Faith…comes only when the outward fact penetrates to the inner heart of man and takes possession of him there — and this is the work of the Spirit. (George Hendry)

Since Easter we have been listening to stories of doubt in our gospels. On Easter Day we had the ending of Mark’s gospel which finishes at 16: 8. The three women are so afraid that they flee from the empty tomb and tell no one the message they have been given. On the Second Sunday of Easter, we went to John’s gospel and read of Thomas’ doubts. On the Third Sunday of Easter we were in a third gospel: that of Luke. We read of Jesus’ appearance to the apostles in the Upper Room on the same day he met the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. Again, it is a story of doubt – and a lot of other emotions. In a few verses we see terror, fear, disbelief, hesitation and distrust. But we also see joy and wonder (Luke 24: 41). It is hardly surprising that seeing a dead man walking, the disciples react as they do. But this theme of doubt continues to run through the Resurrection stories. If we were to read the end of Matthew’s gospel next week (and we are not – it is back to John) when Jesus gives his disciples what is called “the Great Commission,” we would find that whilst the disciples worshipped Jesus, some of them doubted (Matt 28: 17). Doubt continues. But it is to these mixed up and confused disciples that Jesus hands over his mission. He does not seem to be anxious about their doubts.
Personally, I find these stories of confused emotions very refreshing. I think we sometimes teach and preach the resurrection as though everyone was in a very dark place and then they saw Jesus and then everything was fine. Rather it appears that the fact of the resurrection and its meaning had slowly to penetrate into the hearts of the disciples. In Luke’s gospel Jesus twice “opens the minds of his disciples to understand the scriptures,” as having always been about him, i.e. about the true nature of God. Although for one or two like Mary Magdalene and Thomas the revelation is sudden and absolute – “My Lord and my God,” says Thomas, when he sees the resurrected Jesus for himself; for others there is a slower growth into understanding. And why would we think it could be other? Now the disciples have to comprehend all that God is in Jesus backwards through the resurrection and the crucifixion. Everything they thought they understood about Jesus; his teaching and actions; everything they thought about themselves and life; all has to be revisited in the light of these world changing events. They are at the beginning of a learning curve that will continue through their lives as they seek to understand and apply all Jesus has taught them.
What is demanded of the disciples (and of each generation of believers) is what Paul calls the renewal of the mind, or in Greek metanoia, a complete change of mind. But this change of mind is not purely intellectual but a deep, life-shifting change of heart and being. The disciples themselves have to undergo a kind of death and resurrection, and it takes time. Nothing will ever be the same again and they recognise it. No wonder alongside the joy there is confusion and doubt. That is real and very, very normal.

I was brought up short and rightly reprimanded by a lady the other day, when I said I had to leave a Lent lunch early “to go back to work.”
“But,” she said, “This is your work. These are your congregation.”
I floundered around making excuses about another appointment, but the comment stuck with me. I saw that I had thought of the Lent lunch as something unimportant, that I had to squeeze into my day between the ever present mountains of administration. Being alongside the nice people who are my congregation wasn’t work: listening, sharing, laughing. It was a hiccup in my day but something I had to do, and I did it as meanly, so I saw after my telling off, as possible. I was unjust in my attitude and in the use of my time and person.
If Christ’s life, death and resurrection are about anything, it is justice. Jesus chose to live and preach his message of God’s love, faithfulness and forgiveness, mainly to the rural peasant class of his time. These were the poorest people for whom life was full of injustice and threat. Into their hard lives, Jesus spoke about the Kingdom values of God: peace, forgiveness, mercy and justice. He had time for them. He was for them. He spoke of a God who was familiar to them through the words of the prophets.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Amos 5: 24
Jesus’ fundamental message does not change though the world goes through various epoch and cultural changes. At the moment the Western world is overwhelmed with the idea of 24 / 7, the notion that not only must everything be open and available 24 hours a day, but that we have to work harder and play harder and longer than we have ever done before. There is real anxiety in our culture and most markedly amongst our children. We are charging around working for something, but what? A house in the sun? An escape to the country? A time when we won’t have to live like this? And all the time, as the UNICEF advertisement on television tells us, there are children as young as 3yrs old living parentless on the streets of some of our major world cities. There are young people so disenfranchised and so disillusioned by what our culture offers, that they find the message of IS attractive and at the other end of the age spectrum, the elderly receive the impression through the media that they are a burden to society.
We all need, to speak in American slang, to wake up and smell the coffee, meaning we need to be realistic or aware; to abandon the naïve and foolish notion we have that an over busy life is somehow a moral life, or a more fulfilled life. It is our busyness that makes us blind to what is happening in our world and to us. You need time to see with your heart and your mind as well as your eyes. When we race from one thing to the next in a fluster of anxiety to get things right, we do not see how the opposite happens: we shortcut our loved ones and ourselves as well as the needy people of this world.
Jesus, we read, took time out. I don’t know about you, but I certainly need to do more of the same.

“For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” (Sol. 2:13)

One of the first things that I learnt when I studied Christian Spirituality was that the idea that there is a spiritual and a secular world, God’s world and the rest of life, is entirely false. If God exists then all that is created is of God and loved and cherished by God. If we do not see this we are blind or asleep or haven’t made the connection. If all that is created is of God then everything that delights us physically is also of God and is given to us to bring us more deeply into the joy of our Creator Lord.
As we enter Easter Week, the daily readings designated by the Church at Morning Prayer include, “The Song of Solomon,” a book that has been highly misunderstood in modern times because it celebrates love, Eros, in all its fullness – which of course means physical love, too. Until the Reformation, “The Song of Solomon,” was considered one of the most important and profound books in the Bible. Such writers as the Venerable Bede, Gregory, and most famously, Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote commentaries on it. Meister Eckhart and St John of the Cross were hugely influenced by it. Why: because for the medieval person creation was an expression of the being of God – all is from God. God pours himself out in it. For these writers and thinkers the description of the love God had for his universe was most closely defined by the word “Eros” or erotic love. Eros is a force, the force or drive that animates all things and which comes from God. But in the Post-Reformation world we have cleaned up God and Christian society. We don’t talk about Eros, we don’t mention sex and so we miss the point the medieval commentators understood, that the “Song of Solomon” was thought to contain the central message of all scripture as the ultimate parable of God’s love for the Soul.
Perhaps part of our inherited fear about this book (inherited, I might say from the extreme prudishness of our Victorian forebears) is that it smacks of free love, but that is not to understand the story behind it. The story, put simply, comes from another Old Testament book, “Ecclesiastes”, and tells of the young king Solomon of Israel, who dressed up as a shepherd boy so that he might go about his kingdom incognito. He meets and falls in love with a simply country girl and she with him, not knowing who he is. They promise themselves to each other. He has to return to his responsibilities and she weeps for him, but one day he visits her part of the country and calls for her attendance on him. She, still not knowing who he is, goes to meet him and finds her beloved. They are married and it is in the profundity of their committed relationship to each other that they realise the full beauty of their love on all levels. It is this that is described in “The Song of Solomon.”
But of course we have not heard the deepest message of this song until we pass behind the description of this purely physical human love, perfect as it is, to read it as an expression of communion between a human being and God, between Christ and his church. And that is why it is given to us to meditate on in this Easter Week. Like the couple in the story in “Ecclesiastes” we have wandered throughout this world to find something, someone, bigger than ourselves to trust and fall in love with. We have seen it in God’s love for us expressed through the Cross and Resurrection and now we long to respond.
Someone has well said, “If you love Jesus Christ, you will love this song because here are words that fully express the rapture of the heart that has fallen in love with Christ.”