Proof

Haiku for believing

Sunday evening,

so the story goes; doors locked,

he comes among them.

A greeting of peace.

Perhaps this is proof enough

that he is risen.

Again he speaks peace,

breathes the Spirit upon them.

Continue my work!

Give the people hope,

Speak God’s word of forgiveness

and new beginnings.

Thomas was not there.

I must see his wounded hands

before I believe.

What proof do I need

that he lives, moves among us;

who will I believe?

Those who have not seen,

who hear my words and follow;

they are truly blessed.

John tells his story:

Know that Jesus is the Christ;

find true life in him!

© Ken Rookes 2022

Locked doors

Haiku of the first day

They were filled with fear.

They had seen their Master killed,

so they locked the doors.

In the evening

Jesus came; even locked doors

could not keep him out.

His appearances,

as one raised from death to life,

are strange, like in dreams.

Why should we expect

things to be straight forward, when

death is upended.

What really happened?

We are left to speculate,

and to imagine.

Thomas can’t believe.

Why should he? These things defy

rationality.

In time, he enters

the collective belief, that

their Lord is risen.

He breathes his Spirit

upon them. My work goes on;

Forgiveness must rule.

Evangelist John

writes his book to persuade us:

Life is in Jesus.

© Ken Rookes 2021

The purpose

Haiku of peace

John does it better!

His Jesus comes through locked doors.

Well, why shouldn't he?

Imparting Spirit,

Jesus ensures the mission

goes on without him.

Make forgiveness real,

so that all folk are made free,

capable of love.

No room for doubting!

Even Thomas is sorted,

leaving me alone.

Doubt is not opposed

to Faith; that’s the role of Fear.

Doubt and Faith are friends.

My Lord and my God!

Hey, followers of Jesus,

get on with the task!

The book is written,

John asserts, to convince us;

so that we might live.

© Ken Rookes 2020

Not unless I see

Haiku of growing hope.

Sunday evening.

The disciples locked the doors,

fearing they were next.

The women’s stories

which might have brought them some hope

went disregarded.

Jesus came and stood

before them: Peace be with you!

His friends were perplexed.

He shows them his hands

to help put their minds at ease.

Yeah, right; that’ll work!

There is rejoicing

along with bewilderment.

The stories were true‽

He sends his friends out,

breathing his Spirit, charging

them to forgive sin.

The absent Thomas,

could not believe that he lives.

Not unless I see!

Seven days later,

so John tells us, Jesus came,

to meet them once more.

Here I am, Thomas!

See the nail-marks in my hands,

touch my wounded side.

Falling to his knees

Thomas cries: My Lord, my God!

Finally convinced.

You see and believe?

Blessed are those who believe

who don’t get to see!

Jesus did much more.

Were the stories written down

they would fill volumes.

© Ken Rookes 2019

An elusive figure

Haiku for us sceptics

The risen Jesus

is an elusive figure:

now you see him. . .

From behind closed doors,

according to the story,

he appeared to them.

His greeting of peace

was not quite enough, so he

showed his hands and side.

He breathed upon them.

Receive the Holy Spirit:

go out and forgive.

Thomas was absent,

didn’t believe the reports.

I must see his wounds.

What is there to see;

what evidence sufficient

to bring us to faith?

Thank you, man of doubts,

Thomas with your questioning;

you speak for me, too.

Risen Lord Jesus,

present with those who question,

be patient with me.

What more can I say?

Should ev’ry story be told

they would fill volumes.

These have been written

that you might know God, have faith,

and life in his name.

© Ken Rookes 2018

Struggling to believe

Haiku for faithful doubters

Thomas, called the Twin,

wasn't there with the others,

struggled to believe.

The resurrection;

life constructed out of death,

the seed bursting forth.

Jesus reaches out,

speaks words of acceptance, life;

inviting us all.

Thank you, friend Thomas,

for your precious gifts to us,

your doubts and struggles.

Jesus shows us faith,

Thomas teaches honest doubt.

We need both of them.

Embrace your questions.

Faith is not opposed by doubt;

no, but by fear.

© Ken Rookes 2017

Proof

Proof

The previously-dead Jesus meets with Thomas

and invites his sceptical friend

to extend his hand,

to touch his master's injured hands and side.

