HOLY DOUBT
Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Prospect United Methodist Church
Bristol, Connecticut
April 11, 2010
I Peter 1: 3-9
John 20: 19-31
In one church I served the choir had a name for the Sunday after Easter. They called it “Thud” Sunday. Because the attendance dropped so dramatically from Easter Sunday.
Actually, there is another technical name for today given by the ancient church even though it also sounds like it is talking about attendance. It’s called “Low” Sunday. Low, because the mood changes so dramatically for all of us.
Last Sunday, Easter, everything seemed possible. But in a week’s time, we’ve all taken that glorious, almost easy Easter faith back out into the world, and by now realize all over again how difficult it is to live an Easter faith in a Maundy Thursday kind of world. Faith seemed so easy just a week ago. Now, in light of life’s stuff, faith is not so easy.
All this is surely why the appointed Gospel every year for the Sunday after Easter is always about Thomas, doubting Thomas, as he has been dubbed. “Unless I see for myself. 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.”
Doubting Thomas. He wanted so badly to believe in Jesus. But faith for him seemed not to be easy. Just a few chapters earlier in John’s gospel, Thomas is recorded as saying “Lord, I will follow you anywhere.” And he meant it. But, when Jesus was killed, Thomas went underground like everyone else. In fact, he’s not even around on Easter morning to hear that Jesus didn’t stay dead. When contacted by the others and told about how Jesus had appeared to them, he refused to believe them. Unless, he said, he saw proof.
Poor Thomas. But, really, is Thomas so different from you or me?
It’s easy to believe in Jesus when your career is blossoming, pay raises are frequent. It’s harder to believe in Jesus when the pink slip comes.
It’s easy to believe in Jesus on our joyous wedding day. It’s harder to believe in Jesus when a spouse walks out.
It’s easy to believe in Jesus when a child wins an award in kindergarten. It’s harder to believe in Jesus when that child can’t stay out of trouble.
It’s easy to believe in Jesus on a sunny Easter day when everything is so alive. It’s harder to believe in Jesus on a cloudy day marked by the death of someone we love.
It’s easy to believe in Jesus when good triumphs, when evil is vanquished. It’s harder to believe in Jesus when bad things keep happening to good people.
This morning I seek to make only one point, and lest you not figure it out when I’m done, I’ll state it now: Having doubts, questions about God and things religious is okay. More, it’s even necessary for us to grow in faith.
What’s the proof? Our disciple of the day, Thomas.
Thomas was not afraid to question. If you were to thumb through the Gospel of John looking for other scenes with Thomas in them you’d find several of interest. In all of them, he reveals that he’s an up-front, out-spoken person. He knew his own mind and wasn’t afraid to speak it.
For example, in the 14th chapter we see Jesus and the 12 disciples together. This is where Jesus makes his famous statement about heaven being a mansion with many rooms. Jesus goes on to promise that he will come again and take the disciples home with him. And Jesus concludes, “And you know the way that leads to where I am going?”
And all the disciples probably began shaking their heads in a “yes” fashion – except for Thomas. Thomas pipes up and says, “Wait a minute, not so fast: We don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way to get there?”
I’m sure with that the other disciples stared at Thomas with looks that could kill. But, likely at least a couple were glad Thomas spoke up, because, frankly, they didn’t know what Jesus was talking about either, but had been afraid to question.
I think much the same dynamic is often operative with our doubts. We may be reluctant to admit that we have doubts, say, about various doctrines of our faith. Things we may find hard to believe. Or, we may be reluctant to admit to doubts whether this God, religion business isn’t only a projection of our fondest hopes, and that faith is therefore as Sigmund Freud described, merely an illusion.
Admitting that we have doubts if hard for many of us.
Personally, all my life long I’ve had doubts of one kind or another. It got me in huge trouble when I was in the Baptist Church and particularly when I was a student at a Baptist seminary. “We don’t think this way,” was the professor’s note at the top of a paper in systematic theology on which I still got an A. I left the Baptist church shortly thereafter.
