The news media has a tough time portraying Christian ethics and understandings. This all happened in probably less than three minutes, and it’s tough to have any conversation about the Christian life with just a few soundbites to go on. To the man characterized as the (quote) “conservative” pastor, I would be inclined to ask, “Why would you say you believe in a Bible that includes the 40 books of the Old Testament not so much about Jesus, and all 27 books of the New Testament including multiple kinds of stories about Jesus, if all you need are a few verses about believing in Jesus Christ?” And to the (quote) “liberal” pastor, I would remind her that the more nuanced understandings of the Christian faith get lost in TV footage every time. So in the real world of trying to be faithful, what happens to Christians who want to cover both sides of that fence – who want to say that belief in Jesus Christ is an important thing, but it really isn’t the only thing?

Let’s face it. We are in the Bible belt where it’s common to hear the “belief equals salvation” speech. It’s all around us. We can’t quite avoid it. In fact the passage we’re dealing with today is one of the proof texts for promoting that belief in Jesus is all that’s necessary for Christian followers. Thomas sees Jesus and believes, and so Jesus says how much more important it is for people who haven’t seen his resurrection to still believe, and then to cinch it all up, John affirms in the writing of his gospel that he writes it specifically so that people will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. However, I want you to recall that John is the gospel writer who in the start of his book emphasizes belief as the means to eternal life. That’s why John 3:16 is a popular billboard verse yet today. It’s for those who want absolute clarity – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John is also the only gospel of the four that includes the statement in which Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” It seems as though the “belief equals salvation” argument is centered on one particular book of the 67 of scripture.

The other gospel writers and the apostle Paul have much to say about who Jesus was, and what he did, and how he treated others, but less to articulate about the importance of “believing” in him. It simply isn’t stressed in the same way. By the time we get to John’s writing, which is at a comparatively later date, John is writing to be convincing, and I must say, when it comes to being convincing, the blunt, clear, short and sweet argument seems to catch people every time! Today, and for about the last century, this emphasis placed on belief, and especially on conversion, meaning getting you to believe what I believe, has really taken hold in our culture.

When you compare this theme of belief in John to what goes on with the teaching of the disciples in Mark’s gospel, it’s even more glaring that Mark thinks that they are really, really slow. In that text, the story makes it plain that Jesus selected a band of students who would have a hard time getting what he was about. That same difficulty carries over into Luke and Matthew, and even passionate Paul is quick to point out that what we know about God, even through Jesus, is only what we can see through a dark glass. Other parts of scripture are willing to go farther into the murkiness of what it means to believe something that’s certainly hard to believe. It’s hard for us, the doubters like Thomas, who cannot touch or see Jesus to believe that he’s alive and that he’s there for us. Couching our salvation in terms of belief alone is frightening to me. But it’s also frightening to me when people want to throw out the insights of John’s gospel because it places such a high expectation on belief. John pushes us to greater depths in our faith by claiming that Jesus Christ alone is the key to life.

So how do we integrate what the whole of scripture means for “believers of the Word” today? I don’t think we can get there with a few well quoted verses spoken loudly, nor do I think we get there by soft-pedaling what it is that we do believe. I think that where we want to go is to say that our belief in Jesus Christ is essential to the understanding of the kind of things we do as a church community. One day our faith may be strong, another day it may be weak, but by practicing the long –held ways of being the church, we proclaim Jesus Christ – crucified and risen, the Messiah, the Son of God, the healer, the teacher, and the redeemer of our sins. We do this through worship – worship that includes all of scripture, not just the parts we like. We do this through service –through the kind of ministries Jesus did in offering healing, teaching, and compassion to all sorts of people. We do this through prayer – honest prayer that recognizes our doubts as well as our faith. We do this through giving – through growing more self-less in a selfish world. And we do this through the kind of friendship attributed to Jesus in John’s gospel – the kind that is willing to give up in our lives to be there for another.

My theology mentor, Doug Ottati concludes that there are recognizable dangers at stake when we try to practice our faith without recognizing that belief and practice work together. In an article about evangelism, he acknowledges that when we forget about the “belief” part, “…that we will cease to be church because we will cease to be a place where people explicitly worship and praise God. Among other things, this almost inevitably will lead to a loss of clarity about the reasons we engage in works of service to begin with. And, of course, if and when that happens, then our deeds will become theologically inarticulate and dumb. They become moral efforts at social reform rather than mission.” (Theology for Liberal Presbyterians and Other Endangered Species, p. 58)

When we are trying to speak with a broader voice in a “Bible Belt” culture, it is too easy to simply reject what we don’t like about the “belief alone” practices of faith without giving voice to how we understand God at work in our world. The longer view of the Reformation traditions – including both Luther and Calvin – were apt to say that it is God’s “grace alone” that will save us. Believing in Jesus Christ does nothing if we are not transformed by God’s grace in our belief. For example, I don’t think you can believe in Jesus and hate your neighbor at the same time. I don’t think our belief in Jesus is complete when these lines of liberal and conservative that the news medial loves to portray become so striking as to keep us from listening to one another as God’s faithful. Conversion doesn’t happen when we say a sentence out loud about Jesus being Lord. Conversion happens when, like the disciples, our eyes are opened and we recognize in Jesus, the God of grace who has been there for us all along. Where belief can let us down, God’s grace forgives. Belief is not always the instantaneous thing that some would have you accept either. It may happen over time and with much practice – of worship, of service, of prayer, and of observing those who are friends to us in our community of faith. Even John’s gospel recognizes that Thomas is no less a disciple for his doubts. Jesus has compassion for his skeptical friend and lets him touch the wounds so he might have faith that God’s love is one of the most real things we can know.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Do you believe not only with your lips but with your life? By God’s grace, may one day your answer be “Yes, Lord.”

Amen.