What do we mean when we say “I believe in Jesus”? First, what does it sound like to other people? I know for a large segment of the population, when they hear somebody say “I believe in Jesus” they will think you are out of touch with Modernity and science and that you also believe the earth is flat. They also don’t appreciate when Christians go around saying you can’t go to heaven when you die unless you believe in Jesus. The coercive nature of doing that is counterproductive. They will also expect that you’re going to play moral policeman and go judgemental on them. People think those things because a large portion of the people in the last couple of centuries who have said, “I believe in Jesus”, have been just like that – anti-scientific, anti-questioning, coercive, and power hungry – rather than behaving as if they actually know and abide in Jesus.
Moreover, belief or faith in this age of science and psychology is a rough row to hoe. Belief in something or someone you can’t see is thought to be ridiculous, delusional even. If it can’t be seen, touched, measured, or proven by math, then it’s not real and your belief therefore is really just your fantasy or delusion. But then there’s always that politically correct tag on, “if that’s what helps you keep your world together, then who am I to judge.” Your truth is your truth and mine is mine.
Oddly, looking here at John’s Gospel, this relationship between belief and having evidence to prove it seems to be what’s behind Jesus’ conversation with Thomas. Thomas believed in Jesus. He followed Jesus around and participated in Jesus’ ministry. His belief in Jesus as the Messiah and what Jesus was about in initiating the Kingdom of God or in John’s Gospel “Eternal life” was likely shattered by Jesus’ death. But then the others tell him that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Being the type who needs evidence, Thomas is not going to believe it, until he sees it, until he can touch the wounds that killed Jesus in a Jesus who now lives.
Thomas’ response is reflective of what Greeks and Romans thought to be true about this world. They believed that bodily resurrection is impossible. People don’t rise from the dead. Indeed, why would you want to? Why would you want a second go at this sick, twisted world? They believed that physical matter, especially bodies, is bad, evil, and gross. Things change, rot, and stink and hurt. Spirit and spiritual, as are the gods, is the true good. Becoming an immortal spirit should have been Jesus’ destiny to the Greeks. If Jesus was God or the Son of God, he certainly would have gone to the spiritual realm after death, not come back to the physical.
Informed by that Greek sort of mindset, Thomas exclaims, “I won’t believe God raised Jesus from the dead unless I see the evidence, i.e. touch the wounds on the physical body of the crucified yet now living Jesus.” Jesus gave him the proof in what is probably the most humorous moment in John’s Gospel. “Put your hand here in my side, Tom. You’ll know I’m for real when you touch my guts.”
In response to Thomas’ Greekness, Jesus’ response to him is quite Hebrew. The Jews believed God created the world and that it was very good. It’s just diseased by sin, a disease which culminates in death. If Jesus is bodily raised from the dead, the disease is cured, sin forgiven, and death defeated. Moreover, if it was God who raised Jesus from the dead, then Jesus is the Truth because God has validated him. What God was doing in, through, and as Jesus is as sure and as real as the rocks that are the very foundation of the very good earth, as sure and as real as life itself and more powerful than death even.
So, to believe in Jesus the Resurrected One, is to say I believe he is the heart and root of Creation and of life. Participating in his ministry is what everything is all about, what life is all about. To not participate in Jesus’ ministry, to not be his disciple, is to perish. Jesus and his ministry are the root of purpose in God’s very good creation. John started his Gospel with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh.” That’s the way he started it and pretty much how he ended it. Jesus is the root of reality, the source of life around whom we must orient our lives if we want to have true life. Believing in Jesus is orienting your life around him and his life.
Well, now that you’re all thoroughly philosophized and looking like a deer in the headlights, let me tell you something more about what it is to believe. In New Testament Greek, the word we translate as believe, “pisteuw” and the noun form, “pistis”, belief, is also the same word we translate as faith and being faithful. It is a complicated word family because we really don’t have a good word in English to translate the concept the word family carried in the first century. Being loyal is probably the most accurate way to translate it. Believing in Jesus is being loyal to Jesus.
A few years ago, I spent a chunk of money on a thick book that I actually read that is probably the most comprehensive analysis of the “pist-” word family. Something I find really cool, but realize you might not and that’s okay, is that pretty much every book, letter, engraving, sales receipt, and scribbling of a note that is in the Greek language from the several centuries before and after Jesus are now typed into a computer database word by word. You can do a word search that’s pretty incredible with it. You can type in the word “cup” and give it a couple days and it will provide you with a report of pretty much every known use of the word “cup” in the Greek world way back then. The author of this book did that with the faith word in Greek and found some interesting stuff.
One thing I found really interesting is that this word that we associate most readily with faith in God, with a religious religious context, was actually quite secular in its use. Our dear word for faith, for belief, is the word they used to describe the relationship between crime lords and their thugs. The very loyal thug in essence believed in their crime lord much the same way as Christians believed in Jesus. It was a relationship rooted in owed loyalty and reward. The crime lord gained the thug’s loyalty usually by saving their lives, and in an odd sort of way he included them in his family, he continued to provide for them and their families, and did them favours in response to their acts of loyalty. Betrayal of this benevolence was punishable by death or something worse. I bet you have never thought of God the Father as being God the Godfather? Heh. Heh.
Back then a Christian saying “I believe in Jesus” meant more or less the same thing as a thug saying “I believe in Corrupticus Maximus”, his crime boss. Believing, having faith, meant way more than simply believing in the existence of something you can’t see or touch. Believing means being loyal with the totality of your life. The thug wouldn’t have said “I believe in Corrupticus Maximus even though I can’t see or touch him”. He would have said, “I am loyal to Corrupticus Maximus even unto death.”
But in all seriousness, God acts in our lives much like a crime lord would have to gain our loyalty but truly for our good. God answers prayers. God heals. God is there with a still, small voice when we need to know what to do. God acts to deliver us in the real muck of our broken lives. Yet there’s more. In, through, and as Jesus and by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit God has done something infinitely more. We know and abide in Jesus. We have a real and living connection with him. We know ourselves to be the beloved children of the Father just as Jesus knows himself to be. A crime Lord didn’t love his thugs. Yet, God loves us as his own beloved children and we know it and feel it because of God’s faithfulness to us and because of the love we find in the presence of the Holy Spirit with us and in the way we love each other. In Christ, God is way more loyal to us than we can ever be to him. God doesn’t hold it over our heads that we owe him our lives and threaten us with death if we don’t do what he wants. Rather, God works graciously in our lives until we have the love for him that Jesus has so that we live to please God simply because we love him and those he calls us to love and serve.
To believe in Jesus is to be loyal to him with our lives because we know and love him because he knows and loves us so much more than we could ever love him. Even when we prove ourselves disloyal to him, he doesn’t “get us” like a crime lord would. Instead, he continues to be loyal to us and works to heal us of what caused the disloyalty. Quite often that can be a painful thing to grow through but it’s always for our healing and for drawing us closer to himself so that we know and love him more.
In closing, we truly are blessed because we don’t see him. We love him and are loyal to him because of his saving and gracious work and presence in our lives and in our very selves. He lives in us! By gift of the Holy Spirit, he is in us working to reveal who he is to us. We get to know him through and through and that is more than just touching some scars for proof of his existence. Amen.
