Delighting in Doubt

April 7, 2024, Christ Presbyterian Church - John 20: 24-30 

You can watch a video of the sermon here.

Good morning. My name is Thomas. I’m the one who asks questions.

 

When Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote their gospels, they just gave me a passing reference. They included me in the group Jesus called to be his closest followers. Nice of them to remember me. 

 

You’d think they could have at least told a bit more about me since some people said I was the twin brother of Jesus – or maybe a twin with one of his other brothers. Oh well.

 

But John … the most beloved of Jesus’ followers … John paid attention to me in his Gospel. And you know, the things John wrote about me are probably true of a lot of followers of Jesus. They may even be true of folks sitting in this church this morning.

 

There was the time Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died. Jesus wanted to go to Bethany to visit Lazarus’ family. Little did we know that he was also going to bring Lazarus back to life. All we knew was that Bethany was two miles from Jerusalem and some people there had wanted to stone him the last time he was in the area. When Jesus said he wanted to go to Bethany, I said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

 

Now those may sound like brave words, but I just felt so committed to Jesus that I could not bear the thought of him going off alone to face people who wanted to kill him.

 

Not that I was ever afraid to ask him questions, you understand. On the night of his Last Supper, all sorts of unusual things happened. Jesus washed our feet and told us to serve others as he has served us.  He told us one of us would betray him. Us his closest followers! I could hardly believe that. 

 

He told us just as he loved us, we should love one another. Now that I understood. 

 

Then he said he was going somewhere to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house. Well, I was getting confused, so I asked Jesus, “Lord, we do not where you are going. How can we know the way.” And he patiently replied, “I am the way, and the truth and the life…If you know me, you will know my Father also.” 

 

I was not the only one who asked him questions that night. Peter and Philip and others asked him questions, too. That’s the way it was with Jesus. He knew he was telling us things that were sometimes difficult to understand, that he was asking us to live in ways that were different from what we were used to.  

 

So you can understand why I didn’t feel any hesitation about asking questions about this amazing story my friends told about Jesus appearing to them after that terrible day when the Roman soldiers nailed him to a cross. I was gone that evening – maybe they asked me to go out to get the groceries, which turned out to be a bad decision on my part. 

 

Jesus’ followers had all been gathered in a room on Sunday night, not sure whether they were also marked for death. They said Jesus came right through the locked door, breathed his spirit onto them and talked with them about forgiveness. I’m not sure what was more amazing … that they saw him after he had been killed or that he was talking about forgiveness so soon after his fellow human beings had treated him so despicably.

In any case, I spent the next week sort of on the outs with my friends. “We have seen the Lord,” they kept telling me. “Yeah, right,” I kept telling them. “Unless I can put my fingers into the nail holes in his hands and my hand into the wound in his side, I’m just going to keep believing that this is all in your imaginations.”

 

So when Jesus showed up again the next Sunday night and invited me to do just that, you can imagine how shocked I was. I guess my friends were feeling a bit smug right about then.  I did feel a little sheepish for being such a skeptic. 

 

But Jesus didn’t spend any energy making me feel bad. He invited me to have a tangible experience of his presence in my life. I needed that, and Jesus was just fine with that.

 

Well, thanks for listening. I think that other guy who’s preaching here today has a few things he wants to say. So I guess I’ll give him a chance.

 

+++++

 

Well, thanks, Thomas.

 

I know a bit about doubt and faith. I suspect many of us here do.

 

As many of you know, my first career was as a journalist. It’s a profession where one of the mantras is “if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

I think that Thomas would have been a good journalist. He was curious, not afraid to ask questions. 

When I added ministry to my career in journalism, people would ask how I handled that change. I said I was straddling skepticism and belief. I thought that was a pretty good place to be. I still do.

We as a church community have said we think that is a good place to be as well. When we adopted our vision statement and articulated our values last year, one of those values is Doubt + Faith. 

Here’s how we explained it: “We humbly approach the mysteries of faith and complexities of life through continual learning. We encourage questions and curiosity.”

When we think about so many of the stories in the Bible, so many of the things we are asked to believe about God and Jesus, even the many things we are asked to believe about how we should live as followers of Jesus, it sometimes can seem a bit overwhelming. 

I think bringing a bit of skepticism to all that is not a bad idea. It forces us to think through the things we say we believe. The danger, of course, is when we allow skepticism to turn into cynicism. 

On the other hand, I find it helpful to remember that belief really means this is not something I can prove. I can believe in an idea; I can believe in a person. The parallel danger to skepticism turning into cynicism is belief turning into just blind faith. 

One of the things I learned from a pastor who was mentor to me is the phrase, “This is what I believe, but I could be wrong.” There is a resonance to that phrase that has allowed me to listen to what others believe with what I hope is an open heart.

The wonderful author – and Presbyterian minister – Frederick Buechner wrote an essay on doubt some 30 years ago and had this memorable line:

“Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

And as Thomas mentioned, he was not the only one with doubts among Jesus’ followers. Remember when Mary Magdalene and the other women who had been to tomb and learned that Jesus had risen from the dead went back to tell the apostles?

Peter – among others – doubted what they said – ah, idle women’s tales - so Peter ran off to the tomb to see for himself. 

Peter’s doubts propelled him forward.  That’s what our doubts can do for us. We seek to learn more, to hear from others, to see what sense we can make of life.

Of course, sharing our doubts, our uncertainties with others can also cause a bit of tension. Keep in mind what the week must have been like for Thomas. 

His companions say they had seen Jesus and he told them he did not believe them. Yet they all stayed together in the midst of that. 

One of the things that I have come to value about life at Christ Presbyterian is how well we all stay together even though we bring a range of doubts and beliefs, of experience, of worship styles and musical preferences into this space. 

Here’s one example. There has been a movement over the last couple of decades to pay more attention to the reality that God is a being beyond any one gender. While many of us grew up thinking of God as a man and praying to God as a father, the language we use has broadened so much. 

Those of us in leadership here try to be conscious of that in our public prayers, in the lyrics of hymns, in our preaching. Yet we know that there are those among us for whom the more traditional ways of praying has deep meaning. 

We know that in churches less white than ours, the Father God language is central to an understanding of God’s care for them. We know that the fact the Jesus often called God “Father” – like he heard in Thomas’ references to Jesus’ Last Supper speech - helps inform many people’s prayers.

So here we work to hold so many traditions and styles in a place of respect. 

Here we work to make sure that people who continue to figure out what they believe have room for their questions and their doubts.

Here we hope that people who feel more anchored in their faith, in what they believe, can rejoice in that even as they recognize that others are still on a journey.

I feel so at home here because this is a place where I can straddle skepticism and belief with so many others. 

Many of you know that I grew up Catholic and the Catholic Church - and other Christian traditions - have a rich tradition of patron saints – heroes from the past who in some way are connected to a place or a profession or a cause in the present. You know – like St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland.

Well, I think if we had such a custom, Thomas would be a good patron saint for us here at Christ Presbyterian. Committed to follow the way of Jesus – even willing to stake his life on that conviction – yet always willing to ask questions, to live with doubts, to stay in community.

So thanks, Thomas, for setting an example. 

And thanks, people of Christ Presbyterian, for embracing Doubt + Faith.

Amen.