December 22nd, 2024 - "Thomas Rides the Polar Express" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find

out more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please visit us

online at FUMCbentonville.org or check us out at Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Welcome to First United Methodist

Church here in Bentonville.

My name is Michelle Morris.

I'm the lead pastor here, and we are in the midst of our Advent series.

In which we are looking at well known or classic children's Christmas stories

alongside stories from the Bible.

Today's story that we're looking at is the Polar Express and we are pairing

that with Doubting Thomas from John 20.

Before I read that passage I just want to lift up again that We

are able to offer these books.

We have some here and some out there and if there are any children that

want to go ahead and grab a copy, they're welcome to come up and get one.

And it is through a gift through the Joseph and Mary May Jones Estate

that we're able to offer these books.

And I can think of no better way for us to be able to offer those than

to honor them through that gift.

If you never met Mary May Jones, she was a beloved educator in this town and

just a spirit full of joy and she would run up to people and say my name is

Mary and my birthday is December 25th.

Guess what my husband's name is.

Confused so many people but she was like it's Joseph.

Doesn't that make sense?

I'm so glad that we're able to honor that heritage with this series.

So to get us ready for our two stories today we will hear now from the book of

John and Chapter 20, verses 19 to 29.

Hear now the word of the Lord.

It was still the first day of the week.

That evening, while the disciples were behind closed doors, because they

were afraid of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them.

He said, Peace be with you.

After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy.

Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you.

As the Father sent me, so I'm sending you.

Then he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven.

If you don't forgive them, they aren't forgiven.

Thomas, the one called Didymus, one of the twelve, wasn't with

the disciples when Jesus came.

The other disciples told him, We've seen the Lord.

But he replied, unless I see the nail marks in his hands, put my

finger in the wounds left by the nails and put my hand into his side.

I won't believe after eight days, his disciples were again in a

house and Thomas was with them.

Even though the doors were locked, Jesus entered and stood among them.

He said, peace be with you.

Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here.

Look at my hands.

Put your hand into my side.

No more disbelief.

Believe.

Thomas responded to Jesus, My Lord and my God.

Jesus replied, Do you believe because you see me?

Happy are those who don't see and yet believe.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes, that we might see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray.

Amen.

So, in case you're unfamiliar with the story of the Polar Express, I

cannot give you the story from the movie because I haven't watched it.

It's one of those things where, you know, you know when you're a kid and

you'd watch the movie, that there was a book assigned for and then you'd

take the test and you'd fail the test because the movie was different.

So I didn't want to run the risk that I would fail the sermon test.

So I've only read the book.

And the way that the book goes is there's a young boy and he believes in Santa.

There are people around him who do not, but he does believe in Santa.

But he really wants to have that experience of having that belief affirmed.

And so he He stays up Christmas Eve and hopes that he will hear the

sound of the bells on Santa's sleigh.

And instead, what he hears is the sound of a train pulling up.

So he goes out, and there's a conductor who says, You can get

on the train, the Polar Express, it's headed towards the North Pole.

So, little boy gets on the train, they ride up to the North Pole, and he

finds out, in the course of the train ride, that one child will be chosen to

receive the first gift of Christmas.

They can ask for whatever they want, and that will be

their first gift of Christmas.

And it turns out he is chosen.

The end.

And so when Santa asks him, what would you like for your Christmas present?

He says, I would like a bell from your sleigh.

So Santa has an elf cut off the bell from the sleigh, gives it to the boy.

That's the first gift of Christmas.

Then they send Santa off so he can deliver gifts all over the world.

They all get back on the train.

And it was while they're on the train ride that the boy realizes that he

had put the bell in the pocket of his robe and he reaches into that

pocket and finds out there was a hole.

in the pocket and the bell has fallen out.

He's crushed.

He goes home, wakes up the next morning.

He and his family are opening their gifts and it is his sister

that notices that there's a small package for him under the tree.

She gives it to him.

He opens it up and it is the bell.

With a note from Santa that says, don't lose this.

And he holds onto that bell for all of his life.

And he notices that as the years go on, more and more of his friends can

no longer hear the sound of the bell.

Children do start hearing the sound of the bell, but he always remembers

and believes and can always hear the sound of the bell ringing.

So when we think about these two stories together, we want to start with

one affirmation that the truth of the matter is, both Thomas and the boy.

Now, I think we all understand that that's the case with the boy.

He was so sure that Santa was coming that he stayed up to

hear the sound of the sleigh.

But I think a lot of people wonder if Thomas started from that place.

I mean, after all, he is called Doubting Thomas, right?

Does he really start from a place of belief?

Well, I've read scholars make the case that actually Thomas may have believed

in the words of Jesus and what Jesus taught them more than any other disciple

because he paid attention to the fact that Jesus said, Many will come in my name

and claim to be me, but they are false.

And so he has questions.

I mean, these people are claiming that someone who is dead has come back.

And he wants proof.

You But he did believe enough in what Jesus said.

He believed enough in what Jesus said to doubt what the disciples were saying.

So they both start from this place, this point where they believe,

from a place of openness and a wondering about what could be.

You might say that they both believe in seeing.

But, they do want proof.

They do want proof.

Thomas wants to actually see and touch the wounds of Christ.

The boy wants to hear the sound of Santa's sleigh.

They want proof for what they believe.

Now, to some extent, people might argue that that's contrary

to what faith actually is.

That faith, in fact, does precede seeing, hearing, touching, and having.

They had that faith that precedes.

If we're not open to the possibility, then we miss the purpose and the

presence of what we could see.

We have to be open for signs to have meaning.

