 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
I Doubt It | John 20:19-31 | April 7, 2002 |
This is Thomas. Thomas is always referred to as the twin. His name usually comes in the middle of most lists of disciples. He is remembered mostly for the account we have just heard from today’s lectionary reading. So he gets the stereotype: Doubting Thomas. When I was young he was held up as a bad example. We were told that he separated himself from the others and demanded to see Christ for himself. I even heard a sermon focusing on the fact that he wasn’t with the other disciples when Jesus appeared showing that doubt begins if you fail to go to the meeting house for church. So we learned that he was a dull, doubting follower of Christ whom we should not imitate. The moral of the story was clear–Don’t be like Thomas! Don’t doubt!
But I have always been attracted to Thomas because he was a doubter, for I am a doubter too. I too am critical and questioning. After all, I teach Philosophy which, as my students will tell you, has more questions than answers. I think Tennyson was right when he said, “There lives more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds.” I do not see a conflict between “not knowing” and faith as trust.
I ask my beginning students to read an essay by W. K. Clifford in which he says that the credulous person is parent to the liar and the cheat. If you are gullible you allow liars and cheats to get away with their nefarious schemes. Last October the career of Gerald Payne, the founder of Tampa, Florida-based Greater Ministries International Church, came to an end. He had offered thousands of followers what seemed a foolproof investment: God-driven profits. Using the biblical story of the loaves and fishes, Payne told investors he would buy an island, turn it into a religious refuge and make them a fortune on gold, silver and diamond mines in Africa and the Caribbean. Some $580 million in investment losses later, Payne was sentenced to 27 years in prison for orchestrating a six-year Ponzi scheme in the mid-90's. Unfortunately this is only one of many stories of con artists with religious rip-offs. There should have been more doubting Thomases!
So I identify with Thomas, the doubter.
In John’s account of the last supper (John 14) Jesus talks about going away and winds up by saying “the way I am going you know.” But Thomas replies, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way.” I don’t know what you are talking about, he cries. He unabashedly acknowledges that he is in the dark. He is plainspoken. He wants to understand what’s going on, and be able to face the situation at hand. One of the things I celebrate about our community of faith is that we are not afraid of our doubts. We do not force people to struggle alone with deep questions because they are afraid of how others might react to their doubts. We are willing to agree with Frederick Buechner who wrote, “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.” (Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC)
I also recognize that it may be a bit too flippant to say that doubts are merely a helpful part of the faith process. Doubt can be painful, in those moments when God is less than we wish God to be. Those times, when we cry out, and there seems to be no response. We would like to be more certain.
Jesus said if we have faith, even a small amount of certain faith, we will be able to move mountains. But most of us do not want to move mountains with our faith. We merely want to keep going, to have hope in the midst of today’s bad news or difficult circumstances. We then identify with the longings in Thomas’ doubt. We trust, but we need help with our lack of trust. We’ll believe it, when we see it. The good news in today’s gospel is that Jesus gives Thomas what he needs.
But where was Thomas anyway that first Easter evening when the other disciples saw Jesus while they were hiding in the upper room? Is he faithless because he is not huddled with the others?
Thomas Long takes this scene and says that it appears that the early church was the church at its worst–“scared, disheartened, and defensive. What kind of advertisement might this church put in the Saturday paper to attract members? ‘The friendly church where all are welcome’? Hardly. Locked doors are not a sign of hospitality. ‘The church with a warm heart and a bold mission’? Forget it. This is the church of the sweaty palms and shaky knees.” (Whispering The Lyrics)
Maybe Thomas isn’t with them because he can’t imagine hiding when someone has just reported seeing Jesus alive as Mary Magdalene had. Perhaps he is trying to find out the truth. Or maybe he is the only disciple with enough sense to recognize that this hiding thing could take a long time, and that he’d better go out and get milk and bread for the group.
Wherever Thomas was Jesus, according to today’s reading, gives the disciples his peace, the Holy Spirit, and then commissions them to do the same work that he himself had been doing. This is rather amazing considering that these are the same disciples who proved to be singularly unhelpful at the cross, and considering that all they have to show for themselves now is their huddling behind locked doors in fear.
Yet to the fearful, utterly ordinary folk Jesus gives his commission.
William Willimon writes that “We are church because to us, even to us, [Jesus] has come and given us his gifts of Spirit and mission . . . commissioning us to give them to the whole world in his name.”
To illustrate how that still happens Willimon describes his first church in rural Georgia. On his first visit he found a large chain and padlock on the front door, put there, he was told, by the sheriff. “Well,” he was told, “things got out of hand at the board meeting last month. Folks started ripping up carpet, dragging out the pews they had given in memory of their mothers. It got bad. The sheriff came out here and put that there lock on the door until our new preacher could come and settle things down.” Willimon was the new preacher and that sort of typified that church. Each Sunday he would drive out to the church praying for a miraculous snowstorm in October which would prevent him from getting there. He writes, “I tried everything. I worked, planned, offered, but the response was always disappointing. The arguments, the pettiness, the fights in the parking lot after the board meetings were more that I could take. It was tough and I was glad to [leave] them behind.”
A couple of years later he ran into a young man (only 23) who told him that he was now pastor of that church.
“They still remember you out there.” He told Willimon.
“ Yeah, I remember them, too!”
“Remarkable bunch of people” the young preacher said.
“Remarkable??” Willimon asked.
“Yes, their ministry to the community has been a wonder. That little church is now supporting, in one way or another, more than a dozen of the troubled families around the church. The free daycare center is going great. Not too many interracial congregations in North Georgia.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. One Sunday, things just sort of came together. It wasn’t anything in particular. It’s just that, when the service was done, and we were on our way out, we knew that Jesus loved us and had plans for us. Things fairly took off after that.”
“I tell you what I think happened.” writes Willimon. “I think that church got intruded upon. I think someone greater than I knocked the lock off that door, kicked it open, and offered them peace, the Holy Spirit, and forgiveness. And now, they are called ‘church.’
“Church isn’t our hard work, our earnest effort, our long-range planning . . . Church is a gift, a visitation, an intrusion of the living Christ standing among us.”
Amen
Joe Dunham
| Copyright © 2002 by Joe Dunham. All rights reserved. |