Playing Comparative Religious Experience

2 Easter Sunday April 16, 2023

Acts 2:14a,22-32 Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9 John 20:19-31

Lectionary Link

You've heard of comparative religions, the study of the various religions of our world.  But have you heard of comparative religious experience?  Probably not, but it is probably a introspective exercise which we have been involved in both in our private thoughts but also in our religious group identities.

Even though in theory, we believe everyone's experience is unique, we can't help but ponder the differences in religious experience and what those differences might mean.

Perhaps, we feel inferior in our spiritual experiences or maybe we feel special because of some Holy God moment which changed our lives.  Maybe we feel sorry that others who have not had a similar life-changing spiritual breakthrough or conversion or enlightenment.  Perhaps we can carry an unwitting superiority complex about our special God-experience or special knowledge.

I would like to suggest to us that the doubting Thomas story was a teaching which arose in the Johannine community in the year 90 or later to address the tendency of either proud or insecure members to get involved in the comparative religious experience habit.

Did this sort of comparative thing happen within the early Christians communities? Wherever there is evidence of strife, the comparative religious experience social phenomenon occurs.

St. Paul did not see Jesus when Jesus walked upon this earth.  He did not see him, touch him, or talk with him.  He was not at the cross or the tomb and he was not with the disciples who had post-resurrection experiences of Christ.

What did he say about himself and his experience of the Risen Christ?  He said he was like one untimely born; he had a dramatic encounter on the road to Damascus as he seeking to imprison the followers of Jesus.  He was stopped in his tracks and compelled into a complete turn around.

Of himself, he said that he was not the least of the apostles.  So even with St. Paul, there is a comparison of his spiritual experience with that of the other eyewitness apostles.

For those of us who are 2000 thousand years from eyewitnesses of Jesus of Nazareth, we may be like the people for whom the Doubting Thomas story was preached.  We might be involved in comparing our religious experience of Christ and perhaps come to some doubt about its authority or validity or worthiness.

Perhaps we sometimes let ourselves off the hook from doing full throttled Christ-like behaviors because we cite the inferiority of our experience.  "God, how can I be held responsible; I've only had second handed experiences of Christ, I've only heard or read hearsay testimonies?"

By the year 90 of the first century, the community of the Gospel of John did not have very many eyewitnesses to Jesus around, perhaps none.  Perhaps they were feeling their zeal for Christ flag and perhaps they were feeling inferior in their experiences of Christ.

If we appreciate this context, we can derive the full impact of the Doubting Thomas wisdom teaching story.  What does the voice of the Risen Christ say to the community of the Gospel of John? "Thomas, you are blessed because you have been an eyewitness and have believed; but what about all those who have not seen, what is their status?  Well, their experience is blessed too, valid, real, certain and sure."

Why?  Because it has brought you to faith and belief in Jesus as the Christ.  The modes of the self-authenticating presences of Christ are many; they cannot be limited to only the people who saw and walked with Jesus in his own earthly lifetime.

How have most people accessed their experience of the presence of the Risen Christ?  Through having the interpretative framework of words to identify the significance of their experience.  The Doubting Thomas story has a direct plug for the significance of word and writing.  John's Gospel begins with Word as God and creator from the beginning.  That Word became flesh in the body language deeds of Jesus who exemplified active love.  Jesus also spoke words, words to remember, and about his own words, he said, "My words are spirit and they are life."  The writer of John wrote:  "I have written these things so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that in believing you might have life in his name."

Can we appreciate that Christ as the eternal Word has become a presence in our lives through the words which have been handed down for many generations and these words have had the spontaneous "spirit effect" to conduct faith and belief which engenders the proof of the presence of the Risen Christ?  

So the Risen Christ is made present in and through written and spoken word.  But the Doubting Thomas story also gives us the following clues of having and knowing the authentic presence of the Risen Christ.

First in the experience of peace.  To live in peace personally and communally is a sure sign of the presence of the Risen Christ.  The liturgy of the church enshrines the evocative peace of Christ in the passing of the peace in our Eucharistic liturgy.  "The peace of Christ be with you."  This transaction of peace with each other is one of the preludes to knowing the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic gifts.

Next, a sign of the Risen Christ is knowing the presence of another Spirit, the Holy Spirit.  In the Doubting Thomas account, Jesus breathed on his disciples and said, "Receive the Spirit."  Knowing the deep and peaceful Holy Spirit beneath all our inward realities of instinct, moods, desire, emotions, and thought is a sure sign of the presence of the Risen Christ.

Finally, the sure sign of the Risen Christ is the practice in community of forgiving sins.  Forgiveness is not always easy, even when we ourselves, know that we ourselves need it.  But the opposite of forgiveness is the demise of community caused by retaining the sins of others.  Most often we cannot forget harm and injury done in willful ways to us so how do we maintain community and move forward?  We activate the grace of forgiveness which enables us to be people who live together resolved to be reconciling with each while being honest about our weaknesses and faults.

In closing, you and I, like the Johannine community of old,  are encouraged to be blessed in our experiences of the Risen Christ as they are tailored to our own personal circumstances and our communities.  And if we are concerned about the authenticity and validity and blessedness of our experiences, let us test them from the criteria provided in the Doubt Thomas story.  Does our inward life exhibit the cleanness of motive and purity of heart of the presence of the Holy Spirit?  Do our behaviors manifest peace within ourselves and in our communities?  Are we practicing the forgiveness of sins?  And do they comply with coming to faith and belief in Jesus Christ as are found in the written words that have been past down to us in the Gospels?

I hope that you will find the Doubting Thomas event as reported by John's Gospel as an affirmation of your experience of the Risen Christ, in Spirit, in peace, in forgiveness and in written word handed down to you to confirm your faith in Jesus Christ.  Amen.