Do You Believe?

Gospel: John 16: 29-33

Jesus asks his disciples a blunt question: do you really believe? They all claim to believe, but in a few short hours they will scatter to the four winds and abandon Jesus to die alone.  They make the claim of the belief in the glow and aura of good feelings and comfortable times.  But when the difficulties arise and when faced with the powers of the world threatening, the belief they claim to have disappears as quickly as they do from the scene.  

This question is asked of us as well.  Do we really believe? Many claim to believe, but most really do not.  We have all sorts of prerequisites set upon God before we believe.  We need the right liturgy, the right community, a comfortable lifestyle, and certain political and legal frameworks.  We place all sorts of conditions upon our faith life that have nothing to do with God at all.  They are all mere projection upon God of our egos and biases.  This we claim to be faith.

But Jesus shows us what authentic belief is.  He tells the disciples they will leave him alone, but he reminds them that he is not really alone - that God is present to him always.  Even in the midst of his arrest, imprisonment, torture, and execution, Jesus has the calm assurance of God being present to him at all times.  This is authentic faith, a faith that needs nothing but God alone.  When we can be content with God alone, then we can say that we truly believe.   

Worship and Doubt

Gospel: Matthew 28: 16-20

Come we now to the very end of the Gospel.  We have followed the Lord from the desert of temptations to this mountaintop.  We have seen remarkable things: Jesus healing people of all sorts of ailments; delivering people from the demons that oppress them; feeding countless hungry people.  We even had the opportunity to do these very things ourselves! Now we are at this mountaintop with the risen Lord, yet another wonder we have beheld.

At the same time we have experienced hardships in this journey.  We have seen Jesus opposed in many places, chased off by those who would reject him.  We were there when Jesus was arrested, put on trial, and executed in the most horrible fashion.  We found ourselves betraying the Lord, denying that we knew him, and abandoning him to suffer his death alone.  Our own behaviors and responses to the Lord throughout this journey have not always been accepting.

So here we are at the mountaintop, and Jesus about to ascend to heaven.  We worship, and we doubt.  This is what we have been doing throughout the Gospel journey.  This is the arc of every spiritual life undertaken with authenticity.  We are honest about our doubts, and we are honest about our worship.  We look to the heavens to be with the Lord.  We can only do so by taking up his work on earth, the work of mercy and love, in the midst of our doubts and weaknesses. 

Asking for Presence

Gospel: John 16: 23-28

Today's Gospel portion is perplexing to us.  It is frequently offered to us as some sort of consolation that God will grant to us whatever we ask. Yet, we know that this is not true.  Even when we ask for objectively good things - healing, liberation from addictions, change in our moral and spiritual life - we often do not receive that for which we ask.  This leads to frustration and very often to spiritual crises and loss of faith entirely.  

We might well avoid such crises in our life if we come to realize the purpose of prayer.  Prayer is simply the request for God's presence.  It is not unlike our human relationships.  If we call a friend only to constantly ask them for things, then that's not much of a relationship.  It is merely transactional on our part.  But very often we just want company and companionship.  We just need the presence of another person for reassurance and calm.

So it is with God.  Our prayer ultimately is for God to be present with us no matter what we are facing.  God is always present to us; prayer is just our reminder of God's presence among us.  And that presence is enough.  We may not receive healing or deliverance or anything else, but if we have God's presence then we have everything, no matter what happens.  That is the promise Jesus provides us - I am with you always.