learning and of asking the questions why and how.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing that I’ve found is that I simply cannot fathom the depths of their love for me. I can’t fathom their experience of watching my life unfold and going through the mess of raising a kid like myself. More will certainly be revealed on this front as I go through life, but some of it will always be a mystery to me. But I’ve found that the more that I seek to understand their experience, the more that I open myself up to really understanding them and by proxy, my place in their world.

You know, we live in a world where this seeking, this kind of curiosity is quite widely celebrated. We teach our kids how to read and interact with the world in a critical way. We have learned the value of asking “how” and “why” and the great good that comes from curiosity. And yet, somehow when it comes to faith, the Church is seen as having a completely different view.

We take on more of a “curiosity killed the cat” type of mindset when people, both inside and outside of our walls, being to ask critical questions. It makes us uncomfortable. Usually because we don’t know the answer, or we are afraid that the answer might change our understanding of reality. And so we make the mistake of just falling back on “you just have to take in on faith.” Which is true, but having faith doesn’t have to mean accepting something blindly.

I think that part of having faith, biblically speaking, means exercising our curiosity for the sake of rightly representing Christ in the world. If you go out into this community, into the world around our church, you will find that people have questions. There is a divine curiosity, and part of who we are called to be as a church in this time and in this place is to be a place that fosters these types of discussions and allows people to be honest about the questions that they have about God, faith, and the Christian journey.

But in order for us to be a community that makes people out there feel like they can safely bring their curiosity here to us, we have got to become a community that fosters curiosity amongst ourselves. We have got to become people who wonder, who ask questions, who seek to challenge our own beliefs and assumptions in order to get a right sized view of who our God really is and what it really means for us to follow Jesus.

So the Apostle Paul, when writing to the Ephesian Christians, has this prayer for them. It’s kind of an expression of his deep desire for them as a community and as people who are trying to figure out this whole Jesus movement that they’ve been swept up in. He says this to them in Ephesians 3:16-21

The New Revised Standard Version (Prayer for the Readers)

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Paul says I pray that you are strengthened by the Spirit and rooted in love so that you have the ability to comprehend how vast God’s love is.

Comprehend. Not just know upstairs here, but know down here in our hearts. Not a dead knowledge, but a living, breathing, critical understanding of God’s vast love that we know what to do with.

For Paul and the early church this meant that they needed to open up their minds. Because the vastness of God’s love meant that somehow, the Jewish Messiah, this Jesus wasn’t just for the Jews.

And I think we’ve already made it clear in previous messages in this series that for us this means that Jesus isn’t just for church people.

All of this is a condition, a consequence, of being rooted and grounded in love. This is our starting point for curiosity. Curiosity for us, as Christians is A desire to fully know and embody the fullness of God.

This is a much different posture than the “sit down shut up and have faith” culture that many strands of the church have adopted. It is a posture that welcomes questions and seeks to understand God in God’s fullness, rather than in our limited human capacity.

You see, Jesus was a guy who fielded a lot of questions. He dealt with a lot of people who were quite unsure of the claims that he was making about himself. And sometimes he was kind of harsh with those people. His rebuke was often “ye of little faith.” But, and I say this pretty confidently, those people who he took a harsh tone with, those people had a heart that was not rooted and grounded in love. They were people whose line of questioning was not so that they might understand, but so that they might bring themselves some glory by taking down the trending new rabbi in town.

But what we tend to do is take those instances in the Bible and say, “see Jesus says just have faith! Don’t question him. The Bible says it, I believe it, That settles it!” But thats just not quite how it is. So I’d like to turn our attention to a story that often gets misrepresented. It’s a story about one of the disciples, and it takes place after Jesus has risen from the grave. Its a story about a man named Thomas. And I some of you may know him better by his full name, which he got from our misreading of this story. Yeah, Doubting Thomas.

Poor guy’s got the worst legacy ever. I mean we don’t call Peter, Denying Peter, or Matthew, Scam Artist Matty. But anyway that’s just what’s happened.

Some time after Jesus’s resurrection he appeared in a house to all of the disciples besides Thomas. And they all see him, and the next scene is this which goes down in John Chapter 20.

The New Revised Standard Version (Jesus and Thomas)

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!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

I mean come on. Who is not with Thomas right? Your buddies all sitting at home, and you come back and they are like hey man Jesus was just here. And you know, you know he died. I mean imagine that scene. Put yourself there, you’ve been through the ringer the past few days, exhausted with grief and these dudes are clearly out of their minds right?

