Faith, Doubt, and Certainty

 

If you were in church on Sunday, then Congratulations!  You bucked the Episcopal trend.  You refused to tip your hat to the ancient church tradition of avoiding church on the Sunday after Easter Day!  And you were rewarded with a sermon on the Apostle Thomas, doubt, and faith.

 If you were at the beach/lake/home/golfing/brunching/whatever and hoping to stream the service live or on demand on Facebook/YouTube, then I apologize that because of temperamental tech, we were not able to broadcast or record the service.  Ugh.  Tech.  Don’t get me started.

 So, at the risk of boring the folks who were at church, here is the highlight reel of that sermon.  Enjoy it – and be encouraged…

It goes by the clumsy name of reputation rehabilitation, and it is one of the fastest growing services in our digital age.  You hire a reputation rehabilitation manager when your good name has been besmirched on the Internet and you want to redeem your shattered image.  If reputation rehabilitation had been a thing in other times, William the Conqueror would now be known as William the Skilled Negotiator, Vlad the Impaler would be Vlad the Heart Surgeon, and Ivan the Terrible might be Ivan the Greatly Misunderstood.

And this morning we read about a man who could certainly use his reputation being rehabilitated.  Thomas.  AKA ‘Doubting Thomas’.  So, let me suggest some other nicknames for the man who begins today’s Gospel lesson by being somewhere else when the Risen Jesus appears.  Ten of the Eleven are together inside a locked room.  They are cowering in fear.  Ten of the apostles are hiding, like men who have lost hope and courage, and Thomas isn’t one of them!  We don’t know where he is, but it isn’t trembling in a locked room, terrified of being arrested for consorting with Jesus.  For all we know, Thomas is courageously striding around Jerusalem, visiting the market, going to the Temple, flouting the conventional wisdom that advises him to keep his head down.  This isn’t Doubting Thomas, it’s Flouting Thomas.  Ignoring the smart advice, the safe option, the easy road of hiding.

Then, as we’ve read, Jesus appears again, and this time Thomas is present.  And the risen Christ shows him his pierced hands and the wound in his side and invites him to do the very thing that Thomas had earlier demanded before he would believe – to touch those injuries.  And Thomas responds by not accepting this invitation.  Despite what he’d said earlier; he doesn’t actually need to touch the wounds before he will believe in the Resurrection.  Instead, he exclaims, “My Lord and my God”, and he becomes the first person in Christian history to call Jesus God.  This isn’t Doubting Thomas, it’s Spouting Thomas.  He is quick to realize his own foolishness and then gushes the Good News.

This is not the only time the Gospel writers tell us about Thomas.  John writes about a time when Jesus goes to the grave of Lazarus and Thomas says, “Let us go with him, so we may die with him.”  This isn’t Doubting Thomas, it’s Scouting Thomas, looking for places to go where he can follow Jesus, even if it is costly.  He’s sprouting Thomas, taking risks, and growing beautiful graces as a result; he’s Day-in-day-out-ing Thomas, walking the way of the cross each day.

Yes, he does doubt.  But whom is he actually doubting?  It isn’t Jesus, it’s his friends.  It’s their words he does not accept.  And with good reason.  They tell him that Jesus has risen, and yet there they are locked in a room out of fear.  Thomas is reluctant to believe the testimony of the Ten because their experience of the risen Jesus makes no difference to their lives.  You have to ask; do they truly believe he has risen?  And if they do, then why are they still locked in a room trembling with fear?

So, are you ready to rehabilitate Thomas’s reputation yet?  If not, let me ask you one final question that will surely persuade you: Who says doubt is a bad thing, anyway?

If doubt were the same as disbelief then, sure, doubt is something that we would want to avoid.  The mere thought of it would cause us distress.  Doubt would be a threatening force, stalking us, like some predator.  We’d be right to organize our lives to avoid doubt.  We would not mention our faith to people because they may reply with something that causes us to doubt, and we must avoid that at any cost.  We would read only the parts of the Bible that seem reasonable and easy to believe.  We would stay away from theologians, historians, scientists, in fact any person or book or podcast that might expose us to other points of view, because then we might fall into the jaws of doubt and be consumed.  Yes, if doubt were the same as disbelief, it would be sensible to be afraid.

But what if doubt is different from disbelief?  What if doubt is a normal, healthy part of living the life of faith?  What if doubt can change us more and more into the people God created us to be?  What if doubt is our friend and not our foe?

Doubt it is often seen as the enemy of faith.  But it’s not.  People get faith confused with certainty.  So, let’s say that you read a story in the Bible, and for whatever you’re just not feeling it today.  You’re not sure this event happened in the way it is described.  And because you are not certain then it must be that your faith is weak.  And what you’ve just done is take the need for faith, thrown it out and replaced it with the need for certainty.

But here’s the truth: It is simply impossible to be certain about our Christian beliefs.  Actually, think about it, we can’t be certain about any of the most important things in life.  You believe your family loves you but you can’t prove it.  Doubting aspects of the Christian Faith does not make you a bad Christian, it makes you human.  It is perfectly possible, and indeed, it should be the goal of our life in God, to live with uncertainty, but to act like our beliefs are true.

James, in his letter, says that the way we know our faith is genuine is that we will act on it.  So, if you have enough faith to pray, even if you aren’t certain God is listening, then you have enough faith.  If you have enough faith to love God and your neighbor, even if you aren’t certain that God loves you, then you have enough faith.  If you have enough faith to serve God and the people he loves, even if you are not certain that Jesus has died and been raised, then you have enough faith.  And if you have enough faith to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Christ, even if you are not certain he is real, then you have enough faith.  As John Ortberg says, “Disciples are not people who never doubt.  They doubt and worship, they doubt and serve, they doubt and help each other in their doubts.  And they wait for their doubt one day to be turned into knowing.”

Doubt does not stop us living content and productive lives for God.  Of course, doubt is often unpleasant and always unwelcome.  It causes us disorientation and distress.  But like all suffering it can teach us, shape us, make us better followers of Christ, and better servants of our world.

Doubts are like ants in the garden of faith.  They can’t kill you, they won’t destroy your garden, often you don’t even notice them.  They are minor irritants that have a good purpose.  They keep you on your toes, they stop you becoming lazy in your faith, they increase your hunger for the perfect garden where we will one day take our eternal and antless rest.  So, don’t resent them, don’t fear them, and don’t allow them to stop you enjoying your garden of faith.  Let’s rehabilitate the reputation of Thomas, and while we’re at it, let’s rehabilitate doubt.  Don’t despise it, don’t deny it, but learn to live with it.

Duncan