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April 10: Good Friday 9am Deutsch, 10:30am English |
April 12: Easter Breakfast 9am, Easter Worship 10:30am |
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May 2: Garage, Plant, and Bake Sale |
May 10: Mothers' Day Brunch |
May 23: Hike |
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 So you’ve found our website. Maybe it was a fluke, maybe it was just lucky, maybe you don’t know how you got here, but I’d like to think of it as a blessing. A blessing for us because every guest is a blessing. We value that, we value you. More importantly, God values you.
And then we believe that we don’t just live for ourselves, so we hope that we can be a blessing to you.
Perhaps you will find here something useful, interesting, or inspiring. Hopefully you will see that while this site has many purposes we’d mostly like this to be an invitation, an invitation to believe but also to explore the Christian faith. Maybe, if you live close, you’ll find a reason to drop in in person. We would be very glad if you did.
Pastor Christoph Reiners
on behalf of the people of Peace Lutheran
| Faith and Beauty |
It was just Easter. It actually still is (for 50 days).
On Good Friday the Church remembers that in the person of Jesus God entered our humanity: God became one of us. On Easter Sunday the Church celebrates Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We remember by reading the stories and by reminding each other.
One story we read at this time of the year has been nicknamed the story of ‘Doubting Thomas’: The risen Jesus appears to his friends; all except Thomas are present. When Thomas returns, Jesus has left and everyone says, “You won’t believe who we saw!” And indeed, Thomas doesn’t. The next time Jesus comes Thomas is there and Jesus invites him to do what he had earlier demanded to do: to put his hands in Jesus’ wounds to see whether the visitor really is Jesus. The episode ends with Jesus saying: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe (see John 20).
In most of these stories there is someone who asks the questions we would ask or does the things we would do. I don’t claim to have more faith than Thomas, and so I am content to identify with him. Since I am he I will not give him a hard time.
Many years ago my wife and I were hitch-hiking in Europe. Our last ride was our longest. The friendly Norwegian driver asked what we were planning to do. We planned to go hiking in the Norwegian wilderness. We attempted to stroke his patriotism by telling him how beautiful his country was. He was mystified and exclaimed repeatedly that he was unable to see what we saw: Why don’t you go to Spain or Italy where it is at least warm? All that we have is rocks and trees. He dropped us about 30km from our destination where we embarked on a long and beautiful hike.
We say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is a loving and respectful way to say that you can see whatever you want to see and that we won’t argue. But it’s not an acknowledgement of beauty or of the truth of what you see.
The biblical text does not say whether Thomas followed Jesus’ invitation to place his fingers in Jesus’ wounds. All we are told is that Thomas believed. For Thomas belief is not defined by accepting twenty-three improbable propositions before breakfast. For Thomas it is a different way of seeing. It is Jesus, no doubt, but the important question is whether seeing Jesus effects how he sees the rest of the world. God sees humanity with the eyes of love, all of humanity. Can we see what God sees?
One of my favourite books is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince”. In it a fox says to the Little Prince (who has trouble understanding others): It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Not seeing is believing but believing is seeing.
When we were in Norway, we saw rocks and trees, but we saw much more: we saw beauty and the goodness and the presence of God. When Christians confess the resurrection of Jesus they do more than make a historical claim: They confess that the resurrection has something to do with them, that Jesus’ overcoming of death means that they have overcome death: Love over hate, forgiveness over retaliation, generosity over miserliness and rule adherence, it is in giving that we receive. Jesus is not distant but present, as near as our neighbour.
It is true, like Thomas, we weren’t there when he came the first time, but he comes to us still. And aren’t we glad he does!
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| Posted by J. Christoph Reiners on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 14:01
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