Let’s do an experiment. Everyone look at the tapestry right now. What do you see? Some of you first see colors, drawn by the green and blue hues, or by the earth tones and reds that set off the symbols. Others of you see the obvious symbols first: the three circles with the burning bush, the descending dove, and the communion chalice just jump out of the picture for you. It may be helped by the special lighting we have that pulls your attention there. Others of you see the background and are drawn to the embedded crosses that connect the circles of symbols. Those of you who like to live on the edge might point out the border that looks like waves of water. Still others are more tactile; they are fascinated by the texture of the tapestry; in fact, a few of you have told me that you had to actually get up close to it and maybe even touch it before you believed it was a rug and not a tile mosaic. Still others of you look at this work of art, and rather than letting your mind settle on the details of it, you jump immediately to what the symbols represent. You see the divine Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, connected by the suffering love of the cross of Christ that is open to anyone that crosses through the waters of baptismal faith to enter into the very life of God.

So what did you see? And who was right? Those who saw colors, symbols, texture, or ideas? Well, they were all right, of course. It doesn’t really matter how you take the work in, as long as you are taken in by it.

Now if that’s true of something like this, how much more should we expect our faith in Jesus Christ to take many different shapes? If we can’t all agree on how to look upon a work of art, but we can be content that we all appreciate the beauty of it, can we not widen the lens of our hearts to allow for a diversity of faithways in our Jesus faith?

Look at our gospel text today, and remember the one we read last week. John’s gospel gives us several pictures of disciples who came to believe in the resurrected Jesus. Last week we saw that a few disciples had a footrace to the tomb on Easter morning when Mary reported the news that the grave was empty. One disciple, John, we presume, looks into the tomb and, seeing nothing, believes. He goes straight to the idea of things and lets his heart settle on the truth of the matter – God raised Jesus from the dead; he is alive! Simon Peter and the others look in and, seeing nothing but the burial clothes lying in place without a body, don’t know what to think. It’s only later that night Jesus appears to them bodily and they get it. Seeing is believing for them. Thomas was a harder sell. He needs texture. He wants to touch and feel the risen Lord before he can accept it as real. There’s no indication that he actually touched Jesus once the Lord appeared to him, but he certainly laid out his requirements for belief that many of us understand. And finally, there is Mary. She sees the Lord but still doesn’t know him or believe in his resurrection until he calls her name. His word turns her heart to faith.

So which disciple was right? Who had the right faith? John seems to get his digs in for his own kind of faith when he quotes Jesus after the crowning Thomas affair saying, Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe. But is Jesus really telling us that those kind of believers are better or is he simply setting things up for us who come later and will have the same evidence to go on as the first disciples? After all, we’re all going to have to believe in Jesus without seeing the way they got to. I think that’s it, and I think John is actually being incredibly generous here in showing us these various types of believers beside himself.

Now let me stop here and remind you that there is one belief but many kinds of believers, one faith but many faithways. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me. So this is not about whether one chooses a faithway that includes Jesus or one that avoids him and goes another route. That’s a topic for another day. Today we are talking about the different ways people come to faith in the resurrected Christ and the ways they live out that faith as Christians.

Imagine throwing together a group of four into car to set off for a place you’ve never been before but only heard about. Odds are there’s one person who would need to drive. I don’t mean concede to drive; I mean need. He – and it would probably be a he, don’t you know?! – will want both hands on the wheel and can only feel like progress is being made if he is steering the vehicle. Another will be riding shotgun, probably with map in hand. Maybe a compass, a watch, and plenty of coffee for everyone. In the back one is sleeping like a baby – Wake me up when we get there! Another is talking, asking questions, looking out the window, noticing things, figuring ‘it’s the journey not the destination’ that counts. Sound like your family?

Okay, so whose got the right approach to the trip? Isn’t it more about how each is wired that leads them to be the way they are? So what if they all had to change roles? What if the driver had to go to sleep in the back of the car? He wouldn’t sleep a wink, right? What if the navigator had to carry the conversation? Pretty boring trip, I’ll bet. And if the sleeper had to navigate, I’m thinking they’d be lost in no time. And if the noticer had to drive and keep her eyes on the road? Might be some close calls, huh?

