I Ain't Lost

Once there was a business man who was accustomed to giving orders and having his own ways. On the way to an important meeting, he decided to take a short cut, but he soon found himself completely lost in a strange neighborhood. He asked the first person he saw, a young boy, for direction.
“Hey boy, how to get to Dover from here?” “I don’t know,” the boy answered with a little embarrassment. The man continued, “Then how far is it from here to Clayton?” “I don’t know that either,” the boy answered. The man was a little frustrated, “Is there anyone around here who can give me directions, then?” One more time, the boy answered, “I don’t know.” The man’s questions became angrier because the boy kept responding with the same answer. Finally, the man raised his voice, “Well, you don’t know much, do you!”
And the boy smiled for the first time. He looked up to the winding street on which his house was located. Under the evening light that was shining through the window, he saw his brothers and sisters playing under the watch of his dad. He looked at the man and answered, “No, I don’t know much. But I ain’t lost.”
Can you imagine: the man must have felt embarrassed because he knew the boy was right, and he couldn’t argue against him. The man is accustomed to relying on his own knowledge and his own ways to get where he wants to go; but such knowledge and such ways can’t get him where he needs to arrive on that day. Haven’t we all experienced it in one way or another in our lives? We thought that with the education or the family background or the economic status we had, we could get to where we want in life?
Back to the Gospel today: every time we listen to the story of Thomas being reprimanded by Jesus, it is easy for us to criticize Thomas for his lack of belief. But think more carefully about the setting of the story, you might discover that we would have done the same as Thomas did. He has never seen anyone during and before his life time rising from death. Common experience taught him that for a thing to be real, it has to be experienced it in a tangible way: it has to be visible or touchable … When Jesus was still alive, of course Thomas heard Him talk about the resurrection, but how did he know if the Teacher was talking about a real resurrection of the body or he was talking about something else. So of course, when the women and other disciples told him about this rather crazy news that his Master, the one who was killed a couple days before, has risen from death, he reacted the way he did.
Just like us, Thomas only relied on what he had experienced in his life so far. He had only one approach to truth: he needs the tangible to confirm whether a thing or an event is real or not. Don’t we still hear this kind of reasoning today: unless I see God, I wouldn’t believe he exists; if God does not let me win this lottery, he is not a loving God; Jesus didn’t exist because no one has ever seen him, we only hear stories about Him written by his followers …
But the Good News we hear today is not about the lack of faith in a disciple, but rather the story of how the risen Christ helps his disciple to step a step further, so that their knowledge about God would not only rely on what they are able to see and touch. What he teaches Thomas and us is that we may need more than our normal way of knowing to get to the truth about God.
“Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.” But how can we believe when we have not seen? I think what Jesus tries to convey here is that: for us to believe in a God who is beyond all power and intelligence and love, knowing is not the starting point. Like that business man in the story: knowing (or there lack of) is not the deciding factor. The child is not lost because he finds himself within a trusting relationship: he sees his brothers and sisters playing in his father’s house, he sees his loving father is watching over him and his brothers and sisters, and that is enough for him to know that he is not lost. The starting point for the boy’s knowing is relationship; the starting point for the man’s knowing is his own knowledge and his own ways of thinking and doing things.
I believe that Jesus wants to challenge us to approach the truth in a different way. Rather than starting from our own ways, our own thinking and our own strength, why don’t we start from agreeing to enter into a relationship with him. A person in a relationship knows the things that outsiders wouldn’t know. Before you become a parent, you could try your best to know what it is like to love a baby by reading books, watching shows or attending workshops; but you would not really know what it is like until you make the commitment to enter into a parent-child relationship. Holding your little one in your arms, you now know what it is like to love another human being who only eats, sleeps and poops. Not only that, you now understand what it was like for your parents when they took care of you as a baby, and you would love and appreciate them more. Do you see how a relationship prompts you to know more than books and lectures can provide you with?
“Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.” If I may put it in light of what we just talked about, this is how I would put it: blessed are those who may not know much about God, yet decide to enter into a relationship with Him. That relationship will let us know that, we may not know much, but we ain’t lost.