This, according to gospel-writer John,

is the incontrovertible proof

that his Lord lives.

We find it less convincing.

Nor do the various reported signs work for us

in quite the same way that they did for the evangelist.

What evidence, then,

might persuade you and I that our Lord lives?

The generous acts of his followers? Perhaps.

Loving deeds of disciples? Maybe.

Lives spent courageously for the sake of justice, hope,

and the gospel? Yes,

such as these could be sufficient

to satisfy the rest of us sceptics.

©Ken Rookes 2016

Good news story No. 4

 

 

Thomas the questioner
refuses to accept the unbelievable:
Good for him!
I’m there alongside Thomas;
let some of the criticism
that gospel-teller John sprays in his direction
paint my body, too.
In the end, we are told,
when he meets the impossibly revitalised
person of the man he had watched die,
Thomas puts aside his scepticism.
I suppose I would, too,
if invited by the risen Jesus
to touch his hands and side.
 

The good-news purveyor

writes of a resurrection far beyond
encounters with the risen Jesus.
There are generations
who will not have opportunity
to comprehend with their eyes,
but who will be none-the-less be blessed
with believing, perceiving, rather,
in their hearts.
They follow resurrection’s improbable promise
of justice, hope and love;
treading with faith
that foolish and costly path through death,
towards life.
 

 

© Ken Rookes 2015

Get on with it, Thomas!

In the business of faith, so-called,
words are gathered on paper,
sorted into groups,
numbered and annotated,
printed with indelible ink,
framed behind glass
and made into standards
behind which combatants assemble
and accuse their opponents
of heresy and betrayal,
and by which fellow humans
are categorised as being in or out.
But faith is not about words,
or being right,
(or, even more importantly,
not being wrong);
faith is responding to grace
and risking all
on the wild adventure
of life and of love.
When, a week after he was raised,
Jesus told Thomas to stop doubting
and to have faith,
he was not so much worried
about the content of his beliefs
or his ability to put aside his questions,
or so it seems to me,
but simply telling him to get on with it.
Get on with it, Thomas.


© Ken Rookies
I left my new poem behind, in Willowra, so I am posting an old one on the gospel for this coming Sunday. I will post the new one when I get home in about a week.

an answer to Thomas

Thomas’ heart is troubled.  He’s worried and concerned about all this talk of Jesus going away.  So he asked that fateful question, “How can we know the way?”  Jesus’ statement about being the way, the truth, and the life is a response to a question by Christians, and Jesus’ answer is directed to Christians and is about Christians. Of course, Jesus’ followers wouldn’t have called themselves to “Christians” yet; but, as we learn in the book of Acts, “The Way” was one of the earliest names for Christianity.

Part of what Jesus was doing was offering comfort to Thomas: “Don’t worry, Thomas.  You know me. When I’m gone, just continue to ‘do the works that I do.’ Follow the path I have set forth with my life, and you’ll be following the way.”  So perhaps I wasn’t so wrong all those years ago to find comfort in John 14. But Jesus’ instruction doesn’t end there.  Included in Jesus’ pastoral assurance is the challenge to keep on following the way of Jesus even when it’s difficult.  The best summation I’ve seen of this perspective is by the pastor, writer, and spiritual director Eugene Peterson.  Peterson encapsulates Jesus’ point in John 14 by saying, “Only when we do the Jesus truth in the Jesus way do we get the Jesus life.” Isolating only the so-called “Jesus truth” yields a disembodied orthodoxy: all the right words with no behavior to make the words believable.  More important is the “Jesus Way” of loving God and loving neighbor.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2011/05/lectionary-commentary-%E2%80%9Ca-progressive-christian-reading-of-john-146%E2%80%9D-for-sunday-may-22-2011/

Questioning Thomas?

It seems that many adults in the church have never had the benefit of an environment which encouraged searching faith. Some persons are forced out of the church during this state and, sadly, some never return; others remain in searching faith the rest of their lives. In any case, we must remember that persons with searching faith still need to have all the needs of experienced and dependent faith met, even though they may appear to have cast them aside. In spite of his questions, Thomas remained with the disciples. There he discovered the answers to his questions. 

Our congregations are filled with Thomases. Thomas’ faith reminds us that living in community in spite of our doubts is the only way we can find the truth that will sustain us. In such moments, we may lean on the faith of others, knowing that God’s love does not depend on our orthodoxy or certainty.

