Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. (Psalm 34:8)
Prop: Fleece / lamb’s wool
Shalom! Peace of the Lord be with you!
I have here some genuine lamb’s wool. The wool of a lamb is called “fleece.” And it’s very soft, and very thick. Would anyone like to touch it.
[Some can come up…..or you can walk it around and allow people to touch it.]
We see something soft, or interesting. We want to touch it. It’s ingrained in us as humans to want to see, to touch, to feel, to hold what we experience in life.
The first thing we do as humans, as babies, is learn to reach out and touch, grab, hold. And what’s the first thing we do after that?
[Allow people to answer.]
Yes, we try to eat it! We put everything into our mouths, so that we can also taste it! We want to see it, grasp it, feel it, taste it. This gives us a tangible experience to connect with the way we perceive that object.
We also learn what not to touch –a hot stove, a growling dog, a sharp knife. But sometimes, we are not correct in our perceptions.
We see a dog and immediately react in fear until someone says to us, “it’s ok…..you can touch it.”
When we do, our fears are relieved. We feel better having touched something.
Why? We come into relationship…by touching. Let me repeat that because it’s so important: We come into relationship . . . by touching.
I want to do a little experiment this morning. Who’s game?
I have here a box. Inside of the box is something I want you to reach in and touch. You can’t see it. But you can touch it. Volunteers? [Inside of the box is jello.]
[Have a few people reach in and touch the object.]
So what do you think it is? [See if anyone can answer the question.]
So what if I told you, it’s an eye of an alligator? [Wait for the horrified eaaeww.]
But it’s not.
What is I said, it’s a big slimy worm. [Equally horrified reactions.]
Shall we look and see?
[Open the box.]
It’s jello!
So sometimes touching doesn’t tell us everything, does it?
Now I want to do another experiment. [Use a magic eye stereogram …. or the “dancing girl” test for right and left brain.]
[You need another volunteer.]
Ok. So take a look at this screen and tell me which way the girl is moving? Right to left? Or left to right?
[Or you could show a photo that looks like one thing….then alter the colors in the same photo to highlight the photo underneath.]
So what did you really see?
Our eyes can be deceptive. Our sense of touch can be deceptive. Even our taste can betray us –think of when you have a cold!
Let me tell you a story.
It’s one I think you all know.
There was once a little girl, who was told by her mother to take a meal to her sick grandmother across the woods. A little bit afraid to go through the path in the woods alone, still she wanted to help her grandmother. So, off she went. When she came to her grandmother’s house, she opened the door and went in. And she saw her grandmother bundled in the covers in bed.
Now….we all know what happens in the story, don’t we? The grandmother is really a wolf in disguise in her grandmother’s clothing and blankets. And even when the little girl begins to notice….the sharp teeth….the long nose….still she’s not looking for a wolf. She’s expecting to see her grandmother. And for a long while –she does. Only at the end of the conversation, when the wolf unveils himself, does she see him for who he really is.
Our sense of reality can be easily distorted by our expectations, our faulty senses, our assumptions. And I’ll tell you something else. Our sense of reality can also be distorted by grief.
Ask anyone who has ever been depressed….and they’ll tell you that nothing seems usual when depression hits. Everything seems to lie under a dark cloud. People, surroundings, things take on a distorted look. Things that once were exciting under the black cloud seem unmeaningful, hopeless, dark, dingy.
When someone is grieving after the loss of a loved one, it’s also hard to see the good in things, to see the light at the end of the tunnel, to taste good food, to even have an appetite. It’s hard to laugh at jokes. It’s hard to imagine being happy ever again. It’s very hard to believe that there can be joy in all of that sorrow.
Is that the truth? No. But it’s the way we see things at that moment. That’s why four of the most important words in the Bible, words that everyone should memorize and keep close at hand are these: “It came to pass.”
Touching and seeing can be deceptive. One of the most curious stories in the scripture is the story of Jacob and Esau. When it came time for Esau (the eldest) to be blessed to carry on the family covenant name, Rebekah (his mother) schemed with his brother Jacob to trick their then-blind father Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing instead.
Rebekah prepared Isaac’s favorite food –lentil stew. This was the food his son Esau usually made for him. Rebekah sent Jacob not Esau into his father, but first covered him in goat’s skin so that his flesh would not feel Jacob smooth but Esau hairy.
When Isaac felt the hairiness of his son’s skin and smelled the scent of the outdoors on him, he gave Jacob the blessing meant for Esau. This is how Jacob (the word for deception) became the one to carry on the covenant line.
Does touching and seeing tell us the truth? Not always. We as humans are easily fleeced! Especially when other humans –or wolves—are involved.
