Seeing is believing

An Easter reflection. One of the interesting things revealed through the Easter stories in scripture is how personal faith develops as the story unfolds and the facts become clear. The reason this is important in my view is that it teaches us something we need to grasp about faith.

For many people, faith is an issue of the intellect. It is for this reason that some struggle with some of the amazing stories in scripture that go beyond what is humanly possible. They therefore get stuck because they cannot believe it.

For Mary, and probably the other women that morning, the logical explanation for the empty tomb was that someone had come in the night and stolen the body. But even as she grieved about her loss, hearing his voice and holding onto him led to believing.

For Peter and John the testimony of the women was not enough and they ran to the tomb to check it out for themselves. Peter saw the empty tomb and was overwhelmed by what appeared a tragedy, but something about the evidence of the grave cloths enabled John to believe Jesus was alive.

The two walking to Emmaus came to believe partly through what they saw but also because of the conversation that had made their hearts burn within them. In some ways, faith came by hearing scripture.

Thomas wanted the experience of seeing and touching the wounds before he could believe, but confronted with the person of the risen Jesus he fell to his knees and confessed that Jesus was in fact God.

For all these people some kind of engagement preceded their ability to believe. For me back in 1962 it was an invitation to “try out” the invitation to engage with Christ that really started my faith journey. The writer to the Hebrews states that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. While I know that to be true, it seems to me that for most, if not all of us, there needs to be some kind of evidence. That might be seeing or hearing what God has done in the life of someone whose testimony we are inclined to believe. That brings a challenge to Christians.

A story about someone coming alive again after so public and undeniable a death will never be grasped intellectually unless, like those early disciples, we too have engaged with the person of the risen Saviour. He does not invite us to believe on nothing. The invitation to us is to open up our lives, to invite him into our lives so that we might experience the reality of his love and forgiveness and all that comes in with that.

In the moment that we respond to that invitation most people do not immediately experience anything dramatic, though some do. It is in keeping the door open to him that lives begin to be changed and faith grows in the light of experience.

Today, wounded hands reach out as Jesus repeats, “Whoever comes to me I will never turn away”.