And I still have many doubts. Or shall I say, questions or “wonderings”
For example, like many of you, I wonder how to reconcile a loving God – who I know first hand in a thousand different ways – with the sufferings of people, particularly children. I just don’t get it. I’ve tried on all the traditional answers, studied them deeply. But I still don’t get it.
But, in the meantime, I find that I still trust God and love God for all the countless ways I know. Even if I don’t understand a lot of things.
And one of the reasons I continue to trust God even when I don’t understand God’s ways, is that I find permission in the Bible and in the United Methodist Church to question God. That I can be honest with God even when I have serious doubts. One could even say that the Bible is even saying, it’s virtuous to do so. At least that’s what I get from Doubting Thomas.
One could accuse me of making too big a deal out of doubting and questioning. But, in the spirit of Thomas, I think it’s a healthy thing to do. Fact is, I think for those of us with a disposition to questioning or doubting our predicament is not only an okay place to be, but if patiently nurtured will help us to grow stronger in faith.
Fredrich Buechner wrote that “Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.” I like that. What I hear in this saying is that doubt is what keeps you moving around trying to satisfy the discomfort of previous answers to faith that no longer quite satisfy. In fact, it’s only by doubting what we once believed, that we are enabled to be open to new, greater, deeper truths.
To use some classic examples, as long as one believes the world is flat and am closed to any other possibilities, I’m stuck. But if I admit evidence to the contrary, if I open my mind, then ultimate truth can be known.
Or, what if we still believed with the medical scientists of the 19th century that the best way to cure many illnesses was to attach leeches to people and bleed them? A lot of us would be dead if medical science hadn’t doubted their once held solid state-of-the-art practice.
It’s the same with truth about God. To be sure, the Bible contains all we need to know about God and salvation, but the last word has not been written about understanding the Bible’s truths.
Once people read and interpreted the Bible to conclude that slavery was perfectly acceptable. Churches divided, north and south, over this matter, including our own Methodist church.
Even today many people understand the Bible to say that women can’t be ordained.
The truth is that we are still uncovering God’s will for us as the Holy Spirit teaches us more about how to understand and apply the Bible in our 21st century lives.
Thomas wasn’t afraid for Jesus to know that he had serious doubts about the resurrection. Which tells me a lot about Thomas. But it tells me just as much about Jesus. It tells me that Jesus honors honest doubt. And it tells me that Jesus will do whatever it takes to convince one of his followers that he is indeed the way, the truth, and the life.
Remember how Jesus invited Thomas to touch him? And then remember what Thomas said? After placing his hands in Jesus’ scars, Thomas declares, “My Lord, and my God.” As the Interpreter’s Bible declares, “This is the most powerful confession of Jesus’ identity in the Gospel, as Thomas sees God fully revealed in Jesus.”
For Thomas, honest faith had honest doubts and Jesus responded in a way that enabled Thomas to believe. And not only to believe, but to go on, and as tradition has it, to found the church in India.
Thomas needed to see in order to really believe. The question for us is what do you need, what do I need, to really believe? What do we need in order to really believe in a bone deep “bet-your-life sort of way?” What do we need Jesus to show us in order to really let go and let God? What do we need to settle in our minds in order to put our full faith in God for our lives?
You know what Thomas would say? He would say to you, to me: just ask. Just ask this Jesus to show you the way, the truth, the life. And then prepare to be as astonished as Thomas was. Because Jesus will respond. And respond very likely through our participation in the church. Maybe through an interaction with another believer. Maybe through a worship service. Maybe even through a sermon. Ask Jesus to prove himself to you and he will.
We might not have all our questions answered, but whatever it is that we need at any given time in our lives in order to be able to say with conviction from the tips of our toes to the crowns of our heads, “My Lord and my God!” will be given to us by God if we ask and wait patiently and expectantly.
Of this I have no doubt.