God however does tell us the truth. God shows us the truth! We have a need to touch and see. God knows that. And so when God provides a “touch, taste, and see” experience for us, we can trust the Lord.
Humans may serve as wolves in sheep’s (or goat’s!) clothing…. But Jesus never fails us.
This is the lesson that Gideon learned, as he was hiding from the Midianites, threshing wheat in the wine press, so they would not find him. When God came to send him out on a mission, Gideon asked God to show him a sign so he would know the Lord would be with him in everything he would do. And God did. Gideon placed sheep’s fleece –like this one here—in the center of the threshing floor. He knew that in the morning, if the fleece were wet, but the floor not, then he had truly heard the voice of God and had seen an angel. The fleece was indeed wet. Again he reversed it –asking the next day that the floor be wet but the fleece remain dry. Again, God provided his sign. And Gideon was assured.
Had Gideon doubted, because he didn’t believe in God? No. But Gideon needed reassurance that the voice he heard and the vision he saw was truly one of God.
True assurance comes from the voice and presence of God confirmed by our relationship with God!
In our scripture today, Jesus comes deliberately to see Thomas. He had already been to visit the others. But Thomas, for whatever reason, was not there then. Maybe Thomas was so depressed he went off by himself. After all, they were all in hiding from the authorities. When his friends, the other disciples, come to see him and tell him that they’ve seen the risen Lord, he doesn’t believe them.
Should he?
And why should he? After all, though Thomas was loyal and willing to die with Jesus, as John tells us at the death of Lazarus, every one of the others had proven disloyal, every one of the others had run away, every one of the others had denied Jesus. Thomas was no doubt unhappy with the lot of them. Now they want to tell him, they’ve seen him? Who are they kidding? Thomas is also not satisfied with their report second hand. He wants to see for himself. He does not distrust Jesus. He does not distrust God. But he does distrust his colleagues perhaps. And he definitely distrusts the people around them trying to kill them for following Jesus.
Thomas is in deep mourning. After all, Jesus had told him, he would know how to follow him. But he doesn’t know. He is confused, sad, riddled by grief. And all of them are hiding from the Jewish authorities, afraid to come out, distrusting everyone.
Thomas wants a sign. And a sign he is given. Jesus tells him, touch my side. See my wounded hands. Put your finger right here! Touch and see. Does he? Does Thomas accept Jesus’ invitation? The story doesn’t tell us. But we do know his reaction.
When Thomas encounters Jesus, and Jesus speaks to him, Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!” This personal witness was all that Thomas needed. He had seen the Lord. His hope and joy was assured and restored.
There is a difference between challenging God, taunting God, demanding from God a sign (as the Israelites did in the wilderness of Massah and Meribah), and asking God to relieve the authentic fear and doubt that comes with real danger and real grief, the kind that can be reassured by God’s presence. This is part of what prayer is all about.
Just as God is patient and gentle with Gideon, Jesus is also patient and gentle with Thomas. They are God’s servants, about to be sent on a dangerous mission. But “I will be with you,” God says. “I will be with you to the end of the age,” says Jesus.
Each of us has a time in our lives when we are filled with fear, ridden with doubt. Perhaps it’s a time when a loved one has died. Perhaps a time when everything in our lives seems to go wrong, and we no longer sense God’s presence. Maybe it’s a time when we’ve been persecuted or punished. Or a time when unjustly stricken with disease or calamity. No matter how good a follower we are, we will come to times when the valleys seem dark and the mountains a bit too high to climb.
And those are the times when we need to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Notice the psalmist did not say “intellectually comprehend and understand that the Lord is good.” No, “taste and see.” Taste and see a sign of God’s presence. And God is always there for us, always ready to assure us in our love and in our faith. God has never left us without guidance from above: The Cloud, the Fire Pillar, the guiding star, the inspired Word, the inner Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
Thomas is probably, next to Peter and Paul, one of the most courageous disciples in our gospels. He walked the talk. He was a loyal follower, ready to die with Jesus if he had to. Courage is what courage does. And Thomas’s dismissing of his colleagues in no way was a dismissing of God, but a courageous plea: “let me know that my hope is real, that my Master told me the truth, that there is real joy in this sorrow.”
There are some who seem always to have faith that never wavers, those whose faith endures through every struggle. Then there are the rest of us . . . those who sometimes need the reassurance of God’s presence when things don’t go very well. Thomas Didymus does indeed have a double----the rest of humanity.
