I like to watch movies, but not every movie. And I don't usually sit down and watch a movie without doing something else, unless I go to a movie theater, which isn't that often. I tend to watch movies on TV or
DVD's while I am doing something else, like reading the paper, doing chores around the house, working on the computer. I guess this is a hold over from my teenage years when I did my homework in front of the TV.

Every once in while as I watch a movie I catch a scene or a piece of dialogue that captures my full attention. These snippets don't necessarily come from a great movie or a classic, but they make me ponder
its meaning and how I might use it in a sermon or in teaching. I came across a sentence from the movie, "The Santa Claus II," where Scott Calvin's son is telling his teacher, who is also his father's love
interest, that it's okay to believe in Santa Claus. He says, "Believing is seeing." Believing is seeing.

Now, many of us have heard the old saying, "Seeing is believing." Until we see something, we won't believe that it's real. But what intrigued me about this new saying, "Believing is seeing," is that it states quite
firmly that there are some things that we can't see or prove, and yet we are called to believe in them because they are truly real. For instance, how do we know that there is a God? Or how do we know that God's Spirit is active and moving in the world today? Or how do we know that Jesus was resurrected from death? We are never going to see any of these with the naked eye, and neither will anyone else, or has anyone else.
Ultimately it comes down to believing first, and once we believe, only then will we know, or see, that God and God's Spirit and the resurrection are true and real.

The disciple Thomas was one of those who had to see to believe. The others hadn't really seen Jesus resurrected either, but they saw an empty tomb and the unwrapped burial cloths, and they heard the eye- witness of Mary Magdalene and others who claimed to have see the risen Christ. Even though the inner circle of disciples, the original 11 still surviving, had not seen the risen Christ, enough had happened that most of them chose to believe. And in their belief, 10 of the 11 who had gathered together that first evening, saw Christ appear to them in the upper room where they had celebrated a last meal with their Lord and master Jesus, now the resurrected Christ. Their belief empowered them to see the risen Christ come into their circle and visit and teach them.

But one of the disciples, Thomas, was absent from the group during that nightly visit, and when he returned, the others informed him, "He's alive. We've seen him." Thomas, ever practical, expressed his doubts,
"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." Seeing is believing. Forever after, he has been called Doubting Thomas.

Now I don't fault Thomas. It's difficult and perhaps crazy to believe that something that has never happened before and is known to be impossible has happened. I mean, would anybody believe me if I came in
this morning and said, "A flying saucer landed in my driveway last night. And, oh, by the way, Bigfoot has been living in my garage for the past week." I know some people who believe in both of these characters even
though no one has ever produced either one for the rest of the world to see. And I suppose some true believer will try to say, "Well, obviously, Bigfoot came from the flying saucer and was returning home." In this
particular instance, only seeing will bring belief, that is, documentation or proof that other people were there at the time, and reputable authorities have certified with tangible evidence that this has
really happened.

So I don't fault Thomas questioning that Jesus was resurrected and had appeared to the other 10. In Thomas' experience and in the other disciples' experience, people don't come back to life after death from
crucifixion. "I need proof," said Thomas. "I need to touch the nail holes. Then I'll believe."

Thomas got his wish. Jesus came back to visit again and not only showed Thomas the nail holes, but also let him touch them, just so he wouldn't think he was hallucinating. Thomas believed because he saw and touched
him.

But what about the rest of us in the 2 thousand years since? We know from our scriptures that after visiting with hundreds of people for several weeks, Jesus left this earth, and he has not visited in human
form again. How do we believe if we can't see or touch the resurrected Christ as did Thomas? How can we know this story is true if we can't see the proof?

That's where the saying, "Believing is seeing," becomes true. Based on the eyewitness accounts of those who came before us, those persons who testified and preached that they saw and spent time with the resurrected
Christ, we can only believe their stories and therefore believe that Jesus was resurrected and lived again, that life in God is more powerful than death. To some this resurrection story may seem crazy, like the
stories of flying saucers and Bigfoot. But here's the amazing part: unlike the other fantastic stories that are floating around, once a person does believe in Jesus, that he was crucified for our sins and did
indeed rise from the dead, then we truly see Jesus, we know from our own experience that the story is true, that all that happened is real. We see him in our own lives as we are transformed anew by God's actions in
Jesus. There is no other way for us to know Christ today. We must first believe, because believing is seeing.

So what we're talking about is a new kind of faith. One of the ways that we speak about faith is as a body of knowledge. To be a believer, we must accept this, this, and this, statement of understandings that
someone has formulated a to explain our life and the reality we live in. If you accept what I believe, then you are a believer. Another way of speaking about faith is to accept as true what we cannot see or prove. Certainly, that is how we are called to accept and believe in the risen Christ. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (John 20:29). Of course, other criteria have to be used to determine what is real, like the reliability of the first witnesses, what are the results of faithful believing, how our belief has been proven right in the living of life and reality and cannot be proven wrong. Otherwise, people can believe in the most bizarre and outrageous things because who can prove them wrong.

The new kind of faith that John is recording for us is not just believing in what we cannot see, and seeing because we believe, but this new kind of faith in the resurrection of Christ is a gift from God to the world, a
heavenly gift to us. It's the purest of all gifts. It was unsolicited; it was unexpected; it was undeserved, it was unearned; it cost us nothing, even though it cost God much; no one even thought about it, let
alone considered it possible. God, out of divine grace, gave to the world a way in which we could understand human life and Godly intentions, love and mercy, human living and eternal life. This new kind of faith is
a gift that we can only graciously accept without any possibility of exchanging a gift of our own, because we can never match it in cost or importance. The most we can do is say thank you and let it become a part of our lives and reform them for all of eternity. And once we accept it, then we know its full truth and reality. We have no doubts, because we know the gift is real.

But it's not just the receiving of this gift that makes it real. It's what we do with the gift that makes it real. Unlike other gifts that we receive and either put on shelf to gather dust, or pack away because we
don't have a suitable use for it, or toss in the garbage because it doesn't meet our expectations, or we put into a collection to admire and display for the envy of others, or we play with until we get tired of it,
this gift is meant to be used for God. In fact, the only value of this gift of faith is in using it to share with others the Good News of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. We are called to share it with the world so that they too might believe, and in believing see that God is real in their lives, too.

Of course, what the Gospel writer John is conveying through this resurrection story is the message of discipleship. We followers of Christ are called to live this gift of faith, to speak of it when the
opportunity arises, to share it freely, to let God work through us in whatever way God chooses. All so that others may find the truth of this earthly life we live, the God who has created it, the love that the
divine has given to the world through a Son, and a new kind of life that can lived from now until forever.

Believing in this gift is seeing the truth of God's love and grace for the world. For those who have not accepted this gift, will you receive it now? For those who have accepted it, will you share it with others?
Who will go into the world to proclaim what we have believed and seen?