Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (04:00):
Good morning. Please join me in the caudal worship. How
very good and pleasant it is when kindred lived together
in unity. Praise be to God Almight. It is like
the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar
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of his robes. Praise be to God Almighty. It is
like the dew of hermon which falls on the mountains
of Zion, for there the Lord ordained his blessing life forevermore.
Praise be to God Almighty, Almend.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
S S S S S S S S S S
(06:33):
S S S.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Please pray with me, Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for
this day. We ask that you be with us in
this sacred place of worship. We come before you with
gratitude and admiration. We seek your guidance and blessings as
we gather here together. Now, please join together as we
say the prayer you taught us to pray. Our Father,
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who are in heaven, Hallow it be thy name, Thy Kingdom.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Come.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us
our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us
and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power and the
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glory forever. Omen time.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
To let me from s.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
S time sets.
Speaker 6 (09:49):
To so.
Speaker 7 (10:00):
No the same, Gracious God, As we gather together in
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worship and fellowship, we come before you with grateful hearts,
recognizing that every good gift comes from your hand.
Speaker 8 (13:10):
As we prepare to give our tithes and offerings, we
acknowledge your abundant provisions in our lives. Bless these gifts, Lord,
and multiply them for the advancement of your kingdom here
on earth. May they be used to support the work
of your Church, to take care of those in need,
and to spread your love to all people. Teach us, Lord,
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to be faithful stewards of all that you have entrusted
to us, knowing that everything we have ultimately belongs to you.
May our givings be a reflection of your love and
devotion to you, and may it bring glory to your
holy name. We pray these things in the name of
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.
Speaker 9 (14:37):
May be seated.
Speaker 10 (14:40):
Before we enter into a time of prayer, Let me
mention a few things to you. Please keep Lynn Rodgers
and your extended family in your prayer in the death
of her son Joseph. Please also keep Tim Hill in
your prayer, who had surgery this past week on his shoulder.
Hubert Harvey, and as Spencer mentioned, please also keep the
Passions Arch Committee in your prayers. Let's go to God together, Creator,
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God who set the stars in motion and spun this
world into existence, We come to you this day, on
this Sunday, twenty four hours before the moon will eclipse
the sun. We may think of our prehistoric ancestors and
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imagine how frightened they would be to see the sun
disappear in the middle of the day. And for us
it's just fifth grade science and a spectacle to enjoy.
But may it also help us to reflect for a
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moment of what it means to exist as your creatures
in this expansive universe. To be a part of a
world where we are so small that the cosmic forces
around us are more powerful than we can hardly imagine.
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And the changing of the eclipse and the way that
we can analyze and use mathematics to understand exactly when
this will happen reminds us of the forces that we
engage with every day and yet take for granted. So
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however we mark the occasion tomorrow, may we take time.
May you help us to take time to reflect on
what it means to be human in this world you
have created to have this life that you have given
us on this planet. And as we watch the amazing
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soular eclipse happen, may we have a sense of your
grandeur and your mystery in our lives and call us
again to live them fully and completely as your followers,
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Oh God. As we think of the pathway that the
sun will take tomorrow circling this earth again, we think
of all the situations in the Earth that catch the
news today, and we pray for people who are living
and surviving in Haiti. We pray for all that's going
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on in Palestine and Israel particularly. We pray for the
Israeli hostages and for the innocent people, children and by
the thousands living in Gaza trying to survive. We pray
for all those who are in the process of trying
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to bring some sort of peace and protection to the
people who are caught in this crossfire. We pray for
those in Central America whose lives too often are under
the power of drug cartels, for the people fighting for
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their freedom in praying, and for all those who are
resisting Putin's dictatorship in and outside of Russia. So we
pray for all these situations around the globe. Dear God,
we ask that you would help us to also not
take for granted the relative safety and the prosperity and
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the freedom that we have in this land. And may
you move us to help us to use these blessings
to be a blessing for the world we're close to home,
do God. We pray for these persons that we have
already mentioned. For Lynn Rogers and her family going through
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the valley of the Shadow of Death, we pray for
this journey of grief that they are in. For Hubert
and for Tim, we ask your grace over their medical situations.
