The Wobbly-ness of Faith

John 20:19-end

I don’t often give my sermons a name. That’s largely because when I start writing them I don’t often know which direction they’re going to take. Usually I read and ponder, and then read and ponder a little more and then it just flows.

Perhaps it’s the work of the Spirit. Perhaps it’s just the way God wired my brain, but that’s the way it is. Today’s sermon however is most definitely named.

‘The Wobbly-ness of Faith’.

For whatever reason it might be, that name leapt out at me from the very beginning, and so I share it with you in the slim hope that it might resonate somewhat. Quite simply, there is nothing easy about faith, and yet it can be, just some of the time, the easiest thing in the world.

We have an expression in our household. We call it feeling 'wobbly.'

Wobbly-ness is that feeling you get when something isn’t quite right. There’s a vagueness to it. A sense of caution and concern wrapped together with a lack of clarity about what it is that is making you feel wobbly. It’s not a sense of relaxation, but it not as far down the line as pure fear. Perhaps you have a similar name for it in your house? But in our house, we call it feeling wobbly.

The disciples would very much have been feeling wobbly in this morning’s reading from John’s gospel.

Why? Well the story today picks up on the evening of Easter Sunday. We are told that:

“On the evening of that first day of the week, the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders...”

The disciples are in hiding because they are scared and frightened. Scared about what’s been happening over the last three days. Scared about what might happen tonight or tomorrow or the next day. They are living in fear of their lives and yet, perhaps they needn’t be so afraid.

After all, John records the events of Easter Sunday like this:

“Early while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple (That’s John by the way!), the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. (Again, that’s John talking about himself, telling us what a fast runner he is!)

He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

So despite the fact that John and Peter had both seen the empty tomb; they had both seen the strips of cloth which Joseph and Nicodemus used to wrap Jesus’s body in laying on the ground, despite all that, they still didn’t quite get what it was all about?

And that why, as they sit there, in a locked room in fear for their lives, Jesus appears among them.

“Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”

They still needed the proof, didn’t they? They still needed to see the hands and the side, to hear His voice, to feel His touch and sense His presence in order for that sense of wobbly-ness to subside.

Just imagine that for a moment. Imagine being there, in that room, with all that’s gone on over those past few days, and suddenly He is there. That sense of utter joy and confusion. Of feeling overwhelmed with excitement and yet bewildered about how it all came to be.

That, my friends, is the wobbly-ness of faith.

And I have to tell you that it is incredibly common. Every single person of faith has had a wobbly moment at some point in their journey. Some of us live is a constant state of wobbly-ness throughout most of our believing lives. And that’s OK!

One of the many, many joys of my job is that I get to talk to people about faith. And very often, when you’ve get past the fact that people are overly polite to a priest, they struggle to talk to you about their faith because they have doubts and questions, and they somehow don’t want to offend or pass their confusion on to the local minister. It comes as a strange combination of them feeling self-conscious and not wanting their question to be the thing that makes the local vicar lose their faith!

And I always say the same thing to anyone I meet who wants to talk about faith….

‘You can say anything to me and ask any question. You’re not going to scare me off.’

And once you get past that, the truth is that we all struggle with the same kinds of questions.

Questions of how and why the Earth came to be what it is today.

Questions of suffering and loss, of ‘fairness’ in terms of illness and death.

Questions of hypocrisy and double standards from those who are supposed to be closest to Christ, who in fact end up looking nothing like Him at all.

This is all wobbly-ness and let me tell you right now, clearly and plainly. Everyone Christian feels the way the disciples felt on Easter Sunday evening at some point in their lives. Every single one.

And also, whilst we're here, let me say this…

It’s perfectly fine to live with your faith and your questions going along side by side.

We cannot know all the answers, not this side of Heaven anyway.

If one had to have all the answers before taking a step of faith, well I wouldn’t have got off the starting blocks, let alone become ordained!

We, as Christians, need to dispel the myths that being a Christian means:

You’ve got it all sewn up (life wise)

You know all the answers

You never have any doubts

It’s nonsense, and we need to model that, and talk about it, and share it with our loved ones, because if we never engage with the stuff that confuses us, then how will we ever give all our burdens to the Lord.

Cast all your worries on the Lord, says Peter, for He cares for you.

Those disciples in that locked room needed to presence of Christ with them in order to feel as though things we going to be OK. They didn’t know how or when, but Jesus was still with them. Emmanuel, God with us. And He is still with us today. And despite all of our wobbly-ness and our questions, there are still things that we know are sure and solid for our faith.

We know that God loves us.

We know that Jesus died for us.

We know that we are called to bring the light and life of Christ to all whom we meet.

So today, as we wait for the risen Lord to appear in our living rooms or our back gardens, or wherever we’ll meet Him next, embrace the wobbly-ness of your faith and pray for His presence in your lives. It might just be the thing that God uses in order to speak to someone else about His saving love in their life.

Amen.