Acts 2: 14a, 22–32; Psalm
16; I
Peter 1: 3–9; John
20: 19–31
A homily by Fr.
Gene Tucker, given at Trinity
Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, April 27, 2014.
“FOUNDATIONS”
(Homily texts: Acts 2: 14a, 22–32 & John 20: 19–31)
As we
remember the Lord’s appearance to His disciple, Thomas, on the first Sunday
following the first Easter, let’s talk a little this morning about foundations,
for the Lord, in appearing to Thomas, is providing Thomas with the foundation
that Thomas will need in order to believe in the Lord’s resurrection. Let’s consider this event from the
perspective of the foundation that the Lord provided for Thomas.
Foundations
affect just about everything: Foundations
support the things we build. Foundations
support the ways in which we think.
Foundations support the ways we believe.
If we think about it, nearly everything in our lives has some sort of a
foundation.
Consider,
for example, our Trinity church building….when the contracts were signed and
the builders began work, just about the first thing they did after having
cleared the land was to begin digging for the foundation. And, since this building was built in the
first decade of the last century, it’s a pretty good guess that the work was
done the hard way, with picks and shovels.
That’s a lot of work. But that
hard work had to precede what would come later, the building of the walls and
the installation of the roof. Without a
good foundation, the building would not be stable, and its life span would be
considerably shortened.
As the work
on our church building continued, the workers would have had to erect
scaffolding so that they could stand at the level that the walls had
reached. In essence, then, the scaffolding
that became part of the work later on also served as part of the foundation
that the builders needed in order to have a base from which to work.
In the area
of thinking and behavior, our country’s Constitution serves as a foundation for
the ways in which our country’s government will function. Its enduring importance can be seen in the
ways in which the courts are asked to determine if certain actions are in
accordance with the Constitution. Nearly
every civic organization (and many churches) has a constitution, and some also
have some sort of bylaws, which serve as the basis for the way in which the
organization will function.
The
Christian faith also has a foundation.
That foundation rests, primarily, on all the things having do to with Jesus
Christ. (Of course, the Old Testament
parts of the Bible also form part of our foundation.) The Christian faith is built on the witness
of Jesus’ disciples, as we hear Peter relate in our reading from the Book of
Acts this morning. These disciples are the ones who would become Apostles once
He had sent them out to tell the Good News of God in Christ to the world after
He had ascended into heaven. So the New
Testament is the written record of the eyewitnesses to all that Jesus did, but
especially to His resurrection on Easter Sunday morning. The New Testament is also the record of the
beginnings of the Church, and of letters to those early Churches that often
deal with specific problems and challenges.
So our foundation, the thing that supports how we think, what we
believe, and how we will act, is the Bible.
For us as Anglican Christians, the Bible is the most important part of
our foundation as Christian believers.
However, in
addition to the Holy Scriptures, there are two other important parts of the
foundation that allows us to believe in God, to come to serve the Lord Jesus
Christ, and to know how to act: That
second source upon which we base all these things is our ability to think, or,
as the 16th century Anglican priest, Richard Hooker, would
call it: Right Reason. Hooker made it clear that the Bible was the
most important part of our foundation.
Right Reason would help support what we can understand about the Bible,
but Right Reason cannot replace the Bible’s primary place as the foundation for
faith. Our ability to think allows us to
understand at least some of what the Bible has to say. Our ability to think allows us to make wiser
choices than we might otherwise make, the Holy Spirit being our helper,
counselor and guide.
But then
there is a third part of our foundation for belief, and that is what Richard
Hooker called Tradition. Tradition
consists, to a large extent, of what the Church’s founders believed, and by
what has been affirmed by Christians everywhere and in every age. That may be a somewhat simplistic explanation
of what Tradition is, but I think it does justice to the concept. It is worth adding here that tradition
stretches back into time, transcending local customs in a local church. Those customs and ways of doing things that
we, at the local level, do may be part of our local tradition, but Tradition in
the truest sense takes in all of Christian history.
We would do
well to back up, at this point, and take a look at the disciple Thomas’ demand
for a foundation for believing. Remember
that, in our gospel reading this morning, John tells us that Thomas was not present when
the Lord appeared to the other disciples.
So when Thomas was told that the Lord had come and had appeared to them,
Thomas told the others that he would not believe unless he had physical proof
of the Lord’s resurrection. Thomas’
words were, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my
finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will not
believe.”
We might
characterize Thomas’ demand as a demand to have some basis, some foundation,
for faith in the Lord’s resurrection.
Thomas wants to be sure that the Lord had really come to life
again. He wanted to be so sure that he
demanded physical proof of the Lord’s risen state….he not only wanted to see
the mark of
the nails, but he also demanded to touch the mark of the nails and the spear
wound in the Lord’s side.
Notice that
the Lord offers Thomas just what Thomas demanded, as He said, “Put your finger
here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it into my side. Do not doubt,
but believe.”
In
response, Thomas exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”
Thomas now
had the foundation he needed to go and tell the world that he had seen the
risen Lord. Tradition tells us that
Thomas went as far as the subcontinent of India, telling that Good News.
These many
years later, we Christians today have a foundation for our faith: That foundation rests on the eyewitness
accounts of the Apostles, who saw the risen Lord, and whose lives were
completely changed as a result of their encounter with the risen Christ. The four Gospel accounts of the New Testament
serve as a written record of the things that Jesus did, and of the disciples’
experience of those things. These things
are the primary foundation for our Christian faith.
Our basis
for believing also rests on our ability to see God in action in the world
around us, and in the lives of those we know.
Our ability to think (Right Reason) allows us to understand what God is
doing as people’s lives are changed, and as those we know come to new life in
their faith walk with God.
Our basis
for believing also rests on the Traditions of the body of Christ, known as the
Church. Like scaffolding that surrounds
a building, this body of Tradition rests on the foundation of the Holy
Scriptures. It cannot stand on its own,
but rests on the apostolic witness to Christ.
Tradition rises, like scaffolding around a building, as the years roll
along. Tradition must rest on the
foundation of Holy Scripture.
So, though
we have not seen the Lord as Thomas saw Him, physically present, may we be
blessed in coming to belief in the risen Lord through the witness of John’s
gospel account, as the Lord commends us this morning.
May we come
to exclaim, with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”
AMEN.
