I want to talk today about faith and belief and doubts… and Thomas.  SO… let’s recap the scene again from this Gospel reading from John which is the only gospel that contains this story about Thomas.  As we read, the disciples have locked themselves in an upper room, presumably somewhere near Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem, trying to lay low and stay out of sight of the Jews who were still somewhat stirred up about this whole crucifixion, moved stone, disappearing body chain of events.  Thomas, one of the remaining eleven disciples, is out on some errand when - POOF! - there Jesus is, standing amongst them.  He breathes the Holy Spirit into them and charges them with preaching the Gospel and forgiving sins… and then – POOF! - He is gone again.  Thomas then gets back to the room and hears the news and has a hard time believing it.  That’s why they call him “Doubting Thomas”.  We all can relate to “Doubting Thomas”, can’t we?  He loved Jesus, he had followed Jesus.  He was a disciple of Jesus.  He had listened to everything that Jesus had preached.  He just couldn’t quite buy this whole “Jesus has come back from the dead” stuff.  He had his doubts.  Don’t we all?  But then, a week later, in the same upper room… with the door again locked… and this time with Thomas in attendance – POOF – Jesus appears once again and challenges Thomas to examine his wounds to verify his identity.  When confronted with the undeniable physical presence of the risen, Jesus – wounds and all… Thomas then admits the depth and completeness of his belief.  And what was Jesus’ response?  I would guess one might describe it as mildly rebuking…. He says:  “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”   How did Thomas respond to that mild rebuke?  Well… I did some studying about Thomas in preparation for this sermon.  It turns out that Thomas left that locked room and that confrontation with Jesus and went on to be a very productive and adventurous disciple.  It seems that Thomas headed east to spread the good news of Jesus and made it as far as India where today, there are over three and a half million St. Thomas Christians in the Malabar region of the western coast of the Indian subcontinent.  He certainly made his mark there. Legend has it he even stopped off for a visit with the Magi from that first Christmas on his way to India.   According to “The Passing of Mary”, which is a text attributed to Joseph of Arimathea, Thomas was the only witness of the Assumption of Mary witnessing her bodily assumption into heaven, from which she dropped her girdle. In an inversion of the story of Thomas’s doubts, the other apostles are skeptical of Thomas’s story until they see Mary’s empty tomb and the girdle. Thomas’s receipt of the girdle is commonly depicted in medieval and Renaissance art.The “Acts of Thomas” is one of the most widely read of the New Testament apocryphal texts.   Thomas was clearly a guy who may have had his DOUBTS about the resurrection of Jesus, but certainly believed in what Jesus was trying to teach, and certainly went out into the world and did what Jesus had asked him to do.  Belief…  faith… doubt… present in Thomas… present in all of us. When I was eighteen years old, I was a pretty big fish in a pretty small pond.  I was the first guy in anyone’s memory from my high school in Illinois to be appointed to one of our nation’s military service academies.  Suddenly, girls who hadn’t paid much attention to me were letting it be known that they’d love to go to the movies with me…. Suddenly, my mother gained enormous bragging rights at her bridge club and PEO meetings… Suddenly, my father was no longer predicting a life for me of selling ties on street corners because of my less than top shelf academic performance.  Suddenly I had gone from relative anonymity – some would say notoriety – to local fame.  Yet I was secretly torn with doubts.  I wondered whether or not I had the right stuff to be able to survive four years at Annapolis.  I wondered whether volunteering to be in the military in the middle of a war was really a wise, long term life decision.  I wondered - after all that hoopla - how I could ever come back to my hometown if I didn’t make it…  After about 24 hours at Annapolis in the hot summer of 1968 with hordes of upperclassmen screaming at me at the top of their lungs and after having done more pushups in that one day than I had previously done in my entire lifetime, those doubts were intensely magnified, and resided, front and center, in my consciousness, for the next eleven months.  And even after I had successfully weathered plebe year, I still had my doubts as to whether I would be able to endure and to prevail in the rigorous academic environment in which I found myself. I always believed in myself.  I always had faith in my own abilities, but I honestly doubted, from time to time, whether they would be sufficient to accomplish the task.  Faith, belief and doubt… I had all three. How many of you follow Red Sox baseball?  I grew up as a Red Sox fan – even though I grew up in Cubs territory – because I had been a huge fan of Ted Williams. I was a fan throughout all those lean years…I was a fan in 1967 and had faith in the Impossible Dream…but I had my doubts.  I was a fan in 1975 and watched on TV as Carleton Fisk wave his homerun fair in game 6…I believed… but I always had doubts.  1986 was a bit different.  I was taking the wire basket off the bottle of champagne… when suddenly everything came unglued…  and Billy Buckner broke my heart and sent me into a dark and brooding baseball funk that lasted for several years. But I survived…but laden with a heavy load of newer, stronger, more resilient doubts.  Who among you who were Red Sox fans in 2004 had faith during that season that they could win the World Series?. Who among you had doubts when they were down three games to none and losing in the ninth inning in game four of the ALCS?  