Doubt
The Second Sunday of Easter
(Acts 5:12a, 17-22, 25-29; Psalm 118:19-24; Revelation 1:1-19; John 20:19-31)
Last Sunday, Easter Sunday, Jeff talked about the three times of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, one time is the past – the first Easter, the second is the final resurrection at the end – either of an individual lifetime or of all time itself, and the third is the resurrection in the eternal now.
Today I am going to talk a bit about that first resurrection, the primal, first Easter. But before we get to that I want to share with you the context from which I will frame the discussion.
We have two terms that are often conflated in meaning when we talk about religion. They are belief and faith. To my mind they are not synonymous, but each implies a different formative process. Belief, to me, has its basis in reason. Through discernment or investigation or logic, one comes to accept the truth of theological statements. The mind is the vehicle to believing.
However, I would say that the heart is the vehicle to faith. Through a process of letting go of reason and of opening the heart to any possibility, one comes to faith. Both belief and faith are necessary in order to embrace a religion, and neither takes precedence over the other.
Now, it is obvious to modern day biblical historians that the idea of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in bodily form, while absolutely central to the earliest of Christian core beliefs, was difficult to convince people of in the beginnings of the first century AD.
The early church leaders well understood the difficulties for people to come to believe in the resurrection of the body, as opposed to a resurrection of the spirit.
The idea of a resurrection of the spirit was a fairly commonly held belief among the myriad of forms of Judaism and paganism alive in the beginning of the first century. But the claim of a resurrection of the body was a new, even shocking, thing.
And so in the reading of the Gospel of John today, we find the problem faced head on. As the story goes, Thomas, a disciple, was not present when Jesus came and stood before the other disciples in the locked room on Easter evening.
The other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But Thomas did not, and I choose to think could not, believe. He said, "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."
So there we have it – the statement of the problem. Thomas could not believe. He stands in for all of those who could not believe in a bodily resurrection down through the ages. All of the people, non-believers and Christians alike, that have had difficulty believing that Jesus came back to life in his actual body, still containing its marks of his violent death.
Thomas stands in for me, for as hard as I try, I cannot believe in the literal truth of the bodily resurrection. I try to explain my lack of belief: Maybe I am too much a "head" person, too much a left brain person, too much a product of this post-modern culture to be able to open myself up to the possibility of anyone rising from the dead. Maybe I’ve experienced the loss of too many loved ones and of too many friends and acquaintances to expect the once dead to appear again.
No, I for one, do not find Thomas’ reluctance to believe without seeing difficult to understand. For Thomas reacts to the news of the risen Christ in the way many, particularly since the Enlightenment, and during our time of extreme materialism, would react to something that is, on its face, scientifically impossible.
Through the ages the story in John’s Gospel of Thomas, familiarly called Doubting Thomas, has been seen as a cautionary tale: Do not be like Thomas who only believes by seeing. On the contrary, as Jesus himself says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
But, in the hope that I am not alone in my struggle to believe the resurrection, I suggest that we can view the Thomas story from another perspective. The perspective of faith.
The story of Thomas reports on a how one man came to believe in the living Jesus through seeing his body and its wounds. The story then goes on to end with a stunning statement of faith as Thomas opens his heart to the implication of the resurrection..
After missing the first appearance, Thomas is in a room with the disciples on the second Sunday after Easter. Again, Jesus came and stood among them. Addressing Thomas, Jesus says:
"Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe."
And Thomas responds with belief but also with the statement of the highest Christological faith to be found in any of the Gospels – "My Lord and my God".
In the Gospel story, without actually touching Jesus, without putting his hands in the wounds, Thomas’ doubt has been transformed into profound faith, not only belief, but faith.
Is it true for you, as it has often been for me, that the deepest doubt, the deepest lack of belief, when resolved, has become the deepest faith.
For me the Christian lesson in this Gospel is not so much about doubt, as it is about faith. It is how one often comes to faith not in spite of doubts but because of them. It is about confronting doubts, acknowledging them, expressing them, wrestling and praying with them, living with them.
For unlike belief, faith is not comprised of proofs, scientific realities, witnessing. Faith is not about agreeing intellectually with doctrinal statements or literal truths of bible stories. Faith is recognizing in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the image of a loving and compassionate God.
For me, witnessing Jesus own doubts in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, freely admitted and expressed, leads me to an ever deepening faith of my own.
And I also think that our doubts when acknowledged and taken seriously can not only lead us to an ever deepening faith but can help others grow in faith as well.
I think we must try to be forthright about doubt, questions, struggles with our faith, so that we, as a Christian community, can reach out to and welcome those who, while searching, come through our doors. So many unchurched people I have spoken to are longing for God but bring with them serious questions and doubts about their ability to believe in parts of the Christian story like the resurrection.
We must remember the compassion shown by Jesus in providing the proof that Thomas needed not only to believe but to come to for his profound faithfulness. We must find a way to convince questioning newcomers that the path to faith begins with simple presence. With showing up and being here with us. We must welcome and find ways to make comfortable in our midst those who question and doubt even the deepest and most cherished tenants of our faith.
For it is not questioning and doubting that leads to estrangement from God, but it is apathy and disinterest and disregard. Many of us know from our own experiences that God provides even the gravest doubter with faith sufficient for their lives. We are taught that one need only ask, and it will be given. But we are also taught that one must learn to ask.
We will grow our community if we are willing to welcome and share our worship and community with non-believers – with people who have questions and doubts. With people who have never belonged to a church before. With people who don’t even know what it means to be a Christian.
We will grow if we are willing to learn new ways of expressing our faith so that we can communicate our beliefs to those who don’t even understand our vocabulary.
The Thomas story stands as a symbol of the great challenge to the Christian church today – indeed the same challenge faced by many faith traditions – the challenge of how we can provide what is necessary to transform doubt into faith. Or, harder still, how we can persuade totally disinterested people of the relevance of faith – of believing in something - anything - outside of themselves.
To begin, we need to practice speaking of our faith and of our doubts. We need to practice by talking to each other of what we believe and of what we have trouble understanding or believing.
We need to practice explaining our faith even though we do not yet believe all of its particulars.
We need to share within our community our doubts and how we have come to have faith in spite of doubts. We need to learn to talk openly about what we believe and what we are not presently able to believe.
As we figuratively throw open wide our doors here at St. James and invite into our lives those searchers who may wander in, let us remember how Thomas, doubter though he was, became the first to publicly proclaim the Christian faith in the risen Christ in full majesty as "My Lord and my God."
The Lord is Risen, He is risen indeed!
AMEN
Martha Buck, Deacon
