April 19, 2009
Rev Linda Fernandes-Bailey
“Faith and Doubt”
Doubting Thomas!
That’s the reputation that Thomas has received through the years. We usually mean it as a bad thing….OH don’t be such a doubting Thomas we say.
How could Thomas ask such a thing…”Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands and put my fingers in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
We somehow peg him as a bad disciple because of this.
First of all the other disciples have already seen the risen Christ…Thomas just finds it hard to believe when they tell him that Christ is risen, the way they did when the women told them. When Christ appears to them they were so frightened of the events of recent days that they were locked up behind closed doors. So it’s not like Thomas has the market on doubt…fear…questioning.
He is no different than any of the disciples or any of us. We know the rest of the disciples have denied, betrayed, fallen asleep, been plagued with doubts and even locked themselves in a room trembling in fear.
In Luke’s gospel when the women tell the apostles that the tomb is empty and Christ has risen they think it’s an idle tale and they do not believe them…after all they’re only women! When Jesus appears to the disciples in Luke’s gospel he asks them: “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?”
Trust me Thomas is not alone in his doubt. So let’s not make Thomas out to be the bad disciple, He was a fine disciple. One commentary affirms him as courageously devoted to Jesus and theologically alert.
AND what’s so bad about doubt anyway? Isn’t doubt a part of living our faith? Like joy and sorrow, laughter and tears…faith and doubt go together somehow. I personally don’ t know one person of deep faith that has never had doubts, questions, or struggled asking, “Did I make this whole God thing up?” What does it all mean? Seems to me we are wired that way…to doubt and question. Granted some of us are more prone to doubt than others because we all live and experience our faith journey differently.
But doubt scares us because we want certainty…we want black and white answers. We live in an information age so everything must be proven, researched, disputed etc.
ON my way into church on Rt 84, I pass a billboard that says “Where are you going? Heaven or Hell”…It’s divided in half…on one half there’s a lovely picture of heaven with blue skies and puffy clouds and then the other side is fire blazing hell….THEN there’s a phone number that you can call! Apparently someone will have a certain answer on where you will wind up based on some scripture passage no doubt! (Someone will have that answer…that scares me way more than doubt.) Doubt scares us so much we’d like a phone number to call….someone who can give us the answer….anything but wrestle with God….anything but live the questions!
Our life and our life with God are one in the same. Our theology, that is, what we believe about the nature of God…who God is for us, is woven within the stories of our lives.
So, naturally when we are knocked off center by a family crisis, the death of a loved one, losing our job, broken relationships, depression, addiction, an illness….when we look around the world and see economic disaster, war, hunger, homelessness, domestic violence, child abuse…you name it…It is natural to question and doubt….Where is God in all this? Does God exist? Does it matter if I pray? Does my faith matter? These are the theological reflections that spin around in our mind…these are the prayers we cry.
AND If we are honest, we have all even sat right here in worship when the words have gone right through us and everything seems meaningless. We wonder does any of this matter? What sense does it make?
Like Thomas we sometimes cry…Give me some proof….show me a sign…then I will believe!
This is how faith journeys go.
Marcus Borg claims there are three stages of theological thought: Pre-critical naivete in early childhood when we believe what the significant authority figures in our life say is true, are in fact true. Whatever we learned in Sunday school…whatever our parents taught us we believe it. The next stage is Critical thinking in this stage one takes inventory of all those things you learned as a child. In other words you question and doubt…you reexamine. The third stage is Post-critical naivete the ability to hear the Biblical stories as true stories even as you know that their truth does not depend on their factuality. In other words you decide what your faith means to you and how to live it within the context of the stories of our Christian faith.
If we engage our faith journey we will go through stages as we go through life stages. Our relationship with God will shift and change as will our theological thinking. That is, if, we are engaged. Otherwise we end up with a fourteen year old’s faith….You know we make our confirmation and then we never explore our faith in any depth again….so, we end up with a pretty shallow and immature faith. It seems to me those who doubt and question and struggle are the best disciples. Who would bother if they didn’t love God with all their heart and soul?
And Jesus can handle doubt. He tells Thomas…go ahead: “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” He engages his doubt. He doesn’t condemn him. He still loves Thomas.
A while back there was a big crisis as Brian Kolodiejchuk published the private journals of Mother Theresa. It turns out that she had many years of deep darkness when she questioned God’s existence….She believed but could not feel God’s presence. She says “There is no God in me when the pain of longing is so great. I just long and long for God and then it is that I feel he does not want me…he is not there…” With the deep pain and despair of those she ministered to ….the unwanted, the rejected, the dying, those living with extreme suffering and darkness it’s no wonder her own darkness became so deep. Like Jesus she knew deep suffering. But people were shocked and disappointed because they reverved Mother Theresa, she was a shining example of Christian faith for all of us. Somehow we fantasize that our shining examples have strong steady faith that is free from doubt. Rather it is that they DO have strong and steady faith right in the middle of their doubt. The truth be known, most who have deep faith experience deep darkness too. The saints…the mystics…You and I. It’s part of the deal.
The promise is never “everything will be peachy” BUT I am always with you.
Peace be with you is the first thing that Jesus says when he appears to the disciples in John’s gospel…the peace which passes understanding…I think because it is peace in the midst of chaos…not peace that makes everything bad go away. Peace that accepts what is.
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” It was hard enough for those who were right there…now we get an extra blessing for believing without seeing. We live by faith. I like to think of faith in the way Marcus Borg does…radical trust in God…not so much a belief in dogma or creeds but a radical trust in our relationship with God.
Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on the disciples empowering them with his presence. Sending them forth to offer forgiveness, love and peace as Jesus himself offered to those he ministered to. We too are empowered by the same spirit called to go forth and live forgiveness, peace and love….Touching the wounds of the world…the wounds in our faith community…the wounds in our homes….the wounds in our own hearts…even when we doubt and question….even in the darkness……We live by faith. Amen.