Touched into Believing
Sermon preached by Rev. Larry Young
April 23, 2006

“O God, thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” To me that statement by St. Augustine back in the 5th Century is one of the most perceptive insights ever offered on the human condition. We are hungry for experiences of God—for connecting with a dimension of life that transcends the mundane every-day level. One of the sentiments I hear most often among church people is, “I long for a deeper experience of my faith.” The sentiment isn’t always articulated that clearly; and it’s true most of us can go a long time operating at a more surface level. We can engross ourselves in church social life and fund-raising and committee work, and we may manage to scoot along indefinitely without feeling the hunger for something deeper. But the hunger is still there; and in those moments when we get a sense, even fleetingly, of something deeper, we know our longing to have more of it. We want to be touched into a deeper sense of believing, a deeper sense of meaning and connectedness in our spirits.

The days following the first Easter were an awesome and mind-blowing time for Jesus’ disciples. On Good Friday they thought all their hopes were lost; but then Easter happened, and they began to hope again that they were connected to something much greater than themselves. It was in this context that Jesus appeared to them on Easter evening, reassuring them that indeed this was true. And of course the disciples were overjoyed. “We have seen the Lord,” they told their colleague Thomas, who somehow had missed the meeting. Jesus’ presence had touched them into a fresh believing and hope. But for Thomas who had missed the experience, second-hand believing wasn’t good enough. “Unless I put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Thomas demanded his own experience. And a week later he got it as Jesus makes a return appearance to the disciples. Finally Thomas is touched into believing along with the others. But Jesus also uses the occasion to give a word to all of us who would come after that point in history: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Jesus will no longer be making any personal appearances. Yet we too can be touched into belief if we open ourselves to that.

For some people this seems to come almost as a natural process. They are blessed with an active and vivid sense of God’s presence and God’s working within them. The hymn writer who wrote “He walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own” must have been one of those people. And friends, if that has been your experience, be thankful for it. Many of us are not so blessed. (continued...)

"Touched into Believing" by Rev. Larry Young, April 23, 2006

Others find a strong sense of God’s reality and presence in Nature. Spending frequent time in the mountains, or by the ocean, or even on the golf course, even on Sundays, can be more than an escape from the daily grind. God can touch us through the beauty and majesty of Nature and move us to a heightened faith in the Creator of it all. I know what those kind of experiences have meant to me when I have opened myself to take them in. For the greatest number of us, however, I believe the primary way we come to deepened faith is through other people. For how many of us has the most important shaper of our faith been a parent or grandparent, or maybe a Sunday School teacher or a special friend—someone who may or may not have told us about their faith, but showed in their life what it meant to them? I don’t think of my parents as spiritual giants; but when they prayed, I didn’t doubt that they believed there was really someone on the other end hearing their prayers, and that touched me into greater faith. Each of us is a potential witness to others to the reality of God; and each of us finds in certain others the kind of witness that shapes our faith.

I and your Gulf Coast Work Team have returned from a week in New Orleans where a powerful amount of touching into believing took place; and I want to share some of that with you--a witness from the team to you who helped make it happen. The team report on what we did there will follow the 10:30 service; but now I want to relate some of the spiritual dynamics of the experience as I saw them.

I think there is no question that the people of Bethany UMC, our partner congregation, were touched by our presence and work. Again and again we heard from Pastor Edwards and the church members present at the work site how much they were encouraged by the fact that we would come half way across country to be in solidarity with them in their time of need. That may have been more important than the work we did—although our restoring grass and shrubbery and flowers to the church grounds was also a potent symbol of hope and new life for the congregation and indeed for the whole Gentilly Park neighborhood which is still a very bleak landscape. But I think the deeper message of our visit was that we came as brothers and sisters in Christ bearing witness to our own faith by our coming, and so we affirmed that even in the midst of disaster their faith and their commitment to Christ’s cause were not in vain. This morning when I opened my email I found this message from Pastor Edwards that I want to share with you now:

"Touched into Believing" by Rev. Larry Young, April 23, 2006

So our bearing witness to our faith hopefully served to touch them into a deeper faith and commitment to being the church in a very difficult time. And when a church has lost as many people and had the property loss that Bethany has had, this kind of touching matters a great deal. Friends, by your support and prayers, you were a part of that touching.

But however much we touched the Bethany congregation, one of our indelible memories of the week is how they touched us! We learned very quickly that Bethany is in no way a lukewarm run-of-the-mill congregation. It’s a congregation with passion for its mission and a deep-going commitment to the church and its work. Rev. Hadley Edwards, the pastor, is himself a man of passion and commitment who models that for his flock; and indeed he makes it clear that Bethany members are expected to be on board 110%. Prior to Katrina the church had a variety of mission outreach programs in its neighborhood and also in the lower 9th Ward. They always paid their apportionments 110%. They were truly a church in mission. Well, Katrina may have limited their capacity for mission, but in no way has it limited their spirit. Bethany is coming back as a church that touches others and indeed their whole community into faith because that’s in their DNA. A very touching sign of the commitment of the membership is the level of their giving, even when most of them have lost their homes and possessions. When a Sunday morning attendance of 55 leaves an offering of $10,000, doesn’t that say something powerful about commitment? Now granted, Rev. Edwards can be very forceful when it comes to giving. I saw him actually collect a $100 offering from two of his parishioners who happened by the church in their truck. He’s not hesitant to ask! But my sense is that the members give not just because their pastor is so persuasive, but because they are so invested in their church and its mission.

Friends, that’s the kind of church we got partnered with! And my hope is that the witness of their passion and commitment to the church can touch and inspire us as a church, just as it touched us on the team so deeply. We team memberscome back as spiritually renewed persons because of how Bethany touched us into believing anew. And if our witness touches you in turn, that will only magnify the blessing.

Many of us on the team had very personal experiences of being touched as well as we got to know some of the Bethany members. For me this happened with Lucille, a very lively 80-year-old who spent time with us. Lucille’s home, like those of most Bethany people, was trashed by the flood waters; in fact, I and another team member visited her house, and whether it can or should be rebuilt is a real question. Lucille has worked in recent years as a substitute elementary school teacher; and because she can earn three times as much in Los Angeles where she has a son, she’s been living and working here. But her heart and her church and what’s left of her home are in New Orleans, and she goes there whenever she can. Now you’d think Lucille has every reason to be totally demoralized and despairing about her situation. (continued...)

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