Jesus loves all of us. He doesn’t chastise us for our doubt and fear, but reassures us with his presence and promises. Jesus will lift us up when we are down, and help us find balms in Gilead when we need them, places where we can ease our troubled souls. Jesus is the Keeper of still waters. And Jesus Water and Wine enable us to go out into a world that is deceptive and troubling with that stillness in our hearts.
The world may be a deceptive and troublesome place. But may Jesus’ sign of “peace” be a signal for all of us that God’s everlasting presence and promises are always with us. Those promises are not of cloudless skies and effortless days. There will be sorrow and suffering, conflict and confusion. But there also will be joy unspeakable and full of glory . . . and ultimate victory in Jesus.
Touch. And see.
*The photo for this sermon is taken from the blog of Gail Kellogg Hope.
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
The Story of Gideon’s Conversations with God and the Sign of the Fleece (Judges 6)
John’s Witness to Jesus’ Post-Resurrection Appearance to Thomas Didymus (20:24-29)
Minor Text
Rebekah Tricks Isaac into Blessing Jacob Instead of Esau By Touching Goat Skin (Genesis 27)
Massah and Meribah (Exodus 17:1-7 and Numbers 20)
Psalm 18: Praise Be the Rock
Psalm 25: In You I Put My Trust
Psalm 34: Taste and See that the Lord is Good
Psalm 42: Put Hope in God
Psalm 98: The Lord Has Made His Salvation Known
Psalm 103: Praise the Lord My Soul
Psalm 135: God’s Signs
Paul Preaches: Christ Crucified Is Our Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:18-31)
The Story of Gideon’s Conversations with God and the Sign of the Fleece
The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
The Lord answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.”
Gideon replied, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you.”
And the Lord said, “I will wait until you return.”
Gideon went inside, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.
The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth.” And Gideon did so. Then the angel of the Lord touched the meat and the unleavened bread with the tip of the staff that was in his hand. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the Lord disappeared.
When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, “Alas, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!”
But the Lord said to him, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.”
So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it The Lord Is Peace. To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
That same night the Lord said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.”
So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the Lord told him. But because he was afraid of his family and the townspeople, he did it at night rather than in the daytime.
In the morning when the people of the town got up, there was Baal’s altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar! They asked each other, “Who did this?” When they carefully investigated, they were told, “Gideon son of Joash did it.” The people of the town demanded of Joash, “Bring out your son. He must die, because he has broken down Baal’s altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.” But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.” So because Gideon broke down Baal’s altar, they gave him the name Jerub-Baal that day, saying, “Let Baal contend with him.”
Now all the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples joined forces and crossed over the Jordan and camped in the Valley of Jezreel. Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him. He sent messengers throughout Manasseh, calling them to arms, and also into Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali, so that they too went up to meet them.
Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised— look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” And that is what happened.
Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water.
Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.”
That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.
John’s Witness to Jesus’ Post-Resurrection Appearance to Thomas Didymus
Now Thomas (also known as Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them.
Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Image Exegesis: Fleeced
“They did not thirst when He led them through the deserts.
He made the water flow out of the rock for them;
He split the rock and the water gushed forth.
"There is no peace for the wicked," says the LORD.” (Isaiah 48:21-22)
“Peace. Do not be afraid.” (Judges 6)
The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are, as all other gospel stories, rooted in the metaphors and stories of the Hebrew scriptures. The story of Thomas encounter with Jesus is no exception.
When you look to the first testament stories, you find two kinds of stories, twin stories if you will -- stories in which God’s people disrespect and challenge God, complain and test, and stories in which God’s faithful have questions, are fearful and in doubt and need God’s reassurance and presence.
To those who challenge God or deny God, God becomes angry. For those faithful, who want to understand, who are afraid, who doubt, God is undeniably patient, kind, reassuring, bolstering.
There is a difference between asking, “Does God really exist?” or “My God, are you with me?”
In the Exodus, God’s people severely complain and test God at Massah and Meribah. “He named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the LORD, saying, "Is the LORD among us, or not?"
Is the Lord among us, or not? That is the question of many in the Hebrew scriptures and also in the gospels. Or is it? When Elizabeth becomes pregnant for example, she praises God at the miracle. When her husband is told, he questions God’s ability and power. There is the difference. And for his challenge, he is muted.
On one hand, we have people like Mary, who asks how it can be, but accept God’s gift gladly. We have the psalmist, who even in pain, recognizes the presence of God. We have Noah, who builds an ark based on God’s hidden plan, Abraham, who may have questions, but still follows God into the wilderness. We have Moses, who needed reassurance, but still followed God’s command to free the Hebrews from the Egyptians. And there many, many other people of God, people of faith: David, Gideon, the prophets, the judges, whose faith is strong, but whose nerves are sometimes weak.