I don’t know about any of you, but I may have had BIG doubts, but I NEVER lost all my faith.  I NEVER lost all my belief.  And, as it turned out,  Dave Roberts DID steal second and Bill Mueller DID single him home to tie the game and  David Ortiz DID hit the walk off homerun in extra innings to keep the dream alive… and the Red Sox DID go on to win the next seven games in a row and win the World Series for the first time in my lifetime.  Faith and belief triumphed over doubt.  Other examples:  The US Olympic Hockey Team in 1980… were there doubts?  YOU bet!  Faith?  Belief?  They obviously had it.  Harry Truman versus Thomas Dewey in 1948… doubts?  The Chicago Sun Times Headline, “Dewey Beats Truman” would suggest that many doubted Truman. Faith and belief?  Harry sure had them.  And we could go on and on…but enough of the light hearted and humorous secular analogies… let’s look to Jesus himself.  Ten days ago on the church calendar was Maundy Thursday…. We had a lovely service here that night – I saw some of you here…some I did not.  It was a joint service with Old South Congregational Church in Hallowell.  Put it on your calendars for next year so that you won’t have any scheduling conflicts – we hope to make periodic joint services like that one part of our church calendar every year.  Maundy Thursday relives the night of the Last Supper…Maundy Thursday relives the night of Jesus’ betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane.  The events of Maundy Thursday took place less than 24 hours before Jesus would die on the cross, and less than three days before he would ascend into heaven as a DIVINE member of the Holy Trinity.  And listen to what Jesus had to say to HIS father that night:  From the Gospel of Matthew:  “My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me”.   From the Gospel of Mark, “Father, all things are possible with you…remove this cup from me”.  From the Gospel of Luke, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me”…. Jesus, the Son of God… soon to be completely divine in nature, had doubts - HAD DOUBTS - about His heavenly father’s plans for Him.  If God can patiently listen to His OWN SON express doubts about His plans, don’t you think He will patiently listen to ours?    Doubt and belief and faith - can and do co-exist.  Doubting one’s faith is entirely different than denying it, or abandoning it.  Questioning one’s beliefs is entirely different than not believing in the first place.  Thomas LOVED Jesus.  Thomas was a disciple of Jesus.  Thomas had some doubts about the resurrected Jesus… that did not mean that Thomas did not BELIEVE in Jesus or have FAITH in Jesus. Listen again to what Jesus said to Thomas:  “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”   Who is Jesus really talking about there?  Realize: The first time Jesus appears inside the locked room is the evening of the very day He was resurrected.  The second time is a week later.  Clearly, the disciples had been cowering behind locked doors for much of that week.  How many people had come to believe about the risen Jesus in that week’s time? I would suggest ZERO.    Jesus would go ahead of the disciples to Galilee.  He would speak to them on a handful of other occasions – but only to them.  He would cook them breakfast at a little campfire on the shores of the Sea of Galilee…but He would not make any grandiose appearances as the risen Lord before large crowds of people.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”.   For those whose English grammar classes are distant specks in the rear view mirror of life, Jesus uses the present perfect tenses of the verbs “to see” and “to believe”.  Present perfect is used to describe actions which happened at some unknown time in the past… or actions which happened in the past, but have an effect in the present… or, actions which started in the past and are still continuing. Now I realize that Jesus actually spoke in Aramaic and the nuances of English verb conjugations used in translation are the products of English translators dating back to John Wycliffe and his followers from the 13^th century who first translated the Bible – at great peril – from Latin and Greek into English, but clearly, they tried to translate a sentence that made little sense unless that unfinished nature was somehow included.  I think that those folks who translated the Gospel of John into English would have been much less cryptic if they had translated that sentence as, “Blessed are those who will never have the opportunity to see Me and yet will still come to believe in Me sight unseen”. Jesus wasn’t talking about anyone who had already not seen yet had come to believe, Jesus was talking about an event that had not yet finished.  He was talking about us!!!  WE are the ones who ARE blessed for believing in Jesus having never seen Him and He was speaking directly to us when He said it.   We ARE blessed, by Jesus himself, even IF we have our doubts from time to time.  We can ALL be like Doubting Thomas… we can ALL question our faith and our belief… everyone does… but we can ALL be like Doubting Thomas and stand up and put our doubts behind us… and reach beyond our comfortable insular existences and spread the good news of Jesus Christ – even if we DO have doubts.  We can all acknowledge our doubts and STILL stand up tall and strong and do God’s work here on Earth.  The Triune God may be omnipotent, but He doesn’t have any hands.  He doesn’t have any hands!  WE must all take a deep breath, acknowledge our doubts and our fears and step forward and BE the strong hands and the strong arms and the strong backs and the strong voices of God…here…. now… in this place in this time.    For if we don’t, who will?   Doubt all you want, but have faith in God.  Believe in the power of Jesus’ love. Doubt all you want, but be brave and DO God’s will anyway.  Deep down inside, we ALL KNOW we can…  We all know we can. AND…  SO…  DOES…  GOD!  Amen.

