Acts 2:14a, 22-32, Psalm 16, 1 Peter 1:3-9, John 20:19-31

March 30, 2008
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

The Gift of Uncertainty

If it wasn’t for Thomas being remembered as a doubter, it’s doubtful that he’d be remembered at all.   Just because he wasn’t there when Jesus returned and just because he said unless I see it for myself I will not believe he is called a doubter, and it’s not meant as a complement.  And if you have ever been called a doubting Thomas, it probably wasn’t meant as a complement either.

Webster defines the word doubt as…..and in relationship to faith it’s the stuff of which discomfort is made. Doubt is often seen as the opposite of faith, and faith is spoken of as a possession, something that you have or you don’t. 

And yet, it’s my guess that on any Sunday morning in any church in any place, the folks who gather are as apt to have doubts as they are anything else.  And those doubts, whatever they may be are snuggled right up along next to faith, each one meandering in its own way, informing and challenging the other in a dance that lasts throughout our lives. 

Still, as common as it is, it’s hard to talk about…so doubt gets buried away as we show up week after week assuming we are the only ones who don’t have it all together and hoping no one finds out.

Our doubts are as unique as we are; sometimes doubts are a crisis of faith in response to a life altering tragedy, other times a chronic unanswered nagging question…however doubts show up…they are highly individual and connected to personal experience. 

“I don’t believe in God anymore” was a comment I heard occasionally during my years as a hospice and hospital chaplain….and when we had opportunity to explore it most often it became clear it wasn’t doubt about God’s existence as much as it was doubt about how God relates to people in the midst of their pain.  It wasn’t that people didn’t believe in God, it’s that they didn’t know what to believe about God in light of their experience. 

And I don’t think folk in the hospital are all that different from the folk who people the pews on Sunday mornings.  In fact churches would be mighty empty places is the only folks allowed in were the ones who have it all figured out. 

So, today we begin by acknowledging the rightful place that doubt has in the journey of faith.  Doubt is not the opposite of faith; the opposite of faith is despair, and that’s a different sermon for a different day. Today, I want to honor the place of question and inquiry and struggle in the faith journey.

Doubt is a holy thing and Thomas is its patron saint. 

All he wanted was his own experience of the resurrection, and that doesn’t make him all that different from us.  It’s so surreal that some handle, some toe hold in the incredible story is needed to begin to understand it.  May be he didn’t get it right away.  So what.  He stayed anyway.  He could have left and gone back to his pre-Jesus life.  He could have chucked the whole thing and walked away, but he didn’t.  He stayed with the group, he asked questions and said what he needed and didn’t flinch. 

There is a lot of integrity in that kind of witness and Thomas did what we all do from time to time…show up with faith such as we have and such as we hope for…stay with the community and look, learn, listen and grow.  

There’s something encouraging about that.  Bruce Epperly, in the Process and Faith Commentary writes

Over thirty years ago, I discovered that I could be a Christian when I read Paul Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith… Questions were not a sign of faithlessness, but a willingness to take our faith seriously. In this regard, Thomas is a hero of faith. Though he does not experience resurrection day, Thomas stays with the other disciples. No doubt the week was quite painful to him as he heard their wild stories of the Risen Jesus, and could feel nothing of their excitement. He could have left for home and abandoned the teaching altogether, but he stayed!  And, that is the point! He believed with all his questions. He stayed in the community in spite of his theological uncertainty and spiritual dryness. His patience was rewarded by his own encounter with the Risen Christ.

It’s what we seek as well, an encounter with the Risen Christ, a way to know that this whole odd and gracious promise is real, and that there is space for our own spiritual dryness, dogged questioning and whatever else we go through on the way to our confession, “My Lord and my God.”  There’s room in the story for those who come a little late, need some different lenses for bringing it all into focus and are unapologetic for their questions and the need for answers.

Did you ever wonder why Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus showed up the first time?  The rest of the disciples were all huddled up in a locked room for fear of the Judeans…where was Thomas?  Nobody knows for sure, maybe he went out for bread and milk…but I prefer to think, along with Biblical Scholar Sarah Dylan that Thomas was out in the world trying to do what Jesus wanted them to do all along. 

He was the one, who earlier in John’s Gospel, showed some courage by saying, if we must die with him, so be it (14:6).   Whatever reason he wasn’t hiding out with the rest may be the greatest testimony to his faith.  He was out there in the world where Jesus had sent them so many times.  At some level Thomas knew what the work was, what the need was and he was out there doing it while everyone else was locked up, scared out of their wits.  If that isn’t faith, I don’t know what is. 

I can only imagine the disappointment that Thomas felt when he returned to that locked room and found the disciples twittering about having seen Jesus and had his breath bring them a new sense of purpose and power.  I can only imagine they were still thinking about it, since that experience had not yet caused them to unlock the door and go out where Thomas was all along…but that is probably another sermon for another day.

Suffice it to say that Thomas lived on an edge of faith most of us know all too well. 

Faith that asks questions is not doubt…it is the foundation of passion that sustains through the tough times.

Faith that seeks concrete expression isn’t simplistic, it is an expression of mission.  We find the risen Christ by seeing him at work in those around us.

Works that are done even when the spirit is dry is not hypocrisy it is an act of hopefulness, the desire that the risen Christ we see in those around us will be in us as well.

The need to touch Jesus’ wounds was not a lack of faith on Thomas’ part, but a reminder that the place where the risen Christ is known is in the pain of the world that he presumably was encountering as he was out there doing what it was Jesus had asked him to do that first day he called him from whatever life he was living.

Thomas was blessed, not because he saw and believed, but because at some level he believed anyway and what he saw later confirmed the belief that caused him to be absent for round one of the resurrection appearances.

History will probably continue to remember Thomas as the doubter, it’s tough to change 2000 years of history, but I prefer to remember him as the one with foresight and faith, who was honest with his struggle and as a result came to a more authentic faith, and who shows the way for the rest of us.  

Amen