“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1.
Grace and peace to you from our ever-faithful God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who is our Christ. Amen.
It’s 2025, and science has given us a lot of certainty. We can take a blood test and find out what kind of virus or bacteria is causing that cold that just won’t go away, and know what kind of medicine can cure it.
We know about stars billions of light years away that were born lifetimes ago, but the light has only reached the James Webb Space Telescope in the past three years.
We know about particles smaller than atoms. We’ve built electron microscopes so powerful that they allow physicists to see quarks and leptons, the building blocks of atoms.
Now, I have no medical degree and I can’t take a blood sample and test it for viruses and bacteria. I have never seen direct, real-time images from the James Webb Space Telescope. I’ve never looked through an electron microscope – and I wouldn’t know what I was seeing if I did!!
I have seen secondary images. And I have faith that the people who have advanced degrees in medicine, astronomy, and physics have the knowledge and tools to see these things and make conclusions. I trust them.
I trust the doctors I have chosen in my lifetime to care for my health. I trust the fund managers who know far than I do about investments. At least I hope I can in these turbulent times!
And I trust people who walked the earth in the First Century, who followed Jesus personally, who passed along their first-hand accounts to our Gospel authors. I trust they knew something about life and death, natural law and common sense.
And based on their observations, Jesus was a man in his 30s who traveled throughout Galilee and the Holy Land. He had a group of about a dozen followers, and thousands more who listened to him teach about God and the way to live. He said he was one with God, the Son of God, and through his miracles and signs, and his life, death, and resurrection, he proved it was so. I trust his disciples knew what they saw was out of the realm of normal human action. Especially when it came to his brutal death on a cross, and then seeing him alive, moving and talking and eating three days later.
Was I there? No. Was anyone I know personally there? No.
Just like science, like technology, like finance, and many other things in my life, I trust and believe because I trust the people who did see it. The people who were there and had their lives directly impacted. And my life is indirectly impacted by this Savior today.
Has he healed any member of my family? No, but I believe there are family members who have been healed through prayer AND the gifts of medical science. Has he performed any miracles for me? No, but there are miraculous things that have taken place in my life, and my family’s life that I cannot explain besides the grace of God. Was I there on Easter morning to see the empty tomb? No, but a handful of those closest to him were, and their lives were changed forever because this Jesus was the Messiah, Emmanuel, God with Us in human form.
The message of Jesus Christ IS CRAZY to those who choose not to believe. Maybe the writer of Hebrews put it best: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” If a real-life Dr. Doubt walked in the door right now and said “Prove It,” none of us could pull out a TikTok video of Jesus changing water to wine, feeding the 5,000, or rising from the dead. The Apostle Paul told the church at Corinth the doubters will doubt: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
We all have to choose whether to believe. And to those of you who struggle to believe, I want to remind you – Doubt is NOT the opposite of faith. Doubt is part of our faith journey. The opposite of faith is certainty, and that’s something we just will never have in this lifetime. But through the testimonies of the apostles, and the modern-day apostles that are sitting around us with their own stories of faith, we can profess with all the saints: “I know that my Redeemer lives!”
Amen.
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