I know I’ve shared this story at a funeral, but I don’t believe I’ve ever shared it with you.
A man was once sentenced to solitary confinement in a pitch-black prison cell. To relieve his boredom and keep his sanity, he threw a marble against the walls—day in, day out, bang, bang, bang. The marble would bounce off the wall onto the floor and then roll around the room until the man could locate it and repeat the procedure.
One day, he decided to do something different—he would throw the marble up and try to catch it as it came down. Of course, in the pitch black, he missed the catch quite often, so he would listen as the marble hit the floor and bounced around. Feeling around in the general direction of the sound, he would locate it and try again. The longer this went on, the more proficient he became, and the more proficient he became, the higher he would throw the marble. However, when he made his highest throw ever, he did not catch it, and neither was there any sound. The marble simply did not come back down. He became more and more disturbed. What had happened to his precious marble? How could it disappear into thin air like that?! He spent the rest of his life wondering what had happened to his marble, and it eventually drove him to madness, and he died.
We all have things we wonder about and questions that we seek answers to. Sometimes, we have questions about life: Why does so-and-so not love me? How come all my luck is bad? What did I do to deserve this?
At other times, we question the world around us: Why is the sky blue or the grass green? How was the universe formed? How does Santa get into houses without chimneys? (Just seeing if you were paying attention.)
We also have questions about our faith. Does God hear my prayers? Do I matter to God? Or even, is there a God?
For life’s questions, through our faith, we learn to understand and take each day as it comes. For the questions about the world around us, we explore and study. And for the questions about our faith, we pray and study scripture. However, when it comes to these questions of faith, we also tend to try to make a few deals with God. Why do the hard work if there’s a shortcut?
I’ve never been a Janis Joplin fan in the tiniest little bit, but I remember a song of hers that we would laugh and sing as kids, if only the first verse.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends
That’s about all we knew as kids, but it is the third verse that gets to the theological heart of the matter.
Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town?
I’m counting on you Lord, please don’t let me down
Prove that you love me and buy the next round
And there it is. “Prove that you love me.” Prove to me that You hear my prayers. Prove to me that I matter to You. Prove to me that You are there.
The first stanza of the poem, Doubt, by Norman Shirk
Let me meet you on the mountain, Lord, just once.
You wouldn’t have to burn a whole bush,
Just a few smoking branches,
And I would surely be your Moses
In the end, it all comes down to the same statement: “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.”
It is easy to criticize poor ol’ Thomas, but there’s a bit of him—maybe a little or maybe a lot—there’s a bit of Thomas in us all.
Like Thomas, in order to increase our faith, we ask the Lord to meet us halfway. However, He already has. The Lord Jesus met us halfway between heaven and hell. He met us on that hill outside of Jerusalem. He met us outside the empty tomb, and He continues to meet us every day exactly where we are. He also meets us at that altar in the Sacrament of His body and blood.
But you say, “Yes, yes, Father John. That’s real nice, but today, I want to be Thomas. I want to see Him, hear Him, and touch Him. I need the burning bush. I need the missing piece of the puzzle. I need to find the stupid marble that fella pitched up into the air and never came back down. Give me these things, and I will.”
A line from a movie I watched inspired the title of my blog—Candle in a Cave. In the movie, an older priest tells a younger one, “We are all blind men in a cave looking for a candle that was lit 2,000 years ago.”
In some sense, this is true because I can’t show you a burning bush or guide your hands and allow you to touch the wounds of Christ. Sorry, I can’t do it. If I could, we would have folks flocking to this church by the millions to see it. Why? Because they want God to prove Himself to them, to give them a sign. Like Job, they ask God to explain Himself.
But remember, the Lord was patient with Job for a while, but after much questioning, the Lord answered, “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?” “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? Who created the sky, the animals? Were you there when I breathed life into the dust and created you?”
Like Job, and even during Jesus’ time on earth, we desire signs and wonders, miracles. Scripture states that at one point during Jesus’ ministry, some Pharisees and teachers of the law questioned him: “Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.” Jesus answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
You see, the problem is not with God; it is with us. The Lord has already given us a sign. After three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, He rose! How? Truly, the Lord only knows. As the Psalmist says, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” But Jesus rose from the grave. How much more proof does a person need? Just because there were no witnesses to the resurrection, does it mean it did not occur? No. Remember what Billy Graham said, “Can you see God? You haven’t seen him? I’ve never seen the wind. I see the effects of the wind, but I’ve never seen the wind. There’s a mystery to it.”
No one witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, but from that day forward, we have all been witnesses to, and have experienced for ourselves, the effects of the resurrection—this new life in Christ Jesus—and it didn’t involve getting a Mercedes-Benz. Therefore, “Do not doubt but believe.”
Remember our prisoner and his marble? When the guards later entered the cell to remove his body, a glint of light caught one of the guards’ eyes. He looked up toward the ceiling to see the most astonishing sight—a marble caught in a spider’s web. “Of all the crazy things,” he thought. “How on earth did the spider manage to get a marble up there?” He spent the rest of his life wondering.
There are many mysteries in our lives with God, things we can wonder about and seek answers to throughout our lives. However, the question of the resurrection is not one of them, for the proof is all around us.
Let us pray: Praised be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He who in His great mercy gave us new birth, a birth unto hope which draws its life from the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; a birth to an imperishable inheritance, incapable of fading or defilement, which is kept in heaven for you who are guarded with God’s power through faith; a birth to a salvation which stands ready to be revealed in the last days. Amen.
Candle in a Cave 