For the Pastor Search Committee who this congregation has called
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to be on the lookout for who you might be
calling to be the next pastor of this congregation. We
pray for each of them and for their process as
they work together as a team and try to listen
to one another so that they may speak as one body.
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And we pray already for potential candidates, that they might
listen to your voice, that they might examine their own
lives and see if this is a time for them
to take on a new journey and exploration. We asked
that you would open the hearts of those we need
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to talk to. All these things. Dear God, we lift
up to you in prayer our lives, this world, nature itself,
and we ask that you would renew all of these
in this Easter season. In Christ Jesus, we pray Amen.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
Ms.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
As my preason cost my things.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Having rested one for the same.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
The s extreames.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
Sos as my ship bull shows and sees a chop shop,
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have st st stays and school at all stage, ship
sees a spot.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
So my.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
Song s soul.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Sixtre are.
Speaker 10 (23:39):
Its le'scripture passage this morning comes from John's Gospel, the
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twentieth chapter, beginning with verse nineteen. On the evening of
that first day of the week, when the disciples were together,
the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus
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came and stood among them and said, peace be with you.
And after this he showed them his hands and sighed.
The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord, and
Jesus said again, peace be with you. As the Father
has sent me, I am sending you. And with that
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he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit.
If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven. If
you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. Now,
tom Us, also called the Twin one of the Twelve,
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was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the
other disciples told him we have seen the Lord. But
he said to them unless I see the nail marks
in my hands and put my finger where the nails
were and put my hand into his side, I will
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not believe. A week later, his disciples were in the
house again, and Thomas was with them. This time, though
the doors were locked. Jesus came and stood among them
and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas,
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put your finger here see my hands, reach your hand
and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.
Thomas said to him, my Lord and my God. Then
Jesus said to him, because you have seen me, you
have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen me
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and yet have believed. Now Jesus did many other miraculous
signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not
recorded in this book. But these were recorded so that
you may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
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and that believing you may have life in His name.
Here the reading of God's Holy Word. May God bless
it for our hearing and understanding. Poor Thomas, it's a
bad rap this time of year. The story of his
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skepticism is almost always read the Sunday after Easter. Doubting Thomas,
we call him doubting Thomas didn't believe that Jesus had
really been resurrected. He would believe it when he saw it.
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So sure enough, the very next week, Jesus shows up
again meeting his disciples and shows Thomas the scars in
his hand. Now, one reason this passage is almost always
read the week after Easter is because the text itself
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that Jesus returns back to the disciples and Thomas the
week following Easter, and when Jesus arrived in their hideout,
which was probably the same place where they had had
the last supper, Jesus goes straight to Thomas and shows
him his hands and invites him to put his finger
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in his wounds, and Thomas believes. Unfortunately for him, believing
Thomas never stuck. What I really like about Thomas is
that he asked the question that was on his heart.
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He didn't just bury it. He didn't just go along
with the other disciples when deep in his heart he
really wondered did they really see Jesus or in what
way did they see him? He stuck with his question
and kept pursuing it and asking about it. Often we
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feel uneasy asking questions about God. We feel like we
as Christians, are supposed to have people who have answers,
not questions, and when others around us seem to have
so much more certainty about their beliefs, we are less
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willing to offer up our questions. This is the problem
with calling Thomas doubting Thomas, isn't it We say doubting
Thomas as if he were less faithful than the rest
of the disciples. Of course, they had physically seen Jesus, right,
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They had had a chance to see him and to
touch his wounds to figure out their own sense of
how he was here, just as Thomas desired. But he
was not with them the day of Easter. The fact is,
when all, all the rest of the disciples were like Thomas,
when all they had seen were the folded clothes and
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a missing body and an empty tune. None of them
ran through the streets of Jerusalem saying Christ has risen,
He has risen. Indeed, no, they were locked up in
this room hiding from the Jewish leaders. According to Luke's Gospel,
when the women disciples who had gone to the tomb,
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when they returned to their hiding place and told the
rest of the disciples that the tomb was empty and
they had seen the angels, and the angels said that
Jesus was raised, the male disciples said something like silly women.
