The Heart Has Its Reasons

I shouldn’t really have risen to the bait, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.

There I was, preparing for lots of different Easter services when this popped up on Facebook.

The real reason Easter exists – meet the Germanic goddess Eostre. Her existence began with the Anglo Saxon pagans. Her sacred animal was a rabbit and the significance of the rebirth of spring was, you guessed it, the egg.

So when you see Christians lolloping around claiming that Easter is the celebration of the re-birth of Mr Imaginary himself, make sure you point out that, just like Christmas day and many other Christian festivals, they’re actually celebrating an ancient Anglo-Saxon ritual.

Words of wisdom from Atheist Axis.

Mmm. Red rag to a bull, that one.

Firstly, tell us something we don’t know. Part of the genius of the early Christian movement is that when they took the message of Jesus to different tribes and places they had the sense to re-tell the Christian story using the culture and traditions of the indigenous people. They kept some of the imagery and traditions of their old ways, but gave them a new Christian meaning.

So when we talk about eggs and new life at Easter, or bring greenery into the home at Christmastime we’re not celebrating ancient Anglo Saxon rituals. We’re celebrating the Christian faith using images and traditions that we’ve appropriated from the ancient religions of these islands, for our ends. We know it and we’re not embarrassed about it.

Secondly – Mr Imaginary. Or should I say Mr Imagniary. If you’re going to go to the bother of posting this kind of thing on Facebook at least have the decency to spellcheck it before you put it up!

But anyway! No serious historian doubts the existence of Jesus Christ or the facts around his death. And there’s good reason for that. Apart from the New Testament writings there’s evidence of Jesus’ existence from both Roman and Jewish historians who were no friends of Christianity and had no reason to fabricate anything.

Whether Jesus did everything the New Testament says about him is open to debate – it’s a matter of faith. But to suggest he didn’t even exist is just the height of ignorance. It’s silly nonsense. And we can’t let people get away with that.

So I posted a Facebook response in those terms.

And got the usual invective in return.

It’s amazing how worked up some folk get about other people’s beliefs. And how rude and disrespectful they feel they can be about them in public.

But basically all the criticism boils down to: ‘there’s no evidence to back up your faith, and you’re all idiots for believing in it’.

Which is essentially what Bertrand Russell, the granddaddy of modern atheism said too, albeit with a bit more decorum.

Russell was once asked what he’d say to God if he died and found himself standing before the judgment seat.  And his response was “Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?”.

And note the two assumptions in that statement.

1 – that there’s insufficient evidence at the moment and

2 – that if we just had more evidence then we’d definitely believe.

We’ll come back to those later.

But that, in a roundabout kind of way, brings us to Thomas and this morning’s gospel reading,

Thomas is looking for evidence that Jesus has risen. And frankly, who can blame him? History’s labelled him doubting Thomas, but is he any different from anyone else in the story thus far?

Mary went to the tomb, found it empty. Cried her heart out. It was only when she met Jesus for herself that the penny dropped. And try as she might, it looked like she still hadn’t convinced the others by the end of Easter Sunday.

Peter and John ran to the tomb that morning as well, found it empty. Did they rejoice at that point, did they feel suddenly alive and free and invincible? No here they are on Easter Sunday evening, cowering behind locked doors for fear of the Jews.

They don’t yet fully believe. It’s only when Jesus appears and shows them his hands and his side that the amazing truth dawns on them.

But Thomas misses that encounter; that evidence that they get. And he’s so low, so torn up by what’s happened, that he finds it almost impossible to believe what they’re telling him. You can hear the bitterness in his voice when he says “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe”.

Hadn’t they seen Jesus die in the most gruesome way? And hadn’t Jesus told them to be careful, because in the last days false Christs would rise up and try and deceive them? Can we blame Thomas for wanting the same evidence that the others had all had? Sometimes I think we judge him too harshly.

Thomas wants evidence. Show me the marks. Let me touch them. Then, maybe, I’ll believe.

But here’s what I find really interesting. Jesus shows up a week later when they’re all gathered , and says ‘Here I am Thomas. You wanted to put your finger into the nail prints? You wanted to put your hand in my side? Now’s your chance. Knock yourself out.”

Does he do it? Well, it seems to me, from the text, that he doesn’t, despite all the renaissance art that suggests otherwise!  Jesus invites him to touch his wounds, to get the evidence he said he needed, but there’s no indication in the text that he actually does so. Instead, looking at Christ, or maybe with eyes that are downcast, he simply says “My Lord and My God”. Words that are the most profound confession of Christian faith in all 4 gospels.

In that moment, I think Thomas discovers that he doesn’t really need the evidence he thinks he needs. What he needs is an encounter with the risen Christ; after that everything else seems to fall into place.

It’s not that evidence doesn’t matter. It’s that encounter matters more.

Blaise Pascal was one of the leading scientists of the 17^th Century, a brilliant mathematician and a passionate believer. After his death in 1662 they found a piece of paper sewn into the lining of his coat which recorded an experience which became the turning point of his life.

It said:

From about half past ten in the evening to about half an hour after midnight.

Fire.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob..

Not the God of philosophers and scholars.

Absolute Certainty. Beyond reason. Joy. Peace.

Forgetfulness of the world and everything but God.

The world has not known thee, but I have known thee.

Joy! Joy! Joy! Tears of joy.

Pascal worked in the world of science, where observation, evidence and measurement were thought to have the last word on everything. But his own experience taught him that science cannot and does not account for everything.

He said “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realise that.”

Put more poetically, he also said ‘the heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of’.

