Most of us, early in our school careers, learned to name and memorize the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. It's through these senses we get to know the world. Babies demonstrate this for us. As they begin to focus their eyes on crib toys and identify the voices of their parents; as they put dangerous objects in their mouths and their fingers into all kinds of inappropriate places, these little scientists collect information, test hypotheses and learn to make their way in the world. All our senses are helpful and we each have our favorites—those we rely on more than others. Not having full use of all five can be challenging. If we think about the oceans of print we encounter each day, fine print that is, the mumbling people do, narrow and dangerous stairs (to name a few obstacles), we must confess that as a society we've made it unnecessarily challenging.
Jesus knew how much we depend on our senses, and how hard it was for people who couldn't fully use one or the other. He gave eyesight to people who were blind. Those who had never felt the ground beneath their feet suddenly knew the power of walking. In Matthew's gospel, when the disciples of John the Baptist ask Jesus if he is the one, or if they are to wait for another, Jesus answers them: "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear." (He also said the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them, but that's another sermon). In the ancient world, people dealt with difference even less well then we do, so healing the senses also meant restoring people to community. Enabling someone to walk, to see with their eyes, or touch others with their hands meant they could work, and eat. They could move from the margins toward the center, where they—along with tax collectors and sinners and everyone else—always belonged.
The Gospel evidence tells us Jesus fully enjoyed the use of his senses. He was accused of being a glutton; he drank wine at weddings and broke bread at supper. He allowed aromatic perfume to be poured on his feet, and lovingly touched the feet of his disciples. And when Thomas asked to see the risen Lord with his eyes, and to touch his wounds with his hands, Jesus came. The disciples saw him with their own eyes. They heard him speak with their own ears. They felt his breath upon them, and were invited to place their hands in his side. Later, they even smelled and tasted some delicious fish that Jesus grilled on the beach.
So it was. Those first disciples knew Jesus with all their senses, both before and after his death. Yet Jesus tells them, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Those blessed ones include the early Christians whom Peter addressed, Christians who came to faith years after and miles away from the place where Thomas made his confession. "Although," Peter tells them, "you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him." Those blessed ones are also us. We have not seen the living Christ with our eyes. We have not touched Christ with our hands, heard him with our ears, or known his breath across our face. The disciples could let their eyes and ears and hands confirm what they dared not believe. We must take leave of this dependence on our senses. We must do what we have learned not to do since we were infants: to believe without testing and verification through hands or mouths, eyes or ears. We must believe even though we do not see Christ now.
Of course, we use our senses, all our senses, in worship and love of God, and in discernment of God's Word through the risen Christ. We praise God with hymns. We read the Bible with hands and eyes, we hear sermons and scripture through our ears. We see the face of Christ when a stranger helps us, and we show the face of Christ when we serve others. We feel Christ's love in the touch of a beloved, we gaze upon God's handiwork in the heavens. But the words in the Bible or the sermon are not the words of God, words we can point to as proof that God speaks. We see the face of Christ in others, but they're not Christ. God's Spirit may be revealed to us in the beauty of a stained glass window or in the glorious sounds of our organ, but pictures and organ pipes are not the Spirit. Even though we are joined with the Real Presence of Christ when we eat the bread and drink the wine, the bread and wine remain bread and wine. We may struggle with it, we may wish it were otherwise, but we have no choice but to believe even though we have not seen.
Yet we are blessed. We are blessed because we don't have to depend on the working of eyes, or ears or hands, to know the love of Christ or to have faith. Our eyesight may grow dim, or fail us completely, and we have lost nothing we need to believe, as difficult as such a loss may be. We may no longer be able to hear the words of a sermon, or the notes of an anthem, but we have lost nothing we need for faith, as painful as such a loss may be. We may not be able to touch and move and explore with the same ease or range that other people have, but we lack nothing we need for faith in Jesus Christ. And if we do not need our senses for what is most important in this life—faith and love in the risen Christ—when we finally have to take leave of them, when we are ready to let go of this perishable body, we will lose nothing we need for the inheritance Christ promises. The inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for us for a salvation to be revealed in the last time. When we finally take leave of our senses, we will lose nothing that we need for that last time, that time when we will all know Christ fully.
Last Wednesday evening, some of us were talking and a few people, who shall remain nameless, said they liked the title of the sermon and wondered if I would be asking them to "take leave of their senses." Of course, they meant it differently than the way I've been using it. They wondered if I'd be asking you all to step out, to get wild, do the kinds of things that would make other folks shake their heads and wonder, "Have those people taken leave of their senses?" By way of answer, listen again to these words of Peter: "Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy." In this sour, depressed and irritable city, if we were to rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, would people think we were taking leave of our senses? Perhaps. Peter says that by God's great mercy we have been "given new birth into a living hope." In a world where it's considered naïve, or even foolish, to believe there could be peace in the Middle East, or an end to the AIDS pandemic, if we lived like we'd been given new birth into a living hope, would people think we were taking leave of our senses? Hopefully! So my answer is yes: let us take leave of our senses, so we may take leave of our senses, and rejoice in an indescribable and glorious joy. Let us take leave of our senses, and believe in the Risen Christ, so we may take leave of our senses and live into the new birth and living hope that we have been granted. Alleluia!