I am getting used to the world as a defense attorney, but the one thing I am not getting used to is the absolute disregard some people have for life, theirs and others. And the worst ones are the youngest prisoners. They act all cocky and proud that they are criminals and don’t care at all that they are going to be spending much of their lives in prison rather than out in the world living. It’s very tough to understand.

Luckily most are just people who do stupid things at stupid times. Don’t get me wrong they can be facing just as severe consequences. But you can actually feel some hope that they won’t be back in again if you manage to win. Who knows, maybe someone somewhere will wake up and realize that they could face serious problems if they stay on the path they are on. who knows.

 On an unrelated side note: I’ve learned that lawyers who are incarcerated are considered gods in prison. While I never want to commit a crime or be railroaded on some false accusation, it’s nice to know that my skills will keep me safe from any harm that could come.

This political season began over a year ago, making it one of the longest political seasons yet. And that is optimistic; one could say the season began the minute GWB was sworn in for his second term as President of the United States of America. There comes a time, however, when politics should be set aside and we allow ourselves some unity at being one of the few citizens of the world who can truly call themselves American. Today I took an incredible walk along a wooden, American made, boardwalk on California’s scenic central coast. This is a great country and it was no small feat making it great. For all America’s purported evil the press slobbers about, seemingly countless people continue to want this country to be their home. Since this country is great, our feelings for her are of course passionate. We may argue tooth and nail with our political foes, nevertheless, enjoy the fact that we only argue and trade verbal barbs instead of bullets. This may change, war may be inevitable, I for one do not look forward to that day. So for today, I enjoy America and all the she is to us.

So its March Madness. I’ve never been a big basketball fan but ive been filling out charts the last few years. quite frankly ive never been good at it. Seriously, I suck.