According to legend, “doubting Thomas” eventually traveled to India , sharing the good news in a very different religious environment. To this day, a group of Indian Christians refer to themselves as “Thomas Christians.” Truly, doubt gives birth to transformation and courage when we faithfully wait for the right moment, when God’s truth awakens us to a new vision of reality. Doubts will always remain and emerge from time to time, but we will know that doubt is itself a doorway to experiencing God’s presence in our life. Doubt may even be the space that makes room for resurrection faith.  In our faithful doubt, we will make room for the seekers in our community and the seeker in ourselves."

http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yeara/2005-04-03/2nd-sunday-easter

Disciples of the outer-circle

Let me join you, Thomas,
out here in the outer-circle of disciples;
along with other questioners and doubters.
Here I shall make my home
among those for whom creedal recitations
and orthodox affirmations
seem increasingly less relevant.
(Discipleship, we all know, has only one test.)
Our wonderings will be loud,
and our speculations wild and free;
none shall be offended,
perhaps not even God.
In our outer-circle orbit, always at risk,
we will repeat the stories and tell new ones,
and do our best to love into reality
the kingdom of which the Master spoke.
Defying the sadness and the fear
we will announce in word and deed
the mysterious presence of He who died.
I like to think that we would do so
even if the tomb had not been emptied;
and, if, one day,
the Master’s earthly remains were to be found,
it would make no difference.

© Ken Rookes, 2014

powerful doubting

"If we are willing to work through our fear and our doubts, we will find the other side of today’s Gospel that teaches us also about faith. If we are honest in our relationships with one another, we can experience mutual support in learning to believe what we cannot easily see. Based on our life with God in the body of Christ, we can recognize the power of the Holy Spirit at work among us, providing new possibilities that can move us beyond doubt and fear and anxiety and psychological paralysis. We will learn that through the power of God, miracles happen—that which we would doubt possible can come to reality. Dreams can be fulfilled, forgiveness offered, obstacles overcome, pain relieved, sickness healed, hunger fed, spiritual longings relieved, good brought from evil, love experienced in all the Easter glory of the risen Christ."
 http://christchurchcathedralbahamas.com/worship-messages-30.html

Get on with it, Thomas

Get on with it, Thomas.

In the business of faith, so-called,

words are gathered on paper,
sorted into groups,

numbered and annotated,

printed with indelible ink,
framed behind glass
and made into standards
behind which combatants assemble
and accuse their opponents
of heresy and betrayal,
and by which fellow humans
are categorised as being in or out.
But faith is not about words,
or being right,
(or, even more importantly,
not being wrong);
faith is responding to grace
and risking all
on the wild adventure
of life and of love.
When, a week after he was raised,
Jesus told Thomas to stop doubting
and to have faith,
he was not so much worried
about the content of his beliefs
or his ability to put aside his questions,
or so it seems to me,
but simply telling him to get on with it.
Get on with it, Thomas.

 

© Ken Rookes

Every year

Every year

we hear again the story

of the sceptical dismissal

of the resurrection reports by Thomas

Every year, at least on this day,

we get to celebrate restless enquirers

and affirm their questioning.

Let us hear it for those who trepidly wear

the label of ‘agnostic;’

those honest men and women

who are willing to admit

that they simply don’t know.

They remind us all

of the sad limitations of certainty.

Hurray for all those carefully considered

unbelievers; it was god

(however she is conceived)

who gave them their enquiring minds.

They help keep the good christians on their toes

and bless them with a boundary

to their smugness.

Be grateful for Richard Dawkins

and all the other evangelising atheists;

without them our own literalisers

and fundamentalists would run

rampant and unchecked.

Every year we are prompted to rejoice

in those with reservations;

questioners, doubters,

sceptics, cynics

and all who struggle to believe.

Give thanks to your god for the dear people

whose objections keep us honest,

and who lead us once again

back to the Galilean teacher

to listen to what he really said.

© 2012 Ken Rookes

one element of faith

Paul Tillich

Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith."

"The old faith must die, eaten away by doubts, but only so that a new and deeper faith may be born."

Doubt

Dostoyevsky – "My hosanna was wrought in the crucible of doubt'