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Of course, that would go down in history as one
of the faith mistakes of patriarchy. Thomas, you see, was
no different than the other disciples. He just didn't have
the same experience that they had had. He was the
one missing when Jesus first appeared to them, and therefore
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he was the one that kept pushing the questions. Why
is it that we as the Church are so uncomfortable
with questions? You might say that a lot of people
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are uncomfortable with questions these days, not just the Church.
The ask of questioning of entering into inquisitive dialogue has
been going out of favor for some time now. Questions
rock the boat, upset the equilibrium. Why question someone? Why
question an idea when it's a lot simpler, just to
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presume you have it all figured out? We are having
difficulty as a society talking and discussing things together. News
channels target their message to a particular audience. Social media
puts us in this algorithm loop where we keep seeing
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the same things over and over again. We only see
the same things that we already believe Misinformation disinformation plague
the internet. When someone offers an opinion with which we disagree,
it is becoming more socially acceptable to shout them down,
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something that would have been considered rude and bad character
a generation ago. College campuses are having big discussions about
what freedom of speech means. Universities are criticized on the
one hand by students and parents who say they are
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not protecting them from harmful speech, and then on the
other hand from students and parents who say they are
not protecting their right to speech. I feel sorry for
college administrators that have to navigate through this climate. Why
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are we as a society so uncomfortable with questions and
inquisitive conversations. This mindset that we should only talk with
people who who think like us, only discuss things in
our own little echo chambers, is exceptionally shallow and weak,
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and in the long term, will erode the Christian Church's
reputation for truth and lead our society to ill informed
decisions and failed innovations. Questions are good for faith, good
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for ideas, good for society. If the marketplace of ideas
is shut down and we only listen to people we
agree with, then ignorance will be the only winner in faith,
in civil society, in science, and in governance. Perhaps we
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Christian should ponder what might be the point of believing
Thomas's story. John selected specific stories for his Gospel and
left other stories out. I mean, he said so in
the passage we just read, right, Jesus did many other
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miracles which are not written in this book. These were written.
These were written so that you may come to believe.
So what is it about this story that John thought
was so important for us to read and to grapple with?
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What is it that John thought this story would help
future generations of Christians to believe the conventional meaning of
this passage is that it reaffirms readers and hearers of
the story who have not seen Jesus and yet have believed.
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And I suppose people like us living two thousand years
after Jesus's life and death and resurrection can take solace
in that are those who haven't seen and have yet believed.
We are blessed according to John's gospel, But you can't
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get to that affirmation until you follow Thomas's pathway. His
refusal to just go along with what the others told him,
and his insistence that he wanted to see for himself
should be an example for all of us to follow.
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Because Thomas questioned, he got to see Jesus, isn't this
the moral of the story? Because Thomas questioned he got
to see Jesus. When Jesus appeared a week after Easter,
he went straight to Thomas, as if that was his
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purpose for being there. Because Thomas questioned, Jesus came to
him Thomas. The story is, in an interesting way, somewhat
like the story of Job Job the Old Testament. Joe,
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who was a rich man, a prosper man who loses everything,
questions God yells at God shakes his fist that God
demands that God answer him. And in the end of
the story of Job, Job meets God face to face.
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God doesn't give Job the answers that he was hoping for,
but Job got to meet God face to face. And
if I had to choose the two, that's the one
I would choose. See, here's the thing. Whether we ask
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the question that's on our mind about faith at church
or in Sunday school or with a trusted friend, whether
we ask a question or not, it's there in us.
God already knows it's in us. So why not ask it?
Why not put it out there? Why not explore it?
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Why not have a conversation with people who might have
some ideas with you, or maybe even disagree about it.
But the conversation brings all this together, brings the spirit
of God in with this conversation. If it's already in you,
you might as well ask it. In an age where
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truth is fungible and we're alternative, facts are sometimes suggested
to be as worthy as measured, it seems imperative for
people of faith and people of goodwill to be doubting
or believing. Thomas's The Book of First John instructs us
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to test the spirits. Do not simply believe every spirit,
but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.