We are not merely rational creatures. We are spiritual creatures. We are emotional creatures. And we sense truth and appropriate truth not just with our minds, but with our hearts and with our spirits as well.

25 years ago I met a lovely girl in church. I thought she was well out of my league, but I screwed up my courage and started talking to her. She was a trainee doctor, she’d just been out in India on an elective and spoke with real feeling about how that had changed her and helped her faith to grow. She was kind, she was capable, she was a good friend to people. She was just a lovely person, inside and out. And I remember going back to her parent’s house and hearing her play piano for the first time and realising – even as it was happening – that  I was falling in love with her.

Now there were lots of very practical, rational reasons why Rhona would make an excellent partner. But it was my heart that was leading me. I had a sense that I’d found a good woman, someone I could trust with everything that I am, someone similar enough for us to get on, but different enough to make the journey interesting and keep us both learning and growing.

I felt that in my heart. I didn’t have a relationships spreadsheet or a formula for success or a list of pros and cons. This wasn’t a head thing, it was a heart thing, a gut thing.

And it was exactly the same for me when I came to faith. I didn’t come to believe in Jesus because I’d had all my questions answered. Because someone had given me that final piece of incontrovertible evidence that would tip the balance in favour of belief.

I came to faith because in my own small way, far less dramatic than Pascal’s or Thomas’s, I had an encounter with Jesus. No fiery letters in the sky – just a sense of God being there with me, in the immediacy of a couple of hours alone in my room, and inviting me to surrender my life to him. And for once, I didn’t think about the consequences and I’m glad I didn’t because I might still be vacillating today if I had. I just went for it. It wasn’t a head thing, it was a heart thing. A gut thing.

And the thing is, there’s plenty of evidence for our faith – rational arguments that can be made to show that this is not just blind faith, but has a solid foundation in history. And I’ve rehearsed some of that stuff with you over the years.

But as Francis Spufford says, and I agree with him, more often than not it’s the feelings our faith evokes that come first and are most important. I assent to the ideas of Christianity because I experience feelings of closeness with God. I don’t have the feelings because I assent to the ideas.

Are you beginning to see the fallacy at the heart of Bertrand Russell’s modernist view?

He argues that if he just had more evidence – then, maybe, he’d be able to believe.

Well the Pharisees saw almost every miracle Jesus ever did and it didn’t convince them. It’s hard to be convinced of something in your mind when deep down your heart doesn’t want to believe it.

But over and above that, what if the faith that leads us to God begins with heart knowing rather than head knowing? With encounter rather than evidence?

What if the act of faith is more like falling in love with someone than solving an equation or balancing a ledger?

What if the heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of?

You can’t quantify or measure that, but it doesn’t mean it’s not real.

In the world of theatre and cinema, they sometimes speak about breaking the fourth wall.

That’s when a member of the cast turns and speaks directly to the audience rather than the other folk on stage. It’s almost like they’re stepping out of the action for a few moments before stepping back in.

Right at the end of today’s passage, I think Jesus breaks the fourth wall. As he looks over Thomas’s shoulder, he’s speaking to John’s community, the people who’d have received this gospel when it was first written, and he’s also speaking to us.

“Have you believed because you have seen me?” he says to Thomas. And then he looks past him to us: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”.

That’s us, isn’t it? Neither we, nor John’s community – living at the end of the first century – have met with the risen Jesus, bodily, as the disciples did. We might find ourselves wishing we could. We’d like to be more certain. We’d like to get Atheist Axis off our backs.

Stupid Christians - ‘there’s no evidence to back up your faith, and you’re all idiots for believing in it’.

No, says Jesus – “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”  That’s us he’s speaking about.

And why have you come to believe, if you do, as you sit here today? Because you found that elusive piece of incontrovertible truth? Or because, in some way you’d struggle to define, you had an encounter with Jesus – something warmed your heart. Something gave you an intuition; something started pulling you back to God, back to church, back to prayer. Something you saw or heard made you start wondering if there’s truth in this after all.

That’s how it works. The heart leads, and the mind follows.

Because the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

So don’t be embarrassed if you don’t have all the answers. Nobody does! But it’s important that you know what you know. Know why this matters to you. Know what difference it makes to your life. And then go and live it out in the places God puts you. As the Father has sent me, says Jesus, so I am sending you.

I don’t really have an issue with atheists – they’re entitled to their opinions. It’s the shouty, rude, ignorant ones I don’t like. If you sit down and talk with sensible atheists you often find that you don’t believe in the God they don’t believe in either.  So many of them are working from really poor second hand caricatures of who Christians believe God to be. It’s lovely when you get the chance to enlighten them a little.

And I often wonder if atheism outside the church is less of a threat to our future than apathy within it. We say that we believe in life-changing good news. But if our lives don’t change, and the communities we serve aren’t blessed through our being here, then why on earth should anyone believe a word we say?

I don’t know if you saw the programme about Eddie Izzard earlier this week. I used to love his standup routines, but recently he’s been getting more and more dismissive of faith to the point where I just don’t want to watch him anymore. This past month he’s raised over £2 million for Sport Relief by running 27 Marathons in 27 days in honour of the 27 years Nelson Mandela spent in prison before his release in 1990. Mandela’s a huge hero to Eddie and he was visibly moved when he visited Robin Island to see for himself where he’d been held.

And I thought to myself how ironic. He ridicules faith in his standup but at the same time, lionises Nelson Mandela, whose quiet Christian faith underpinned his whole approach to the re-shaping of post-Apartheid South Africa.

And I thought about Eddie’s inconsistency for a few self-righteous moments until God whispered “and are you giving people like Eddie enough of a reason to believe?”

Amen and thanks be to God for his word.