Those Who Ask Questions Receive Answers, a sermon based on John 20: 19-31, preached on April 27, 2025

Late one night, having had a nightmare, our young daughter cried out. I hurried to her bedroom and rubbed her back. Then, I fell asleep next to her, and I know that she did not fall asleep because I woke up to the feeling of her pulling her finger out of my mouth. A salty taste lingered on my tongue, and so I asked her, “Did you just feed me a booger?” She had fed me a booger. But I don’t regret being there. Every child needs to be able to reach out and touch her mother or her father when she is afraid. We all learn that everything is going to be OK, not because someone told us it was, but because when we cried out, someone with flesh and blood was there. Love must have flesh and blood. Otherwise, it is unbelievable. A lasting image of Pope Francis, who died last Monday, will be him kneeling at the feet of incarcerated men, washing their feet. How are incarcerated men to comprehend the awesome love of God unless such love is wrapped in flesh and blood? The Gospel, to be understood, must come down from the pulpit and to the people because so many understand kinesthetically. How’s that for a big word? Kinesthetic learning means to learn by doing or experiencing. Think of going to the part of the museum designed for young children, where they get to touch a fossil or gently pet the back of a stingray. One of my earliest childhood memories is going to the High Museum of Art and walking across a giant tongue. The taste buds lit up under my feet as I walked over it. We know this about kids, that they learn, not just by listening to us talk or reading about new things, but by doing and touching, feeling and smelling, and we learn about the love of God the same way. We don’t just believe because someone told us, but because someone walked into our lives and made the love of God real. Do you remember that scene in Ted Lasso when Coach Beard goes to Nate’s apartment? Nate is afraid that Coach Beard is there to head butt him. Instead, Coach Beard turns his hat around, gently places his forehead against Nate’s, and forgives him. Jesus said to the disciples, “forgive the sins of any and they are forgiven,” for no one believes in forgiveness until forgiveness comes in flesh in blood. Likewise, Thomas said, “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” because the good news is just too good to believe until it takes flesh and blood. Until the Gospel takes flesh and blood, we cannot believe it. The love of God can’t just be learned by listening or reading the Bible but is comprehended kinesthetically. We believe because we have known. Because we have touched His wounds and felt His grace. This is how we learn the truth about people, who they are and whether they can be trusted, not just by reading their resumes, but by shaking their hands and going into their homes, so the great author Mark Twain is famous for advocating that people travel, saying, Travel is fatal to prejudice. It’s fatal to bigotry. Travel is fatal to narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and women and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. But that is what we are too often doing. I read about the nation of Haiti. Then I went on a mission trip there, and I tell you, it is one thing to read about the poverty, the mounds of plastic floating in the coves, the lack of sanitation and prenatal care. I tell you it’s one thing to read about a lack of sanitation, and it’s another thing to smell the lack of sanitation. It’s also one thing to read about overwhelming poverty, and it’s another thing to witness the strength of human resilience in spite of it. We learn the truth through touch. We come to believe in miracles once we’ve witnessed one. How does anyone ever come to believe that the alcoholic can recover from his addiction, but to see it? How can we comprehend the miracle of the healed broken heart but to see the woman broken by grief lifted and restored? We believe that the light shines despite the darkness because that light has shined upon us, so Jesus doesn’t question Thomas’s motives but says to him, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe,” because this is the way it always is. God who created the heavens and the earth is not some figment for theologians to describe. God is no faceless theory to ponder academically, but is a reality to be experienced. Jesus Christ is God’s love in flesh and blood, which is the way people learn what love is, and so when this city drives by our church, seeing a line of hundreds of cars on Tuesday afternoons, and dozens of volunteers providing those families with food to eat, they know that hope is alive. When the world reaches out and finds Christians here that they can touch, lives are changed. Through ministry here that they can feel, people come to know that this place is not a den of hypocrites, or a country club for casual believes, but the Church of Jesus Christ. For we all learn by touching, smelling, hearing, and witnessing in person, so Jesus calls the disciples to forgive so that His grace takes on flesh and blood. Jesus calls on Thomas to touch His wounds, that he might believe that life has victory over the grave, and I tell you that it’s one thing to read about it in book, and it’s another to experience hope for yourself. I’ve read a book called The Anxious Generation. It’s a book full of incredibly bleak statistics that point towards a concerning reality. Many kids are addicted to their smart phones. They’re not playing outside as much. They’re not on the playground so much. Instead, they’re inside, which seems to many parents as though they’re safe at home, yet so long as they’re on their phones, they’re at risk for exposure to child predators, unhealthy images, and all kinds of other bad influences. That’s the reality that I read about, and in reading this book, I wanted to destroy our daughters’ iPhones. I wanted to destroy your children’s phones and your grandchildren’s phones, too, but then, the week before last, our girls had some friends over, and one friend brought with her a phone basket. She demanded that all in attendance place their phones in the basket so that they would all be present in the moment, talking and interacting instead of staring at their screens. Everyone complied with 16-year-old Birdi Dixon. I put my phone in the basket, too, and I tell you this story because the night is not necessarily so dark as you have heard, but to see the light, you’re going to have to open your eyes and reach out your hands. Death will not have the final word, but you may not hear that on the evening news. He is not dead, for He is risen, but to believe, you’re going to have to go out into the world to find where God’s love has taken on flesh and blood. Don’t take their word for it. For prejudice and racism thrive when people stop searching for the truth. Don’t just read about it. Evil in this world grows when good people give up on finding hope. And please don’t let the talking heads tell you what’s really going on, for ignorance thrives when good people stop asking questions. I’ve heard a lot of concerning news in recent weeks, but when God’s love takes on flesh and blood in us, it changes things. I was invited to lunch by a new banker in town. Before we ordered, he started telling me about his Easter, how he spent the weekend with his daughter, a student at Florida State. You may know that there was an active shooter on the campus of FSU. Two were killed, and several others were injured, and upon hearing the news, he called his daughter right away. She was safe, and he told his wife that she sounded fine. His wife told him to drive to Tallahassee to make sure. “What did you do once you got there?” I asked. “All she needed was a hug from her dad,” he told me. My friends, we all learn that everything is going to be OK, not because someone told us, but because when we cried out, God provided us One to touch. Will you let your faith become action, that those who do not yet know or understand might gain a sense of God’s love through your flesh and blood? Amen.