First John, chapter four, Verse one. To test the spirits
means to to discuss, to probe for God's truth. We
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can't be like Thomas and get to put our fingers
in Jesus's hands. So the only thing we can do
is to question and to talk, and to discuss and
to listen with one another. There are so many places
in our country and in our world where questioning Christians
are needed to probe for truth, particularly areas where controversial
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subjects shut down debate and discussion and leave the talking
to extremists who just shout back at each other. For instance,
the education of our children and the advancement of our
nation are poorer if we leave the scientific debates only
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to scientists, who on the one hand, may be weary
of religious intervention, and people of faith on the other who,
for whatever reason, refuse to question their faith in light
of scientific discoveries. If we, as the Church cannot bring
these folks together in seeking God's truth, then who can
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do that? Who can bring science and religion together if
not the Church? This is true with so many other
things in life. If people of faith don't stand up
and question poverty in our nation and voice the call
of God's economic justice for all people, then who's going
to do that? If people of faith don't stand up
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and support the need for good law enforcement and God's
justice at all citizens should be equally protected and served,
then who's going to do that? Who's got a tent
big enough to bring people together? If people of faith
don't stand up and question the way we are treating
the environment and to voice the call of God's caretaking
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of this earth, then who can do that? Questioning Christians
the Church are needed to bring all these parts of
our society together. You see, we of all people are
free to question and to probe all things for God's
truth within an open mind, because we celebrate that Jesus
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Christ has been raised and death has been defeated. So
we are free free to question without our fear. We
question in order that we may believe. So how do
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we follow Thomas's example? How do we go about faithful questioning? First?
I think that we need to work on training ourselves
to question for truth, not just for facts. We often
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confuse the two, but they are not the same. Facts
are tools that lead us to truth. They can get
us on the pathway to truth, but they in and
of themselves are not truth itself. We want to examine
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evidence for facts in order to get to the truth,
but always understanding that the truth is beyond what facts
can show us. Biblical scholar Marcus Borg once wrote about
a Native American storyteller. It would always begin his stories
this way. Now I don't know if everything happened this way,
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but I know that this story is true. Oftentimes, we
modern scientifically minded Americans, when we read the Bible and
talk about the Bible, we spend our time trying to
determine the facts of the story instead of focusing on
where the story rings true. Thomas wasn't just looking for
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the facts about Jesus' resurrection, even though he wanted to
put his finger in the nail holes. It wasn't just
the facts he would seeking. He was seeking to know
the truth, the meaning behind Jesus's resurrection. You don't get
that just by sticking your finger in a wound. Secondly,
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faith is not a problem to be solved, it is
a mystery to be explored. Problem solvers are always going
to solve problems, right. I mean, you've got to have
problem solves around someplace in your family, someplace in your church,
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someplace in your business, because you need people to solve problems.
But they are always going to find an answer, a
solution to whatever problem's out there, whether it's the right
one or not, because that's who they are. They're problem solvers.
They begin with the end in mind. We want to
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get here. Explorers begin at the beginning. They have no
idea what's out there, They have no idea what the
end is. They begin with the beginning. They ask curious questions,
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where am I, where am I going? Why is this
new thing I'm seeing? The way it is? What does
this mean for me? And others? And every time an
explorer receives an answer to a question, it merely opens
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up a new question beyond that question. Now that I've
known this, what about that? And the process of exploration
is to continually go from question to question with a
deeper and deeper understanding. But every explorer understands that they
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don't know what they don't know, and they keep searching.
And this is okay. It is okay for us to
be people to say I don't know everything because we
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are not saved by our knowledge. We are saved by faith.
We are saved by faith, not by orthodoxy or having
the right answers or theology. We are saved by faith.
And faith and knowledge are two different things. Problem solvers
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want certainty, explorers want understanding, and there's a vast difference
between the two. Learned to ask curious questions. Thomas saw
Jesus the way Louis and Clark saw the Louisiana purchase.