If i pick the winners, they have upsets. If i pick the losers they are crushed. Quite frankly I should just pick the people i dont think would win. but that would mean they wouldnt win. There is no hope for me.

And I just want to see my Alma Mater get past the first one at least one year. Seesh. One round! Is that too much to ask. We cant even beat the team seeded lower than us when we are in there. What the heck is up with that? Some Cougars they are. Oh well maybe next year. But I am always disappointed with my teams. Sports victories arent in my teams future. but im still loyal to a fault.

We have all heard lately the racist filth and outright lies that have spewed forth from Rev. Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ (“TUCC”) in Chicago, of which Obama is a 20 year member.   You might be surprised to learn that TUCC compromises the largest congregation of TUCC in the nation.  Rev. Wright (former) presides over an 8,500 member congregation. As congregations go, this is no small church.

Rev. Wright has espoused black nationalism, accused the “white” government of trying to annihilate blacks, among a myriad of other hate filled racist rants that do not bear repeating at this juncture.  Those that support Obama claim that he had no knowledge, or at most, never “really” heard specifically those hate filled rants from his pastor that he was intimately acquainted with for 20 years.   Before the truth about Obama’s church came out (I include the majority members of the church, because you cannot seriously claim that as lead pastor since the 1970s the members were “clueless” as to his beliefs) Obama had Rev. Wright’s endorsement on his webpage, now, Obama is doing everything he can to distance himself from his “Spiritual Advisor.”

I have been told repeatedly that Obama’s pastor’s remarks are no big deal and that it is only a big deal to racists like me.  it is only a big deal because you wouldn’t for vote him as you would never vote for a black president anyways.   This from the very dems who would be hyperventilating if this had been McCain’s white pastor of twenty years and the white pastor had been saying this about black people.  It is no big deal, it’s like a gambling problem, the guy just made a mistake?  Really?  If it is no big deal, why then did the TUCC remove him from his position as lead pastor?  Why did Obama fire him from his campaign?  Why did Obama remove Rev. Wright’s personal endorsement from his website?

More troubling, is that there are those who, even after reading this, will still believe that I am a racist and that Rev. Wright’s hate filled rhetoric (that is only a problem now because the truth is out) is ok.

I’ve been reading Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg lately. I highly recommend the book because it has really been making me think. Mostly about what freedom and liberty really is.

I’ve also taken a job as a public defender, which I am really enjoying and trying to wrap my head around the fact that I am defending the people that a few years ago would have had a problem defending. You know the guilty ones. (The innocent ones I don’t have a problem defending, never did).

The thing is I feel as though everything I’ve gone through lately, and these new experiences are changing my world view. I am not sure what they are changing them too. Definitely not becoming a liberal, progressive, fascist, communist, whatever you want to call the left. Because I see how easy it is for government to be corrupted and people to abuse power.

 So yeah I’ve been thinking alot about freedom, liberty, but also power and the nature of it. The Founders set up the Federal government the way they did because they did understand power. The fact is absolute power corrupts absolutely. But where exactly is that line where government cannot and should not cross? I don’t know anymore. I am definitely more inclined allowing more freedom, but I also know anarchy arise out of it and anarchy is one of the antithesis of freedom.

One thing I am convinced of more and more is that no system of government is perfect. That is why you need to have honest and moral people in order to maintain freedom. Because without honest and moral people in power, those who are in power will use any means necessary to not only abuse their current power but obtain more power than they were originally given.

Joseph Smith was once asked how he governed such a great amount of people. He responded “I teach them true principles and they govern themselves.” Self-government is the key to freedom. That means we need to take personal responsibility for our actions. That means we do have to choose to live moral lives. We determine our destinies, not anyone else. Sure life can throw us curve balls, but its our choices that determine whether we hit them out of the park or not.

If all of us don’t return to principles of self government, we we see oppression and bloodshed at an unheard of scale. That may sound crazy, but I know it’s as true as much as I know the sun will rise in the morning. I don’t want to fall to that.