On the other hand, we have stories about people who confront and do not have faith in God’s power and ability, people like Saul, who are later stunned into submission, or people like the Baal worshipers or the Egyptians, who don’t trust in the Lord at all.
The story of Gideon is one of those stories about one of God’s faithful, who has become afraid, disillusioned, worried, doubtful. The story of Gideon starts out like a hiding story. Just as Thomas and the disciples are in Jerusalem hiding from the Jews, Gideon is in the winepress using it as a threshing floor, so that he can hide from the Midianites.
The metaphors of winepress and threshing floor are beautiful in the story. The threshing floor is a metaphor traditionally in the scriptures that indicates a place that is sacred, a reckoning place, a place where human meets divine, and also a gathering place and a place of mourning (see for example 1 Kings 22, 2 Chronicles 18, Genesis 50, 2 Samuel 6, 1 Chronicles 13, 2 Samuel 24, 1 Chronicles 21, 2 Chronicles 3). Whereas the winepress represents the abundance of God’s blessings and fruitfulness, Gideon is using it as a place of mourning, fear, and doubt. He has turned his joy into grief, worrying about the Midianites and seeking God’s presence.
Into this “sacred place” appears an angel, and Gideon hears God’s voice. God tells him, he will equip him for battle and be with him to victory. But just as Moses and others before him, Gideon is afraid. He asks if he can have a sign for reassurance. The sheep’s fleece is the metaphor used to communicate with God. When Gideon is reassured, he goes into battle equipped with the confidence and assurance of God’s power and presence.
The metaphor of the fleece is significant. The Israelites are a nation of shepherds. And Jesus is signified by both Lamb and Shepherd. When Thomas seeks to touch and see Jesus, the Lamb of God, he is needing the same reassurance as Gideon, who uses the fleece to communicate with God.
The need to “touch and see” is revealed as a human need for reassurance. And God complies patiently and kindly.
But not all stories of “touch and see” have this outcome. Jesus mentions “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” You might mention perhaps “wolves in goat’s clothing too!” For this is the deception of Jacob over his brother Esau, as he pulls the wool over Isaac’s eyes. We cannot trust the world. Humans can be deceptive. And when we touch and see, we often can be deceived.
God however, is not like that. When God invites us to “touch and see,” we can feel reassured. God is entirely faithful, and entirely trustworthy. He is the rock.
We know that Thomas is a loyal and devoted disciple. It is Thomas who says to the others when Jesus is about to go to Lazarus, “Let us go and die with him” (John 11:1-16). Thomas is courageous and he is faithful. He also asks Jesus how to follow him when Jesus says, he needs to go away. Jesus tells him, He IS the way. But Thomas is confused, not because he is disloyal, but because he is very loyal. He wants to follow Jesus. He wants to know what to do (John 14:1-6).
And still…he wanted to touch and see. Was it that he didn’t trust Jesus? No. It’s because, he doesn’t trust his colleagues.
There are the sheep (like Gideon), and there are the goats (like Jacob). Mankind can be deceptive. Jesus, Thomas knew, was not.
He wanted to experience Jesus in person.
The name Thomas means twin in Hebrew, as does Didymus in Greek. Thomas was both faithful and doubtful, completely loyal, yet needing reassurance. And he wrestled with twin issues: Jesus’ divinity and Jesus’ humanity.
Did he touch Jesus? We don’t know from the scriptures. Perhaps when he saw Jesus face to face, with the invitation to touch, all he could say is that prophetic statement, “My Lord and My God!”
As in the story of Gideon, hiding in the threshing floor, the disciples too, including Thomas, are hiding in their own “threshing place,” a locked room in the outskirts of Jerusalem. This place of mourning was to become a sacred space, a place of reckoning and a place where human meets divine, as what was hidden is now revealed.
Jesus comes with a message of “peace,” just as God came to Gideon with that same message.
Peace! Do not fear.
“Peace, peace, to those far and near," says the LORD. "And I will heal them." (Isaiah 57:19)
Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, "I have put my words in your mouth. (Jeremiah 1:9)
Then one who looked like a man touched my lips, and I opened my mouth and began to speak. I said to the one standing before me, "I am overcome with anguish because of the vision, my lord, and I feel very weak. (Daniel 10:16)
Then Jesus invited Thomas to touch his hands, to put his finger into the wound. “My Lord and my God!” he said.
And Thomas is healed of his doubt.
The place of mourning had become a place of joy, as God’s abundant power was made known.
God’s signs, God’s “touch” is for our assurance only. God’s grace is there whether we see it and touch it or not.