The definition of faith given in Hebrews 11, one is that faith is

the reality of what we hope for the proof of what we don't see.

And yet I can't blame them for wanting proof.

Maybe you have wanted proof in your journey of faith as well.

It does help to have those signs, to have the concrete

reinforcement of what we believe.

I've shared in the course of time here that I was on a journey of

faith myself to determine whether I was going to believe or not.

And part of that journey involved reading the Bible.

And as part of that journey, every night I would read one chapter before I went

to bed, but on Sundays I would read two.

That was my going to church, two chapters of the Bible.

And One of the things that happened in the course of that reading, I was reading

the Bible that my mom had given me.

She gave me a third grade Bible, even though we didn't go to church.

And that's the Bible that I was reading.

And that same Christmas that I got that third grade Bible, I had an aunt,

that I share her middle name, I'm her namesake, who gave me a mustard seed

necklace with a little book about the parable of the mustard seed.

If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains, right?

And I decided, let's just see about that.

So I would wear that mustard seed necklace every time I was in a competition.

And so far it was working pretty well.

Uh, but when I was in junior high.

There was a program that I participated in called Future Problem Solving,

and I loved Future Problem Solving.

And my team qualified for state competition, but barely.

We were the last team admitted.

We were definitely the underdogs coming into it.

And as I took my Bible with me, and as I opened it up and read, what do you know,

the night of the competition, Parable of the Mustard Seed rolled up in my reading.

Hmm.

My team took first place.

Yeah, look at that mustard seed go.

So off we went to international competition, competing with

teams from all over the world.

And I took my Bible again.

And as synoptic gospels tend to do, stories tend to come back up

while we were at internationals.

What do you know?

Parable of mustard seed.

We took third at internationals, y'all.

Whoo!

That felt very much like concrete proof to me that if you invite God

into a space, miracles could happen.

It was that little thing that I needed to be able to grab a hold on and give reality

to the faith that I was trying to have.

Just like Thomas wanted to see the wounds and just like the

boy wanted to hear the bells.

Sometimes you just want something concrete to happen.

That's a moment in your faith journey when seeing is believing.

When having one of those experiences puts rock under your faith.

Makes it real.

Thing is though, is you can't stay there.

You can't stay in those moments.

You have to move past the bell and the wound and the mustard seed moment.

Because a great deal of faith is actually not seeing.

That's where we live so much of our journey.

In those spaces of questions and wonderings and doubts again.

So, I'm gonna share something with you that maybe I shouldn't admit

as your pastor, but here we go.

When I take a spiritual gifts test, I score a zero on faith, but here's why.

When I'm taking spiritual gifts tests, a lot of times the questions

that they ask that are related to faith are things like, I believe

that prayers are always answered.

Well, what do you mean question?

See, I have questions for the question.

What do you mean about that?

Like I've walked alongside people and I believe there's power in prayer.

I believe that a lot of what happens in prayer is connecting

us to God and to each other.

And I do believe that something sometimes happens that we can't explain.

But I also believe there are those moments where it seems like God didn't

answer at all, where it's dark and it's hollow and it's quiet, too quiet.

So when.

When, when I'm facing that, that faith is not something that can be answered by

true or false, multiple choice questions.

It's far more complicated than that.

It is a space with a lot of questions and a lot of wonderings.

As I've grown in my faith, I have not gotten less questions, but more, more.

It's not so simple as checking a box.

I do have some assurance because I have had those moments and I'm

standing on that rock Transcribed But there are still questions.

I hold on to those rock moments and allow those to carry me through those spaces.

Where there's a lot of questions.

Just like Thomas encounter with the risen Christ must have sustained him

in the difficult years to follow.

When he was facing persecution.

Threatenings of being stoned.

When it seemed like God had abandoned him.

He still had those moments of seeing and touching the wounds to go back to.

And just like the boy who held on to the bell.

And the bell kept ringing.

But what happened for the boy is that there was a transition.

The boy made the transition from the bell giving him faith to instead

his faith sustaining the bell.

So we move from believing in seeing that it's possible to seeing is believing.

Having a moment where you feel the reality of your faith come alive to

again switching back to believing.

is seeing that because we believe we see the permeation of faith in all

things and less and less do we need those mustard seed moments because

instead we're standing on the story the power and the presence of God's love

in our lives even when it's intangible.

It's still with us.

Now your faith journey may or may not look like this, but I encourage

you wherever you are in your faith journey, whatever stage you are

in, be open to the possibilities.

Be open to what could be.

Bring your doubts, bring your questions, bring your healthy skepticism.

Thomas brought it, the boy brought it, your pastor brings it.

Bring some healthy skepticism from time to time, but also.

Imagine the potential.

Imagine the possibilities.

And when you're having those moments when the rock seems to be shifting

a little bit beneath you, recognize that you have a community beside you.

Just like Thomas had the disciples, the boy had all the people who

would come to and grow into belief in Santa, and you have each other.

And I, my friends, have you, and I am so grateful that your story and my story

have intertwined, and we can ask questions together and see miracles together and

experience the possibilities together.

So, my friends, I invite you to see how your story unfolds, whether you are just

believing in seeing, seeing as believing.

Or believing is seeing.

In all spaces, God is present and at work in your journey.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the Sermon Podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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everyone into our church family.

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orientation, marital status, age, physical and mental ability, national origin,

economic station, and political ideology.

We come together in action and outreach, aspiring to follow Jesus' example of

radical hospitality, love, and grace as a transformative movement in our community.

Please join us for worship on Sunday mornings at 9 and 11am, both

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All are welcome, and we'd love to have you with us.

Grace and Peace.