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As an explorer. Third, and finally, to follow Thomas's example,
we question and follow. Thomas did not just question his
friend's statement, but Jesus had been raised. He questioned it,
and then he hung around. He hung around his friends
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to make sure if Jesus should appear again, he would
be there. He questioned, and then he hung around for
Jesus to reappear. He questioned and followed. I must say
that I learned that here decades ago. I learned that
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from people like Evelyn Welte, who guided the children's program,
From Yvonne Johnson, who at one time was my sunny
school teacher, from Nelson Worsham, who was my youth tunny
schooling teacher and Skip and Linda Turner who would have
Wednesday night gatherings with the teenagers. They turned us loose.
They gave us permission to question. There was no question
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that we could not ask, and we were encouraged to
follow our questions and see where they led us because
they believed rightly. I think that wherever those questions led us,
they would always lead us back to God. Cynics questioned
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in order to tear things down to deconstruct, Christians should
be questioning to build things up, to shed light on
God's truth, to give the world a fuller understanding of
this world and how we should live in it. We
do not see people with different ideas as our enemies,
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and in fact, if we did, Jesus tell us to
love our enemies, so it doesn't make any difference. Right,
so we have no need to tear people down who
might disagree with us or have doubts about our beliefs.
If we are pursuing God's truth, conversations with anyone can
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open up new avenues for exploration. A skeptical faith questions
and keeps following. Questioning is not doubting the faith. It
is keeping the faith real and authentic and relevant for
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the living of these days, which are always changing, which
are always confronted with new challenges, as Thomas saw Jesus
after he doubted the disciples, as Job met God face
to face with his hard questioning as first. At first,
John commands us to test the spirits. Let us practice
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the art of faithful questioning, so that we and others
may fully see God's truth in this world and in
one another. Friends, Christ, the Lord is risen. May we
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be believing Thomas's pursuing questions that are deep in our
hearts until the risen one is revealed to us again
and again and again. Ah Man, will you pray with me,
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Oh God, May you trap the thoughts running through our
minds and hold them there so that we may reflect
upon them, dig deep into them, that you may show
us a deeper way to live our faith in Christ. Jesus.
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We pray, Amen. It is in this church or tradition,
a Baptist tradition, that we open our doors of fellowship
for those who would like to unite with us as
a congregation, who might like to profess their faith in
Jesus and it wish to be baptized. I'll be by
these steps. If anyone would like to come forward while
we stand together and.
Speaker 5 (51:52):
Sing sechs josss chance Schoss drums Joss choice see.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
Joss.
Speaker 10 (54:28):
Well, it's good for me to be back in this
place which is sacred to me and holy to me.
Is this community helped for me and shape me. So
I hope this has been a good day for you
and a good way to begin your day and your
week as you go about your life scattered as the
scattered church we are the goad of the church today
will be the scattered church wherever we go this week.
Do you want to thank some of you who helped
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us with worship A camera that was that was a
beautiful prayer. I have you write prayers for me like
in the future, that might be pretty good. And John
mcclar that was a great piece y'all saying thank you
for leading us with that. And Rachel did a good
job of getting it started, both Rachel's in worship and
prayer and the children, so we'll thank them for their leadership.
I do hope some of you all have some of
these two dads right for tomorrow, So do not look
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up in the sun without something like this right We
don't need anybody coming back with eye patches next week,
so or else, like, get you a box and you know,
do the little pinhole thing, do the fifth grade science experiment.
And you're on your own if you don't have one
of these little things. So the staff we're gonna have
Extinguish extended staff meeting tomorrow and will be ending about
the time the clip starts. So I've got a few
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extra of these, so if you want to come by
and join us, we can all take turns kind of
passing those around. So, yeah, I don't have anything else
to do, right, Is there anything If there's somebody else
us to do, Susan tell them anything else? All right? Good, Okay,
let's have the benediction. Friends, as you go back out
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into the world, rejoice in all things, persevere in prayer
and to overcome evil with good. And know that God,
the creator of the universe, has already gone before you
and is ready to meet you at wherever you go.
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And Jesus the Christ walks beside of you along your journeys,
and the Holy Spirit, God's love in all things is
surrounding you and will protect you and guide you through
whatever you face this week.
Speaker 9 (56:28):
Go in peace, amending
Speaker 4 (59:31):
Anything about