Look, some people come to faith with such ease they can’t imagine not having believed, and they can’t figure why some other people struggle with it. And vice versa. We buried Marilda Wynn yesterday, age 100. She was Margaret Buckley’s mother. Now after the service, her pastor came up to me and mentioned having gotten to meet “Tillie,” as they called her. He asked her when she had become a Christian and she said, Well, honey, I’ve always been a Christian. He probably knew what she meant, but he went on to ask her when and under what circumstances she actually invited Jesus into her heart. So she told him when she was baptized and that was that. But the truth is, Tillie was reared in a Christian home and her conversion was sort of like growing tall in your sleep. You don’t do it all at once; it happens so gradually you have to keep going to the door every few months and marking out how tall you have grown. She never questioned her faith; it was a given of her life that she simply lived out of. Whereas her daughter Margaret Ann, now that girl’s another story. She comes to see me from time to time to tell me what she doesn’t believe that she thinks she’s supposed to believe if she’s going to be a good Christian; and “is she going to hell for not believing it?” she wants to know. She questions and struggles and wrestles and reads, and then she wonders why she’s that way. By the way, I asked her if I could tell you these things and she told me yes, as long as I also told you what a charming, witty and wonderful girl of 14 she is. So there you have it.

It’s the same in my family. My dad is a very black-and-white kind of Christian. He reads the Book of Proverbs every day. 31 chapters. A proverb a day keeps the devil away. Proverbs aren’t too hard to understand, only to practice. Dad is quick to do what he thinks God wants him to do, but he doesn’t struggle much with ultimate questions. He often flips a coin to make major family and financial decisions, because he believes God will determine the outcome. And then he never looks back. I, on the other hand, if I flipped and didn’t get the answer I really wanted, I would be checking the wind and trying to go for two out of three. My mother is big on the mystical side of the faith: she’s a closet charismatic, a pent-up Pentecostal. She also has a huge imagination, which is usually turned toward the holy. When she found out she had cancer recently – and by the way, thank you again for all your prayers and concerns – the first thing she wanted to do was go to the 700 Club in Virginia to have one of Pat Robertson’s lieutenants lay hands on her and pray. That wouldn’t have been my first choice, but hey, [Jewish accent] What could it hurt?

Church denominations owe their identity to this, I think. Instead of accepting different faithways within the body of Christ, churches tend to canonize one way of coming to faith in Christ and one way of growing in that faith. Roman Catholics have traditionally viewed the church as the agent of salvation, so that infant baptism gets you started even before you know it. Then you declare in your confirmation that the faith you received is your own, and you become one of the faithful. To be a Christian is to be on the faithway of doing the right things, confessing when you do wrong and getting back to doing right. It is a practical faith for the most part, a faith that begins out of sight but is proved by sight, by everyday deeds. Catholics have always made room better than most for other expressions of faith – but usually they made orders of Jesuits or Franciscans or Dominicans or whatever to carry these other approaches.

Lutherans, and other Protestants like Presbyterians, have been more about believing and accepting the truth of the gospel of Christ. Christ has decided for you, your job is to accept his decision and celebrate your acceptance. Methodists that favor the John Wesley stream are committed to warm-hearted faith that grows in small groups of Christians that study and pray for and minister to one another. Baptists tend to be all about the individual making a decision for Christ, taking a walk down the aisle, a dive into the pool, that sort of thing.

So who’s right? We are, of course. We wouldn’t believe the way we do and call people to faith the way we do if we didn’t think it right. But along this faithway, maybe we can give others a little leeway. Some Christians contribute to the full body of Christ by their passion for the truth: they want to know, to look deeply into things, to understand. Others give themselves to untiring service to the community on behalf of the poor and vulnerable. Still others show their faith by their passionate and unconditional love for people. We need them all – mystic prayers as much as skeptic scholars, softhearted lovers as much as hard-nosed workers. Whatever your way of faith, whatever way you are wired, the church needs your faithway.

The biggest thing, though, is not that we come to faith in different ways or live it differently, but that the living Christ comes to us where we are. Notice the risen Christ came to each disciple right where they were, just the way he knew they would respond. He is like a parent who knows not to treat every child the same, but instead to motivate them according to how they are wired. Jesus did not make John and Mary and Peter and Thomas become like each other in order to believe. He custom-makes his approach to us on the basis of how he has made us. We celebrate the living Christ when we celebrate the diverse faithways of his people.

What’s your faithway? As long as it is the way of Christ, then thanks be to God.