So when Jesus shows up we get this beautiful and kind of weird scene where Thomas’s requirements for believing that Jesus has been raised from the grave are met, and Jesus seems to rebuke him. At least in the way that we tend to read it. But look at what Jesus actually says.

“Have you believed because you have seen me?” Well duh, but remember… everyone up until this point has believed because they have seen Jesus.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” What we need to understand is that this does not meant that those who see and come to believe aren’t blessed. Jesus is simply making a statement of future fact, because we, you and me, we aren’t going to have the luxury of seeing Jesus face to face.

In fact, Thomas’s words “My Lord and my God” are an ultimate confession of faith. Lord and God are the two names given to the God of Israel. So Thomas has made a huge confession of faith, he’s gotten to the core of Jesus’s identity as the Lord of the entire cosmos. And yes, he’s gotten there through a moment of doubt, but Jesus doesn’t reprimand him. He doesn’t say “ye of little faith.” He blesses all those that will follow in Thomas’s footsteps, declaring Jesus as the Lord of Creation without having the luxury of physically seeing Jesus face to face. This is honestly the climactic moment of John’s entire Gospel, in which the Disciples finally get it, they finally understand who this man they have followed for 3 years and devoted their lives to is. And the climactic moment comes at the hands of Doubting Thomas.

So tell me, does Jesus scorn those who doubt with a sincere heart. Jesus knew Thomas. Jesus saw that his heart was rooted and grounded in love. Jesus took that and used it to ignite the movement that was to come. A whole community of people who would read and learn from this account that Jesus Christ is Lord. Immediately after this John tells us why he wrote his gospel! Why did John write the Gospel of John?

The New Revised Standard Version (The Purpose of This Book)

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

It’s a shame that we’ve taken this story and used it as a means to say “you shouldn’t have doubts and you shouldn’t have questions” because honestly it’s a story about how one man’s doubts and questions led to a stunning and full understanding of who Jesus is. And isn’t that what we want both for ourselves and for those around us. To fully understand, to comprehend the fullness of who Christ is?

I don’t know what Thomas thought about Jesus before this. But by having some curiosity, he arrived at a much deeper understanding. He didn’t say “I won’t believe ever,” He said “I wanna experience something.” So Jesus gave him an experience.

That kind of curiosity is something that we need to encourage. We need to have the guts to think, to ask questions, even critical questions about faith, about God, about our Bible in order to truly seek after the fullness of God.

You see we’ve all got this box. It’s a box in our mind and its walls are the limits of our imagination. Those limits are put in place by our own experiences, our own education, our own theological understanding, and our own opinions. And what we do is we take God, and we pick God up and we put God inside of this little teenie box inside of our little finite minds and we say, “Here it is, I’ve figured it out. This is who God is, and this is all that God is.”

And it’s really comfortable to have God in this box, because we control it. We get to decide for ourselves how we will experience God, as well as how others have to as well.

But we can’t keep God in the box. Because the box can’t contain God. And by keeping God in the box we are depriving ourselves of the ability to seek out and comprehend the fullness of who God is. You see in my experience, the more questions that I ask, the bigger and more incredible God gets.

We’ve got to get comfortable being curious. Asking questions. We need to be exploring what God has been up to in history, and what God is up to right now. Otherwise, our faith is kind of weak. When we become certain about the wrong things, when we trust the box more than we trust God then our faith is in ourselves, not God. You see humility allows us to recognize that our box, its not big enough. So we need to ask questions, experience faith through the lives and experiences of others. Get down to the nitty gritty stuff of seeking to fully comprehend God, so that we can more accurately represent God to the world around us.

People out there have questions. They are curious, and I bet you are too. So what are we to do with that. Do we continue to stuff them down, to make God small and digestible, or do we venture out? I think you know the answer to that question. So what will you do with your curiosity?

I have an idea. And it might be crazy. But what if you asked some questions this week? What if you listened to someone else. I know last week you got to throw people a 3 min party. What if this week, if this week you gave people a 3 minute press conference.

3 Minutes of uninterrupted time to answer one question: How have you experienced God in your life?

I think you’ll be surprised by the answers that you get. I think that God will jump right on out of that box in your mind. I think you’ll start to develop more questions, your curiosity will be peeked, and you will begin to explore the breadth and length and height and depth of God and God’s love. Let’s pray.