It Wasn't A Ghost Story

Reflections
April 26, 2009

Luke 24:36b-48 is a post resurrection passage where Jesus comes to his followers and they struggle with believing who he is. This is not the only challenge in belief for the early Church. In John 20:19-31 the story of the disciples gathered when Jesus appears to them. Thomas is not present and will not believe until he can touch Jesus’ wounds. So Jesus appears later that Thomas may believe. The Bible is replete with such stories. An angel of God tells Abraham and Sarah that in old age they will become parents, and they laugh in the face of Holiness itself. Noah doubts that God really wants him to build an Ark. King David doubts the real power of God and experiences a fall from grace. Peter swears loyalty to Jesus only to deny him. Paul insists on his righteous condemnation of those who follow Jesus only to find his surety could not have been more false. Doubt comes because it can and because sometimes it must.

In a Homiletics Magazine article from March of this year in which the agnosticism of the late astronomer Carl Sagan is written. Jerry Adler of Newsweek in March of 1997, Sagan was fascinated by the phenomenon that educated adults, with the wonders of science manifest all around them, could cling to beliefs based on the unverifiable testimony of observers dead for 2,000 years. He once said to cleric Joan Brown, “You are so smart; why do you believe in God?’ “ Of course, Dr. Sagan meant why would you or how could you? Rev. Brown replied “she found this a surprising question from someone who had no trouble accepting the existence of black holes, which no one has ever observed. You’re so smart why don’t you believe in God” Adler goes on to say that Sagan never had doubts about his agnosticism. His wife Ann Druyan, told him that “There was no deathbed conversion...no appeals to God, no hope for an afterlife, no pretending that he and I, who had been inseparable for twenty years, were not saying goodbye forever.” Didn’t he want to believe? She was asked. “Carl never wanted to believe,” she replied fiercely. “He wanted to know.”

Therein lies the difficulty. Far too often we need to know rather than simply believe. Be it Dr. Sagan, or the bank manager, you, me or the postal worker, we forget that God’s existence does not require our approval. The world we live in, with its flora and fauna, even the bubble gum we can experience, and the ‘Black Holes’ we cannot are proof that God believes in us. Our need to know is not a validation of faith, our willingness to believe is.

Dr. Joey K. McDonald
First United Methodist Church
4832 Tujunga Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601