Love is Alive: Even When We Doubt

The peace that Jesus speaks of is not the absence of questions or the removal of uncertainty. It is the presence of Christ in the midst of it all. And that matters for us because it begins to shape how we understand how it means, what it means, love to be alive in your life and mine. Love that is alive does not wait for everything to be settled. Love that is alive does not require for us to arrive at a place of perfect understanding. Love that is alive meets us in the very places where we are even if, maybe especially if, we're still holding questions, if we're still navigating uncertainty, if we're still learning how to fully trust in god. [01:05:08] (56 seconds)  #PeaceInTheMidst

Jesus does not tell Thomas to just keep all your questions to yourself. Jesus meets Thomas right where he is in the middle of his questions, and that encounter becomes a place where Thomas moves from uncertainty into recognition, from questioning into trust, from distance into relationship. Now if we think about that for just a moment, we can begin to understand more deeply what it means for us to say love is alive. Love is alive because love that is alive is not fragile. [01:08:59] (46 seconds)  #FaithMeetsQuestions

So here's an invitation for all of us. It stands before us for this Eastertide season. We don't have to have everything figured out. This is an invitation for us to remain open, for us to allow our faith to just speak to us, for us to be willing to walk through our faith journey through this Eastertide that Christ continues to come nearer and nearer to us, and we begin to see clearer and clearer. Because when we begin to look for it, we can find that Christ is already present in a whole bunch of ways that we do not fully recognize or even name or even realize sometimes. [01:10:29] (51 seconds)  #OpenToChrist

Love that is alive is not easily shaken by any questions. Love that is alive is steady. It's present. It's patient. It's willing to remain with us as we grow, as we learn, as we come to see more clearly over time? Anyone here believe exactly the same way about your faith that you did when you were five years old and you were in VBS, or have you grown through the years? And Jesus has been with you as you have grown in your understanding through the years. [01:09:45] (44 seconds)  #FaithGrowsWithYou

And what's so remarkable in this story is not simply that Thomas expresses that deep human longing that he has and we all have, but that Jesus responds to it. Jesus returns. He comes back into that very space, and this time, Thomas is there. And once again, Jesus stands among them. And once again, he speaks peace, and then he turns towards Thomas, and he meets him exactly where he is. He loves Thomas. And in that moment, we begin to see something so essential about the nature of Christ's presence with us because Jesus does not ask Thomas to pretend. [01:08:07] (51 seconds)  #JesusMeetsYouWhereYouAre

We carry our faith, and I want you to know it's okay to carry our questions. In fact, we welcome your questions as we continue to walk through the ordinary days that follow the joy of Easter morning. May we allow ourselves to live into this incredible truth that Christ continues to come to us, that peace continues to be spoken over us, that love continues to meet us exactly where we are and even in those places where we're still wondering, where we're still growing, where we're still learning. And church, if you are still breathing, you are still growing, you are still learning. We are still opening our hearts and our lives to god to continue to work in our hearts because love is alive, and love is closer than you think. [01:12:21] (63 seconds)  #LoveIsCloserThanYouThink

And his response is not a rejection of faith. I don't hear doubting Thomas. I hear this as an expression of longing, a longing for something real, a longing for something he can encounter, that he can understand in a way that speaks in his own experience. And when we consider our own lives, we recognize that same longing within ourselves. We recognize a desire for a faith that's not just inherited, not something that's just passed down and assumed that, of course, we're all going to be Methodist and go to the Methodist Church in Mooresville, Indiana. We want a faith that we can experience, a faith that meets us in our very questions, a faith that holds us in our wondering, a faith that grows as we engage with it honestly. [01:07:11] (56 seconds)  #FaithYouCanExperience

One week after Easter, just one week removed from a morning filled with proclamation and celebration where we we gather, we lift our voice, we declare Christ is risen and the tomb is empty and that love has the final word and yet even with Easter, what happened Monday? We step into the next week. We recognize something that feels familiar to us. The energy shifts again. The celebration maybe softens just a little bit. Life returns to business as usual. As my daughter Miranda says, life be life and mom. [01:00:36] (43 seconds)  #LifeAfterEaster