"Prom" by Amy Ray

Ok, I have to admit, I am a bit obsessed with Amy Ray's new cd Prom. Though I only got it yesterday, I have been listening to it incessantly, and if her first solo album Stag was any indication, Prom will be in heavy rotation for months to come.

Just for those who are unaware, Amy Ray is one half of the Indigo Girls. Having been an Indigo Girls fan for a number of years, I have appreciated the underlying creative tension that has inflected their work -- that tenuous dance between straight-out rock and folk. I would sometimes sit and listen and wonder when Amy was going to launch into blistering guitar solo. Stag had a friend wondering if the Indigo Girls were parting ways, as it was preceded by a Indigo Girls retrospective album. As time has told us, Stag was just Ray's letting her rock freak flag fly proudly.

Prom begins with a riff that easily recalls "Lucy Stoners" from her first disc before launching into lyrics that those of us who grew up queer in the South, or any red state, knows is true. Ray is more comfortable here with a full-on rock back-drop. "Give In" will have you bouncing, while "Covered for You" will have you reaching for a tissue with its gut wrenching tenderness, and "Blender" will have you wanting to put a fist in the air as it channels the pop-punk of the Ramones (sorry Green Day). Like Stag, Prom is full of gems; for me, my favorites are the above mentioned, plus "Rural Faggot" and "Let it Ring."

Prom is what one might expect from the Indigo Girls' rocker if left to her own devices, and like Stag does not disappoint. Besides, the photos of Amy Ray in various high school archetypes is worth the price of the disc itself.

Twist & Doubt

This is my homily for 03 April 2005

John 20.19-31 in NRSV: When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "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." A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Good morning! I must confess to you this morning that as I was selecting the topic for me sermon, I was going to choose one more closely tuned to the spirit of April Fools’ Day, which was this past Friday. However, I was curious to see what the lectionary gospel reading for this day was, and much to my surprise, the joke was on me. I read the gospel passage and realized God does indeed have a sense of humor. I mean, after all, this is the Bible story that made me hate going to Sunday School as a kid those few Sundays just after Easter Sunday, feeling those furtive stares and giggles as the story was read to us. If I can recall this part correctly, this is about the time I started going by Thom, as if on some sub-conscious level I was attempting to distance myself from my doubting name-sake.

In fact, I wrestled back and forth between doing a sermon on Thomas or anothernon-lectionary based scripture. Following a conversation after our Maundy Thursday service, I resolved all my doubts about what to do today. During a conversation at the Circle of Friends men’s spirituality group , we each talked about our own individual tendencies to identify with Judas (the betrayer), Peter (the denier), and Thomas (the doubter). It was the consensus of the group that gathered that power of these characters is not whether or not the accounts of Judas, Peter and Thomas are historically accurate, but how we each respond to them on a deep psychological level. In our faith journey we have been Judas, Peter, the hemorrhaging woman, Thomas, Lazarus, the Syrophonecian woman, or the one asking what must be done to inherit eternal life. So with this in mind, I would like to continue the spirit of our Lenten theme, “A new look at an old faith,” by taking on the person of Thomas, the doubter, and examine how he might be a good role model for us in our relationship with Christ.

Sure, it’s easy to point a finger at Thomas. Although he was not in the room with the disciples the first time Jesus appeared to the others, surely you would believe all of them. Unfortunately, Thomas gets a bad rap. Though it was not included in today’s reading, if we just back up a few verses in John, Mary is the first to see the risen Savior, and she runs and tells the other disciples. How do they respond to her? They respond to her in the same way Thomas responds to them – with unbelief. Unfortunately, Thomas makes a bold statement and he has been signaled out as a doubter ever since.

Often, Thomas is lifted up as a model for how not to be in our spiritual lives: “Don’t be like Thomas, believe in the resurrected Christ. For ‘now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ And blessed are you my sisters and brothers for believing in the Christ whom you have not seen!” We are not supposed to be like Thomas who expressed his disbelief in the risen savior until he could touch him with his own hands. Really, some do not like Thomas because we are more like him than we sometimes want to admit. And on a deeper psychological level, he expresses those doubts we feel as believers we should not have. Some of us have avoided the character of Thomas because some of us, if not all of us, have been him at some point in our faith journey. I know I have.

But let us remember: doubt is sometimes is not a sign of lack of faith, but rather an expression of it. We are like Thomas because we have doubts about our faith; we have questions that cause us to twist our faith around in our minds and hearts. We are like Thomas because we want proof and signs, wanting to put our faith in something real, not fanciful. We remember that Jesus’ miracles of healing were a broader part of his message about community, restoration, wholeness, love, and God’s kingdom on earth. We want to feel, touch, question things we hear regarding God and see if they are really a part of the brick and mortar of God’s expanding kingdom, or just a fairy tale. We want to believe in something real. So did Thomas.

Let me go ahead and dismiss one myth: to be a doubter is not to be an unbeliever. Henry Drummond makes the point that a doubter is one “who searches for God and the Godly life… that is on a journey to find God and the love of God.” The doubter is the person who wants to ask God multiple questions concerning life, love, existence. The doubter is the one who wrestles with God and attempts to live a Godly life, struggling to find life’s true meaning through Jesus… not ever being satisfied with the way things are. Not the unbeliever. The doubter probes, twists and expresses skepticism that leads to a deeper faith and understanding about the nature of God.

Perhaps a better meaning of the nature of Thomas might be that of a skeptic. To be a skeptic is be active about searching, to be a detective, being impassioned about finding out the true nature of God. And when we find God, falling on our knees and saying, “My lord and my God.”

Being Thomas means not accepting the easy answers about faith. Being Thomas means probing those places where we feel God present on our lives, putting our fingers into the wounds of our lives and knowing that God is there. Being Thomas means looking for the real God amidst the false idols, and believing. Amen