Worship April 12 2026

(1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31) JG White ~ 10:30 am, Sunday, April 12, 2026, FBC Amherst

Do you remember this famous letter, published in 1897?

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. (F. P. Church, The New York Sun)

This may not seem like the right season to declare, ‘Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,’ but we are still in this skeptical age. I dare say there are many people now who do not hold out much hope for humanity, for goodness to win out, for pain and problems to perish, for beauty to be the best at surviving. But is hidden goodness real? Is invisible God at work? Does the Spirit of Jesus abide here?

As Francis Church wrote to Virginia O’Halloran, You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. 

Earlier we read from a different, much older letter. This letter in the New Testament that we call First Peter begins with the expected beautiful and deep attitude of gratitude that starts so many Epistles. Blessed be God! God has given us this… and this… and that… You rejoice, even though… And so on. It is filled with phrases like a living hope, the power of God, a salvation ready to be revealed, indescribable and glorious joy. 

The invisible is put into words. The hidden is revealed by naming it, reaching for it by what we say, what we pray, what we sing. We spend one hour on this project here, every week. Being together for the blessed things that are not seen. Not seen directly, anyway. 

How can we celebrate a Salvation to be revealed at the last time? Sometimes it is a clear and present blessing. But the whole idea of salvation can also be hidden from people. 

Salvation is both future and present; it is yet to come and it is going on right now. What did we read here? There is a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 

We bat this word around a lot in Christianity, and we must remember all that we read about ‘salvation’ in scripture. It has a big meaning. 20th century theologian Paul Tillich tells us: Salvation is derived from salvus, ‘healthy,’ or ‘whole,’ and it can be applied to every act of healing: to the healing of sickness, of demonic possession, and of servitude [slavery] to sin and to the ultimate power of death. (Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol 1, 1973, p. 146)

There is something blessed about the unseen quality of life called salvation. It is a healthiness, a well being that is growing within and among us. Sometimes it seems quite slow. Sometimes it breaks out and shines. 

Here in 1 Peter 1 the goodness we are given from God is spoken of as an inheritance. Once in a while I have inherited something from someone I knew. One close friend willed to me his large library. Once, a church member left me one thousand dollars. At the funeral of an outdoorsy friend, Burkhard, everyone got to pick a small stone to remember him by. At another, for Rev. Roger Prentice, everyone could choose a necktie from his huge collection.

 Perhaps you have in mind some of the things you have heard might be in the offing for us from Jesus our Brother and our Saviour. If you got to pick something from His estate, what would the first thing be? As we play with this imagery, I think to myself: well, we inherit not when we die, but when our loved one dies. So, if Jesus died long ago, we have already inherited what He gives to us. 

The inheritance of salvation is not like earthly inheritances of all those things we can’t take with us. All the things that families fight over, whether the deceased was a millionaire or in poverty. Somehow, my own ideas of what God provides to us now and forever are simple. They simplify life. Perhaps the best vision of the afterlife we inherit is not all this and all that and many, many wonderful things. Not a mansion over the hilltop: a gold one that’s silver lined. It is less of all this.

I just read about this; it will lead to my next point. A Boston, Massachusetts’ Holocaust Monument is a walk-through sculpture that bears this inscription of a concentration camp survivor: Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present that night to me on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend. (Gerda Wissman Klein)

Sometimes, we experience grace and salvation in such a small, simple way. Our blessed Jesus, who is not seen by us, gives to us. And so we rejoice despite trials, as it says in 1 Peter. The various sufferings we have are along the way to rejoicing. The challenges of our days can train us to realize how little we need. And what we do have. And what we have to give to others.

Amazingly, our weaknesses can become gifts. Even our sins get transformed into strengths – they don’t have to stay as weaknesses. I have been thinking some of this for a long time. How someone like me who can be indecisive may learn to use the other side of my coin: I can see all sides of an issue well. My friend who is such a bothersome critic of local leaders who fail or church congregations who don’t serve, she is an amazing activist for local justice issues and such a supporter of the downtrodden and weak. 

Lately I have been reading and researching an ancient approach to understanding personalities, and it really points out how the weaknesses of our inner selves can be redeemed and become our strengths. I wonder this as I look back upon those who clearly spent time with Jesus. Intense Mary Magdalene, spontaneous Peter, cautious Nicodemus. Today we had some of the story of Thomas, who we unfairly call ‘Doubting Thomas.’ If he was the only disciple not hiding away in a room after Jesus’ death, but was out in the community that resurrection evening when Jesus appeared to the rest, perhaps Tomas was the bravest of them. And He was brave enough to ask big questions and be honest about his needs.

Julian of Norwich was known for saying this about the human, sinful condition, “First there is the fall, then there is the recovery from the fall; both are the mercy of God.” So, we rejoice in the grace of God, in the midst of the problems inside us. The problems that stay with us. The Spirit of Jesus still breathes peace upon us and sends the Holy Spirit among us. We are even being protected, a word used twice in 1 Peter 1. 

So (one), we have a salvation now, with also more to be revealed. (Two), we can rejoice despite the troubles of life. (And three), though we have not seen Jesus, we love Him. Though we don’t see Him now, we believe and rejoice. 

Remember that phrase Jesus used with Thomas and the others? Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. We are the blessed who have not seen. At least, not seen like the five hundred people who did get to meet the risen Jesus ‘in the flesh.’ 

We have our occasional experiences that are profound, moving, visionary, spiritual. My one vivid time of seeing Jesus was years ago now. It was in my living room, and I know when I lived in that apartment, so it had to be in the early 2000s. I guess I was having a prayerful moment at home, and was certainly interested in Jesus being an authentic, Middle-Eastern man, not looking like any of the white people in stained glass windows or religious paintings. 

And then, just coming into the room from the front hallway, was The Man. Dark in hair and complexion, looking rather serious. Not glowing, no halo, not unusual. Entering at an angle, not facing me. Just that scene, that moment: Jesus in my living room. 

I don’t believe in Jesus more because of that vision; I had that vision because I knew Him, as I know Him now, twenty years later. I am grateful for the blessing of knowing the One I have not seen. 

Blessed are you who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Let us rejoice!