Seeing Is Believing

2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10

 “Believing Is Seeing”

12 June 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            Our culture routinely tells us “seeing is believing.” It defines truth as something tangible that we can see, touch, taste, hear, or feel. This is a result of us becoming more and more observant of the world around us and our reliance on the scientific method to help us explain life, the universe, and everything. There are some who proclaim that only when something can be tangibly explained it is true and believable. But, is that a healthy way to live?

            Paul comes right out and tells us that we must believe through faith not sight. Thank God that he made this claim and the church canonized it in our Holy Scripture. Because I’ve never seen Christ risen doesn’t mean he didn’t walk right out of that tomb on Sunday many years ago. The fact I can’t see faith doesn’t mean it isn’t there or that it isn’t vital to my thriving as a human being and helping others to flourish as well.

            Have any of you seen the forces that keep aloft the planes in which we all arrived in Singapore? As an engineer I can talk your ear off about lift and drag and how the Bernoulli effect on the wing of a plane causes a pressure difference that keeps the plane in the air. I could also go into lengthy discussions about how the shape, length, and height of a wing are important factors in efficiently harvesting the forces that keep us from falling out of the sky when we are trying to visit the many wonderful vacation sites all around us.

            But, have I ever seen the actual force that keeps the plane in the air? No. I’ve seen strong indicators that the force is there. I’ve seen wind tunnel videos with fog and smoke gliding all around scale models of wings. Back in my engineering days, I calculated lift, drag, and all manner of coefficients to explain mathematically what I knew to be true. But, I’ve never actually seen lift, drag, or any other actual force. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real or are false. I know lift, drag, and gravity are real and affect me each and every day.

            There is a special place in my spiritual heart and my spiritual walk. It’s a place that has become a second home for me and many others. A place that formed my faith. A place that challenged my beliefs in a way that I knew the community would care for me and love me as I struggled with how to articulate theological responses to the tough questions life drives us to ask. A place where I learned how to facilitate tough discussions in a loving manner and give everyone a safe space to say what they believe. A place where I could sit quietly by a lake, a creek, or take in a cool mountain jog in the morning and then, just a few short hours later, dance and sing in worship with a thousand people ranging in age from 6 months to over 90 years old.

If I go back farther in my life, it’s a place where my call was first articulated by someone other than myself, where 12 years ago this week, God spoke to me through one of the saints of the church when she pondered, “maybe you are meant to teach something else.” You see I was struggling with what to do after my department head tour and was seriously considering teaching high school physics.

            Even further back in my life it was a place where an awkward, nerdy teenager could find friends from all over the country. A place where people who would never cross the hallway to talk to me at school would hold deep conversations at night after a long day learning about Christ. A place where my gifts were being nurtured without me realizing what was going on. A place where God was covertly working in me and through me leading me to the Navy and this chapel. A small town in North Carolina called Montreat.

            We all have places like this in our lives. Places where it just feels like Christ is in the air, where every breath we take we breathe in the Spirit and let it fill us up so that our cup truly spills over. There is an old Celtic saying describing places such as this as thin places. Places where heaven and earth come together so close as to be indistinguishable.

            Besides the uplifting and refreshing feeling we soak up in a thin place, they serve a much more important function in our lives. These places are where we get to see the indicators of God at work in, around, and through us. Thinking back to our example of how we know a plane is able to stay in the air, it is in these places where we find the indicators of the forces that keep us aloft. Where the equations of faith make sense, where we enter weary from the world, but leave uplifted and confident that God is there. Places that allow us to know that walking in faith is truth. For in these places we see the equations and definitions of what we see happening all around us.

            But, Paul isn’t content with us just knowing about these thin places and seeking them so that we learn how to see God all around us. Paul takes it a step further and tells us that our receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit means that we are called to be a thin place. With the Spirit in us, we should be places where people find God. Places where people learn through the unseen. We are called to be people that are recognized as places where the Spirit can be found and where it is obvious that Christ is working through us.

            What is amazing about that concept is that there isn’t one set way in which we become a thin place. I may connect with a certain type of person because of a certain trait or behavior that reflects Christ to the world. Another Christian’s behaviors and traits will resonate with a different group of people and draw them closer to God. In his first letter to Corinth, Paul developed the metaphor of the body of Christ in which we all have a role to play because we have been gifted in different ways by the Spirit. All that matters is that we believe in and seek to follow the risen Christ.

            To the ears of a seeing is believing culture, this makes no sense. Christ was counter-cultural so we can count ourselves among good company. The world thinks we are placing blind faith and trust in the unseen. None of us have seen the risen Christ, so we are following something we can’t tangibly prove. However, we aren’t blindly following Christ. At some point in our lives, we have stepped into a place or met a person that was a thin place and showed us the equations that keep the plane in the air.

            As we continue along our walking with Christ in faith, let us strive to become a people who truly are thin places. People that flip the popular saying of “seeing is believing” into “believing is seeing.” Where people come to us to see God because of our belief and faith. Find thin places and spend as much time as you can so that your belief allows you to see God working in the world because we can only learn to reflect Christ by seeing him working in the world.